So? What is the target there they can rally against? Wealthy businessmen? That has not been SOP in the GOP.
That would be a fascinating experiment, but it’s irrelevant to reality. The notion that Mexicans are taking their factory jobs is also irrelevant to reality, but is a rallying cry nonetheless. That’s what we’re objecting to.
And a demagogue will be most successful.
If I understand you correctly then I can agree with part of your point. Let me try to rephrase and expand upon it and see if my rephrasing is something you agree with.
This subgroup of whites (see post above for the full descriptor) are becoming increasingly powerless and pessimistic. Trump, as a good salesman, connects to their frustration and offers making them “great again.” He exploits this group’s pre-existing biases and prejudices to give them some “others” to simplistically rally against and gives them a sense of addressing their concerns. This is in the service of selling his brand which is his expertise. Leads to profit!
There actually are some valid concerns for this subgroup. Nothing that Trump offers actually would fix any of them, but at least he seems to hear them and to be giving their concerns a voice. In comparison the GOP mainstream has taken them for granted and used them for their own purposes and the Democratic side seems to have given them up as a lost cause, a shrinking demographic that the GOP has doubled down into, leaving their side to grow with everyone else, from various shades of non-White, to college and above educated White.
There is little recognition of the actual valid concerns of this group by anyone. They are in fact becoming an entrenched underclass. The combination of their having previously been relatively privileged (due to being members of the larger identified group called “white”), and the ugliness of the rhetoric, the tactics, and well of their sometimes willful ignorance, makes efforts to give them ladders somewhat unappealing to those who they are attacking as “other” and who are the critical members of the coalition on the Democratic side. To some of that group acknowledging the difficulties that this group currently has is heard as an endorsement of its distorted view of reality, and as an attack upon them. It is hard to want to help someone who unfairly blames you for their problems.
Nevertheless, as unappealing as these siblings of ours may be, they still are our brothers and sisters in the big family that is our country. Having them become further and further entrenched as a resentful underclass is in no one’s best interests. It is what makes the success of a Trump possible. It creates extremism.
Trump will highly probably not become President, and if he did he would not in fact do anything of real value for this group. Some of their grievances are things that they will just have to adapt to. Some have no easy answers. But it is in all of our interests that they at least feel heard by the rest of us, and that we do our best to address the issues we can (that do not impose upon the rights and opportunities of others).
Which of that would you agree with and what would you disagree with?
What is that supposed to mean?
Agreed.
DSeid: I agree with everything you said except for part of #2. I agree the GOP seems to have taken this group for granted. I am not sure the Dems have “given them up as a lost cause”, unless you mean that entirely in an electoral sense. I think the Dems would like to help them get jobs (Obama’s failed national infrastructure overhaul proposals would accomplish this, to a point), but 1) this demographic abandoned the Democrats during the Southern Strategy days and probably aren’t coming back (which makes it easy for the GOP to take them for granted) and 2) as you say, the Democrats aren’t going to demagogue their irrational fears and humor the notion that oppressing other demographics is the answer (this last sentence, and pretty much anything we say on this topic, is going to be easy to take the wrong way because of the seeming paradox of the issue involving xenophobia and not at the same time). Dems just aren’t going to address the problem in this group’s terms. This makes them look like they want to make the problem of “Mexicans taking our jobs” worse, when it is really more complicated than that. It isn’t giving up on them, it is that the Dems can’t reach them, they are viewed as part of the problem. As you point out, it can’t really solve its own problems, either.
So yeah, we have a politically isolated demographic tainted by America’s darker historical trends, and it is difficult to help them. Along comes Trump championing their cause and humoring their worldview, and now everyone is yelling at each other.
Yes I mean politically.
In point of fact the Obama administration has, fairly quietly, done lots of rural America initiatives. But there is the acceptance that Appalachia say will not be able to actually see much farther than coal’s downturn, and will blame that on Democrats.
That said there is a great political reshuffling in progress. Trump is putatively a Republican and is certainly no Democrat but the fracture he is exploiting has laid bare that the mostly rural mostly White, lower educated portion of the GOP (which now is most of the party’s electoral strength), and the mostly suburban and loosely metro area college educated Whites, and the hard core movement conservatives, are not at all very likely to be able to share the same car much longer.
No question many of that Trump prime target market subgroup will only respond to pandering but a fair number are, while not well educated, still smart. Treating their rational concerns with respect and in a manner that assures those concerns will be taken seriously can make inroads there, politically, and again whether it leads to greater political success or not is in all of our best interests for the longer haul.
Thanks for that link- I was unaware of most of those programs. They are probably not enough to save Appalachia from the death of the coal industry, and I agree that is going to be blamed on the Democrats. A fine example of what I’m talking about here.
It will be interesting to see what effect the elevation of Trump by this demographic has on the GOP- look at the comments just in this thread to the effect of, “if Trump supporters are white, I want to be considered something else.” I do think this group is going to get more attention going forward, regardless. Obviously “white people” is a clumsy label for them, maybe this thread will deliver a better label. Still, I think the way we talk about demographics is going to change going forward.
