My hypothesis is that a large part of why Hillary lost is because she threw the “deplorable” under the bus. I think that back in those days, the deplorable vote was not a strong unified block voting Republican. If it had been, there’s no way that Obama would have won, and with the margins he did, in 2008 and 2012. Obama won with the margins he did because a significant fraction of deplorables voted for him. Democrats before 2016, especially Obama, had to not campaign too harshly against the stuff deplorables like. Obama managed that. Hillary didn’t.
Except they did. I don’t see how Obama could have won twice with a comfortable margin in both victories unless he was getting votes from people who are now solidly in the MAGA camp. It has little to do with being a non-white woman. How else can we explain how a Black man with a funny sounding foreign / Islamic name could win a comfortable victory in a national election in 2012, but a mere 8 years later a white, cis-heterosexual Catholic male who checks off all the traditional boxes for privilege managed to barely eek out a victory? It’s because some deplorables voted for Obama in 2012, but by 2020 they would never have voted D, not even for a traditional / old school white male with all the usual privileges.
The OP apparently does want to empathize, however. And as such, it is important to distinguish between that desire and the slippery slope into a defense of the indefensible.
This made me think of the few times I’ve spoken to people who were truly deluded about something. One flat-earther and one who believed in chemtrails.
I don’t hate them. I don’t disregard them, because they apparently exist. I don’t want to ridicule them or treat them unkindly. But the fact is they believe something that makes no sense. Someone saying so and explaining why, even in the most patient way, can make them feel mistreated.
Not sure what to do about that, but it’s at least a little similar to how I view MAGA people. The racism, scapegoating and mean spirited-ness inherent to many MAGA beliefs strikes me as close to delusional. So no matter how polite I try to be when engaged by these people, I’m certain to piss many of them off.
At best, I can call the MAGA worldview perhaps understandable in some instances, but not excusable.
I’m sorry, is that was this thread is about? Is that the “certain type of people” you’re referring to? Were Palestinian Americans even likely to vote for Trump three times? mean, I get the issue in 2024, but even taking it for the sake of argument that they did vote heavily for Trump in 2024, why do you suppose so many would have voted for him in 2020 and 2016 as well?
The only people that I know for a fact that voted for Trump three times and that I know personally are white, college-educate, and could pass as WASPs (despite being Catholic and having other European ancestry).
If it were that simple, then why did Obama do so much better than Biden? Yes, Biden did better in ‘20 than Clinton in ‘16 and Harris in ‘24, but I don’t think it’s because he’s a man.
I’d bet that had things gone differently in who the Democrats had nominated, Biden would have lost in ‘16 and Clinton would have won in ‘20. What changed is that Democrats kicked the crazies / deplorables / whatever you want to call them out of the party. People who are the rank and file Tulsi Gabbards who used to vote D in Obama’s day and now vote R.
I’m pretty sure Barack Obama isn’t a woman. And misogyny trumps racism in politics as well as a lot of other arenas.
Obama did well because he drew out a lot of black voters that were not normally very politically active. But a lot of black people (and specifically black men) would not vote for or otherwise support a black woman.(as both Shirley Chisholm and Kamala Harris could attest).
I have never once voted for Trump, of course. However, I can see some semi-legit reasons for someone to vote for him thrice:
Trump did always put his finger (not necessarily intentionally) on some issues that no other politician was willing to quite call out loudly. It’s just that his solutions were wrong. For instance, it has been true that much of NATO-Europe has been unfairly taking a free ride on the USA in terms of defense, slacking off on their own defense and not spending properly on their militaries until Russia invaded Ukraine. Some Democrats and Republicans made feeble complaints of such sort but were ignored by most of NATO-Europe. Trump then talked loudly repeatedly about abandoning NATO and Europe, and that played a big role in getting Europe to wake up. Correctly identified problem, wrong solution.
Same for political correctness, and a perception by many that Democrats/progressives were turning society into an Emperor’s New Clothes type of world. Trump then comes in spewing all kinds of racist/sexist/incorrect stuff. (Partly) identified correct problem, wrong solution.
Or that Islamophobia is a thing, but Christianophobia is not. Or the perceived double standard in many different fields that “It’s okay when X does it, but not okay when Y does it.”
