Canada

It doesn't matter who's to blame. The question is where is your nation going, and what are you going to do about it? Are you going to let all the terrible things happen because "it's the other guys' fault"?

Their vote made it so that “democrats” have no power in the house, the senate, the office of the presidency, the supreme court, or the dozens of federal agencies that are now being gutted.

Actually, today Senate Republicans needed help from the Democrats to pass a bill to keep the government funded. And 10 Democrats helped them, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Funny how the Republicans always manage to stall everything when the Democrats are in power

Nearly 90 million voters sat home on election day. That's more than either candidate. Disenfranchisement plays a part, but it's more about the complete apathy the American voting population exhibits that's the problem. If even half those people showed up on election day (much less during primaries) the entire country would look completely different. That is a significantly bigger factor than either party shitting the bed.

That being said... Democrats, for the most part, are playing it way too safe. Their leadership is too neo-liberal and too dependent on the status quo to want to shake things up too much, because their main tentpoles (which eerily match the Republicans) revolve around stagnation and a lack of real societal progress. They bandy about social progress with racial, gender, and sexuality policy reforms, but only when it's already well past the point that it'd be possible to enact them. Where it would make them look weak if they didn't do something, and they get quick and easy points by doing the least possible to improve peoples lives.

There's a ton of reps in the Democratic party that want change, and want to see things move forward at a faster pace... but they're constantly pushed to the sidelines by the old guard that has a stranglehold on their leadership. Used as scapegoats when they want to distance themselves from more progressive elements, and fodder when they want to push another milquetoast reform that ultimately changes nothing. The problem is they're hampered by a two-party system. They can either jump ship to a third party, and end up primaried or relegated to pointlessness, or continue on as near-impotent figures that only get soundbites on twitter or facebook.

And that's only on the American "left". The more moderate elements on the right are too scared to speak up lest they feel the ire of the Trump cabal, and end up toeing the line. Even if they feel they're on the wrong side of history.

So there's plenty of blame to go around, it's no one thing or another. The biggest problem, though, being an American populace who refuses to band together and listen to each other, and work for each other instead of just themselves.

There was lots of things they could have tried, especially when they had the whitehouse. They didn't because they were trying to believe civilised democratic norms back into existence, or something like that.

No, fuck this. The best analogy I've seen is that the republicans are a school shooter, and the democrats are the uvalde police department. I'm not going to forgive a group thst somehow becomes utterly ineffectual any time they're needed. This has been brewing for decades. If the democrats were just tooooooooo weak to do anything to prevent it in all that time, what fucking use are they?

Republican voters got them elected, Democrats are standing by doing nothing as their country is ruined.

There are no attempts to secede, there are no wide-scale protests or strikes. Their democracy falls while they sit back and fret, laughing along with Jon Stewart and smug in their knowledge they are better that Republicans. For all their much-touted "second amendment" they are idle as a tyrant solidifies power.

I do blame Republican for their actions. But I blame Democrats for their inaction. I'm furious because what I see in them I recognize in myself -- it's a challenge for me to not be complacent and fight for my own country. Because if we coast like they do, we will suffer the same fate.

You may not be able to say that Trump's actions towards Canada specifically could be predicted in any detail but there was an absurd amount of evidence that he would be erratic, self-serving, and antagonistic towards allies in general. We still elected him. There's tons of reasons for that and many of us want to latch on to some of them in order to absolve ourselves of individual responsibility for this shitshow, but other countries don't give a fuck about any of those reasons and we should not expect them to.

If you're an American, you own this administration in the eyes of the world and that's exactly how it should be. In fact, I would argue that changing course is not possible until the vast majority of us accept that fact and let it inform our actions going forward.