I’ve been told to have compassion for the forgotten voters, stuck in towns where the industries left, lacking the energy to build meth labs. Or leave. Sort of like the folks in those Dust Bowl pictures. Except in color. And not so gaunt. (And many of those sad folks had the gumption to load up the truck & head West.)
But I’ve seen lots of pictures of jubilant Trump Fans recently. Probably taken in the cities, so we’ve got a skewed picture. (Or do we?) They are overwhelmingly sleek & slick young white guys in suits. Damn few women in these crowds–probably because they don’t relish being grabbed.
I’m glad Democrats in power can take the high road & work with Trump. Good for them. I’m just a nobody on the internet & have no need to be so noble. But I’ll channel most of my energy into working in small things, here in one of the Blue urban islands in a Red state. Starting with a contribution to Planned Parenthood…
I am doing no such thing. I agree completely - they rejected that. They rejected that en masse. Instead, they thought the person who could help them was Trump.
That’s why:
Yes. Yes I do. I hold Trump voters in open contempt. I think they have about as good of an understanding of their own self-interest and self-preservation as the guy from “The Happening” who jumped in the lion pit. I believe I know better, and can prove it. Exhibit A: I didn’t vote for Trump.
This is, of course, going from the conceit going around, that these are flawed but basically decent people desperately looking for change and doing so in the worst, stupidest way possible. Which does apply to quite a few of them, make no mistake, but certainly not all of them. A lot of them are just bigots.
We are all flawed. I voted for Trump but don’t endorse everything about him any more than those who Voted with their Vag endorse how Hillary treated all of Bill’s Bimbos all these years.
I chalk it up to Trump supporters do not get the same type of news that other people do.
Western society is no longer a largely homogeneous group that learns the same basic information. It is a fractured, splintered thing where 44% of the US population has their information supplied via what they like on Facebook
When Patton commanded the US Army II Corps in Tunisa during World War II, he reported to British Army commander Harold Alexander. Patton complained to Alexander about British Air Vice Marshal Arthur Coningham’s lack of close air support being provided for his ground forces. During a meeting between Coningham and Patton to discuss the issue, Coningham angrily denied the accusation, insisting that the British had total air superiority. At that moment, two German fighters strafed the town, and part of the ceiling of Patton’s office collapsed around them.
A chastened Coningham then agreed that perhaps there was room for improvement.
Patton is said to have remarked after Coningham left, “If I could find the sons of bitches who flew those planes, I’d give them each a medal.”
In that spirit, Budget Player Cadet deserves a medal.
You do your best, you try to serve the people, and then they just fuck you over. And you know why? Because they’re ignorant, and they’re dumb as shit. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is democracy.
It’s not really a mystery what Trump voters overall seem to want - it’s Trump’s slogan after all. They want a return to how things were in 1950s, when the rest of the world was mostly still recovering from WWII and America was dominant economically (but gradually getting less dominant). Trump has said that the 1-2% annual growth rate of the U.S. is awful and has pledged to make it more like China’s 7-9% growth rate. Trump hasn’t really offered a road to get there, though, other than promising to bring back manufacturing jobs and promising to raise tariffs and shred NAFTA. NAFTA was signed in 1994, but a lot of manufacturing jobs and steel jobs had left the U.S. long before that. This also ignores the fact that China is still a developing, industrializing country whereas the U.S. is a developed country, which also has a baseline of environmental regulations and standards that prevent some extremely polluting factories from just setting up shop anywhere and churning out developed materials in bulk.
Along those same lines, Trump has played in to Republican messaging that non-skilled immigrants cause crime, particularly when they are illegal immigrants, and that they take away jobs from Americans. People in dire economic straights generally like being told that it is not their fault and are eager to find a root cause somewhere else, even if no evidence is offered to support it. So, a lot of southern and midwestern Americans are in favor of a wall, even if they have mixed feelings about whether mass deportations or a path to citizenship should be used to handle those already here.
I voted with my brain. I think Trump is a dangerously ignorant fool–but none of the Republican candidates were that great. Even compared to Republicans in History.
Hillary would have made a decent President. Now You Guys are in charge.
That IS what they wanted to hear. There is no secret positive message. They wanted someone to give them a target of who to blame for everything they don’t like about society. Every time someone in the media says “he spoke to their concerns” it means he gave them someone to hate, whether it was Washington elites, educated elites, immigrants, muslims, or all of the above. They wanted to hate somebody and Trump pointed the way. There is no positive way to look at it. There is no secret message a democratic candidate could have used to make the ball of rage support them.
That in this country, you don’t get to decide what’s best, even though you are convinced that you know what’s best.
You are factually wrong when you say, “I believe I know better, and can prove it.” Any such proof will involve you defining your terms in advance. You know what’s best for them only because you have arrogated to yourself the sole right to determine what counts as “best.”