Etc. etc. There were all kinds of problems that Trump was pinpointing that few other politicians were, just hitting them with the wrong solution.
That’s certainly the current right-wing rhetoric about it, although it requires both minimizing the consideration military contributions of other NATO members over the years and ignoring the fact that the arrangement whereby the USA was the “protector of the Western World” was very much the deliberate creation of the US, yielding it a vast amount of hard and soft power ever since the end of WWII. The representation of the rest of NATO as parasites sponging off US largesse isn’t a real “problem” that Trump has in any way even attempted to solve; it’s grown out of anti-NATO propaganda heavily promoted by Russia who wants to cripple the alliance as much as possible.
Yes, things needed to evolve post-Cold War, but that’s not the “problem” you presented. And they were already in the process of evolving, going back to the Yugoslav War. The only thing Europe “woke up” about is that America was no longer a reliable ally.
Again: a largely imaginary “problem” manufactured by the right. What the right were upset about was accountability. They wanted to be malignant bigots with impunity.
And another. There is no “war on Christianity” in the US, whereas there very much is one against Islam (see Andy Ogles’ recent bullshit for one example). Most of what is presented as “anti-Christian” is pushback against Christian dominance by the right. It largely boils down to “You’re persecuting me by not letting me persecute you!”.
I’m pretty sure Trump is the poster child for this one.
None of these were “problems” requiring “solutions” in the first place apart from the last one, where IOKIARDI still rules.
My hypothesis is that the reason Obama did well, even compared to Biden in 2020, is because this problem with bigotry isn’t imaginary. What the bigots wanted, as you state, is that they want to be malignant with impunity. Prior to Trump, they didn’t all vote Republican because the Republicans hadn’t said the quiet part out loud. Instead we had things like John McCain saying to some anti-muslim bigot that “No ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues”. Because Republicans talked like that, some of the bigots were still voting D, despite the fact the candidate was a Black man with an Islamic name. I contend that what those voters wanted more than anything else, is permission to say the quiet part out loud. That was even more important to them than choosing the right targets, which is why we still have a handful of minorities that can win election as a Republican. When that happened, a substantial number of closeted bigots and other assorted crazies who had been voting D, possibly for their whole lives, decided that hey, I’ll vote R, even if it’s against my other interests, because they gave me permission to say the quiet part out loud, and for me that’s more important than tax policy or relationships with NATO or some other obscure stuff.
For a while, I gave Trump voters a reluctant pass because I felt he did a great job conning and duping them into making a terrible mistake.
It has been 10 years since 2016.
The time for giving anyone a pass is long over. There is no excuse in the world not to know who and what this man is after all of the things he has said and done. NONE.
This is like trying to find a reason for people supporting Hitler in 1944, only this time what happened to the Jews is more widely known. These people are not ignorant of what has happened. They know what has happened and either willingly look away or they actively support it. The amount of facts you have to take off the table to discuss their support of Trump is so staggeringly immense that it defies description.
It is a defense of hatred, of ignorance, of bigotry, of sexual assault, of outright lying, and it is impossible to support without openly embracing it.
Yes. This is exactly it. Before Trump, some of those racists, bigots, and assholes voted D. Enough of them would vote D that Obama won twice with comfortable margins. Now they all vote R. Not just the old fashioned “rural white guy who wears robes and who hates Black people” bigots, but all the other kinds as well. The Latino that hates gay people. The Black man who wants to keep women in their place. The cis-woman that doesn’t want trans-women in her locker room. And so on. Now those formerly D bigots vote R, and there’s enough of them in the US that what were formerly comfortable D victories in national elections will now be nail biters every time.
Blaming Trumptism (and three-time voters) on “Boomers” ignores reality.
If progressives/Democrats think they just have to wait for “Boomers” to die off in order to triumph at the polls, they’re making the same mistake as when they confidently assumed that changing ethnic demographics (such as increased Hispanic voters) would make their job easier.
“A certain type of people” who reject science, hate experts and embrace a personal cult can’t be appealed to on any decent basis. A limited but electorally significant percentage could be pried away from that group if Democrats can avoid being branded as the party of things they find deplorable, such as DEI and transgender rights
