Seven MILLION people voted for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016:
It’s pretty clear that these folks decided the election and probably decided 2012 as well. So who are these people and what’s the best way to win them over?
The writer has a few thoughts:
I think you can condemn bigotry just fine. Just don’t portray policies that are not inherently racist as racist, even if the candidate has racist motives. Because his supporters who also support those policies might not have those motives.
Wait, what? Seriously, I can’t even…what? Is this another serving of “Be nicer to them” pudding? Bless their hearts, they don’t mean well? Gimmee a clue,** addy!**
You can call out a candidate’s racism, but when you portray a policy non-racists support as racist, you basically call everyone who supports that policy racist. At least that’s what people get from that.
“Trump is a racist” is fine. “Immigration enforcement is racist” is not, even though that’s probably what’s motivating Trump.
No one is calling policies bigoted that aren’t. There is just a huge group of people in denial. The immigration example is a very obvious one: it involves treating people differently due to their country of origin. It involves saying that people who are born in the U.S., which is not under their control, are more worthy of equality than those that are not.
There is this tendency by the Republicans to pretend things that have bigoted undertones don’t. And that is a huge problem. Why in the world does the party that can’t hold onto any minorities think that they know what bigotry actually is?
Maybe we’ll have to lie to all these people to get our country back under control. I really, really hope not, but desperate times may call for desperate measures. But I’m not going to let this ignorance spread that liberals call things bigoted that aren’t. We don’t. All men (humans) are created equal.
Trump ran on bigotry. And that resonated with a lot of people. That’s the story. That’s really all there is to it. So they voted for Obama. So what? When a guy spouts bigotry and you vote for him, you voted for bigotry.
All this persecution complex because some of us will actually call out your bigotry has to stop. I’d rather die than allow bigotry.
Here’s the problem with immigration: Democrats are approaching it as if they have already won the argument and it’s so obvious. Immigration enforcement is racist. The problem with that is manyfold, but here’s a couple:
Immigration enforcement is current law. If Democrats believe it’s wrong, they should be writing bills to end it against all but violent felons and making Republicans vote against it. But that wouldn’t work because that would make Republicans look good and Democrats look bad to all but the Latino community. Alternatively, they could advocate for the end of immigration enforcement in it’s current form and treat it as a civil rights issue. They won’t do that either. There has been ZERO attempt at persuasion on this issue.
Immigration enforcement is supported by just about everyone. It’s only certain examples that some people don’t like. Some people hate workplace raids. Some people don’t like breaking up families. Some don’t think non-felon immigrants should be deported at all. But in general, except for the open borders folks, immigration enforcement is popular.
Some state level immigration-related laws are racist, and Democrats have called those laws out as racist. What they have not done is distinguish between state level racism and federal enforcement that has been a popular policy enshrined in law since this country was founded. It’s apparently all racist. Even though they don’t want to change the law.
Democrats’ approach to immigration is a moving target. Not too long ago, they said, “Go after employers”. When actual proposals to go after employers were implemented, and it actually reduced employment of illegal labor, Democrats decided they didn’t like workplace enforcement anymore.
The Atlantic has a relevant article.
Different viewpoints on how the issue of bigotry is seen. The liberal viewpoint seems to embrace disparate impact arguments when deciding what is discriminatory. That is a viewpoint that seems to be more rejected by conservatives.
Example: My 90+ year old grandmother lives in an assisted living facility that was founded by a teacher’s organization (not sure it was a union or some other organization). Their policy is to give first preference to retired educators and their spouses. Usually they have a waiting list, but not always.
It is a given that many educator positions required at least a bachelor’s degree. It is also a given that many African Americans and other minorities were actively discriminated against in seeking higher education, and certainly so in the time frame (60s and earlier) when others their age were earning degrees. And thus these persons were unable to achieve the necessary educational credentials to be a teacher.
So, is grandma’s retirement home a cesspool of discrimination because it prefers retired teachers? Does it matter that there are several minorities living there and they have no policy that in any way considers an applicant’s race in determining who gets a vacancy?
A conservative might say no, there never was an intention to discriminate. A liberal may say yes, the policy preferring retired educators pulls from a pool that was tainted by discrimination.
(FWIW, grandma never taught. She is a retired nurse who got her name on a waiting list for a particular type of in-demand suite there several years prior and moved in when her name rose to the top of the list.)
Jesus Christ, I can’t believe people are still talking about this as though this were based on any kind thought or ideology. These are the voters who just vote for the next shiny object that comes along. Obama was the shiny object before, and Trump was the shiny object in 2016. It’s that simple.
These are the voters who are always saying, “We need change in Washington!” but who don’t have the slightest clue what really needs to be changed or how to change it. This bullshit has been going on since the nation began. There’s nothing new about it, and there’s nothing fundamentally new about Trump. There have been scammers since time immemorial.
