This is a serious answer so it's gonna get down voted to hell, but whatever.

There's a huge portion of Americans who are suffering. Their personal lives are kind of awful, they live in communities that are impossible to get ahead and the communities are often that way to due the direct actions of the political establishment in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Above all else, these communities don't really feel heard by the liberal establishment. They feel as though their concerns are dismissed by what they see as the powers that be. They feel that their anguish is belittled as a personal failure, and often downright mocked. They also feel as though a lot of entities that fucked them are liberally coded.

To these people, Trump is the guy who makes those people seethes and tells them to fuck off. That endears them to him and offers extreme loyalty. They often dismiss the allegations against him because at some point every single conservative has been implied to be a disgusting person in popular culture.

Ironically I think a lot of Trump's worst actions solidified the support of his base, because of where America has been at since his political ascendency. The US culture war has been raging for a decade now, and both sides have a habit of taking extreme positions while vilifying their opposition. That is naturally going to cause people to get more aggressive, which in turn villifies Trump.

An example I love to use is vaccine skepticism during covid. There were two huge groups of vaccine skeptics in America: rural whites, and black Americans. Both had suffered greatly at the hands of an aloof medical establishment, and both had their suffering ignored. While the Black community's wounds run deeper, the rural white community was fresh off the opioid crisis. They had every reason to be skeptical about big pharma lying to them for profit, because that's literally what happened just a few years prior.

The liberal response to the black community was understanding and outreach. The medical community made a huge effort to reach out to black community members and popular figures in black culture. There was a direct acknowledgement of the medical establishment's bigotry in the past. There was not a culture of shame for people who did not choose to get vaccinated. This was also reflected in news articles and social media posts.

Their response to the rural white community was basically the opposite. The medical establishment's outreach was extremely limited by comparison. The opioid crisis was written off as a failure by the Sacklers as opposed to any systemic issues that the medical establishment needs to address. Vaccine skeptics were repeatedly and aggressively shamed, with open discussion in regards to simply enforcing vaccination via mandates. Basically every MSM article talked about how the vaccine hesitancy was a character flaw. Social media went even farther. Not only did they call conservative vaccine skeptics things like death cultists, but there were forums dedicated to making fun of antivaxxers dying of covid. People would post private Facebook posts of people they knew by two or three degrees of separation, and then liberals would more or less celebrate their demise. You even had the return of the word "sky fairy" on reddit to describe when these people prayed to God.

Trump, for his part, encouraged people to get vaccinated. He stated multiple times at his rallies that vaccines could end covid, and that they were making him look bad by not doing so. He was, at his own rallies, booed so loud he had to stop talking. He quickly changed his tune.

A consistent trend in liberal circles is the belief that they have complete moral and intellectual authority, as well as the belief that this authority gives them the ability to treat people who don't conform like shit. I'm pretty sure I'm voting for Harris, but there are also times where I felt like I should just say home. It's completely fucking insufferable, and ironically has a ton in common with evangelical christian politics that dominated the US in the 1980s. So long as that mentality is there, you'll have people like Trump gaining undeserved support.

Trump could be rolled out drooling and leaking brain fluid from his ears and 40% of voters will fully go behind him cause he's a republican. And the "undecided" voters will somehow see it as a strength. By the way, anyone still claiming to be undecided on Donald Trump in 2024 is full of shit

Judging by some of my distant acquaintances it’s something along the lines of HURR DURR GASOLINE WAS CHEAPER 8 YEARS AGO. They focus on a global commodity of all things.

Seriously, the only stuff I’ve seen from them that even approaches a policy comparison rather than “lol black lady is a ho” caliber stuff revolves around money. And some of that might actually be a valid discussion if it were correct and if it weren’t for the absurd amount of other issues.

It’s just a low-information team sport, regardless of how insane reality is.

Lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% (lowest in history).

Obvious tax cuts for the rich.

That's all his financiers hear.

Constantly attacks marginalized groups.

That's all his voters hear.

Everything else goes in one ear and out the other, muddied up with enough "whataboutism" and "both sides" rhetoric from the financiers to keep the voters from actually considering alternative options.

Is there any possible way you'd ever vote Republican? If not, remember that there are people like that on the opposite side. You're always going to have single issue voters. A huge example is anti abortion advocates voting Republican. If someone genuinely believes abortion is murdering a baby they aren't going to care how good a candidate looks in a debate.

Amerikkkans.

I dunno man. I got nothing. I don't understand it either.

Hatred for anything not Republican by MAGA and their brainwashed followers. That's what's keeping Donald T. still in the race.

It's all that side has. Who else would run in his place? Nobody comes close to that sort of name recognition. The Republicans are betting on a culture war to win and who wages that war more than trump?

While there may be "No stupid questions", there are many, many "Stupid answers".

Everybody will answer "greed, racism, idiocy, and bigotry" or some such rubbish, because morally and overall psychologically, that's the most comfortable answer.

The real thing is somewhat complex, and most people won't buy it.

