> I am not a Democrat, and your response seemed to me more geared toward answering "How can I deal with policy changes that I disagree with?"

Yep, 100%. My biases are showing :)

> I am more concerned about the potential for the complete capitulation of American democracy to totalitarianism than any particular platform issues. What's happening right now is only a small part standard disagreements between parties (the GOP banning trans athletes, rebalancing the budget, approaching foreign relations differently) and much more about half the country being entranced by a cult of personality while the leaders in a position to stop a president from becoming a king instead are bowing down to him.

Yes, I’m concerned about the risks I’m seeing too. Where I’m really struggling is in trying to connect that emotion to facts. So far, every headline, article, and statement I’ve seen has turned out to be somewhere between “misleading” and “outright malicious falsehood” upon closer inspection.

Still, I read and give each one a fair chance to change my mind. The accusations being made are so extreme it would be wrong for me not to.

What really concerns me is that this extreme partisan rhetoric would make it much easier for Trump or someone near him to actually take control. When people have seen months and months of these sorts of assertions being made, only to investigate them and discover that isn’t what was happening at all… at some point, people are going to stop listening. That’s when things get really dangerous IMO.

My biggest fear with this administration is that they’ll actually do the things they’re being accused of, I’ll see it for what it is, and I won’t be able to get anyone to listen to me because of “outrage fatigue”.

ETA: a second response is coming for the last section :)

As someone who currently studies public policy I find the centrist declaration interesting because I used to consider myself a centrist until I started reading more on the actual positions of many politicians.

In my limited view Obama was very centrist, as was Hillary, and with some notable exceptions it looked like Kamala would continue the trend (while expediently skewing left and sometimes even slightly right when necessary).

I think if you were to pie chart policy even into Trumps first term you’d see presidential action being both majority in volume and majority in impact as centrist.

So while I agree that Kamala’s messaging failed to point this out during the election, and DEI rhetoric and action being a notable exception to my argument, Kamala was at the end of the day the centrist candidate IMO and thus the 2.0 correction would be more transparency to that reality.

> I don't like Harris' message. I probably disagree with her on a majority of political debate topics. I am a centrist and would agree with her on some things, but I would have considered myself a right leaning centrist more than a left leaning centrist. Her message failed for me too.

I’m an extremist without question, just not the popular type. Think less “Donald Trump” and more “Ron Paul” :)

> I am just dismayed that the country elected _this_ man. A convicted felon who has provably lied more than any other person on record in the history of humanity, who already tried to overthrow an election, is only self interested, a bully, a sexual assaulter, a conman, a swindler: _this_ man?

The alternative was someone with no obvious positions other than her predecessor’s, who was not elected by her party, and who was honestly just unlikeable as an individual for most people.

Of all the things you listed about Trump, I’d only really take issue with two: I’m not convinced he sexually assaulted anyone (though I also don’t have sufficient evidence to believe he definitely didn’t), and I don’t think “only self interested” is quite right. I think his motivations are a bit more complex than that, and are more rooted in personal pride and revenge than anything else. I don’t think he intended to win the first time, and I don’t think personal financial enrichment was really a goal of his either time.

I think his initial run was mostly on a whim, but (Hillary) Clinton offended him and he doubled down in response. His second run was personal - he felt personally attacked on both socially and legally, and has basically made it his mission in life at this point to destroy everything those who did that to him care about.

I don’t believe for a moment that he’s being selfless or altruistic. He’s acting out of self-interest, but not in the way most people would mean that statement.

> And now he's doing what you knew he would do, and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it.

As best I can tell, he’s mostly doing what the people who elected him expected him to do.

> I don't want to know how to get Kamala 2.0 to win an election. I want to know how to get back to Bush v. Gore.

I’d be happy with Obama v. McCain at this point.