The media felt guilty when Trump won (for giving him so much free press), so they tried to dress up these voters in retrospect as some kind of noble working class–all of which was just to justify more media bullshit “analysis.” These voters aren’t some kind of rare animal that has to be understood. These are just the same people who are repeatedly buying those bullshit miracle exercise machines on late-night TV ads because they want some simple, easy way to instantly lose fat they grow from sitting on their asses all day–just like the mental fat they have grown by sitting around watching reality TV shows instead of actually learning about how government works.
Please, isn’t it obvious by now what happened? That Trump’s election was nothing more than an empty publicity campaign directly at these easily duped voters? And that he’s trying to do the same thing in office? And that none of this actually reflects any kind of real policy or belief system? Really–haven’t you at least learned this by now?
That’s actually a pretty good analysis of the Obama-Trump voters. They are a cohort who vote based on “emotional excitement”. Go back through the last 50 years and compare the candidates - the shinier one won.
Guizot pretty much nailed it. We often over-analyze the motivations of voters. In my opinion, most don’t give two shits about policy. They just vote for who the personally like better and/or has charisma.
But the next level question is: aren’t there always going to be a significant proportion of voters who vote for the shiny thing? Don’t we all vote for the shiny thing, just for different definitions of ‘shiny’?
If people weren’t easily manipulable meat-bags of chemically-induced desires and post-factual rationalizations, advertising would be a sham.
So, what do we do? If we concede that humans, by nature, are not voting based on objective truth/facts, and the political machine has finally mastered/embraced that obvious truth, what’s the right way to proceed to ensure our government is run by the sorts of people I/you/we want in power?
That’s a very good hypothesis. But the question remains, how do you win them in 2020? Shiny new objects aren’t always close at hand. Most candidates are boring or even downright confusing to this type of voter.
What **guizot **said. I recall reading an article that said that what drew many Obama voters to Trump was what drew them to Obama - Obama and Trump were both “change” candidates.
And so by this logic, the Democrats should actually have an easy time winning them back in 2020. Because whoever challenges Trump in 2020 will be the “change candidate.”
A couple of questions:
Are we referring to legal or illegal immigration? Because virtually every country in the world, no matter how liberal or conservative, has laws against illegal immigration.
Even if we are talking about legal immigration - virtually every country in the world treats citizens different than non-citizens in some way. Even the EU - perhaps the most liberal bloc of countries in the world today - has strict work-qualification requirements to get a work visa or immigrate for work purposes. They don’t let you just stroll in and say “I want to be an EU-er.”
Which is a very good question. For voters who don’t care about policy, how do you get their votes? It seems to me that we have about 45% who prefer Democratic policies, 45% who prefer Republican policies, leaving the 10% who don’t care one way or the other being the ones that select the winner.
I think the number that like Republican policies might be lower; around 38-40%. Even with the seven million Obama voters that went for Trump, Trump was only able to get 46% of the popular vote.
You’re answering your own question, I think.
Both the GOP and the DEMs learned that a shinier objects gets all the attention. So there is no excuse not to present the shiny object. The 2008 and 2012 election proved that just because the object is shiny, doesn’t mean it can’t also be qualified and competent. The 2016 election proved that sometimes shiny is enough.
Actually, it has to be a CHANGE candidate, because it’s easier for change candidates to win against someone trying to succeed the incumbent, rather than the incumbent himself.
One thing that you might be overlooking: character voters, of which I am one when it comes to the Presidency. Hillary Clinton was always going to have trouble with character voters. Sure, Trump should have also had the same problems, but Trump didn’t piss off character voters in the same way. Career politicians are always looked at with a more jaundiced eye than outsiders.
That’s why I think any challenger should be vetted thoroughly and their skeletons not just waved off as not important. I’m sure they focus group these types of issues, and the party committees should take the lead on this since candidates themselves often don’t want to. If the DNC tells a focus group that say, Kamala Harris politicized her office during her time as AG, and that makes the focus group hostile, that should be a huge red flag.
As I said during the Obama years though, it’s about more than winning elections. As a GOPer, I should have been thrilled with 2016, right? Except that we can’t get anything done, and due to the nature of the party as it stands now, I wouldn’t want them to get much done.
With shiny new objects you have to take likely effectiveness as President into account as well as if it will damage the party in the long term.
I keep likening elections to poker. You won’t win every hand, so you win at poker by maximizing the winnings of your good hands and folding when you have bad hands. Better to lose an election with a boring candidate who makes the party look good brand-wise than to win an election with someone who will just screw everything up.
Trump. “Character voters”. Well, OK, I guess that’s all sorted out, then.