I think the disconnect is believing people voted for Trump.

Many voted against the Democrats including many people that have voted Dem their whole lives. They gaslit their base saying there was nothing wrong with Joe Biden for several years, only to have a weekend rendezvous coup and install Kamala as the candidate over holding an open primary, and then they resumed the gaslighting by saying Trump was "the end of democracy" yet they literally just committed an equivalent act on their base. 

This was after nearly the last decade where they kneecapped Bernie, pushed multiple prominent young party members out (while doing some heinous shit to them) like Tulsi Gabbard, as well as vilified a portion of their wealthy donor class. 

Finally, the majority of America is relatively moderate/centrist. Pretty much every election was a candidate that was just slightly left or right of center but within the last decade the Dems also decided to crank the volume on that from a 7 to bat shit crazy.

Extreme candidates pushing their narratives like the Squad. The DEI movements that saw many people lose promotions or jobs to someone that was not equally qualified just to hit a made up quota. The insane push for trans everything -- tell me how every celeb just happens to have multiple LGBTQ kids wanting to be the opposite sex when that would be a statistical anomaly? So on and so forth.  

People got fed the fuck up. They voted against the Democratic Party more so than voting for Donald Trump. Moreover, the fact that all of the discarded Democrats that joined the Republican party made it look more like what they were used to via what their party had become. 

All the party needs to do is return closer to the center and they'll be fine. That should start with burning down the co-opted DNC. So, if you actually care about the Democratic Party, that is where your hatred and vitriol should be placed, and you should mobilize fellow Dems to demand change from within.

But hey... Orange Man Bad. Amirite? 

 The TL;DR of this seems to be, you feel like people voted for the lesser of two evils, not really having support for their party, but absolutely against the opposition.

What this election has shown me is that people are willing to go to extremes or to make decisions they normally wouldn’t make, for the sole purpose of change. Everyone hates what the democrats have done in the past four years so much they are willing to forget about all of the dangers Trump brings with him to the job. That’s when I know Americans are finally fed up.

And to be clear, I don’t box myself in with an affiliation, there are aspects of both parties I like and obviously aspects of both I dislike. Just getting that out of the way because that’s usually the first thing people think. If I am disparaging the Republicans, I must be a democrat. Uhm, no, I don’t, lol. 

 Yep, that's exactly how I see it. I help run our local Bitcoin meetup and we have multiple lifetime Dems that held their nose and voted Trump this cycle. I'm talking deeply entrenched from places like Chicago and New York and find their lifelong party nothing like what they grew up with. 

I will also say I heard both of those I'm referencing they believed Kamala was a bigger threat to democracy than Trump. Definitely wasn't a good look to be projecting Trump was the "End of Democracy" and then going on TV and talking about censoring social media. 

Lastly, I think the Dems could have put up multiple moderate candidates and beat Trump, especially if they didn't ostracize Tulsi, RFK. I fully believe that if they didn't go so extreme over this last decade and ran Tulsi this cycle, we'd see our first woman President in history. Now she is likely to be the first woman President as a Republican. 

 Very well said. 👌