The general election matchup that seems likely between President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump is about fundamentally disparate visions of the nation.

Each of them has sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, signed bills into law, appointed judges, bartered with foreign leaders and ordered the armed forces into combat. They both know what it is like to be the most powerful person on the planet.

Yet the general election matchup that seems likely after this week’s New Hampshire primary represents more than the first-in-a-century contest between two men who have both lived in the White House. It represents the clash of two presidents of profoundly different countries, the president of Blue America versus the president of Red America.

The looming showdown between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, assuming Nikki Haley cannot pull off a Hail Mary surprise, goes beyond the binary liberal-conservative split of two political parties familiar to generations of Americans. It is at least partly about ideology, yes, but also fundamentally about race and religion and culture and economics and democracy and retribution and most of all, perhaps, about identity.

It is about two vastly disparate visions of America led by two presidents who, other than their age and the most recent entry on their résumés, could hardly be more dissimilar. Biden leads an America that, as he sees it, embraces diversity, democratic institutions and traditional norms, that considers government at its best to be a force for good in society. Trump leads an America where, in his view, the system has been corrupted by dark conspiracies and the undeserving are favored over hardworking everyday people.

Deep divisions in the United States are not new; indeed, they can be traced back to the Constitutional Convention and the days of John Adams versus Thomas Jefferson. But according to some scholars, they have rarely reached the levels seen today, when Red and Blue Americas are moving farther and farther apart geographically, philosophically, financially, educationally and informationally.

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    • @Telorand@reddthat.com
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      1810 months ago

      Don’t you just love how they present it as Blue America vs. Red America, as if they were merely equal but opposing worldviews? You know, instead of being honest that it’s Democratic America vs. Fascist America.

      Sanitize fascism harder, you fucks. Nobody is fooled. I hope you lose all your viewers and readers when the Boomers die.

      • @Coach@lemmy.world
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        210 months ago

        Agreed. What is this bullshit, “Blue America?” I’m not Biden’s biggest fan, but fuck the New York Times for claiming he only caters to a subsection of America, like Trump does. That man continually reaches across the aisle and gets his hand slapped every time. Again, fuck the NYT for printing this drivel. I used to respect the publication, but sadly not anymore.

  • @fluxion@lemmy.world
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    510 months ago

    Mr. Trump leads an America where, in his view, the system has been corrupted by dark conspiracies and the undeserving are favored over hard-working everyday people.

    He’s right, but the undeserving people are lying swindlers like himself who would destroy democracy to further enable their greed and corruption

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    110 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Each of them has sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, signed bills into law, appointed judges, bartered with foreign leaders and ordered the armed forces into combat.

    The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was either an outrageous insurrection in service of an unconstitutional power grab by a proto-fascist or a legitimate protest that may have gotten out of hand but has been exploited by the other side and turned patriots into hostages.

    “Today, when we think about America, we make the essential error of imagining it as a single nation, a marbled mix of red and blue people,” Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the AFL-CIO, wrote in an essay last month.

    Many elected Republicans who once stood against Mr. Trump, with notable exceptions, have rushed to endorse him in recent weeks as his claim to the party’s presidential nomination has grown almost complete.

    Mr. Biden opens his re-election year with an approval rating of just 39 percent in Gallup polling, the lowest of any elected president at this point going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower.

    But the wild cards this year remain unique nonetheless — an 81-year-old incumbent who is already the oldest president in American history against a 77-year-old predecessor who is facing 91 felony counts in four separate criminal indictments.


    The original article contains 1,538 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • BaldProphet
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    010 months ago

    I think they’re looking too deeply into the Trump v. Biden election. It isn’t “Trump’s politics” versus “Biden’s/the Democrat’s politics”, it’s Trump vs. Not-Trump. I don’t know anybody who is voting for Biden because they think he’s the best person for the job; they’re all voting for him because he isn’t Donald Trump.