Nonsense. Hillary Clinton put forward much better plans for economic recovery programs that Donald Trump did.
Can you list what conservative values you think Donald Trump has delivered on that Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have delivered better on?
Note: Saying things like “Trump appointed conservative judges” doesn’t count unless you can articulate why you think conservative judges are better than other judges.
I can list a lot of issues that conservative but not racist white voters voted on. Being opposed to abortion. Wanting lower taxes. Wanting a smaller federal government. Fewer restrictions on gun ownership. Fewer or no restrictions on activities that make global warming worse. The government not placing restrictions on what they view as their religious rights.
The point is not whether Trump is better at delivering on these things than Clinton would have been. It’s more about what the voters in question believe about the candidates, regardless of the candidates actual beliefs or actions.
ETA. Even if Trump fails at all those things (and he has succeeded in some of those areas) the conservative white voters still know what side he is on Any failures can be blamed on obstruction by the liberals.
Democrats could use more white voters, sure. But to state that the Republicans poor performance with non-white voters is equal to the Democrats performance with white voters is just simply wrong. LIke, not even close wrong.
Yes they did – higher minimum wage, better access to health care, better social services, job training, and much more. But in 2016, many of those voters (just enough to give Trump a win) placed a higher value on Trump’s messaging (mostly based on cultural grievances, based on the analysis I’ve read from Nate Silver) than on a working-class-benefiting economic message.
I agree. The reason they aren’t equal is because there are conservative minorities who would vote Republican if they felt welcome by the white voters in the Republican party. The Democrats don’t have a pool of white voters to appeal to who are otherwise liberal but vote Republican because the don’t feel welcome in the Democratic party for reasons of race. I don’t think such a block of voters exists.
ETA. As I’ve already mentioned, what this means is that for the Republicans the solution for their problem is easy. Stop being racist. The solution for the Democrats is a lot more complicated and would mean having to adopt more conservative positions on a whole host of issues.
I’m not sure if people are just taking this point for granted, or maybe some people in this thread are just unaware… the advice the Republicans need to extend their outreach beyond white Americans is NOT about the 2016 election or any fundamental sense of fairness – it’s about betting on an aging horse.
The percentage of white voters in 2016 compared to 2012 dropped by one percent, while the percentage of black voters went up by one, and Hispanic voters went up by two. These trends are expected to continue for the next couple decades.
Republicans continuing to rely on white voters into the future is sort of like someone buying stock in Blockbuster Video in 2010. Blockbuster was still doing fine, but there were enough warning signs that a smart investor should certainly place their bets somewhere else.
Right now, Dems are essentially betting on Netflix in 2005. It’s making them good money but they aren’t becoming billionaires off of it… in other words, its winning Dems elections a pretty decent amount of the time, but not every time, but it’s the long game that counts. Now tell me very clearly why Dems need to invest in Blockbuster.
There’s a bit of truth in what both of you are saying.
The democrats don’t really have a problem with white voters. They have a problem with white, non-college-educated white voters. And a lot of that is rooted in economic insecurity that is filtered through a sense of loss of power and influence.
The problem there is that those voters are absolutely right. They ARE losing power and influence and they resent it. Rightfully or wrongly, they fear are resent it.
Where D messaging falls down in on responding to that. Presenting an economic plan that I think everyone knows can’t actually reverse the trend is pointless. Even if it does do some good it will reverse it for a different generation and not help the people feeling anxiety right now.
These people know they’re losing ground, they know it and have been told for several presidential administrations that it’ll be fixed and nothing has happened to turn it around. So instead, disillusioned, they turn to more and more extreme solutions promised by more and more extreme leaders.
Because why shouldn’t they? The don’t feel either side’s mainstream is actually going to help them. Largely because, in their heart, they know they CAN’T be helped. They can’t be helped without making wholesale changes in their lives and people at all levels of society resist that regardless of circumstance. No long-term, twelve point plan can win these people over because they’ve heard it before and not seen their lives improve. Why should they believe it this time?
One thing Democrats failed to understand in 2016 is that voters aren’t driven solely by economic or pragmatic issues - there is also a cultural and emotional component to things as well. So whether there was an economic message for white Trump voters in 2016 rather misses the point - many felt that they weren’t getting the same attention or support as minorities in culture, media, society, etc.
Right – it was about culture, not economics. These voters have been convinced by right-wing TV and radio that “mainstream” culture and society is in favor of minorities, and against them.
It’s an age-old tactic – divide up the disadvantaged folks and pit them against each other so they don’t unite and cast out the wealthy and powerful oligarchs. In America it dates back before even 1776 – a century before, there were actually landowning black families in Virginia, and mixed families, but a few decades later they (free black people) were cast out by law because the wealthy and powerful realized that united poor and working class free blacks and whites were a serious threat to their oligarchy.
It isn’t a matter of not understanding the cultural or emotional component, it’s a matter of not being able to do anything reasonable about it. If the culture and emotions that are needing to be appealed to are the culture and emotions of racist white people, there isn’t much that can be done. Other than joining the Republicans in becoming a racist party, what else can Democrats do about this?
