Getting a Sense of Voters Who Voted Biden in 2020 but Trump in 2024

If you voted this way, or feel you can reliably and sympathetically report on the views of family members or close friends who voted this way, please tell us in the comments why you did that. The Trump victory, whether one likes it or not, is obviously a tremendously important—and in many ways surprising—event. I think it's important for all of us, regardless of our own personal views, to understand it, and some personal accounts can be one tool for helping us understand it.

Please do not post in the comments unless you fit this category (again, voted Biden in 2020 but Trump in 2024, or can reliably and sympathetically report on the views of family members or close friends who voted this way). My goal in this particular thread isn't to promote debate (something I'm happy to see in other threads), but to provide to all of us a possibly enlightening source of a very particular kind of information. I appreciate that we might not have many readers who qualify given these conditions; but I'd like to see if there are some who can help us here. Thanks!

Comments

[Joe_dallas]

During the summer and fall of 2020, three of my clients and friends commented that they couldnt support the republican party’s or Trump because of the “Racism” .

After a couple of years , they figured out which party is actually the hotbed of racism and voted for trump this time.

Another friend who voted against trump in 2020, strongly supported trump in 2024 primarily because A) biden administration nixed the early ceasefire negotiations which were likely to be successful whereas B) the biden administration was actively seeking a ceasefire in gaza which he stated would allow hama to continue fighting, a result the perpetuate the war for decades to come and continue to impoverish the civilians.

[Joe_dallas]

reposting in correct location -clarifying typo – the reference was the Ukrainian ceasefire. The strong hints that Putin recognized the war was going to be a stalemate, and the russian population was not really in favor of the war. Contrast that with the gaza civilian population that wants to destroy Israel.

[SimonP]

You're being equivocal about "the racism." What is the "racism" they saw with Trump and the GOP, in 2020, and what is the "hotbed of racism" they saw with Democrats, in 2024 - and why did the latter matter more to them, than the former?

[Ed Grinberg]

I think this might help (source):

[T]he media and [the] left have fought tooth-and-nail to declare Trump off-limits. Their strategy has been to convince people that if they like Trump -- or any of his positions -- they must be a racist and a weirdo. I think we are seeing in the polls that this is changing very quickly. People are realizing that it is okay to have right-of-center politics, and they shouldn’t feel ashamed about it. It is [an example of a] "preference cascade"...

This isn't an original observation, see here:
https://polisci.duke.edu/news/trump-wave-way-journalist-cites-timur-kurans-research

[Joe_dallas]

SP - Those friends and clients that were fooled by the racism claims by the democrats in 2020 were no longer fooled by the democrats and now recognize where the actual racism exists. While there is some racism in the fringe republican ranks, the level of racism pales in comparison of the racism that runs deep in the democrat party.

[SimonP]

Explain this to me in terms that a Democrat would understand.

[VinniUSMC (Banana Republic Day 5/30/24)]

An impossible task.

[Joe_dallas]

SimP that would require you to get out of you leftist/woke bubble

Though for starters
anti-semites
CRT
Dei
White supremacy,

All of which are designed to divide and define americans by race.

[loki13]

As I mentioned in another thread, I have a close friend who has been going down some kind of youtube wormhole the last few years*, and has started believing things like "They are shipping guns into America for the undocumented immigrants to use." We are still friends, but don't talk politics. He voted Biden, but now voted Trump.

*I noticed that it started when he began talking about Joe Rogan a lot.

I have a few clients that have mentioned voting for Trump in the past year (and that had voted for Biden). It's always I&I- immigration and inflation.

[Ed Grinberg]

I have a few clients that have mentioned voting for Trump in the past year (and that had voted for Biden). It’s always I&I- immigration and inflation.

I early October, a New York Times reporter asked: Why Is Trump Gaining With Black and Hispanic Voters? He offered “five possible explanations.” Here’s #3: “It’s the economy, stupid.” Bingo! Being told on a daily basis how much the Biden/Harris administration loves you, and how Democrats are all that stands between you and the depredations of Trump & Co. is all well and good, but you can’t eat that…

[Joe_dallas]

clarifying typo - the reference was the Ukrainian ceasefire. The strong hints that Putin recognized the war was going to be a stalemate, and the russian population was not really in favor of the war. Contrast that with the gaza civilian population that wants to destroy Israel.

[шинка]

When you're a man of color and you see what they're doing to one candidate; you know, the people you voted for are hitting some guy with crime after crime and stacking shit as high as they can. That only happens to some of us. And now you see true colors come out.

Democrats vilified and labeled Trump a criminal. I know what that's like. In the process of doing all that shit, they made Trump more like me.

That motherfucker took a bullet. People were shooting at him. Men of color know what that's like. They made Trump more like me.

Harris campaigned from an ivory tower. Trump came to my neighborhood. I got to see how Trump was more like me.

You want to know why Trump got minority men? Because all the shit they are putting him through is the same shit they put us through every day. We have a better chance of him fixing it than anyone else who hasn't walked that mile in those shoes.

