My 11 year old has to ride the bus with little kids who are chanting “TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP”. They held a mock election yesterday and allowed the kids to speak for their choice. They said Clinton was “pro-abortion”. My daughter came home asking me what that term meant because I guess she hasn’t much been exposed to the type of people who would refer to it as “pro-abortion”. Not surprisingly Trump won by a landslide in their election. My daughter, bless her heart, took the political compass test (the whole class did) and she said her closest match was Jill Stein. She’s just 11 but I’m kinda proud of that. I know Jill Stein isn’t presidential material, but I like to see my daughter is a compassionate and considerate child who at least understands what climate change is and seems more concerned about that than trying to take away women’s rights to our own bodies. It seems strange to me that all these kids in her class are already trained to think that way and they may never change, given that their families all think the same way. But there’s hope. I used to be a Republican myself! I’m just really disappointed. I know they’re only voting for him because they want a Republican in office and they have found the clown with mass appeal to do that for him. I really think he could shoot someone now and his fans wouldn’t budge. They’d just blame a Democrat for setting him up.
I’m with some of the others. What do you mean “cope?” Arizona has cast its electoral votes for the Republican candidate in every election except for 1996. I supported Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008 and 2012. Bush won in 2004 and Obama the last two times. Life goes on. Sometimes you’re happy with the results and sometimes not. If Trump carries Arizona, but Clinton gets the majority of EC votes, I’ll be happy of course, but either way I expect to go on living the way I have and cast my vote again in 2020.
I wouldn’t feel much different if Trump won. I used up the last of my youthful idealism when Bush comfortably won reelection because America thought gay marriage was going to bring about the end times. Maybe they were right.
If my state gives Trump the electoral votes, it’s the last time I’m voting. Ever. Because I live in Illinois. If we go to Trump, after polls show a 25 point lead for Clinton in this state, then I’ll finally be convinced that the vote is rigged.
As much as we’d like to believe we come of all our opinions sui generis, the reality is, we are all the products of our environments. Complaining that a 5th grader had her political opinions influenced by her parents is silly; of course that’s true. A parent can still be proud of their child nonetheless.
I saw more Trump signs in Massachusetts than in Texas. Maybe it’s the “minority likes to be loudly defiant but majority can be contentedly quiet” phenomenon.
I’m a native Texan, and I’m just used to the majority being wrong on some things. I will say that even though the state has always been conservative, things went solid right/modern Republican only about 20 years ago, and things are starting to pick up a bit on the left.
(Does anyone else have “Sweet Home Alabama” running through their head because of this thread?)
Because the alternative is to not live, and that is not something I want. My response isn’t to get upset–it’s to be more suspicious of people. That the whole “yeah they’re less intellectual but they’re still good people” idea doesn’t hold as much.
But it’s not like I wasn’t getting used to it before. Obama on Facebook told me a lot about these people. It’s why I barely had any Trump posts on Facebook–I got rid of those people before. Not that they are remotely the same as me politically–nearly all my friends are conservatives. But I got rid of the bad people.
Shrug my shoulders? I mean I live in CA, so it really isn’t an issue. But I don’t have any intrinsic sense of worth tied up in what state I live in. The whole concept strikes me as rather odd.
Now if I lived in a community where my politics were very much in the minority, I might feel a little uncomfortable. Maybe. And it wouldn’t have anything to do with the election per se. But that is intrinsic to the surrounding community. You can find little oases of blue and red in every state.
Grit my teeth and move on, just as I did in 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, 2004, and 2008. (Regardless whom I support, the person for whom I vote rarely seems to take the state in which I am living, even if they eventually win the overall election.)
This is a nation governed (with some shenanigans and without complete fairness) by voting for our executive and legislative branches and even if I am not on the “winning” side, (or my state does not support my candidate), I am opposed to changing things so that “my” side always wins.
Yes, 2004 was tough. I happened to drive through Amish country that October, and virtually every house had a yard sign opposing same-sex marriage, including the phrase “Save Our Children.” The GOP did a great job of politicizing the formerly-non-political Amish.
To answer the OP, it’s not easy living in a major battleground state. You have to fight for every small victory and learn to accept the losses. And in the worst of times, you learn to be grateful that at least in your own community, people tend to vote the way you do.
At this point, I’d feel a little out of place if I wasn’t the black sheep on my Facebook feed. Being a lefty surrounded by conservatives is all I’ve ever known.
Actually, the primary way parents influence their children’s politics is through genetics, not anything that they directly teach. This is a good reference on the topic:
Heritability varies for the specific political issue under consideration, but is strongest for immigration, abortion, and the death penalty.
I’m seeing very few signs either way in Indiana, which is sort of a relief, because they’re eyesores, but Indiana. Pence was not a popular governor, but it’s funny to think that Trump, who did so well in the primary here, may actually have damaged his credibility with Hoosiers by choosing Pence as a running mate. And, it heartens me that some of the “H” signs I’m seeing are in wealthy parts of town-- places I’d expect to be Republican. There’s a huge house on Cold Spring Road that has had a “Dump Pence” sign in the yard for two years. I just assumed they meant “for a different Republican,” but now I’m not so sure.
I mean, I have very little in common politically with my brother, mother, or most other people in my immediate family. The paper says what it says though.