Of course, part of it is those things, but there's way more going on here, some of it is cultural dynamics, some of it conscious intent. Those specifics are the symptoms, not the disease (though they may be diseases in their own rite).

• structural weaknesses in the US government, which was barely meant to handle the complexity millions of people, much less tens or hundreds of millions of people. I.e., bandwidth issues. As more people push their views and goals into the system, all of that needs to get governed or implemented somehow. But there is no cohesive operating principle that guides US (and even other western) culture. There is no razor - not even material necessity (staying in-budget, or managing debt effectively) is accepted. There is no means to trim implementation that all parties will be happy with, so things don't get trimmed. They get crammed in, the laws (in the sense of legal structure, not crime) are consequentially self-conflicting, improbable, or impossible to fulfill. This leads to an intrinsically unstable environment, ripe for (and rife with, by all parties) abuse. What you are seeing is, in part, the breakdown of the rule of law. This breakdown can be allayed, to some degree, with authoritarian means, but that only goes so far, even if that authority has a willingness and capability to work with the people as a whole - which none of the active authorities do, anyways, except maybe Bernie, and he's been written off by the authorities because he can't work with them well, and they also have valid concerns that must be addressed. But, in any case, whether centralized or not, this breakdown is to be expected, because the rule of law, unless supplemented with common principle, becomes.. well.. legalistic, and rife with abuse.

• governance that doesn't match underlying principles: we have no conscious least common denominator. People often point to distinct nations and say things like "see? they are doing X right!", but that nation has a cohesive culture, and isn't dealing with anywhere near the level of cultural complexity that any melting-pot nations are dealing with. What is enforceable must be agreed upon by common culture - or you must sacrifice the reality (though not necessarily the pretense) of diversity, and enforce your way. But that has obvious flaws. Instead, it is better, in my opinion, to enforce sovereignty, which is intrinsically what all the different cultures want, anyways, except that they also want to take control of everyone - which they don't get to do in a system with sovereignty as a basis, except by people ascribing to that culture. What you are seeing, is in part, a breakdown of unity due to a lack of agreement about what can be universally enforced. I.e., the system implemented does not address underlying cultural commonalities.

• the need to incorporate raw power and personal responsibility into the governing body. Bending the rules, breaking the rules with impunity, changing the rules, explicit and implicit coercion are all possible, and as such, the existing system or ruling party must be able to address these things, and incorporate them where needed, for the larger good of upholding the spirit of the law. This relates to the breakdown of the rule of law, but is more primal: you know raw power must be met with raw power. That power can be of a different form, but it must be effective.

• unconscious cognition of complex truths: or, in some senses, the "vote of no confidence". People understand, or are at least impacted, by the above issues. They have instinctive reactions against external control, and for good reason, as individual sovereignty is the source of a solid collective. But in any case, many people are aware there is a problem, don't see a solution, and are see no option but to let things burn. This may not even be a conscious choice, but simply an overall feeling - and thus, more powerful and deeply-rooted.

• genuine mockery and rejection of opposing views. Nobody gets each other, unconsciously, and everyone else treats others outside their worldview like shit, and pretends that doesn't matter. A lot of the left separated from the "Christian" right due to this - only to turn around and do the same thing to the center and right, feeling just as justified in doing so. But it creates real alienation and aggravates the already deep wounds and rifts that exist. One's personal actions, thoughts, and feelings may not seem to matter, but they resound loudly in the whole - and making personal change does, too. For those who are genuinely growing and facing their hearts and minds - my respect.

All of these contribute to Trump's rising and staying power. Of course, he's just riding a wave of unconscious thought, and if it weren't him, it'd be someone else. But people like to fixate on a face.

The actual thing we're trying to do (integrate diversity into a cohesive whole) requires genuine acceptance and support of differing world views (including non-scientific or non-Christian ones - why do I have to say this?). That means that your group, your ideology, must make room for the people who are "wrong", and wish to live their lives wrongly in abhorrent wrongness - though they never gain the right to enforce participation in their culture, above and beyond what is a natural requisite by birth, upbringing, or other dependency.

That is, each person and organization has a sovereign right to rule their own life and the lives of their dependents as they see fit, but does not have the right to force others to use their system, nor to prevent others from abandoning their system and starting their own or joining another. This integrates the very opposite of federation (well, not in the Lemmy sense, which is actually confederation, but that's a no-no-word because some people thought that confederation did give them the right to force others through slavery - but it doesn't).

But Sovereignty Culture isn't simply confederacy, like Lemmy is, but it heads towards the same things. That which can be federal is only that which we fundamentally agree on. The federal must not be used as a means of furthering ideologies, but as a means of resolving disputes between differing ideologies. It can have as much power as the people grant it, and no more - else it loses the people. By making sovereignty a keystone of culture and governance, we intrinsically grant and naturally enforce rights of others, but without placing a burden on others (except the burden of self governance, which you already have, and can't avoid).

Because people like my idiot brother think “he trounced that ho in the debate.”

Two party system, some would vote for party x no matter what.