I don’t agree. Black women are arguably the demographic most prone to struggle economically and the most truly working class demographic and they voted for Hillary 96-4.
Plus when you control for income, college educated whites still voted 30-40 points to the left of high school educated whites.
And supposedly when you control for things like authoritarianism, racism, sexism, Islamophobia, etc the education gap among whites disappears.
So it’s more of a cultural issue, not an economic one. I don’t know what the democrats can do about that.
As noted by Jonathan Chance, the worsening underperformance is with lesser educated white voters. Numbers.
With more educated whites pretty flat since '92 and R +4 in '16. In '18 midterms among college educated white men still advantage R +4, but college educate women moved to very solid D+20
Meanwhile non-college educated whites went from a slight D preference in '92 and '96 downwards to R +25 in '12, and to R +39(!) in '16. In '18 non-college men in particular are R +34 and women R +24, not as bad but still.
The GOP under Trump’s banner is the party of non-college educated whites by wide margin but even in that subgroup it softened in midterms and is nowhere near reflective of the repulsion that the GOP brand has among Blacks (in '18 a D +81 margin).
The D side would be doomed if the GOP did just a modest bit less poorly among Black voters while holding everything else steady. Conversely just doing moderately less poorly among non-college educated white voters, while holding all else steady, would doom the GOP nationally.
HRC’s campaign was afraid that including rural Americans (often white) socioeconomic decline as an item of importance would soften support from Black demographics, and banked on getting Obama level support there that she also failed to get. Rural Americans, especially non-college educated men, were left with a sense that their lives do not matter too, not to the D leadership anyway. Without a positive message of inclusive hope for themselves to glom onto they were ripe instead for messages of resentment and othering.
Just do Kerry level of performance, or Obama '08 or even '12, with non-college educated white voters keeping everything else mostly the same and the win is solid for the D. Don’t pander but neither relatively ignore or disrespect.
Mia Love used to be my congressperson. She lost to a white male, not because Republicans didn’t support her, but because Democrats (and some independents) didn’t.
She lost because it was Democratic wave election with huge turnout. Given the size of the wave she outperformed. Just not by enough.
Midterms 2014 Love was elected 64 to 60K. Her margin was about 3 points while the national popular vote was R+5.7. She underperformed the national popular vote margin by almost 3. But it was enough.
Midterms 2018 she lost 135K to 134K, by just over 0.25%. Nationally the margin was D +8 points. She overperformed the margin by almost 8 points. Not quite enough.
This was an absurdly high turnout midterm election. She lost because more Ds and Independents came out and voted D, true. She lost mostly because in Utah Trump’s toxic cloud had become too big for her to get clear of, and because McAdams was a better candidate than Owens had been.
I’m not sure McAdams was a better candidate than Owens. He just ran in a more favorable national environment. If I’m reading your figures correctly, Owens over-performed D’s nationally and McAdams under-performed.
Depends how you want to look at it I guess. Yes he underperformed the national margin but he got more votes in the 2018 midterm election than Owens had in the '16 presidential cycle one and more than twice as many as as Owens got in the 2014 midterm election. They both got out the votes in 2018 much more than the national environment did.
That said this is getting into hijack territory. I think you’d agree that the GOP in its current flavor, dominated by Trump, is very uninviting to candidates of minority backgrounds and is laser focussed on maxxing out turnout of lower educated whites, especially males, who have embraced Trump’s marketing to them, yes?
Trump was I think more pleased with Love losing than he would have been with her having had a win after failing to completely embrace him and his othering policies. He is fine with having “his Black” so long as their lockstep loyalty is complete, but not if they show any sign of discomfort with any of his positions.
The original question is, I think, worth returning to.
It does very much matter what would need to be said, or not said, to appeal to the non-college educated white (NCEW) voters.
In some cases acknowledging and wanting to address issues of racial justice (inclusive of institutional factors) that go beyond economic inequalities alone, pushes NCEW voters away.
In some cases combating the myth that immigrants are (fill in whatever specific negative myth you want) pushes NCEW voters away.
In some cases arguing for gay rights, abortion rights, for treating transgender American with basic decency, for accepting Muslim Americans as fully American as Christian Americans are, all push NCEW voters away.
If appealing to them means avoiding those issues as issues that matter then appealing to them is at the expense of other tent members.
I’m all for an inclusive statement that identifies the real problems and issues they have, how even and maybe even especially in this long running expansion they are being relatively left behind with many dropping out of middle class and with no clear path back up, for treating their beliefs with respect so long as they do not impose those beliefs on others treating them with respect as well, for looking at the relative decline of their current economic state and their prospects for the future and having a plan for that.
But other than that Yankees 1996 Champs, what would you propose the Ds say that would appeal to these voters?
It didn’t just happen. That “feeling” developed because Republicans were selling it. And it was lies.
That’s pretty much the issue right there. Republicans lie to people. Democrats tell the truth to people. And some people would rather listen to lies.
So should the Democrats start lying as much as the Republicans? I say no.