It mattered a lot.
Doesn’t it make more sense, numbers-wise, to go after the ten million rather than the few hundred thousand? Especially since those millions are from groups that are young and/or growing in population? If the Dems managed to make even a few percent of them into loyal voters, they’d be set for years.
I am in a charitable vein and will assume that you did not read my previous posts with attention. Allow me to reiterate. I am speaking of the Obama voters who voted for Trump and swung the election for him. Those who stayed at home are not germane to the point I am making.
Ooh, I’m a goddamn cretin. Let me kill myself now.
Your point was that Trump won because loads of Obama voters went to him instead of Clinton, and then you went on to assert that wooing back these fairweather friends is essential if the party is to ever win again. Your conclusion is rubbish. If all the Obama voters who flipped for Trump had gone to Hillary, she still probably would’ve lost if the nonvoter numbers stayed the same in swing states. It is much more essential (and also more feasible) that Dems fight low voter turnout (and the factors that cause it…like voter suppression) than spend money and time chasing after voters silly enough to think Trump is a logical successor to Obama.
I can’t access your waPo cites right now, but your other cites are more of the same data-deficient opinion pieces about white rural voters that are challenged by the OP’s article and the Forbes piece I cited. The figure I’ve heard is that about 7% of Trump voters had previously voted for Obama. That sounds like a good amount, but I doubt it was 7% across the board. Trump did not perform significantly better than Romney in MI and WI. So if that 7% largely comes from states that went blue or always go red, then they don’t matter a “jot”.
Rotflmao. Pot. Kettle.
To address the OP directly, a negative, pessimistic portrait could be painted about any community in America.
Far be it from me to stand in your way.
As for your other points it’s clear that you deem your own opinion as superior to cites. I myself could ask for cites to back up those opinions but this is the Pit and I’m quite happy to leave you in your ivory tower.
Sure, and there are people on the other side of this who honestly don’t give a flip- they live in 95% white towns and counties and just don’t get it. To them, it seems equally absurd to vote for someone who would do demonstrable harm to their communities through free trade, etc… just because they want to do right by some group of people who lives somewhere else and who they don’t know. And not coincidentally, who they see on TV in the context of criminal behavior outside of entertainment-related programming.
Not prioritizing the fight against racism doesn’t necessarily make one racist. It may just mean that they have bigger fish to fry in their minds, which is what I suspect the case may have been for a great many people.
That’s a great point and explains why so many women and minorities voted for Trump. American racism can be very bad but is no longer an existential threat to most people. Even people who are victims of racism might have bigger priorities.
I agree, and I am faulting people who think this way. Tolerating bigotry helps bigots and hurts America, far worse than tolerating anything Hillary did/does. Those people are wrong and I am calling them wrong.
As for strategy, I think the Democrats already know the winning one – have inspiring and charismatic candidates. They win, and usually they win big.
It’s not that easy though, and even when they did have inspiring candidates they’ve always run by conceding some issues to bigots or even advocating bigotry themselves.
So because they didn’t disqualify Trump for his bigotry, that makes it their fault? Did you disqualify Hillary because of her corruption? no? Then, had she won, would we say that she won because of those tolerant of corruption?
I know a few Trump voters and they were very concerned about his bigotry but they found Hillary more distasteful that thinly veiled bigotry.
You act like bigotry is something that is new on the menu for Republicans. Republicans have had to get accustomed to bigotry since the southern Democrats became Republicans.
Perhaps but that tolerance is baked in. It was not a variable during the election. Who we nominated was.
That’s what I’m saying as well; I know people who have literally bitched about the Clintons for 20 some-odd years. If they’ve had that personal animosity toward the two of them for that long, merely being a thinly veiled racist isn’t enough to get them to vote FOR Hillary.
I suspect however, that had it been an Obama/Trump race, they’d have voted Obama with no compunction whatsoever.
A lot of people are making the mistake of thinking that bigotry/racism in a political candidate is the ne plus ultra, A#1 sin of an elected official, and that anyone who disagrees is wrong. What I’m saying is that in a lot of people’s minds, it’s a sin for sure, but not necessarily the highest in the pantheon of electoral sins.
I couldn’t disagree more. Conservative views get moderated more frequently than liberal ones. Conservative views get dogpiled by the liberal masses.
Liberal infractions are frequently ignored until they draw an infraction from a conservative, then “all sides” get moderated as if the blame is evenly divided.
Conservative idiots are called out almost immediately. Liberal idiots fly under the radar until they get really bad.
You probably dobn’t notice this because you only ever take liberal positions but I have noticed that my [positions are scrutinized much more carefully when I take a conservative position than when I take a liberal one.
Absolutely – at least they share the blame. Compared to Hillary, or any likely Democrat, Trump absolutely should have been disqualified for his bigotry, which is far, far worse a sin than anything Hillary has done.
Those people are wrong and should be criticized. This sort of tolerance of bigotry is bad and hurts America.
Bigotry in general isn’t new at all. But many of the things Trump said and did are new in recent decades of presidential politics.
I’m not sure why you’re so insistent that 100% of the blame goes to Hillary, and no one else shares any blame at all. I agree that she bears a big chunk of the blame, but so do bigots and those tolerant of bigotry. It turns out the country is more bigoted and more tolerant of bigotry than I thought, and than Hillary thought. We should have known better, and we’re partially to blame for that. But those bigots, and those tolerant or apathetic about bigotry, are also to blame for having an attitude that is harmful to America.
It really depends on their options. I think they would have voted for Biden (and he’s nobody’s dream candidate) or Rendell (and he’s a bit of an idiot) or any one of a dozen other candidates.
I agree – it should be a “#1 sin”, but it turns out it’s not. We (some of us, anyway) underestimated the tolerance and apathy towards bigotry in the American people.
But we shouldn’t refrain from criticizing this attitude just because a lot of people might be offended – tolerance and apathy for bigotry isn’t okay, and should be strongly criticized and challenged.
Liberal positions? Der Trihs? You have to be kidding. He is so far to the left of liberalism as to make Stalinism seem moderate.
You don’t even mean that, otherwise you would have backed a candidate in the 2008 primary who was in favor of gay marriage.
At least we ended up with Donald Trump, and not someone corrupt.
:smack:
Well, yes, if he was a single issue voter.