That would be a debate for another day. But you can’t overlook the sheer power of religion as a voting motivator.
As another anecdote, I attend a Chinese church here in Texas. As far as I can tell, the Mandarin fellowship group I’m in (comprised almost entirely of first-generation Chinese immigrants to the USA, some of whom recently got naturalized and gain the right to vote) is overwhelmingly pro-Trump, due to perceiving him as the more pro-Christian candidate - despite all the insults that Trump has hurled at China, despite “kung flu,” despite all his anti-minority rhetoric, etc. My WeChat feed is full of their pro-Trump posts and statuses. Most of them are women, too.
For many, perception of who is more pro-their-religion supercedes perception of who is more pro-their-race, pro-their-gender, etc.
Immigrants like these would also help answer the OP’s question as to how Trump managed to gain 6 million more votes this time around compared to last time.
From my experience (my wife is Chinese and has been bombarded on Wechat with this messaging) it’s not just Christianity, it’s also the rampant racism. Once Kamala was picked as the running mate the Chinese Christian WeChat world exploded.
I’m not. You can’t overlook the sheer power of lies and misinformation, though, right? Your mother has been lied to about the relative religiosity of the two candidates.
Shrug. It was intended to be an uncharitable interpretation. I wasn’t expecting anyone to agree it’s the truth! But apparently that’s not what you were saying, so never mind. I would be interested to see a corrected version - what message the Democrats intended to send - though.
Has she really? Or has she correctly determined which candidate is more likely to advance the common aims and interests of US Christians? Hint: it’s Trump.
It would help if the left-leaning outlets were not also so obviously partisan. In 2016 they acted like the world was coming to an end. And here we are in 2020, and it hasn’t. I’m betting Trump picked up some voters who were scared off last time, and now have decided they don’t care about his manner and personality, they like what he’s doing.
Looks like Biden has pulled ahead so maybe you can relax this time. But if you continue to belive that people who disagree with you are all deluded, crazy, or evil, you are never going to understand how to appeal to them, and this situation will continue to repeat itself.
First of all we should be cautious about early exit polls which are often wrong. However judging from actual results as well as polls it does appear that Trump made gains among Latino/Black men which is a good reminder to Democrats that their coalition is extremely complicated and that bringing them all out to vote is very difficult.
In 2016 Democrats paid the price for underestimating the importance of white working class voters in the Mid West and taking them for granted. This time round they have learnt that racial minorities may be quite conservative on some issues. In particular I wouldn’t be surprised if some working class Latino/Black men find woke gender politics off-putting and are attracted by leaders like Donald Trump.
Seconded.
I live in China, and I would say Trump is much more popular here than he has any right to be.
There’s a significant proportion of people who don’t understand much about politics or current events (e.g. the one and only thing they know about the russia investigation is Trump’s marketing: “Wasn’t that just a hoax?”), and yes, are quite racist. BLM to them is just black criminals campaigning to tie the hands of the police. And of course they don’t care about authoritarianism because China is authoritarian itself.
I’m not saying that Chinese living in China is the same group as Chinese Americans, just adding another data point.
Which shouldn’t be a surprise. All races have people with a spread of liberal to conservative attitudes; the Democrats get more votes from black and latino voters not necessarily because they are more liberal than whites, or agree with the majority of the party platform, but because of racism in the Republican party.
I think I got away from my original point, which is that playing identity politics is dangerous if the groups you are trying to appeal to are in the minority. It’s common to say rich people used race to divide the working class and prevent them working together to better their lot - the Democrats should be doing the opposite: unite the working and lower middle class around common interests, and concentrate on policies that would help all of them.
I am not a spokesman for the Democratic party, but I would say something like, “We all need to work together to get through hard times and to accomplish the goals that we have in common.”
Some of them have an obvious slant to their preferences, I’ll agree, but that’s why they are “left-leaning.” However, I don’t think that most media outlets are left leaning. MSNBC for sure, but they still don’t fabricate like Fox or other right wing outlets, they may have a bias in what they choose to report, but not in whether they tell the truth.
The problem is that neutral sources like the AP or Routers are also considered left leaning, as they report reality as it is, not as the right would like it to be.
Here we are in 2020, with a pandemic that has killed a quarter of a million people, and killing another thousand or so a day. An economy that is in the shitter, people without jobs or any hope of income in the near future. We have category 4 hurricanes hitting Florida in November, clear evidence of a climate change problem that we are refusing to acknowledge, much less address.
We are the laughingstock of the world. We are not trusted by our allies, and our enemies mock us openly.
The world doesn’t end in a day, it takes time. The question is whether we are on that path or not. Those with some modicum of foresight can see that the path we are on is not sustainable. What the world is and how it comes to an end are a matter of opinion. The world doesn’t end if millions of our fellow citizens die, it doesn’t end if we lose our coastal cities to flooding and storms, it doesn’t end just because people are sick and miserable. It’s not the end of the world that we are concerned about, but an end to our comfortable and safe way of life that we have taken for granted for the last couple of generations. It is an end to the world that our grandparents fought and sacrificed to give to us, that we now squander and ruin.
I don’t care about personality either, I care about results. The problem that I see is that too many people overlook the results of the Trump administration because they like his manner and personality.
I do not believe that anyone who disagrees with me are deluded, crazy or evil. I disagree with many people on many things, there is plenty of room for disagreement on many things. But, those who support Trump are at least one of those three.