Democrats massively fucked that one up. Next time, put a bow on it.

[Frank Drackman]

Preach it Holmes!

[SimonP]

This is definitely authentic!

[Dr. Ed 2]

They made fun of Trump slipping as he tried to get into the garbage truck — something I’ve done more than once, and that was after I learned how to drive the damn thing. And the passenger side is worse if you are right handed because you have to pull yourself in with your left hand., and don't have a steering wheel to grab.)

“You want to know why Trump got minority men? Because all the shit they are putting him through is the same shit they put us through every day.”

Is it “minority” or “working class” men? My family’s been here since something like 1644 and I identified with Trump for the very same reasons that you did — he’s had to walk through the same shit I have, and doing so in fancier shoes is irrelevant.

There is also a quiet backlash to abortion — the grandmothers who don’t have grandchildren to adore, and genuine pro-choice women who understand just how truly dangerous it is for a woman not under immediate medical attention to take an abortion pill.

The way it was put to me was “she’s going to bleed — some, maybe a lot — and there is no way to tell ahead of time. With a D&C you can tell immediately and do something about it. But with the abortion pill, you aren’t going to know in time.”

[Malika]

"There is also a quiet backlash to abortion"

This is why the pro-choice side got a majority of the votes in 8 of the 10 state (several of which Trump won) initiatives!

[Frank Drackman]

Ever notice all of the people who support Abortion are already born?

[EscherEnigma]

This is the second time I've seen this argument: people voted for Trump because everyone was just so mean to him.

It's absurd. This is the guy that won his 2016 primary after mocking his competitor's penis size, bragging about how big his hands were, calling a guy's wife ugly, mocking a disabled reporter, and so-on.

If the electorate cared about "too mean" he wouldn't have won the 2016 primaries.

[Truthfulness]

You just don't get it. Claiming that people were being mean to him is just sheer downplaying the seriousness of what Trump's enemies were trying to do. They were doing selective prosecution, trying to bar him out of the ballot, falsely suing him, and even tried to kill him twice. All your grievances about Trump is nothing compared to what he went through. I'll mock a disabled reporter 10,000 times than assassinate an individual.

Hope you enjoy these four extra years of Trump.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Well, at least we managed to get two purportedly sincere answers in before it fell apart.

[Texasyankee]

In 2020, I was angry at how Trump handled the Covid crisis. I thought the government lockdowns were counterproductive. I also found the mean tweets and name calling offensive. Therefore I voted for Biden, even though I thought him to be stupid and corrupt.
In the next four years, I found Biden to be stupider and more corrupt than I imagined. He also has become senile. Replacing him with Harris was cynical and confirmed the accusation that liberals are just interested in power. Harris is not corrupt, but she is the stupidest and least knowledgeable politician I have seen in my 80 years. Therefore, Trump was the only choice.

[David Nieporent]

Uh huh. Biden was stupid, corrupt, and senile, but replacing him was somehow cynical and bad? Sure, you're a real, sincere person.

(Editor's note: he was not "replaced." He withdrew.)

[Texasyankee]

To be technically correct, he withdrew and was replaced. He could have withdrawn and not been replaced. I guess David is a liberal, making personal attacks rather than engaging in serious discussion.

[Joe_dallas]

yes personal attacks have become his norm instead of engaging the substance. Withdrew, replaced by the democrat machine, in this case, effectively the same.

[ReaderY]

Am not in the category so don’t want to comment on the main thread. but it’s unfortunate. He’s a vety smart guy who used to have a lot of very valuable things to say. But his comments have increasingly consisted of attacks, and those attacks have increasingly consisted of nitpicking over minutiae that nobody else could possibly care about.

This is as good (or as bad) an example as any. If he could read his own comments on one of his better days, he might realize that nobody else could possibly care whether Biden “withdrew,” “was replaced,” or both, and nobody else would think using one word as opposed to the other was in any way wrong or worth worrying about.

Wasting his time trying to pick nits about minutiae like this, perhaps in order to feel he’s scored on the enemy or some sort of similar personal satisfaction, has really hurt his ability to communicate and persuade, which he once had a talent for.

[Vryedni]

The distinction between "withdrew" and "replaced" matters. The OP asserts that replacing Biden with Harris was a cynical power-grab. If Biden withdrew of his own volition, nominating a successor candidate was obligatory, not cynical.

[Joe_dallas]

True but very unlikely that Biden’ “withdrawal” was Biden’s choice or Jill’s choice

[Vryedni]

An assertion for which you can produce compelling evidence, right?

[Don Nico]

leave your bubble.
Joe was politically assassinated

[Doug Heffernan]

My younger cousin works in a warehouse that handles large plumbing supplies, like for municipal water systems. He voted for Biden four years ago because he hoped that he would help workers like him. The reason he gave for voting for Trump this year is because of Trump's promise to eliminate taxes on his overtime pay. He typically does 15-25 hours of overtime every week. He says he can't afford stuff that he used to be able to afford, but if those taxes were eliminated it would make a big difference in his life. I asked if there was any other reasons for his vote, and he said it really was just the overtime issue because it would change his life so much.

