I know some people put such priorities over opposing bigotry, and I’m saying that they’re wrong to do so.
So, then you would want to vote for the party that has been good for investments. Can you make the case that that has been the republican party over the last 30 years?
That’s what I don’t get. I understand voting against your personal best interest, as a sacrifice to get something that is more important to you. I made that decision when I voted for Clinton, as nominally, I am in a position and demographic that a republican administration would theoretically be better for me than a democratic one, but I felt that her policies, and those of the democratic party, would be better for the country as a whole, and further my personal goal of living in a peaceful, prosperous society that values equality and at least attempts to strive for “fairness”.
The thing that baffles is when they vote against both their personal interest, and the interest of society as a whole. Republicans have been pushing single issue voters for decades. Democrats aren’t taking your guns, but the R’s use that as a boogieman to get votes. The republicans are probably not going to make much headway against abortion, at very best it’ll go back to the states, but people vote for them because they expect the R’s to stop all the baby killin’. They care about the national debt, but they vote for the party that runs up much greater deficits. They care about small government, but they vote for the party that expands spending every time they are in power.
It’s not that they are voting against their self interest as some sort of noble sacrifice, they are voting against their self interest, not only for their personal economic situation, but also for all the other things that they claim to care about.
Do they really want coal jobs? Or do they want jobs with the same pay and benefits of the coal industry jobs? If they could get the latter without the dangers and unpleasantness of actually digging in the earth to bring up rocks to burn, would that be okay with them?
I read this somewhere on the dope -
A republican and democrat are in a boat. The republican drills a hole in the bottom and then points to the democrat while saying “Ha Ha, you’re going to drown”
Democrat says, “No, it’s okay, I can swim.”
Republican begs to be saved.
Which is pretty much the opposite of where most working-class Americans of any race are. Take away their Social Security, and most of them would have to work until they couldn’t work anymore, then move in with their kids.
Once again, this thread painstakingly illustrates how common sense is NOT common, and how so many people see the world from the opaque viewpoint of their own lower colon. You people are overlooking the simple fact that some significant number of the people who voted for Trump would have voted for an orangutan, rather than see an HRC presidency.
We’re not overlooking that fact. We are trying to come to terms with that fact. What you are saying in your statement is that hate is stronger than logic or common sense. While, given recent events, this has proved to be true, I think alot of us are still trying to find a way to combat that type of blind hatred.
Hate and Love are the same thing, just opposite ends of the same emotional spectrum. Come to terms with the fact that Mrs. Clinton is and always was a pipe dream to supporters she’d convinced she was something that she is not. Fortunately enough people saw through the veil of legitimacy to put a stop to it.
I have no love for Clinton, but I have followed her career over the decades, and found that she is an intelligent, dedicated, capable person who would have made a pretty good president, even if she wouldn’t have been our best. Though to call her a “pipe dream” would imply that she never had a chance, and that the democrats were just fooling themselves into thinking she did. You know, like the people who support johnson or stein. Those are pipe dreams. Trump following through on his promises, now that is a pipe dream.
As she ended up with more of the popular vote than your buddy Trump, calling her a far fetched idea is non-sensible at best, pretty fucking stupid at worst.
So, you are saying that Trump supporters managed to peak through her"veil of legitimacy", and see through to the real demon inside, and so chose the guy that had no veil over his incompetence, selfishness, arrogance and petulance. Do you think that believing Trumps lies make you a better person?
No, I think I’d rather blame the people who smeared a reasonable, intelligent, competent woman, and turned her into an object of hatred (as exemplified by your calling her a bitch) to the extent that the people they suckered would have, as you said, rather voted for an orangatun than for Hillary.
Now we’re going to have a President so clueless that he’ll make people long to have GWB back. That’s not Hillary’s fault; that’s the fault of the smearmeisters, and the Republicans who should have known better, but lined up behind this dolt anyway.
Trump is not an orangutan??? Have you seen his birth certificate?
I have been scratching my head about the ‘voting against their interests’ question ever since the election. The GOP is just Not about helping the poor and the down-and-out, or the sick, or the retired, IMHO.
The article in the OP isn’t bad. I grew up in Red State America myself, and I know exactly what that author is getting at (though I’d add that not everybody in those places is some kind of religious asshole, just lots of them :p) I’ve looked at a lot of things, and not felt satisfied that I understood the answer.
Well, I still don’t, not really. But the other day I was reading Krugman’sSeduced and Betrayed by Donald Trump, reading the comments, and one comment in particular just leaped out at me, reminding me of this thread but also seeming like a very self-aware, if nasty, explanation:
Seems like a simple but real explanation for how we could end up here. If true, the irony is that, in my personal case anyway, I am being “punished” by being handed a tax cut while having to watch these people basically punch themselves in the nuts.
A separate thought, but the OP’s article also made me think of Leonard Cohen’s It Seemed the Better Way. A really sensitive, non-jerkish look at what is at the heart of the conflict, what we can’t talk about very easily with Red Staters. And all in just a few lines! Probably worth your 4 minutes.
Thanks for that post. Great combo of screen name and a comprehensive, thoughtful reply. Yes, they hate the liberals, and will cut off their own balls to prove just how much.
You’re welcome! I’m glad you liked it. 
We’re in a new era now. Trump kneecapped both parties at the outset, he took workers from the Dems and nationalism from the Republicans and did his MAGA thing. So let’s just take H-1B, everything from the NY Times to Brietbart has noted that outsourcing firms dominate the visa process and game the system for themselves, to our collective detriment.
As you say, the Dems are divided. Sanders questioned why we need so many foreign workers when so many of our own are unemployed, but Clinton wanted to raise the cap, just as Obama planned to do and just as her husband did (I believe.) Republicans are also divided on this, publicly, as Jeff Sessions and Ted Cruz are strong opponents and Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan want to expand the programs.
So, last month you had Clinton trying to pin down core constituencies with that in her platform and with all the jobs momentum on her opponent’s side, and that opponent had already publicly challenged his own party’s pro-business purity and made a mockery of it.
Historically you’re right, but again this was just last month. All indicators say that Trump voters as a group are more varied than a town of Corn Belt fundies or whoever it is in the original article can illustrate, and that some, in fact, are or were Democrats. Make of that what you will.
Because the white working class has been in decline both demographically and economically, they have actually begun to think and act like a minority group, with specific interests, such as preventing unchecked immigration and being skeptical of free trade and globalization. Trump’s direct appeals on these issues caused the white working class to vote just like any other minority, and in fact the white working class is now a minority group, so this is understandable.
Wait, how is “preventing unchecked immigration” a specific group’s interest?
Whites aren’t the only ones with such an interest(African-Americans have a similar interest), but white working class voters are the ones most likely to be turned from Democrat to Republican by a hardline stance on immigration.
Well, now that Trump voters got him elected, that’s the last thing they got to decide. So it doesn’t matter how varied they might be. Trump pretty much goes along with GOP orthodoxy every time it pushes back. Remember how he was opposed to monkeying with Social Security and Medicare? If he’s ready to defend Medicare now, he’s sure got a funny way of showing it. You think he’s going to make an issue of shrinking or repealing H-1B if the business class wants to keep it as it is? Excuse me while I go off and laugh bitterly.
Meet the new GOP boss, worse than the old GOP boss.