I live in Trumplandia. My parents are Trump supporters, so is my brother and one of my sisters. They tell me things that are not true, they base their decisions on disgust of things that they do not understand and wish to tolerate. My father compared living next to a same sex couple as living next to a house with a sewer line backing up. My mother claims that there were only 10 black men killed last year by police. My brother is a sovereign citizen, and my sister says that we’ve never been to the moon. (These are but a single sample of the myriad things that they say out of hate or delusion.)
Most of my acquaintances are Trump supporters. I haven’t really seen most of them since the pandemic, as we usually met at kinda larger get togethers. Sometimes went down to the gun shop to do some target practice. We know eachother’s opinions, and avoid bringing them up. I did lose some of them back in 2012, when they came over and voiced violent opinions as to the Obama sign that my roommate had put up in our yard. I knew better than to have a Clinton sign in 2016 or a Biden this past year.
Most of my clients are Trump supporters. I get along with them fine, so long as politics don’t come up. Even then, I just bare it, and claim to be so busy running a business that I don’t have much time to pay to politics, to end the conversation as quickly as possible so that I don’t get angry with them and their lies and delusions. But, they are more than happy to tell me things that are not true, and things that demonstrate their hatred and intolerance of the other. They seek to “educate” me, on the things that I am “missing”, and every single thing that they tell me is a lie or delusion.
As I was typing this, I had a guy wearing a Trump 2020 mask come in to drop off his dog. I had a very pleasant conversation with him about his dog and the new puppy that he just got. OTOH, he has on previous visits mentioned some of his thoughts on politics, to which I had to put superglue into my eye sockets to prevent me from rolling my eyes.
A very few of my clients are not. I am a male dog groomer with long hair, so they make the assumption that I am not a Trump supporter, and feel me out, and when they find that I am a liberal, they gush at me. Unloading all the things that they are terrified to share with their neighbors and other peers.
I know to not discuss policy with Trump supporters, as they are all slogan and no substance. If you actually try to pin them down on any position, they don’t actually know anything about it. Their idea of the economy is the DOW. They say that they are for deregulation, but cannot name a single specific regulation that they are against. They claim to fear riots, while they live in safe suburban, sometimes gated, communities.
There may be the odd Trump supporter out there who is not crazy, deluded, or evil, but in my fairly extensive experience with them, I’ve yet to meet one.
Right, the way that he had his paramilitary drive off parishioners from church grounds so that he could hold a bible up in front of a church should really convince them.
I don’t think this is a time to relax. I think it’s important to continue to maintain momentum and motivate progressive policies. Democrats always make the mistake of relaxing once they’ve achieved electoral victory. But, as Neil Young has said so long ago, “Rust Never Sleeps”.
Do you consider America’s Christian Right priorities as being generally good for society? If so, why? If not, why do we need to continue to appeal/cater to their wants? Seems to me that ERA has made some inroads with some religious communities. Most recently with respect to wider acceptance of LGBTQ members and even clergy. I don’t think this is a good time to ‘relax’ but rather to continue to press the advantages gained.
Is there a way to view the ideological Christian Right that supports Trump as anything other than deluded, crazy and ultimately evil? And how would you appeal to them except on their terms?
I’d be interested to learn about Trump’s Christian life prior to getting involved in the 2016 Election. Are there images of Trump attending a religious service? Did he ever express the slightest bit of interest in Christianity other than to try to exploit it for his own personal and political purposes?
The Democrats increased their numbers by historic amounts. It’s hard to imagine any Democrat or campaign strategy getting more votes than “the highest Democratic turnout in 100 years or more”.
Turns out there are millions of Trump voters that didn’t vote in previous elections. I can’t imagine what the Democrats could have possibly done to get their votes.
If I were an a-moral political strategist focused only on winning elections, I might be inclined to conclude that right wing candidates have not been sufficiently bigoted in their rhetoric in the past and thereby leaving votes on the table.
They KNOW that Trump’s will further policies that they are in line with, therefore they convince themselves that he is a Christian.
If you look at his actions throughout his life and compare them to the Christian morals and ideals, there is no way that he is Christian. If what you are in favor of are socially conservative judges and legislation from a politician, then he is a Christian Politician.
“Socially Conservative” has become synonymous with “Christian”.
This. As has been said a thousand times throughout his presidency, Democrats who keep saying, “But what about Trump’s (insert immoral/unChristian behavior!)” are completely missing the point. Most evangelical Christians do not care one bit about a politician behaving un-Christianly if he is perceived as pushing a pro-Christian agenda. He could snort cocaine off the Resolute desk every morning and they would accept it.
It’s a much better slogan, for sure. It may be part of the problem that a lot of people who are not spokespeople for Democratic party are assumed to represent them, like BLM.
They try, but I’m not sure they always succeed. Journalists tend to be from a certain demographic that trends liberal, and the way a story is framed makes a great deal of difference.
Thanks for this, it’s useful to get a personal view. (And sorry about your family. Sovereign citizen, yikes.) What sort of things do your customers tell you when they try to ‘educate’ you?
Neither do I. But what the Democrats are doing quite obviously isn’t working. So, they need to try something new. No, I don’t think there’s much chance of appealing to the Christian Right, but not all Trump’s voters can fall in that group. Michael Moore spent many years trying to get the Democrats to pay attention to the woes of the rust belt, but in the end it was Trump who listened and promised them help.
I think there’s plenty of scope for an alternative, but I’m not seeing it offered.
There used to be right-wingers posting here, but most of them seem to have been banned. Now all we get is naval-gazing speculation about their motives, with the most uncharitable possible interpretations. It’s sad, as well as profoundly unhelpful.
so maybe you can relax this time. But if you continue to belive that people who disagree with you are all deluded, crazy, or evil, you are never going to understand how to appeal to them, and this situation will continue to repeat itself.