alt Hacker NewsThanks for the clarification. The interesting thing about the 2024 election was that Trump's turnout was higher than 2016, and in addition, according to the polling and analysis I saw, this was one of the first times in a long time where if _more_ people had voted, he would have had _more_ votes. This is in pretty stark contrast to presidential voting trends for the last 30-40 years. So although I think you could paint 2016 as an "apathy" election (I would still argue that 2016 was more about two deeply unpopular candidates than anything else) I'm not sure that same analysis really applies to 2024. I'm basing a lot of this on this very interesting interview here -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx0J7dIlL7c -- so to the extent that I'm wrong or you disagree, this at least gives some context to my claims.
I did look that up and took out a line about voter turnout because of it. He definitely has rallied people. He does tap into an energy that the DNC has been blind to. But if you look at the tenor of it, it really does seem to be about anger and dissatisfaction and combativeness -- destructive rather than constructive. MAGA talking points and initiatives aren't about building up communities, schools, infrastructure...they're about all the bogeymans.
I do see the failure of either party to produce a truly constructively inspiring candidate as something seriously wrong with the system. Thanks for the link, it does seem interesting.