Yes I do, since his opponent was far worse on the issue (and many others). There was no issue related to bigotry in which McCain was better than Obama, and several issues in which he was worse. There is no issue related to bigotry in which Trump is better than Hillary Clinton, and many issues in which he is worse.
But I separate McCain and Trump, since McCain never said overtly bigoted things and Trump did. McCain didn’t campaign on anything related to bigotry (except perhaps opposition to gay marriage, though I don’t remember that being a significant part of his campaign) – Trump rose to prominence and campaigned largely on bigoted statements and stances.
That’s fine for the general election. Not so fine for the primaries. There were candidates in the field who were supportive of gay marriage. They wouldn’t have won because they were fringe candidates, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s a primary and you can at least cast a protest vote and vigorously denounce the bigotry of the mainstream Democratic party.
This is a good point, but it’s not relevant to my point. In 2008 I was, in at least a small way, tolerant of bigotry against gay people such that I supported Obama over other candidates still good on the issues, and I shouldn’t have.
Fair enough. I agree that Trump was bad enough that his bigotry should have disqualified him. Heck, he had several disqualifying features, including corruption.
Here’s the thing though: Trump represented real change and was proposing policies that appealed to many disaffected voters, some of them Sanders and even Obama supporters. The elites’ consensus on globalization and environmentalism hasn’t displaced elites any. It’s displaced blue collar workers. There is a big political space in every Western country for a candidate or party that primarily represents those workers’ interests. Now there could be a left wing version of that but the left doesn’t really seem to know how to do this anymore. Climate change, liberal immigration policies, and welfare will always be prioritized over jobs. Democrats have to unlock that puzzle. Trump isn’t the last gasp of the white working class. A candidate who had skills and didn’t make racist appeals would have done even better running on policies of protectionism, lower immigration, and prioritizing jobs over climate change.
You democrats are retarded. It’s not that fucking hard. As Der Trihs has explained many times over Trump supporters are more racist than the Nazis. They are more evil than the Nazis. Face it democrats half of this nation, 150 million people, your friends, family and neighbors, are more racist, bigoted, misogynist, and evil than Hitler.
I could bring up the fact that the Republicans didn’t/couldn’t prevent the Democrats from taking back the presidency in 1992 (after 12 years of Republican rule) or 2008 (after 8 years of Republican rule,) but since you’re adamant, all I can say is:
Given that you’re predicting that there will never be a non-Republican president again, wanna bet?
You’re the one being a bit obtuse here, IMHO. The very small number of Obama voters shifted the election a small amount. The lack of democratic turnout shifted the election a large amount.
Ignoring the large amount, the small one lost the election, sure. But why ignore the large amount?
I am a D&D fighter with 100 HPs. A dragon hits me with a flame blast for 98 damage, and simultaneously a kobold bites my shin for 3 damage. You think the kobold was the problem?
It appears to me that the article in the OP is saying that the Dems do understand white, working-class America. They are dark, stupid, misinformed fundamentalist racists who don’t know what is good for them.
We just had an election where one candidate proceeded pretty much based on the assumption that “yup, they are, but it doesn’t matter because everybody who voted for Obama is going to vote for me”. With the observed results.
Writing off an entire demographic can be a winning strategy - any Republican has to expect to get >10% of the black vote - but you have to appeal to enough of your core constituencies to get them to come out and vote for you. Obama did it; Hillary, not so much.
“Morons hate it when you call them morons” seems to be a fact that Democrats have trouble understanding.
and yet again, the voters who turned the election to Trump aren’t those “fundamentalist racist hicks.” but nobody wants to hear that. they just want to enjoy their moment of recreational outrage and spew venom and hatred at the wrong people just because it makes them feel better.
It’s really simple: one party is trying to help the working class, regardless of race - by trying to raise the minimum wage, by making sure that people making <47K can’t be cheated out of overtime pay by giving them some bullshit “supervisor of the deep fryer” title, by making health insurance actually affordable for them , and by strengthening unions so that workers are in better shape to fight their own battles. The other party wants to kill the overtime protections, is torn between wanting to leave the minimum wage at $7.25 or reduce it to $0.00, wants to get rid of Obamacare, Medicaid, and Medicare, and would love to wipe unions off the face of the earth. And the nominee for Treasury secretary is a guy who foreclosed on 36,000 families.
As a lefty, I know a lot of people who are aware of the bind that a lot of people who live in trailer parks are in: they own the double-wide, but they don’t own the land underneath, and after awhile, the trailers aren’t always structurally sound enough to move, and finding a place to move to is getting harder and harder.
Now at some point, this might percolate its way up to actual legislation to try to help these people, who are overwhelmingly white, and are struggling to hold onto ‘working class’ and avoid falling into flat-out poverty. Which party do you think would propose such legislation, and which party do you think will be almost reflexively against it?
We Dems, we lefties think this stuff is worth doing, whether it gets any WWC types to vote for us or not. But it’s a damned sight harder to do anything for them if they don’t vote for us, and the Republicans damned sure aren’t.
To the extent that this is about economic anxiety rather than sheer Hillary hatred, or the possibility that somewhere in this country, an undeserving black or brown person might get some government help as well, then maybe you can tell me what the Dems should be doing instead or in addition to what they’re already doing. I’m just a dumb coastal elite, after all. Explain this stuff to me.
True. And one party wants to kill their jobs if they are deemed not green enough, and lies to them about being against free trade agreements that send their jobs overseas, and encourages companies to replace American workers with immigrants.
