Well, there’s a bold and important stance to take in this thread. Glad we could count on you to tell us something we’ve never heard here before.
Did they tell you their rationale?
Thanks!
Among white voters, Trump drew 45 percent support from college-educated women (and 62 percent support from non-college-educated women). He also drew 54 percent support from college-educated men.
The meme that only angry, uneducated old white guys were going to vote for Trump was clearly inaccurate.
I guarantee their grounds are that they hated or feared Clinton more. I dislike Clinton (on the basis of her duplicity and lack of transparency) even when I agreed on a policy basis, and I even underestimated just how much of that dislike for the candidate would drive voting choices to an extreme. In the last couple of days I’ve had coworkers come out and make the surprise statement that they voted for Trump not because they agree with him, like him, or believe a single thing that he says, but just that he wasn’t Hillary Clinton and/or because he could “shake up the system”.
That this is reflexive, thoughtless selection giving no consideration to the consequences isn’t beside the point; it is exactly the point in that in Clinton, the Democratic party selected a candidate that had to combat her own reputation–ineffectually–more than she had to fight her opponents. That Trump could make openly racist comments, advocate violence against opponents, be caught on tape making statements so offensive they could not be repeated on broadcast television, and demonstrate no knowledge of government or policy whatsoever, and even be competitive indicates just how poor of a choice Clinton was, and it was almost trivial for the conservative smear machine to take even minor controversies and spin them into hysterical crises. Tanking Clinton was child’s play in comparison to swiftboating John Kerry.
Stranger
I remember during the tail end of the primaries many people saying that if the Cruz/Trump alternative was really the final game board, they found Cruz scarier as an actual ideological fanatic with political chops who’d just be focused on enacting an ultrahardline Christian Right Tea Party agenda. With Clinton there were many at the end who indeed figured she would be likelier to succesfully get through those of her policies that *they *dreaded or detested most and she would meanwhile be succesfully doing some sort of underhanded deals in the back room that nobody would know about.
I suspect it that many more than 1% were victims of suppression. Thanks to the bastards in the GOP who have systematically made it harder and harder for people to vote by cutting early voting, cutting polling places, cutting hours, etc., I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it made the difference in states where the vote was close.
It is so disgusting, but it worked, just as the Republican obstructionism in Congress worked, and just as the Southern Strategy has worked for decades. The Republican leadership should be so proud of the way it has mastered sleaze.
Thank you both for answering that. Perhaps in my life I’ve always been focused on or terrified of possibly bad consequences to say, “Hell with it! I’m going to throw caution to the wind, go with my gut and choose X in the hopes that they’ll be better than what I perceive might happen, versus the reality!” I mean, I really bog down where they knew he was all these bad things because he said or did so himself, instead of listening to unverified accusations against Clinton. Then to go a step further and believe he’d never do what he said or have no way of backing his rhetoric up, well, that’s where I fall off completely.
But I may never understand and should just ditch the effort. Sigh.
Thanks again.
But tanking Trump should have been even easier.
Nobody has ever disenfranchised straight white males. I do not think that word means what you think it means. It is not disenfranchisement to stop extending privilege to the historically privileged. Period. Not that even THAT has ever happened.
Disenfranchisement is being somehow restrained from exercising the vote. Now let’s see…what groups does THAT apply to in the last couple of decades? Not straight white males.
Do you prefer the term ‘alienation’? I absolutely believe privilege is a thing, but people who are struggling to survive do not want to hear about their privilege. It’s like lecturing a drowning man about how lucky he is for having both his legs, instead of throwing him a life raft. When people dismiss their reality I can’t blame them for being none too inclined to listen.
Well said. Modern liberals need to try much harder to understand that for their own good. Nobody likes to be told that they are “privileged” when they obviously aren’t in a great many individual cases. Females are outperforming males in education and almost all of the political winds are shifted against younger men no matter which direction they turn unless it is just a position of complete submission.
I honestly think that much of Trump’s biggest appeal was his complete rejection of Political Correctness and that played well to a much broader audience than expected. It didn’t really matter what he was saying exactly or who it was against because he was mostly equal opportunity on that. People get really tired of endless lectures especially when they already have their own experiences that don’t quite match up what they are being force-fed. PC mico-lectures are about as welcome as a missionary knocking on your door on a beautiful weekend morning.
Some people need to read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” before they set out on their own political circuit whether that is online or in real life. Otherwise, you may damage your greater cause no matter how good your intentions because -surprise - not everyone is liberal or progressive and never will be.
You’re welcome, and very good post on your part. I too initially had the impression of a huge turnout. So when Trump won, it was a very scary feeling. A million voters less than Romney (and so far, from what I’ve seen, less even than *McCain *got!) does not seem so scary. But a bunch of blase Democrats sitting at home is infuriating, even if it’s not scary. Let’s hope you’re right that they get their act together, at least for a few cycles before they get lackadaisical again.
No, but they’re fair game for discrimination. It’s seen as fine to discriminate in favour of womem, blacks, latinos, etc, etc, but people don’t see that that involves discriminating against whites and white men in particular. Fighting racism and sexism means setting a level playing field, not righting past wrongs.
So here is a question. How much of the Democrats not showing up is down to it being assumed by everyone that Hillary was going to win?
Did she lose because the polls said she would win?
I ran into a friend last night who was all about Trump ever since the primaries. He looked shell-shocked. He admits now that he considered Trump a joke the entire time and he was playing along. He assumed Hillary would win, but voted for Trump because he wanted to “give the finger” to normative politics.
I would have needed to control the urge to slap him. And then looked at his stupid face, full of hurt wonder at being hit.
I would have controlled it, I assure you. That hit would have stayed in my imagination.
But … thanks for the finger. Dick.
Then there are the people that gave the same reason for voting for Heart Attack Boy(Johnson).
If y’all want to be a goof-ball with your ballots, don’t fuck up the country by putting them in the ballot box-just fold them into little dunce caps and wear them proudly.
Well, actually Hillary got more votes than Donald did. The trouble is where he got those votes. The Electoral College is set up in such a way as to always keep the vote close, particularly between urban and rural areas. A few million votes one way or the other and you have a red/blue or blue/red shift. What you need is a reason for rural voters to believe in the Democrat platform. So far, there isn’t much.
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That’s part of it.
Another part is GOP voter Jim Crow laws.
Another part is the Bernie-Bros- they didnt know how to campaign for their candidate, so they bought Roves lies and kept using them against Hillary, even long after the Nomination was sealed up. I got a couple in my FB feed, they are still going on how the DNC stole the nomination from Bernie.
Karl Roves lies worked really well. He pushed really hard on the idea that both candidates were so crappy you might as well not vote.
My Trumpet Facebook friend posted a gloating meme about the “Trump landslide” that shows the country broken down by red & blue counties. It is quite impressive – overwhelmingly red. But it just means that Trump won all the counties where nobody lives.
You’d think they wouldn’t throw around the word “landslide” so carelessly, considering their guy came in 2nd in the popular vote.