Another way that it might be put it is that many Trump supporters were voting for him because he seemed to be the candidate that was addressing their concerns of being economically disenfranchised and ignored by the parties. His outsider non-politician status was a benefit. His crazy diarrhea of the mouth/Twitter was a negative, as was the racism and other stuff, but NOT enough of one to make them think that Hillary was a better choice.
Like I said earlier, bigger fish to fry. If you live in Bumfuckton, MO pop 2213, it’s likely that you are less worried about Trump being racist or sexist, and more worried about Hillary being focused on the coasts, global warming (which I imagine seems kind of remote and theoretical to the non-scientific people in the working class), international trade, and (in your view) pandering to minorities. That’s not wrong- it’s self-interest. It’s the same sort of self-interest that causes any identity politics group to vote a certain way, despite not necessarily agreeing with the entire platform. ’
But the Democrats have made anything other than complete endorsement of those principles and ideas into a moral wrong, and being indifferent or opposed to them is now not just a political decision, but a test of character and intellect.
And people don’t like being told they’re not only incorrect, but morally wrong and stupid in the bargain.
So there’s a sort of double-whammy effect here- you have a candidate who purports to speak to this middle-America group, and then you have the opposing party who tends to paint things in absolutes and accuse people of moral turpitude and ignorance if they don’t agree. You have one thing pulling and the other pushing.
“The world is 5,000 years old” = racism or homophobia?
“Evolution is a liberal lie” = homophobia or selfishness?
“Climate change is a lie spread by the Chinese” = misogyny or homophobia?
Except that that climate change was hardly an issue that was focused much on in this election.
The ultimatums were more along the line of, “This is my opinion on race and gender and sexual orientation in America today, and if you disagree with me you are racist or sexist or homophobic. I will not compromise, and I will not tolerate dissenting views.”
Unless this is just a tingling you have in your body somewhere you might provide citations.
Otherwise you are just saying that there are people committed to certain issues because they think it’s the right thing to do, and because you disagree you are accusing them of “dictating” something to you, which is no less than what you are doing to them.
Maybe the sensitivity about this just reflects a feeling down inside that whomever you are disagreeing with is actually right.
In any case why such a strong reaction to being disagreed with?
Exactly. People don’t want to be lectured. It gets tiresome and adults generally don’t have to put up with it. The thing is I don’t think the left understands that and those they could win to their side are going to dig in their heels out of spite.
You are right the world does go round. Up until the point the sun engulfs it. Doesn’t mean that one should act counter productively in the short term. I don’t care that much if the left continues being highly tone deaf to their own rhetoric and actions. It’s not going to hurt me having 8 years of Trump.
Yeah, like that SOB Galileo…how dare he tell people that the Earth can’t possibly be the center of the universe? Just because he actually made observations about how the universe worked, doesn’t mean he gets to tell people who base their beliefs on blind faith that they’re wrong!
It is comforting that the Left seems to have learned nothing from this election. It is just a bunch of self-absorbed navel gazing yet again.
My personal position is that that the Left is just plain irritating to the people in the majority of people in states that matter. I am not a right-winger myself but I have been to fundamentalist Christian tent revivals that were less preachy than your average Leftist sermon. I truly believe that the Left is cannibalizing themselves because it is made up of a loose coalition of people that are fundamentally unhappy people and depend on domestic conflict to make their quilt of unrelated movements work. You could solve almost every domestic issue and they would still be fighting like it is a new Civil War because that is what they do.
All you are seeing now is extreme backlash against the type of rhetoric that irritates the average person over time and certainly not in a good way. If the Left learned some softer sales skills that don’t involve poorly planned camp-outs, penis parades or crystals, you may be able to swing voters over to the moderate liberal side. Most Americans are never going to be true Leftists (or far Right for that matter) because they don’t have a mental disorder but there is a spectrum to everything. The Neo-Puritan Regressive Left has simply become counterproductive through their own obnoxiousness and incompetence and turned people off from even moderate liberal issues.
Probably answered already but there are several gun regulations that are already in place that the NRA supports.
The DC laws included a complete ban on handguns. It included a requirement that all firearms including rifles and shotguns be kept unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock.
So this made it illegal to have a functional firearm in the house. It had to be disabled in some way (not just having the thumb safety on).
One task facing liberals ahead may be realizing how they were wrong without throwing up their hands and abandoning their principles.
The second issue is realizing that racists/xenophobes had little to no effect on the race because those votes are baked in. They ALWAYS vote Republican, they didn’t suddenly become racist/xenophobes AFTER electing Obama into office TWICE just in time to vote for Trump over the worst Democratic candidate in modern history.
I don’t think creationism was a major theme of the recent election, so it doesn’t really apply. Unless you have some examples or a cite.
That one is selfishness - as in, greedy corporations want to use oil instead of spending billons on expensive things like solar power and pixie dust, or greedy Republicans who want to do cost-benefit analyses on matters of public policy.
What I found most surprising was (as it was totally obvious to me that Donald Trump was all about getting the rich richer while throwing the disadvantaged to the wolves):
My vote: Republican obstructionism actually turned out to be a viable strategy. By putting party over country and doing their best to hamstring anything that might help the working class for fear that Obama and the Democrats might get credit, they managed to make the government utterly dysfunctional, to the point that people were willing take a risk and blindly go with what’s behind door number one rather than the status quo.