And if Biden - or Harris - don't take steps to address it by 2024, someone much worse than Trump will appear.

And they may well win.

The reality is voters on both sides vote how the various media outlets tell them to vote. There's plenty of media noise, but the available narratives are carefully curated, and voters don't get to generate their own from the grassroots upwards.

This has become far more dangerous as Facebook and the various other online platforms have moved towards microprofiling and microtargetting.

This was a huge issue during the Brexit campaign, when disingenuous single-issue ads aimed at very narrow demographics with specific vulnerabilities put the result over the top.

Trump spent more on social in this election than Biden did, and the result was a good collection of surprise wins in states like Florida, and the second biggest voter turnout in US history.

If Trump had been even slightly more competent and focused and if Covid hadn't been happening this would have been a bloodbath for progressives.

I think it's a viscous feedback loop. Media outlets construct & present narratives based on what they believe will get people to tune-in/click etc., mostly a financial consideration. That content guides the audience's beliefs in the direction of the narrative. Media outlets are then locked in to that narrative, and must present content that coincides with or pushed it even further, and the cycle continues.

America has a ton of issues, but I think some democratic reforms are critically important. Voting rights are being attacked, and I don't think most people are represented well by the two party system.

That's not true.

https://i.imgur.com/EnsuC7N.jpeg

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-presidential-delegat...

The field narrowed after the results of the contests on 3/3. Biden had the lead at the end of that day and it only grew after that.

It's more likely they endorsed him out of self interest because it was clear he would win and they wanted to be considered for the VP pick or other posts. Conspiracy is much less likely and viewing it through that lens (without evidence) is more a reflection or one's beliefs than the actual events.

However, I think a majority might not have wanted a moderate. They might have wanted a progressive, but voted moderate because their priority was to get Trump out, and they believed (maybe falsely, we'll probably never know for sure) that a more progressive candidate could beat Trump. The party establishment was certainly pushing that narrative.

I viewed it much the same. I also saw it as very similar to what President Trump did with the Republican party in 2016: Tracking his registered political affiliations and statements of political belief over the years put him all over the map. And he also faced similar pushback, probably more forceful, from the Republican establishment as Bernie did from the Democrats. I think that reveals a deep division between traditional the conservative platform and everyday Republicans, or at least that everyday Republicans were deeply cynical about the desire & ability of the Republican establishment to deliver.

Again, probably a similar mechanic was underlying support for Bernie. Which means (no surprise) that a very large group of Americans are completely disillusioned with the political establishment.

The way people in the US behave resembles atheists more than they resemble any religion. Generally people don't want to defund the police, including African Americans (people want police to be more accountable and empathetic), and really no mainstream politician is very close to socialism in this country. But its just the labels that stick.

In generally I think state government solutions don't receive enough attention in policy discussions.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so let us just rename the rose and get on with it.

The party did not decide, the people clearly indicated who they wanted. They wanted the person who could win the general election. Turns out they were a lot smarter than you give them credit.