Gestapo USA

Equally bad is a pretty insane take

And unfortunately I had the displeasure of trying to refute people making that exact argument. Not just "they're both doing bad things," but legitimately "if you vote either way, it will have an identical overall outcome for people's wellbeing" (paraphrased ofc)

but so is putting the blame for the election on anyone but the Democratic establishment

Yeah, I get that too. I never really thought the dems were good, but I just think it's hard to argue that their practices of "keep everything generally the same economically while continuing to start forever wars" are identical to "deport every single immigrant, kill anyone I disagree with, crush the healthcare system, jack up prices for goods and services... and also keep starting forever wars with a nice side of random bombings of ships we think have bad people on them"

They knew what the risks were, but they really didn’t seem to give a shit.

That's the thing: I don't think they did. I legitimately think the Democrats just assumed that this was the usual case of "Republican says some crazy shit, we shift a little towards that in our messaging and policy, everything stays generally the same with a bit of a rightward slant" that they've been doing for decades now.

They already knew he said crazy shit before, why would they think this time would be any different? After all, they're heavily invested in just following the rightward tide of the overton window, so when he says crazy shit, they just try the same playbook they did last time by saying "he's crazy, look at him!" without realizing that this wasn't the same as last time, and that this sort of messaging no longer works.