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"Trump owes his victory in great part to low-propensity voters of all races, including young men, and those voters don’t necessarily form their views based on mainstream media reporting. Rather, far too many are stuck in an online social media bubble where they are delivered a steady diet of rightwing propaganda."

~ Stephen Robinson


/1

publicnotice.co/p/how-tiktok-x

Public Notice · How a right-coded media environment helped Trump winBy Stephen Robinson

"The median age of a Fox News viewer is 68, and liberals have joked about the network 'brainwashing' their conservative parents. But rightwing social media content has effectively targeted and radicalized younger people, who — unlike the typical Hannity-obsessed grandpa — can vote for the next several decades.


/2

"A cultural and political chasm has opened up between Americans who still care about the integrity of their democracy and those who do not. We have entered an age of political nihilism in which our traditional conceptions of ideological and identitarian conflict must be abandoned. This election was about the identity of the United States as a whole, and it didn’t tell an inspiring story."

~ Matt Johnson


/3

"The old narratives about the Democrats’ contempt for the working class and their racially divisive politics don’t apply to this election. The argument that Americans are in so much economic pain that they had to vote for Trump doesn’t hold up: Unemployment is just over 4 percent, the stock market was hitting all-time highs before Trump won, and inflation has plummeted from a peak of over 9 percent to 2.4 percent."


/4

"Americans didn’t elect Trump because they were offended by the Democrats—they elected Trump because they like him. They know everything they need to know about Trump. He has been broadcasting his cruelty, hatred, and self-obsession into every American home for nearly a decade."


/5

"This election was about identity after all—an American identity which has become more tolerant of authoritarianism and less committed to democracy over the past decade. As Trump’s opponents try to figure out why they were defeated and how they can resist him over the next four years, they need to confront the dark reality about who we have become as a nation."


/6

"The decline in voter participation is what allows the Republicans to cosplay a mandate. If the elite political media plays along, that play-pretend becomes reality. Any story you read that uses the word mandate in any way except ironically is playing you for a fool…."

~ Charles Pierce


/7

esquire.com/news-politics/poli

Esquire · Trump Only Gets to Pretend to Have a Mandate Because of Low TurnoutBy Charles P. Pierce

"What we can say, though, is that this was not an electoral landslide, but a narrowly contested race in which Trump is likely to have benefited as much from who didn’t turn out to vote for his candidacy as who did turn out to vote for him."

~ Philip Bump


/8

washingtonpost.com/politics/20

The Washington Post · What the numbers actually say about the 2024 electionBy Philip Bump
William Lindsey :toad:

"Trump’s chaos calibrates itself … inside a unified and powerful ecosystem of rightwing news, online content and viral disinformation that has grown more powerful throughout this era, spewing the same falsehoods in unison day after day, on repeat, for years. It is the 'political technology' by which swathes of the population have voted in effect to anoint a king in the belief it will amount to more freedom."

~ Oliver Laughland


/9

theguardian.com/us-news/2024/n

The Guardian · I’ve been to more than 100 Trump rallies since 2016. This is why I think he wonBy Oliver Laughland