The Trump Era has normalized absurdities so much that people have stopped noticing the unprecedented nature of the key players in the American presidential elections this year
Let’s take Bernie Sanders as an example – A decade ago, he was not even a part of the Democratic Party. He always identified as a Socialist and spent almost his whole political life isolated and as an object of curiosity
Bernie would often be invited to talk shows and news programs – America was less interested in his ideas and treated him more like a creature in a zoo – ‘so this is how a socialist looks like’ was the general tone
In the Bush era if someone said Bernie could possibly be a presidential nominee for the democrats, it would perhaps attract more ridicule than saying Trump would one day be the President
Similarly Joe Biden being very close to clinching the nomination today would also be regarded with horror and disbelief a decade ago
Biden has always been an extremely likable politician among his peers but never seen as presidential material – a gaffe machine, he was expected to spend his whole life in the back-rooms of the senate, which he did
The choice for America today is Trump, Biden and Sanders – the three unlikeliest of candidates one could imagine barely few years ago – pushing the limits of credulity even in a comedy sketch show
There is one common personality strand across the three – they come across as authentic people and not as a modern politician with an army of consultants telling them what to say
Bernie has terrible ideas, but he believes in them and have consistently pushed them for decades. Trump shows no fake humility and never says what a normal politician would. The voter sees them as authentic people
What led to this? My theory is the we are still seeing the after-effects of the 2008 financial crises – where no banker went to jail, the ordinary citizen bailed banks out and the trust in run of the mill politicians collapsed
Interesting months ahead – COVID has begun to disrupt the economy and the assumption that Trump will coast to an easy victory. The contest for the world’s most powerful human always ends up being fun to watch (end of thread)