[Dr. Ed 2]

People aren't taxed on overtime as much as they think they are.

Keeping the math simple, let's say you are paid $10/hour which becomes a base weekly pay of $400. Based on a 50 week year, that becomes $20,000 a year.

Then say you have time and a half for an additional 20 hours -- that's an additional $400 for a weekly total of $800. If you earned that much every week, you'd have an annual income of $40,000 -- and the computer thinks that you will be and withholds on that basis.

But your annual income is less -- say $30,000 a year because you only get overtime half the time, and that also puts you into a lower tax bracket -- so you get the money back as a refund. You weren't taxed more than you were for every other dollar you earned.

Now as to not taxing overtime or tips (particularly tips), that would raise a major inequity issue because a good waitress or waiter at a place serving alcohol can earn $70,000/$80,000 -- or more. That's a real equity issue because the median per employee income in the resort/tourist communities is less than half that. And those in the "back of the house" -- the cooks, dishwashers, etc only get what the state minimum wage is.

So why should someone making $35,000 a year pay income tax when someone earning $80,000 doesn't? To a lesser extent, using the above simple math figures, why should an hourly employee working 50 hours/week & earning $30,000 only pay taxes on $20,000 when the salaried supervisor working 60,000+ hours a week has to pay taxes on all of his $30,000 salary.

[Joe_dallas]

Dr. Ed 2 2 hours ago
Flag Comment
Mute User
"People aren’t taxed on overtime as much as they think they are."

That is true, especially if the additional income doesnt push the individual into a higher tax bracket, and then the higher rate only applies to the portion of income in the higher bracket.

However the appearance of higher tax rates on overtime is due to the structure of the withholding tables. For example, if you make 1,000 per week then the withholding table formula assumes you are going to make $52k for the year and computes the withholding based on the $52k gross income. If you make an additional $500 from overtime, the withholding computation will be based on the assumtion that you will make 76k for the year and the overall withholding will be at a higher percentage. It washes out when the return is filed, though the appearance of higher tax rate on overtime remains.

[JackDitch]

Because Biden had ONE JOB and he didn't do it.

I always thought "Vote for me to save democracy!" was a lousy pitch, because if there's only one option for democracy on the ballot, then it's functionally already not a democracy--having at least two legitimate options is pretty fundamental to the idea. Democracy needs to be something most everyone agrees on before the voting starts, and saving it requires a supermajority at the table. I gave Biden the benefit of the doubt, thinking he might do just that.

But he spent his term mostly just further alienating not only the other side, but also the middle. He called reasonable election reforms that might assuage concerns about election integrity "the new Jim Crow" while his party just started mailing absentee ballot applications to everyone. He pushed the boundaries of executive power rather than shoring up its limits, and attacked SCOTUS when they held him in check. Besides just the traditional Democratic attacks on the Second Amendment and the Free Exercise clause, he helped add Free Speech & Free Assembly to their sights. He supported his party as they pioneered all new frontiers in lawfare. The final straw for me was the coronation of Kamala as the candidate, without so much as even a token debate at the convention. That's not saving democracy, that's "Nice democracy you got there, it'd be a shame if Trump happened to it..."

But most importantly, I think the only way to actually save democracy is to rebuild the checks and balances that are supposed to keep candidates like Trump from taking total power in the first place, by distributing power enough that there isn't a throne for him to occupy. Democrats have been and continue to be actively hostile to those checks. Obviously, so is Trump, but it really makes the whole "save democracy" thing a wash between them. Maybe Democrats will take that more seriously this time around. But in the meantime, my policy preferences are closer to The Autocrat's than The One-Party Totalitarians. Those are the only options I've been given, the only even remotely contested question on which I've gotten to vote. So, I voted.

[N-P]

I absolutely concur with your opening statement...Biden failed. I was dismayed that he never got anywhere near 'unifying' or 'healing'. He went old-school Democrat from day one. I think his ego took over. He was the guy that took Trump down, and he made it his mission to beat Trump twice. He made the gambit that keeping Trump relevant was the road to re-election, and that it would cement his legacy.

I was energized when the Democrats switched to Harris, but she needed to be willing to repudiate Biden on multiple fronts...quickly and convincingly. She couldn't win with his Agenda. She was probably not geared to going that route, and probably not advised that way, but it was the only path.

[F.D. Wolf]

Trump won 58% of the vote in Starr County, TX, a border county which has the highest Latino population in the United States, at 97%. Starr County had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1892, the longest streak in the country.

