What was that reason for voting for Trump, again?

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Because of the MAGA cult that's taken over most of the country.

"The Art of the Con and Why People Fall for It"

You're part of the problem then. Blaming the voters that do bother to show up when you don't like the result isn't at all useful. The responsibility here is with the politicians and elites, really the only remaining path forward that doesn't involve violence is to just vote the bums out of office, never vote for a major party candidate for federal office unless there's no 3rd party available and you're voting for the incumbent. We're not at a point where any of the folks in office can be trusted.

At the state and local level it's a bit more complicated, as some of them are actually acceptable. Every state should have either a non-partisan or bipartisan districting committee when the districts are drawn. Every state should have some form of primary that allows the same party to face off against itself in the general election if there isn't a competitive candidate from a different party running.

Things can get better, but the reality, is that we've already lost our Democracy at the federal level thanks to the corruption and incompetence of the Democratic leaderships. We still have a bit at the state and local level, but even that is fading as SCOTUS continues to undermine restrictions on corruption and voting rights.

Broad acceptance of ranked choice voting...at least in the primaries...might help.

For instance, today, having a number of good candidates and one bad candidate running for the same office could work to the advantage of the bad candidate. All of the "reasonable" votes would be split across multiple good candidates making it much easier for the bad candidate to get the most votes.

Matchbox-
I don't blame them for showing up and voting contrary to my opinions, I blame them for their shallow understanding of the issues, and their short memory span.

Yes, but which candidate do they vote for to actually change things in a positive direction? Therein lies the problem, the voters are only as good as the candidates that are available to vote for and the ones that are available at the federal level are mostly ones that have already been captured by wealthy donors. The only thing that correlates with what policy gets put into place the last couple decades is donor contributions. Suggesting that the voters are somehow to blame when there are not candidates that can afford to run without having to make a bunch of promises to donors and get their approval is naive.

As far as Harris versus Trump, Harris would have been a disaster, but people know what Trump is like and they also know that continuing to reward the Democrats for being slightly less evil than the GOP isn't getting us anywhere in terms of progress. And, given how the party is organizing itself now, I see no reason to believe that anything will change as they flat out don't care if they lose. The politicians and the rest still get their money, it's the rest of us that are out of luck.

Ranked choice voting probably wouldn't do much, but since the parties sued to get our primary system overturned, we're using one that's based on a top two model where the top two vote getters in the primary of any party advance to the general election. It discourages the worst actors from misbehaving, as long as you can get people to run against them. Typically, the less extreme candidate is the one that's won when two candidates of the same party run against each other.

How would Harris have been a disaster? We'd know social security and medicare were safe, and she had a platform that promised help for ordinary people, such as federal money for new homeowners. That hardly sounds less evil that the Republicans - far from it. With Trump, you've got a morbid narcissist who surrounds himself with incompetent sycophants whose only qualification that matters to him is their blind loyalty. Then there's the whole matter of Trump enriching the already rich at the expense of the rest of us. Nope, when it comes to evil, the Republicans win hands down.

Why bother voting, when my only choices are between Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber? Either way, we still lose!

She has no spine, no deep seated priorities that she'd fight for. She would have just been a DEI hire and the latest to just let the GOP roll her. Just look at how she behaved as AG of California if you want a sense. She had to drop out of the primaries in 2020 before Iowa because she couldn't even effectively put together a campaign, and you're suggesting that she wouldn't have been a disaster as President?

The fact is that she wasn't even really qualified to be VP and was only selected because Biden promised to choose a woman of color, and even by that standard, she brought absolutely nothing to the ticket. CA was already going to vote blue and she didn't have any sort of constituency with her polling at roughly 1% at the time.

She learned and she grew as an individual and a politician - something Trump never did. As I already stated, social security and medicare would have been safe under her, and probably expanded. With Trump, everything beneficial to ordinary people will be at risk so that he can give his precious billionaires a tax cut.

I don't vote Republican but I've done very well taking advantage of tax breaks.
Took a large capital gain and paid no Federal tax. Then I shoveled the money back into tax deferred retirement accounts. Now that I'm retired I can take the money out of those accounts.