When I read about the poor whites who are rabid Trumpists and claim “He did so much for us” I can only conclude that you are right. Aside from making racism respectable, what did he actually do for poor whites? For rural people?
When I asked my wife how Blacks could support him, she replied that he also made male supremacy respectable. But surely some black women must also have voted for him. Cannot figure.
Trump bragged about grabbing women by their genitals, and some women voted for him.
Trump claimed many Latino immigrants were criminals, rapists, etc and some Latinos voted for him.
Trump has been married multiple times and has had several documented affairs, and many evangelicals voted for him.
Trump claimed COVID wasn’t serious, and despite the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people millions of people voted for him.
You can do a lot with charisma. In addition, not all [insert group here] are the same. I was raised in a conservative church that had very clear “beliefs” that husbands should dominate their wives, and the women vocally supported this when the pastor mentioned this. (I don’t know their real feelings, of course.) I can only assume they considered their religion more important than their gender, but that’s the guess of an atheist man.
it wasn’t that big a change nationally though.
in 2016 the Democrat won Latinos 66-28, in 2020 they won Latinos 65-32. it changed but not by a huge amount.
Also in 2016, 71% of voters were white. in 2020 only 67% were.
but if the millennial and non white vote is all occurring in blue states it won’t matter much. in 2004 Kerry won California by about 1 million votes. by 2020 Biden won by over 5 million votes. but California still only has 2 senators and 55 electoral votes.
democratic voters already make up the majority of voters for president, senator and representatives. but due to how our system is set up, they’re usually in the minority role.
Being the incumbent is usually a significant advantage. People are used to seeing the incumbent as president. The challenger has to convince people that he can be presidential.
Trump was the exception. He seemed less presidential in 2020 than he did in 2016.
Is this actually true? My personal experience is that young people are actually less liberal in many ways.
It hardly matters whether people become more conservative as they age (although I think they do in the literal sense of the word), or simply appear more conservative by comparison with young people. Either way they are more likely to vote for a conservative party.
Why not? Not everyone in a given socially constructed set values the same set of things with the same set of weights. Not understanding individuality is an unfortunate side effect of looking at people through the lens of modern so-called progressive thought. My former neighbors who were black, have some shockingly illiberal ideas on how to reduce poverty. If one were to reduce the complexity of their existence to black democrat much information would be lost.
For some people it’s more about supremacy, regardless of the particular flavor. The sports analogy that I used in another thread is that these people are all playing the same game in the same league. That they’re on different teams sometimes doesn’t matter. They have the same underlying mindset.
That’s why I don’t think demographic changes are destined to make the Democrats come out on top. Eventually more and more minorities will identify as part of the majority. In the past the Irish, Italians, Catholics, and Mormons weren’t part of the majority in group. Now they are. Eventually authoritarian thinkers from other minority groups will also swing Republican as they stop seeing themselves as minorities. That’s my hypothesis on why places where Latinos are already the majority (Rio Grande Valley, Miami / South Florida) moved to the right. Latinos in those places are starting to think of themselves less as an oppressed minority and more like the majority group that the elites are pissing on.
I think you’re correct about this as well. It won’t happen all at once, but Republicans will eventually welcome people into the party who were previously members of one minority group or another. It may seem like it, but the Republican Party isn’t primarily the party of white, heterosexual, Christian men. It’s the party of authoritarianism and oppression of those who want a fair democracy. It’s the party of steal from the poor and give to the rich. It’s the party of I’ve got mine so fuck you. There’s no biological reason that Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Muslims, gay people, and so on can’t think the same way. Many of them already do. It’s just an accident of history that in the United States the starting group was white heterosexual Christian men of English descent. That part has always been malleable and will continue to be so.
The conservative party when these young voters reach their fifties will be by necessity further to the left than today’s GOP. So their liberal outlooks – by today’s standards – matter very much.
If people have been getting steadily more liberal then this must have already happened, right? So the Republicans today should be further left than 30 or 50 years ago. D’you think that’s true?
There is some statistical evidence that shows voters getting more conservative as they age, at least in some areas. I don’t think it’s been debunked although it does tend to be overstated. See:
…
And heck, at least with Latinos and Asians, many have living memory of living in societies/communities where they were in the “privileged” cohort, and were the conservatives of that community; not having been multigenerationally left-progressives to begin with, why would they become that?