I have two good friends who are permanent residents from El Salvador. Naturally, they as non-citizens could not vote, but they talked about friends who did vote for Trump, the majority casting their first vote ever for a Republican. Democrats seem to be under the misapprehension that Latinos favor open borders. They could not be more mistaken. Criminal cartels control the Southern border. You do not get across without their permission, which does not come cheap. Latinos in the United States and their families are their primary victims, from human trafficking to the general influx of criminals. They want it to stop. I haven't seen it written, but I suspect Trump probably received the highest percentage of the Latino vote of any GOP presidential candidate ever.

[Dr. Ed 2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4dV1nfjQRY

[Rubbish!]

My wife has always voted D in presidential elections, but not this one. We have three daughters, all of whom played sports here in the land of beer and cheese. The D's insanity supporting men in women's sports, locker rooms, and prisons repulsed her so much that she refused to vote for Kamala. I know that stance by the national D's was a factor in some of the minority support for Trump since it repelled some family-centered culturally conservative immigrants (Latino, Indian, African, Muslim).

[JackDitch]

This too! Vance made mention of getting the "normal gay guy" vote. That's me. On its own, I don't think this would've been enough for me to affirmatively vote Trump, I put those reasons in a separate comment. But the media's collective eyeroll at Vance over this certainly helped seal the deal. It's actually really offensive to lump all these very different groups into a single alphabet soup and assume we'll take "queer" as a compliment.

[Lennyk78]

Do you realize that your wife was not supporting your daughters' reproductive rights? What kind of a parent doesn't prioritize their daughters being able to kill their grandchildren?

[Truthfulness]

Who knows, but at least they aren't childless cat ladies.

[susancol]

I have a "grossly over-simplified" version (below) and then a long version that I don't have time to elaborate on today.
KEY FACTOR: "VOTE AGAINST" drove this voting pattern.
1. Absolutely loathed both policies and the condescention of Hilary Clinton. Thought she was fundamentally wrong on a number of important policy/issues. Thought Trump was wacko, but not predictable, while Clinton was reliably consistently wrong on many issues, while being totally contemptuous of any opposing view. Voted against Clinton.
2. Appalled at Trump's demeanor and many of his decisions (where he might have been right in some cases, but couldn't manage anything but bullying and "Because I say so" decision making. Just couldn't vote *for* Trump. It seemed possible that Biden might back off of the major democratic lunacies, at least to the point where Trump appeared worse than Biden. Did not want either one of these choices. Voted against Trump.
3. This go 'round, everyone I spoke with, no matter their political persuasion, was dismayed at the choices being presented, when clearly "NONE OF THE ABOVE" was the only choice that could be voted *for*. (Being left with voting *against* one of the two very bad choices the parties provided, I voted (and managed to suppress the urge to vomit due to the shame of metaphorically "supporting" any of the terrible choices).

[Fyathyrio]

My sister has always voted Democrat, since the 2000 pres election. She is thoughtful & principled about it, not a foaming at the mouth Karen. This time, she realized electing a president is not electing a friend, the economy was killing her, and more of the same with Biden 2.0 (or Obama 3.0) was not going to help her finances or family. The standard question, are you better off than four years ago, is her primary motivation to change.

[Malika]

Is this the right question to understand the result? According to CNN's Exit Poll only 5% of voters said they voted for Biden in 20 and Trump in 24 (4% said they voted for Trump in 20 and Harris in 24). Trump got less votes than he did in 20. So another explanation seems to me to be there was less people turning out for Harris or to vote against Trump rather than switched their votes.

[Noscitur a sociis]

It’s looking like Harris lost the popular vote by about 3-4%, so maintaining the support of an additional 5% of people who were willing vote for her last time seems like it could have been important. Now, maybe there’s nothing she could have done to secure their support (or nothing that wouldn’t have meant losing more support elsewhere), but it’s a question that certainly should be considered.

[Lennyk78]

I don't believe 4% voted for Trump in 2020 and Harris in 2024.

[mweiser]

One of the most conspicuous statements made by the early analysts is that Trump’s reelection was his appeal to the undereducated white contingent. This is troubling. While it is true that Harris was left holding the bag of the Biden administration, and even though she possesses the correct attributes to be an effective president (literacy and objectivity), the overwhelming amount of support came from an element of our culture that is interested in maintaining those values which reflect an adverse position to liberal academia. This is troubling. The sustained efforts of the liberal academia failed. What does this represent? It is certainly not permissible to cave to the questionable ethics of now again President Trump, but which category of the cultural divide represents the best and most noteworthy antecedent facts to formulate future judgments. Is the position of the libertarian better suited to guide the obviously discontented populace? Perhaps the Democratic party should investigate a more moderated agenda. The conservative element is here to stay. The issue is what intellectual approaches are best suited to meet the needs of those who are disenfranchised from its conceptual boundaries.

[Jmaie]

The progressive wing of the democratic party will tell you that R’s win because the D party isn’t progressive enough. The dozen or so young’ens I know (through exposure via my 20 YO daughter) want the D party to be more progressive and are working to make it so. I do not see a more moderate agenda on the horizon.

Libertarian they most certainly ain’t.

