The Media Still Doesn’t Get Biden Voters

As a liberal, I don’t need to idolize my president. I don’t want to have a beer with them. I don’t buy Democratic President merch.

I do want them to be competent. I do want them to respect the rule of law. I do want them to be truthful though I understand politics means they sometimes aren’t. I want them to govern for the good of all, even conservatives that didn’t vote for them. I want them to respect history and science, rather than spouting bullshit conspiracy theories with zero basis in fact.

By those criteria, Biden has been as good a president as I could hope for.

Trumpers just seem to care that Trump hates the people they hate. They seem to love the bullshit he spouts; the endless lies, the conspiracy theory nonsense, all of it.

I think I understand Trumpers well enough, without reaching out and trying to understand their point of view. If they could coherently form complete sentences that didn’t involve regurgitating Trump lies or rightwing media conspiracy nonsense, I might try — but they can’t and don’t, so it’s a waste of time. Two groups who can’t agree on the difference between up and down might as well be speaking different languages, so, just no.

Trump voters are never asked to understand Biden voters?

They can't. They can't understand anything outside of their tiny sphere. Everything else angers and terrifies them. Otherwise they wouldn't be conservatives.

So there's no point in asking them. It's like asking a turtle to fly.

It's not hard to understand Trump voters. They love the way Trump is portrayed on Fox "News," and they love licking boots. Getting them to understand that a convicted rapist, six-time bankrupted, twice-divorced irreligious grifter makes a bad president can be quite challenging.

A good in-depth discussion of media bias in political reporting, or why is it that Biden voters are encouraged to understand an empathize with Trump voters but Trump voters are never asked to understand Biden voters?

Same reason why during BLM, lots of media showcasing the looting or police brutality. But 90% of protests were just people standing there politely and cops standing on the other side.

Media wants blood for ratings.

Are there Biden voters or just Anti-Trump voters? The Biden Administration has been dealing with inflation that just now is leveling out. While his policies match what the majority of voters want, the voters don't want him. The downside is there is no one better to choose. Essentially it is meh Biden is better than anything the GOP has to offer.

Brainwashed Trumpers are in such bad shape they'd literally need professional cult deprogrammers... is that still a thing? They are utterly impossible to reason with.

Racism. It is because of racism.

Fascism doesn’t emphasize

I voted for Biden as the least worst of the only two bad options, as I have in every general election I have participated in in both Congressional and Presidential races.

I've only had the opportunity to vote for politicians I actually have confidence in the ability to govern in primaries, and I could first vote in 2004.

I'm almost certain I will die without ever having the opportunity to vote for anything less than a proud crony capitalism sycophant in a general election.

A very good article and the author answers their own question. Because they're the "big tent party," democrats support a spectrum of views and compromises, albeit largely unified on some issues (the author notes a few widely accepted positions across the party, like abortion)

Whereas Trump voters are in lockstep in their hatred and fear mongering (let's not pretend trump had or has any policy positions). You'll find those same views at the Iowa primaries or at that diner in Ohio. It's simply easier to summarize this relatively simplistic and basically apolitical view, so journalists took the easy out. Short, punchy articles with increasingly excessive "hot takes" got them clicks and now here we are

Wait, I know this one --

It's because "Trump voters" have shown themselves to be lunatic conspiracy theorists prone to violence, and "Biden voters" have not.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

CONSERVATIVE AND MAINSTREAM MEDIA don’t agree on much, but one point of consensus is that everyone should work harder to understand Trump supporters.

A common style of this coverage is the safari to “Trump Country,” in which journalists from various outlets, most of whom live in big metropolitan areas, go to a rural community or Rust Belt town and talk to Trump voters, often white, working-class men in diners.

A great example is a May 2019 New York Times story titled “There’s No Boom in Youngstown, but Blue-Collar Workers Are Sticking With Trump.” It’s such a well-trod trope that it’s inspired parodies and running jokes.

Going beyond those attempts to understand Trump voters are two recent arguments that got attention on social media.

First, in his New York Times column early this month, David Brooks argued that “elites” have been “behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable.” In particular, Brooks writes, “it’s easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault—and why they’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class.” Brooks encouraged his readers to imagine what the last half-century of American history looks like from the vantage of those non-elites.

“He’s clearly quite racist,” Yglesias conceded, “but I also think he’s written some good pieces and it’s important to read conservatives.”

I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I mean no shit. Biden is possibly one of the most generic establishment presidents possible. It's not exactly a mystery why people voted for him.

Doesn’t get them? Or just doesn’t like them?

Biden voters just want a sane person in office. Chaos sells, and most media is profit-driven.

ITT: A bunch of liberals who think they're much more open-minded than Trump-supporters, making blanket statements and stereotype-fomenting comments about Trump-supporters. This is the real-world equivalent of Obi-Wan Kenobi complaining that "Only a Sith deals in absolutes!" and it's just as cringe-worthy.

As a Trump-hating liberal, I won't pretend to understand what makes Trumpers love him. I admit, I've tried, and it eludes me. They don't seem like bad people to me, but their political views are often based on faulty information, they have a misplaced distrust of government institutions, and some of them seem to think that science requires faith, because laypeople have to "trust the scientists." So, I don't get them, and I think it's an important question, but one thing's clear: they're not evil, cartoonish Bond minions. Those people here, pushing these caricatures of them, are just trying to make themselves feel better in the face of their own failure to understand their compatriots. They don't like not having an explanation, like all pattern-seeking primates, and prefer a bad explanation to none. It's intellectually lazy and deserves downvoting.