So what’s changed this cycle?

The dems started relying completely on that strategy. They threw away the hope and change stuff that won them the presidency in 2008. Like the person you’re replying to said, they gave up on the “bleeding heart liberals”.

I mean you’re not answering the question in the OP and many people don’t want to hear anything about Trump these days. They have enough to worry about without being reminded that the orange man will be running things for the next 4 years. So yeah, that’s why you’re getting downvoted.

As the (likely apocryphal, unfortunately) story goes: Abbasid Caliph Harun Al-Rashid had announced that if anyone brought him a poem he hadn’t heard before, he’d give him the weight of whatever he wrote it on in gold. Of course there’s no way he’d actually do that; as the story goes Harun Al-Rashid was able to memorize any poem after hearing it once and had a male slave who was able to memorize one after hearing it twice and a female slave who was able to memorize one after hearing it thrice. As you probably guessed, whenever a poet brought him a new poem he’d listen and just recite it back at them, bring the male slave (who at this point heard it twice) to recite it and after that have the female slave recite it, after which he’d say “see? I’ve heard it before” and send them back with no gold. Al-Asma’i, a prominent poet, was sure that there was a trick to it, and wrote a poem that uses strange, rare meanings and sounds such that it’d be impossible to memorize in one hearing. The opening and title of the poem is “sautu safiri lbulbuli”, meaning “the sound of the bulbul’s (a type of songbird) whistling”.

Al-Asma’i then disguised himself as a nomad Arab and wore a face mask (as he was known to the Caliph) and hit Harun Al-Rashid with the poem, which he failed to memorize and so was unable to recite. Because of that neither of his slaves could recite it and Al-Asma’i demanded his reward, so Harun Al-Rashid asked what he wrote the poem on and Al-Asma’i replied “I carved it into a ceramic pillar I inherited from my father. The pillar is on my camel carried by ten soldiers outside”. Then Harun Al-Rashid’s minister says “this has to be Al-Asma’i”, and he’s ordered to take off his face mask. Well the funny part is over, but the rest of the story says that Al-Asma’i gives back the money he took but in return Harun Al-Rashid would hold his promise with the other poets.

As y’all probably noticed the story is full of holes, but hey, a man can dream.

and a link in case anyone wants to listen to it.

*The translation I found says this and while it’s probably wrong I actually have no idea what it’s supposed to be. I think it’s a musical instrument of some sort.

That’s… not related at all though. And not all of the Middle East was subjected to (overt) American imperialism.

Here’s one from the Middle East: Fuck your veterans. Y’all were right when you were calling Vietnam vets baby killers, and Afghanistan and Iraq weren’t much better. And here’s a corollary: Get the fuck out of the Middle East.

I’m not sure where you’re from, but at least in the Middle East that’s not the case. It’s a very desirable immigration destination here (less than Western Europe, though).