[Bob from Ohio]

My wife was afraid of the anti-Semitism tacitly supported by the Democrats. Secondary reason is that Harris is a lightweight.

[Don Nico]

My wife gives both of the same explanations of why she voted for Biden in 2020 but for Trump this year even though she regards Trump as a thoroughly bad person.

I did not vote in this election. I did not vote for Trump in either 2016 or 2020

[Joe_dallas]

Don - I agree that trump is a bad person

That being said, I agree with bob that Harris is very much a lightweight and the anti Israel runs very deep throughout the democrat party. Their behind the scenes actions speak much louder than their public pronouncements

[EscherEnigma]

Pretty sure it was just fundamentals.

From 1992 to 2024, non-incumbents of the party in power have always lost.

For that matter, from 1992 to 2024, incumbents have always won.

The exception to this pattern is 2020, not 2024.

[EscherEnigma]

Whoops, I got the wrong range. Bush Sr. was the incumbent in 1992 and did lose. So shorten from 1992 to 2024 to 1996 to 2024 (a mere 28 years, instead of a robust 32).

[Truthfulness]

You're not being productive.

[Aubrey LaVentana]

Bill Whittle does a dive on this.

https://billwhittle.com/the-outside-inside/

[windycityattorney]

I only know one...and the reason was economic in nature. Cost of basics (food primarily) and gas. Because everybody knows the president directly controls the price of gas!

So we will see if Trump can drill drill drill his way to lower gas prices or if Saudi and the gang will just drop their output to counter domestic production and keep prices per barrel on the open market similar to where they are today.

The national election results are beyond disappointing to me personally but now that the GOP has somewhat of a federal mandate let's see where things are in 2yrs time at the midterm.

The only thing I am really believing from this result is we need ranked choice voting fast. We need more parties and we need coalitions to govern because this strong man "only I can fix all the problems of the world" bullshit is not reality, it won't work and even more people will disengage from voting/politics/everything. Apathy will win, again.

[Jmaie]

Presidents IMHO have always been given unearned economic credit and blame. Clinton is seen (by some) as having balanced the budget despite Congress actually passing spending legislation and also because tax revenues during the late 90's were exploding due to the YTK buildup. Who here remembers when making only 25% annually on your 401K made you a chump? Meanwhile Obama is seen (by some) as having crashed the economy when the housing crisis was years in the making?

[Joe_dallas]

That was during the bush administration, and the financial meltdown was due primarily to the expanding money supply thanks to Greenspan

[Spirit of ’48]

I reluctantly voted for Biden in 2020 because saw Trump as the greater danger. I reluctantly voted for Trump in 2024 because I saw Harris as the greater danger. The main issues that motivated me this election were economy, immigration & Israel.

[Moderation4ever]

To EV for asking the question. I found the responses interesting. I skipped the response to the comments as these seem to miss the point of your question.

[Aubrey LaVentana]

https://quillette.com/2024/11/06/the-revenge-of-the-silent-male-voter-trump-vance-musk/

[JoeGoins]

My sister (37, bachelor’s degree) and her husband (41, master’s degree) voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. However, in the 2024 election, they crossed party lines and supported Donald Trump for three main reasons.

First, their move from urban Maryland to rural Pennsylvania shifted their perspective. In their new, predominantly conservative community, they no longer heard the constant narrative about Trump being “evil.” Instead, when they engaged with their neighbors, they gained a better understanding of why Trump’s supporters view him as a flawed but significant leader. They came to see him as a symbol for the party—someone who gave it direction and purpose, even if imperfect. This stands in contrast to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris who seem to piloting a rudderless ship or intentionally steering the ship in a bad direction.

Second, their new neighborhood lacks much diversity. While they aren’t racist or prejudiced, my sister mentioned that they no longer feel the pressure to cater to minority groups in the same way they might have in more liberal areas. She feels that the Democrat party does this to such an extent that it defies common sense and morality (like Kamala Harris supporting tax payer-funded sex reassignment surgery for prisoners or not being more forceful with illegal immigration to not appear racist). She also sees how efforts in reliably liberal states (like California's Reparations Task Force) signal that white people aren't allowed to be equal. Pundits routinely talk about how Donald Trump excludes minorities, but they lack the awareness that Democrats alienate the average person.

Third, they began to understand that the role of government isn’t necessarily to “help” people, but to protect the basic rights of its citizens: life, liberty, and property. Among these, their primary concern became their financial security. Despite the pandemic and its global economic impacts, they saw their living expenses rising faster than their income. Although there were some efforts from the Biden administration to address these issues, their financial advisor told them that they would need to work an extra year or two to reach their original retirement goals due to the effect of inflation. They concluded that the financial environment under Trump was more favorable to their situation.

As for me (35) and my wife (37), we voted for Evan McMullin in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020, and Kamala Harris in 2024 because we couldn’t bring ourselves to support Donald Trump, knowing his actions and behavior don’t align with our ethical standards. At least our consciences are clear.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Wow, some actual normal people responded in this thread. I thought “normies” shunned the comment section of the Volokh Conspiracy.

