SanAndreasX said:
Except in this case, Trump is the incumbent President. At this point, voters have had four years to evaluate his performance, and a lot of people have found his governing ability to be severely wanting in the first term, to say the least. So for those people who deeply despise Trump and what he has done, or not done, during his first term as President, it is not at all irrational to want to fire him and turn the Presidency over to somebody who will hopefully not screw things up even worse. Trump had his chance. Biden, on the other hand, has yet to serve in office. There is also a difference between voting for a candidate because you don't like the other guy, and voting for a candidate because you don't like the members of your community, state, or country who don't support your guy and you hope that your guy will pass laws and policies that will harm them. |
Eh... gotta push back on "Biden has yet to serve in office".
He hasn't been president but he's been in the Senate for quite a long time, and the Vice President for 8 years. Obviously that's not the same level of power, but enough to judge his merits. I personally think he comes out a lot better than Trump. That being said... There are very few people I would not support over Trump.
And people will call that bias, but I wouldn't really say that about any former republican President or nominee. I think it would be a little hard to justify Bush in 2004 because the invasion of Iraq was such a shit show, but it had bipartisan support, so it's hard to claim Bush was completely irrational about it. At least 77 people across both parties saw the evidence and reached the same conclusion.
McCain seemed like a genuinely good guy. My only real non-policy objection to him was in his picking Sarah Palin as his running mate. I don't think she's a bad person, but she seemed woefully unqualified, and that shows poor judgment.
Mitt Romney was also fine. His economic policies seem to have some logic behind them on their surface. Honestly 1994 Romney is what the party should be. He supported open gay military service, a woman's right to choose, teaching evolution, anti-discrimination bills, and so on. Basically what conservative actually should mean, fiscally conservative, without the regressive social policies. Unfortunately once he rose to the point of nominee, he'd caved and added those things to his platform. Unfortunately his policy of caving has continued in his choice to push forward a nominee. But, he at least is one of the few republicans to usually call out Trump.
None of those candidates got the same amount of backlash as Trump. People want to act like the hatred of Trump is arbitrary and the left just automatically hates the right, but the right candidates have never been hated, or at least not to this extent (Bush comes closest). So, maybe it's actually because of the shit that Trump does and says.