For a long time, “white” has been the default category. Categorizing people by race or ethnicity happens far more if the subject is a non-white person. I think “white” is going to lose its default status, and the word is going to be tossed around more in the way black and Mexican are. I think that is part of what the fuss is about- this reflects real-world changes that obviously some people don’t like. Trump throws these categories around pretty casually- the blacks, Mexicans, Jews (but never Whites, amirite?)- and he is pissing people off by attaching value judgments or traits to these groups as a whole. These aggrieved people rose up and shut down a rally of Trump’s aggrieved people. The “minorities” won (whether or not the protests were the right thing to do). So, who is the minority then?
Whites are going to be another minority. I don’t know that the language is going to change such that the word “white”, specifically, is going to be thrown around in the way black and Mexican are today. The Trump Coalition demographic is distinct from other white people, for one thing. But I think a change like that is coming to the language of the public discourse, hence the thread title The Rise of White People… as a Demographic. The language of the public discourse will catch up with the shift in consciousness underway.
Ah, that’s all right then. His support is only 16% hard-core racists. :rolleyes:
White people are not allowed to ever take any kind of stand, draw any lines in the sand or vocally complain about any problems they suffer. You’re supposed to feel bad for either being caucasian or looking caucasian and show nothing but sympathy and opening up your tax wallets.
No: white people are not allowed to complain about anything as white people. What we suffer by virtue of being white is so insignificant in comparison with what we do to non-whites, even in 2016, that any complaints are unseemly. Guilt is unnecessary and beside the point.
As members of other groups, we can complain all we like. Being white doesn’t prevent you from suffering injustice. F’r instance, my generation was screwed by the Boomers: nothing to do with whiteness.
Moral judgments aside, as white people decline as a demographic, they will start taking on more of the aspects of minorities in terms of social behavior and political views. They’ll start voting more as a bloc, seeing the world in more starkly racial terms, and will acquire a persecution complex.
In other words, they’ll act like everyone else. It’s starting among poorer whites, but will eventually filter its way up to the ivory towers. We’ll all be oppressed minorities.
There is no future in which “white people” will be a single demographic in America. Might as well call Dopers a demographic.
No. Dopers as a demographic makes is much more likely.
None of the “demographics” we talk about are single demographics. My point is that whites will start looking at the world and their place in it in much the same way African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians do.
We call African-Americans, Latinos, young people, old people, males, and females a single demographic. Are white people special somehow?
You call … a single demographic. Most of the rest of us do not.
In point of fact we have quite good discussion here in this election cycle about the imports of merely: considering the differences between the broad groups of Southern and those who are products of the Great Migration; of Mexican-American heritage vs Cuban-American heritage; etc. … They look at the world the same way to the degree that the world reacts to them in the same way more than anything else, and in many important ways are very divergent.
“White” is “special somehow” only in that it is more of a hodgepodge default only sharing very superficial characteristics and along with a default acceptance into the more dominant generic culture. (And before that default acceptance was granted some groups currently labeled “White” were either not or only begrudgingly and provisionally called it … Italians, Irish, Jewish … so on.) Its being such an amalgam means that it is upon any further analysis a multiplicity of subgroups, down to small ones like Jewish GOP Dopers who may have a small membership but whose characteristics do not likely follow those of others with other individually superficially similar characteristics … 
But that applies to all demographics. They all have variances within, plus everyone is a multitude of demographics. I was just pointing out that white voters as a group, defined as they are now, will be more and more into bloc voting than they are now. Minorities tend to vote in blocs, and as whites become less of a majority, we’ll see more bloc voting behavior. We are already seeing it with the white working class.
Minorities vote in blocs under two main circumstances:
They feel under threat. (Such as, but not limited to, by virtue of being identified as “other” by the society’s dominant group.)
The commonalities of the cultural experiences result in relatively cohesive voting patterns.
To the degree that neither is true they do not vote cohesively. A hypothetical not too distant future that has the conglomeration currently lumped together as “white” being less than 50% does not predict them voting more en bloc by now.
It’s already happening. I’d say +28% Republican is pretty close to bloc voting. We’re not headed for African-American 90-10 territory, but voting like Latinos, with a 30 to 40 point spread, seems very likely. We’re almost at 30 points now. Trump will probably grow the GOP’s share of that demographic substantially.
For college graduates, even, it’s +24%. Only postgrads bring the total white vote a little closer to Democrats. The bloc voting is starting to happen now, it’s just trickling up from the bottom.
Trump has a base among angry, conservative whites with a high school education. He doesn’t do as well with more educated whites, or more professional whites.
Also white liberals are something like 10-15% of the electorate. All whites are not the same.
A fear I do have is Trump may be able to pull some white union workers and/or Bernie supporters who are angry at the establishment. Those groups would normally go dem, but this is not a typical election cycle.
I’ll take the opposite bet. If the GOP nominee is either Trump or Cruz the total share of White vote will be flat or decreased compared to 2012. It will become more bifurcated however with a bigger GOP share of the non-college educated White demographic and a smaller GOP share of the college educated and above group.