[Justice Barrett]

I voted for Biden but switched to Trump, because of Biden’s conduct in foreign policy. Particularly vis a vis Israel and its prime minister, but also overall the hold of Neocon/military industrial complex have on the U.S. government, which needs to be broken. I do not know if Trump can do it but I did not think Harris would even try.

[JoeGoins]

But Biden pulled out of Afghanistan. Surely he wants to end foreign wars.

[Truthfulness]

Biden only did a botched job at completing something that Trump started. The wars in Ukraine and Israel only show that his party is just as war happy as the neocons in the 2000s, as long as it serves his side.

[Bwaaah]

I voted Biden in 2020. Trump has always been an offensive, buffoonish character to me. He doesn't seem to have any political ideology. I especially disliked his inclination to characterize immigrants as criminals.

I figured Biden would stay near the center. But he moved with the progressive drift leftward, as did pretty much all Democrats, writing racialized laws, preferencing people based on historical narratives, disadvantaging others, and perhaps most disturbingly, bastardizing the present with the stains of the past. I saw him, and the Democratic Party, in a mad dash to eradicate racism, as having pointedly institutionalized racism in the very spirit of Ibram X Kendi whose "anti-racist" philosophy capitulates that the correct answer to the racism of the past is racism in the present.

I haven't seen such a socially regressive, bigoted ideology in the U.S. in my lifetime, so energetically adopted by half the country as if any other way was, by their screams, "racist!" (The 1619 Project, sponsored by the New York Times, models the brand of deceitful poison.)

That movement in the left struck me as a soft form of totalitarianism, an overt form of racism, and offends me to the core. As if black Americans don't already have a difficult challenge of shaking the past from their cultural funk, Democrats now idealize that culture in the context of their feelings of personal guilt, and build institutional structures to center that story, thereby placing all dark-skinned people as Black people, as "our" victims, regardless of the individual and his/her actual story.

I greatly dislike Donald Trump. But he plausibly opposes and threatens Democratic hegemony in all its forms, racist and otherwise. I hope to live to see that Democratic neo-racism walked back. I also hope to see a spirit of love (yes, love) restored to our feelings about humanity, and especially, in ideals of liberalism. That has been lost, gone, in the virtue signaling of a shallow movement, leftist populism, whose greatest talent is its ability to bash people it deems to be its enemies. And what makes an enemy? Difference itself. That's all it takes.

So Donald Trump and I finally have something in common: we are enemies of the Democratic Party.

[N-P]

We are one of those millions of split families...six siblings of retirement or near-retirement age who had been Republican / libertarian all our lives. In 2016, we were 4-1-1 in favor of Trump. I did not cast a vote for President that year for reasons not directly related to my distaste for either Trump or Clinton, and I had one sibling who couldn't / wouldn't vote for Trump.

In 2020, were 3-3. I broke with my 'not directly related' principle to vote for Biden, for the sole reason of getting rid of Trump and thus saving the country for the next generations. Two of my siblings also voted for Biden with similar sentiments. In 2024, we were 5-1 for Trump. I held my ground with regard to my sentiments toward Trump, but two of my siblings, both retired, switched to Trump. It was exclusively for economic reasons. They were losing ground under Biden, and afraid of continuing to slide under Harris. All but me are essentially 'stock market' voters. A couple of them went patriotic (true patriotism) in 2020, but inflation pulled them back to camp.

[dwidel]

I'm a Never Trumper. My adjusted income is now what it was 12 years ago when I started this job. This is like starting over in life. I didn't vote for Trump; I voted to fire the people that did this to me. I don't think Trump can fix the economy, it will probably get worse before it gets better, but I know the people that broke it can't fix it. They don't even think it's broken.

[JoeGoins]

If you are stuck in the same job you had twelve years ago, perhaps you should look blame the man in mirror.

[Bwaaah]

That's an uninformed, inconsiderate, unhelpful, nasty remark. Or did you honestly think you were advancing an option he/she hadn't considered?

That there is zero to douchebag in nothing flat.

[JoeGoins]

The comment I responded to lacked critical analysis and seemed outright dishonest. If that offends anyone, I’m sorry-not-sorry. The original post stated: “I voted to fire the people that did this to me. I don’t think Trump can fix the economy... but I know the people that broke it can’t fix it.” No one did anything to him. He chose to stay at the same job with (what I assume is) terrible pay. He could have moved to the same job at another company. He could have sought a promotion. There are many things he could have done differently. Blaming politicians removes his guilt.

I can understand the frustration about his finances not being where he wants them, but blaming politicians, especially Democrats, is misplaced. If any politician is to blame, it should be Trump and the Republicans—not the other way around.

