"But disliking Obama isn't WHY they like Trump."

 That may be true, but many do not give any other reason beyond disliking Obama.  Quite literally that is exclusively the reason provided.  "Better than Obozo" was an answer I got just this morning.

 Others add Hillary into the mix, others do like Trump's personality, some like the Wall, some like the Tariffs.  Some just disliked Obama so much, they voted for Trump.

 I do have a list of people who are willing to discuss their decisions if you want to follow up yourself.  Most of them cellphone contacts, some are emails.

 

Let's be completely honest: Trump was elected because he represented the opposite of Hillary. If any other Republican had won the nomination, Hillary would have won. For many, Trump was a protest vote.  

Everyone hated Hillary, but enough people would have stuck with her if it had been her against Jeb for example. However, because Trump was a big giant FU to the leftist Dems, the media and Hollywood, he got enough support in those key five states that he won.

And given how wacho the Democrat candidates are now, he'll win again.

At the risk of sounding negative I honestly think that the majority of Americans don’t mature past high school. And for many it stopped at middle school.

With candidates all people get are feelgood messaging so most people are happy with that and don’t  bother to dig down and see what actual substance the candidacy promotes. Sadly the the feelgood messaging is about as deep as it goes anyway.

People vote emotionally, all of us do. We can't always articulate exactly why we feel a certain way towards someone, but we do. Our subconscious guides much of what we think and we consciously try to justify it afterwards by selecting facts.

Now, relying on your subconscious isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's driven by what we've learned over a lifetime. Many saw Hillary as a slimy politician and they saw Trump as a bad a$$.

If I’d voted emotionally during the presidential election the voting machine would have needed repairs and possibly the fire department when I was done with it.
But I kept my head together and wrote in the best person for the job - Jello Biafra.
Surprisingly when the results came back I saw that 5 others in the state of PA also wrote him in. So out of the 12.8x million people in this state there’s 5 I know I can see eye to eye with  

As for the relentless stream of news and information available to all 1st world peoples nowadays the thing I worry about most is the automated decisions being made by black boxes aka algorithms, which have been programmed by who knows and with what weights and rankings and ulterior motives choosing what each of us should be presented with when we search for world events or political discourse or even local news.

There’s a good book out called the Weapons of Math Destruction.
I recommend it to anyone who goes online for news and political topics.
Very eye opening stuff!

Cool! It’s a good read and it even helped me with a career crisis I’ve had for the past year. I have been a Python language programmer for the past 20 years and its become the defacto choice in the Big Data industry and widely used in the destructive algorithms the book talks about. Faced with the possibility of only being able to land jobs working on that crap was extremely depressing for me. I don’t want to be part of the problem. So seeing how the author of the book had the guts to change the direction of her career to get away from it I chose to do the same. Instead I now work for Amtrak administering, planning and supporting their infrastructure. Plenty of programming work still but it’s stuff that my conscience can live with.

BTW just for the sake of clarification, I’m not a lefty and not a green party supporter. I’m not a wing period. But some people make alot of sense even if I don’t actually have the same political sensibilities as them. Jello speaks truth even in jest. The last two times he played in PA he had some really good solutions for this states problems so he has my respect for actually caring enough to address the issues of my state which he’s not a resident of. He’s really incredibly knowledgeable and an extremely likable person. So even though I’m not a Greenie he’s got my vote should he run again.

Eegore wrote on 05/03/19 at 16:07:39:

I missed it.
If you can repost it, I will follow it.

T And T Garage wrote on 05/03/19 at 05:50:07:

 I do think those that have paid their debt should.

Asking, if a person, committed Cold Blooded Murder.
(A Felony) then got out after, say 10-11 years.
You would want them to Vote ?