I think as candidates Clinton, W. Bush, Gore, Obama, McCain had sincere support overshadowing the need to stop some particular bad person instead. As misguided as I think it is, Trump voters also are all about Trump less than stopping Biden. I can't personally remember a race where "the other side must be stopped" as pretty much the sole consideration among the voters until the Trump era.
Yes, third party candidates are dismissed in a self fulfilling prophecy, but also that reality drives most reasonable would-be third party candidates to one of the viable parties, generally leaving third party candidates that wouldn't be that popular anyway.
Note I didn't claim the were progressive or that Biden did nothing, I'm saying voter sentiment is basically "not trump" rather than "for Biden". I'll accept that Kerry was in a similar position of being the "not W" candidate, but other than that I can't think of a candidate whose popular support was so much more about "the other guy" than the candidate themselves.
WTF? Dude it is not Bidens fault that Convicted Felon and Sex Offender Treason Trump has been ranked as the worst president in history by historians. That means there are lots of "Biden Republicans". But Dems would be voting for Biden over any Republicrat.
You mean the people that Biden got the UN Security Council to pass a cease fire resolution for?
Arabs are the people who aren't doing shit for Gaza. How Egypt/Lebanon/Turkey etc aren't taking in refuges from Gaza and shipping tons of aid in or even offering peacekeepers? Any or all of those countries could have easily done more than Biden but they didn't lift a finger. Looks like Arabs don't care anything at all about Palestinians judging by their actions.
I can’t personally remember a race where “the other side must be stopped” as pretty much the sole consideration among the voters until the Trump era.
The Kerry '04 campaign might as well have been "Anyone But Bush", and it went down in flames as a result. Every time Kerry was pressed on any kind of progressive-ish sounding issue, he ran to the right for fear of spooking the moderate centrist voter. Every time Bush was pressed on his conservative bona fides, he just pointed to 9/11 and said "I kept us safe" and the news media ate that shit up.
In the end, you had the Strong MAGA Security candidate in Bush and the flaky swish liberal candidate in Kerry. Kerry lost by 3M votes and 35 ECs, dwarfing the Bush/Gore defeat. Then he slunk back to the Senate and triangulated votes with John McCain for the next eight years.
I was genuinely excited for Obama. I strongly supported him during the primary, was thrilled he won, and was very hopeful when he was elected.
Quickly disappointed not long after, but at least when he was first being elected it was definitely a "I really like this candidate and am hopeful they'll live up to their promises."