I'll mention in passing only three major reasons why it's unfair to pin this on politicians in general. First, political parties don’t control people’s pay. Second, leaders often get credit or blame for things that happen during their terms, even if they didn’t directly cause them. Third, the Federal Reserve, which handles key aspects of monetary policy—inflation, interest rates, money supply, etc.—was primarily controlled at the time by Republican appointees, including the chair Jerome Powell.

Democrats only had full control of the White House and both houses of Congress from January 2021 to January 2023, and even then, their Senate majority was razor-thin, relying on Kamala Harris as a tiebreaker. Their control of the House shifted between a 222-216 majority and a 213-208 minority, so they couldn’t act unilaterally. Furthermore, when they took over, they were faced with multiple crises: the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a struggling job market due to the pandemic, the aftermath of the January 6th insurrection (including Trump’s second impeachment), and an aging infrastructure.

There are certainly many other causes of inflation. One of those causes is excessive government spending. The old number that most economists agreed with was that a deficit shouldn't exceed 3% of the GDP. Under Trump, our national deficit exploded. By 2019, we had a deficit of almost 5% because of his administration's spending. At the same time, the government was receiving the first tax returns under the restructured tax code. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was understood by majority of economists to further increase the deficit spending. Jump forward to 2020/2021, both Trump and Biden took similar steps to support workers through three rounds of economic stimulus checks. The inevitable outcome of those policies as a whole was inflation. Because Trump lost the 2020 election, he wasn’t in office long enough for the full effects of the two stimulus rounds that he signed into law.

As for the poorly-named Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the Democrats passed that without any Republican support. Republicans didn't offer any solutions or alternatives that had any hope of passing. Several economists predicted it would have little immediate impact on inflation and only modest long-term effects on inflation, in addition to several changes not related to inflation. So, the idea that Democrats are to blame for the current financial situation doesn’t hold up under scrutiny; they actually tried to improve things and were fought tooth and nail by Republicans. At that, several Republicans have since stated that they don't want to repeal the law because it has positive impacts in their districts. This is the fundamental conundrum of Bidenomics: pretty much all objective data shows that Bidenomics is working but not very many people feel that way.

[Frank_-]

I voted for Biden in 2020, Hillary in 2016, and Obama twice. I'm a white male with an advanced degree.

I voted for Trump this time. I live in Brooklyn. I'm a registered Democrat. I vote in every primary. The Italian guys at the local pizza place had been wanting me to vote for Trump. They've been giving me a good-natured hard time about it (very lightly).

I've been brushing them off and ignoring the conversation for months. Then, I said, "What does Jose think?" (real name Jesus, but he goes by Jose) — referring to one of the Mexican immigrant workers I'm friends with who makes all the pizzas and is there every day. I really like Jose, and my kid loves him. We talk all the time, and my kid made sure to give him Halloween candy. He has also helped me around the neighborhood.

The guys all said, "Oh, he loves Trump. Ask him." I really didn't believe them and made a big deal of it. I went over and talked to Jose. Jose said very matter-of-factly while making the next pizza, "Yeah, I like Trump." I asked why, and he responded, "Because all the people coming here are [awful]. I'm working really hard, I'm paying taxes, and they are just coming here and destroying things." I asked, "You really feel like that?" He responded, "100%." I honestly couldn't believe it. I actually think there's a good chance Jose is not here legally, but he was clearly saying that whatever is happening with immigration is really messed up right now.

I then asked him if he knew why I couldn't say that. He said, "Because they will call you racist. But it’s not racist." He was very straightforward — like I was the one who wasn’t waking up to the reality of the situation. Then I asked the woman at the register (who isn't white) who she likes and she made it clear she didn't want to talk about it. I said, "Wait, you like Trump." She smiled and said yes, but was clear that she wasn't going to talk in the restaurant about it. There are such things as "shy Trump voters."

That’s when I just flipped my vote (four days before Tuesday). I walked over to the early voting site maybe half a mile away and voted for Trump and *also* my local Democratic city councilperson, my Democratic senator, and assembly person. The city councilperson still gets my vote because I know he gets things done when I email him after contacting 311. He’s a good guy, and I'll vote for him in his next run too for a different office.

As I took the walk over to vote, I thought about two recent events. One was walking by a hotel I knew that’s housing immigrants in Manhattan. I really find that insane. I can’t imagine going to another country and them saying, "Here, have free housing in one of our most expensive neighborhoods." The other is that the school my kid would go to if we hadn’t won the school lottery is now significantly influenced by students who just arrived here in the U.S. I like all those kids, and we’re friends; we play with them and invite them to our parties. But the fact is, it’s changing the school where teachers have to focus on issues other than just teaching the kids now. It’s too much, and honestly, if my friend Jose could say that I’m not being racist and this whole situation is crazy, then I can vote for Trump.

I don’t like Trump on a personal level. I really don’t. But after I voted, I had some other revealing feelings. I’m irritated with being called a racist or sexist because I have concerns about something. It’s too much. Every person I know is bending over backward not to be racist, sexist, or anything else, but it’s too much for that card to be played so often. Jose (who again might not be here legally) gets it, so the whole thing feels bonkers. After I voted, I did have the thought, "Well, if you want people to vote based on race and gender, you can’t complain if that’s what I do." It was a passing thought, but interesting that I’m having this conversation in my head.

