The crux of this is that these people feel sincerely entitled to a president who fits their personal preferences, rather than just trying to get the least fucked-up and harmful option in a busted system where bad interests have lots of power
The reason pundits like the contested convention thing is that it plays to their vanities: what if the smart people made a meritocratic decision about who’s best?
This is driven, in part, by being mostly isolated from negative reactions to their opinions over the years.
One of my main takeaways from the debate is that anyone can beat Trump if they can make a halfway case against him. These delusional people think they can have their dream candidate and they're gonna get us all killed.
It’s possible to be angry at the Democrats for fielding Biden and believe a second Trump term will be a disaster. But progressives who think there is some path toward a progressive utopia on the other side of a second Trump term aren’t worth debating.
The GOP spent fifty-some years breaking their party well enough for trump to get away with the nom in 2016, and managing that broke other things in the country, as well.
It’s easier to break than build.
Can we even get the kind of sustained effort it would take to fix, let alone make it better?
Trump is horrible, but, he’s also a symptom.
The rot has been going on for decades.
Without doing something about the cultural issues we are all soaking in* it’s going to be hard to securely fix anything.
(*Prosperity gospel, purity culture, fear, corporate “need” for exponential growth, etc)