We had many moderate Republicans in 1971 and even some in 1991. But then polarization set in (thanks, Newt) and the Republican party swung somewhat rightward in contrast to the more general makeup of the electorate as a whole. But the median voter among all age groups still remains further left than the comparable median voters of 30 or 50 years ago.
[quote=“Deeg, post:31, topic:933730, full:true”]
There is some statistical evidence that shows voters getting more conservative as they age, at least in some areas. I don’t think it’s been debunked although it does tend to be overstated. See:
[giggle] That article suggests that as our brains deteriorate with age we become more conservative in our views.
But seriously, even if that data is accurate, and I’m not disputing it, it’s mostly about our abilities to deal with change as we age. That may be true. But the change a 65-year-old is experiencing today is based on a starting point further left than the change experienced by a 65-year-old in 1971. An aging person in 1971 may have second guessed his support for ending segregation and guaranteeing voting rights for all. Today’s aging folks might be reconsidering their earlier support for, say, universal health insurance. Civil rights are ensconced in the nation’s ideals (if not ideally in practice); in 2051 UHC may be, too.
I couldn’t have said it better.
The fact that the Proud Boys were willing to follow Enrique Tarrio should tell you all you need to know about the idea that “the browning of America” will be the nail in the coffin for Republicanism, conservatism, and even the worst excesses of Trump-style fascism. IT WON’T. Their tent will continue to grow.
If you’ve been following their own online communication, you will notice that they’re obsessed with the ((( ))). That’s one group that can be demonized without alienating blacks and Hispanics. This movement does need someone to demonize, and ((( ))) are such a tiny portion of the population that they can use them as the whipping boy, gradually shifting some of the big pile of hatred that’s directed at other minorities onto the ((( ))) without worrying about losing millions of supporters.
In case anyone here doesn’t know what I’m talking about - and you really SHOULD know it if you consider yourself informed on present day politics - those parentheses are referring to the Jews. Open anti-Semitism is back in style now that the vibe of conservatism has shifted away from Zionist-obsessed evangelical Christians and towards the secular generation raised on 4Chan and South Park.
The good news is that Trump also revealed the limits of how large the numbers of people in the general public who support authoritarianism is. The number tops out at less than 50%, and seems to be closer to the 40 to 45% range. The challenge for Democrats is keeping the other 55 to 60% united against the fascists despite not having a unifying theme like the other side has.
ETA: A little off topic, but I also have a hypothesis on how we got here. Back in the day, prior to FDR, the authoritarians were divided between the Democrats and Republicans. Starting with FDR, and slowly increasing since then, the authoritarians started to slowly leave the Democrats and join the Republicans. Trump losing last year was the tipping point that got us to where people like Romney and Liz Cheney are no longer considered good Republicans.
I think the easiest path for the Democrats to do that is simply to keep the economic stimulus coming. Keep it an ongoing thing even after COVID is fully contained. To put it in crude terms, there’s essentially no more tried and true method of gaining peoples’ loyalty than giving them money. People can issue all the protestations they want, but they’re all bullshit - everyone wants more money.
Wasn’t that number smaller for the actual Nazi party?
I don’t think it works like that. In the short run, yes, but people quickly forget a hand out or worse get used to it, demand more and punish you the instant they don’t get it. If you want true, lifelong loyalty and not a fleeting, mercenary one I’d argue you need to give people two things: a pathway to a better future, and an identity tied to the party. The Democrats are really bad at both, and the Republicans are only good at the latter.
Republicans are masters of establishing an identity as an oppressed… majority of “working class” individuals. The Democrats are actually extremely divisive when it comes to a unified identity. Aaand Democrats try really hard to give their constituents proverbial fish, but consistently fail to teach them to fish as the proverb goes - food stamps are better than a swift kick in the arse, but stronger unions and fierce protection of actual competition in the marketplace go a loooot further. Meanwhile the Republicans would simply prefer a modest proposal like repealing child labor laws. Since that worked out so well last time, of course…
Republicans are of course terrible at the first, because none of the things they do are actually beneficial to anyone other than the oligarchs. Democrats are bad at the latter because the party is a big tent, and the things that people who want to focus on fighting global warming are different than those people who are focused on fighting for LGBT rights, and both of those are different than Democrats who are focused on immigration issues, and so on. But Democrats are actually decent at making things better for people. At least I believe they would be if they had a filibuster proof senate, control of the house, and the presidency.