Also, the day after the election, I realized how little I know about Kamala Harris. I was talking with someone and couldn’t tell that person the law school she went to. I didn’t know her mom’s name. I don’t know her middle name. I don’t know what neighborhood she lived in before becoming VP. I don’t know her mentors. I don’t remember ever hearing her talk at length on anything.

Here’s the comparison: I can tell you *all* that stuff and more about Obama. I watched that guy for over a year in a primary with Hillary, and he did long interviews. I know about him and felt connected because I heard him for a year before someone asked me to vote for him. And I can tell you that stuff about Hillary too (whom I voted for over Trump, though I didn’t particularly like her).

You know what, Kamala? Go on Joe Rogan and give him eight hours of an interview. Keep going until you exhaust him, and then say "next!" Go on Theo’s podcast. Say, "Bring it on" and mean it. Step up to the plate. (That’s what Obama did when he was being hounded about buying a house on the cheap in Hyde Park. He finally just said, "Enough. Get all the reporters here, and we will talk about this until they leave." And he wouldn’t leave until they left. Then he never talked about it again.)

As a registered Democrat, I’m irritated with the DNC and the people around Biden. How many people knew that Biden was really deteriorating? This isn’t the movie *Weekend at Bernie’s* or *Dave.* You can’t just prop up some guy to be President who is having trouble physically and mentally. That’s a really dangerous idea, and they should all be ashamed of it. That debate was a disaster. And then we have 107 days to figure out Kamala? I just don’t know her, and that is striking given that she is running for President.

And you know what? Everything is going to be fine. Democracy isn’t going to crumble. All of us are too American for that to happen. We are independent. We are raised to be independent. So, Democrats, stop acting like this is some war on women or people of color, and start focusing on the things affecting my life — like the city’s infrastructure, including schools, which are showing real strain from people who aren’t citizens or here legally. I think about other people’s concerns, so think about mine too.

I’ll give these guys a shot, watch them for four years, and then decide who to vote for in four years. I wish Trump well, and I hope that the Republicans do a good job since they seem poised to control of the House.

[M L]

Thanks for sharing.

[Bwaaah]

Thanks for sharing.

[Frank_-]

I saw some data also that I thought I would add:

I'm GenX, which is the one age group that voted for Trump (and if age were the only thing that matter, the group that helped him win)

https://x.com/philipaklein/status/1854044988360770031

Also, the biggest difference for Trump between four years ago was "Trump wins 55% of Hispanic men voters nationwide; Harris wins 43%. Trump's share is up 19 percentage points from a 2020 exit poll."

and "Trump wins 46% of Hispanic voters nationwide; Harris wins 52%. Trump's share is up 14 percentage points from a 2020 exit poll."

Everything else is 1-3 point difference from four years ago.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/results-nevada-exit-poll-us-presidential-election-2024-11-05/

[thor_in_az]

Attorney in Arizona. Run of the mill old-school Republican never trumper...until this election.

I was really hoping Pres. Biden would pivot to the center and yet he embraced far left policies and ideologies. I felt the same way after Pres. Obama's first term though, so perhaps I am the fool.

The biggest deal-breaker for me was the student loan forgiveness...even after SCOTUS shot it down, Biden kept crowing about how he was going to do it in direct contravention of law.

[Occasional Visitor]

I wasn’t sure whether to post or not, but why not?

One of my brothers falls into the Biden 2020, Trump 2024 category. For him, it came down to a single issue: student loan relief.

He voted for Biden in 2020 based on the promise of having his student loans forgiven. (Or at least a portion. I actually should ask him for clarification on how much.)

Fast forward four years. He’s mad that Biden didn’t follow through on his promise. Yes, the debt relief was ruled illegal. But to my brother, a court ruling it illegal is not a mitigating factor. His view is that if Biden couldn’t legally do it, Biden had no business making that promise. He betrayed his voters. Therefore, he voted for the opposite party, which meant a Trump for President vote.

I’ll be honest. I think his logic is ridiculous, in particular because he has much bigger fish to fry. He’s trying to buy his first house in the next year or two. Any policies relating to that, especially regarding interest rates, will have a much larger financial impact on him than student loan relief.

But I guess I get it too. That was a super simple, easily understood policy with concrete, intuitively measurable benefits. It passes? Suddenly, his bills disappear. It doesn’t pass? He keeps paying a bunch of money every month. Pretty simple!

And “pretty simple” is important in situations like this. On the occasions he thinks about politics, he likes to give it a moment’s thought, max. If a policy takes more than a moment’s thought to process? Too complex. Student loan relief was a rare simply understood policy. So for him, it was simple to be upset when the relief didn’t go through.

Anyway, that’s my understanding of his feelings.