You're ninety percent right on this. The other ten is the failure of the Democrats to go all in on allys ship rather than anything resembling economy. I listened to everything Kamala Harris and Tim Walz said or close to. Almost all of it was some version on the same message I heard for eight years which essentially the same thing: No sane person would vote for Trump. That was Hilary's exact message in 2016. You'd think the Democrats would've learned something from that.

And the rest of it was all about either demonizing MAGA while wooing the Never-Trumpers. There was not one word of what you gained for voting for Harris, just what you'd lose if you'd voted for Trump. I grant you that would have seemed to be a powerful message but if we haven't learned that only appeals to a certain number of people BY NOW, we kind of deserved what we got. We all vote more with our wallets then anything else.

And of course we all vote with our self-interest. The idea of voting for a greater good is a noble concept, I grant you but most of us can't conceive beyond the immediate or beyond are own situation.

Which is a roundabout way of saying you are completely right on this part. And we just have to deal with it.