OK, I have to bow out of a substantive response to this, because frankly I have no real idea what Trump will do, no real idea what he meant when he said the stuff he said, and did not in fact vote for him.
I am objecting here to the claim that anyone has the right to say, “I know what’s better for you, more than you,” to a voter. (Well, of course I’m not even objecting to the saying of such a thing, but to the expectation that such a belief should translate into political power as a result).
I did not support Trump.
But I don’t think that makes me the one to tell those that did, “Shut up; I know better.”
I keep seeing variations of this sentiment. It’s mostly bullshit, with a bit of genuine misplaced optimism about good faith and rationality, and from some quarters a bit of disdain for mythical ‘liberal elitism’.
Look, plenty of people on the “other side” of the issues (e.g. Democratic politicians, ‘progressives’, various policy specialists, etc.) spoke to the concerns expressed by Trump voters. The economic alienation, the angst about immigration, the unease over terrorism, the distrust of the existing government ‘establishment’, the desire for American influence over the rest of the fucking world, and on and on. The Democratic presidential candidate herself spent considerable campaign time talking about -and constructing detailed analytical approaches to deal with- those concerns.
The problem is it wasn’t any of those things that made most anyone vote for Trump, and it wasn’t any supposed inability or unwillingness of Clinton or Democrats in general to deal with those things that made people stay home or vote against HRC. White men and women comprised ~70% of the voting electorate, and went for Trump in large majorities. Smaller but considerable fractions of all the non-white demographic groups also voted for Trump, typically the older and richer people in those groups.
The world is changing and the dominant members of our society cannot retain their ascendancy without forceful action. And they think anything that helps the new (or newly institutionally protected) elements of society must hurt the old established elements in exchange.
Fear & loathing voted Trump into the Oval Office, and stupid apathy kept Clinton out. Voter turnout was down to 2000 levels this year, by the way. There was no Trump wave of disaffected voters, ignored or derided by the mean old liberals, trying to burn down the establishment.
So, I’ll not spit at Trump voters. They’re nothing special or unusual in this country. I don’t have to fight them because they’re doomed any way. I just have to fight the consequences of their poor decision making skills, and work on those who can be persuaded.
And hold the little hands of the tremulous or discouraged nonvoting actual majority, who just weren’t excited enough by HRC to vote for her. I’ll whisper encouragements and promise them there might be ponies if they just keep walking the path with those trying their damnedest to get them. And I’ll reserve my bile for the fuckers on ‘my’ side who reinforce the pouty childishness, civic disaffection or idiotic protest voting that keeps allowing the worst people on the planet to get elected into federal and state governments.
But it’s going to get tougher to get those recalcitrants to vote, now. There’ll be fewer polls in many places in 2018, and fewer still most likely in 2020. There’ll be more intimidation and suppression of minority voters. There’ll be less early voting. And we’ll have to wade through and counter much, much more media glorification of incidental drama and manufactured controversy, armed only with sound policy proposals and persuasion.
So let’s not waste our persuasion on Trump voters. Seriously. IME, they’re about two thirds or less of a group that’s about half of the eligible voting population of the US. If enough of the rest of us vote, they can’t win elections. Yes, let’s continue (emphasis added to stress the point that “I feel your pain” is not a startling new political approach) to address those economic and security concerns, in substantive, pragmatic and reality driven ways.
But let’s also continue to reject, deride and override faux-moralistic or homophobic or racist or sexist or xenophobic concerns. Those concerns have been in play in our politics from the beginning, but they have no rightful place in our polity and there are no legitimate reasons to entertain them in our discourse.
Fuck fear and loathing. If enough of the rest of us vote, the precious feelings of Trump voters don’t matter.
Oh, I’m sorry, I thought we could go from the assumption that economic growth is better than a massive recession. I thought we could go from the assumption that helping our ecology is better than damaging it. I thought we could go from the assumption that a plan to fight an enemy is better than no plan.
Sure, if you want to say “the country would be better if Trump’s economic plans were enacted”, and by better you meant fewer jobs, less GDP growth, less trade, and a generally worse economy, you might technically be right, but I still wouldn’t agree with you, because that kind of bastardization of the english language is the purview of creationists, not rational discourse. That’s pure sophistry. If we analyze their respective plans and try to estimate the effects they would have, Clinton is simply better than Trump. There is no getting around this, unless you intend to redefine “better” to mean something entirely different. This isn’t just my opinion, this is what all of the experts who took the time to examine this said.
There have been many interviews post election with Trump voters from the rust belt and the common themes I’m hearing are some variation of “He’s going to bring back our jobs by keeping out immigrants”, “I just hated Hillary more”, and a few sad pleas of “I get my heath care through Obamacare and I hope his new plan lets me keep my coverage”.
Democrats can not win voters motivated by anger unless they can change their motivation to one of hope (or get hope-motivated voters to the polls in greater numbers). And the side lesson is you cannot change someone’s anger with reason.
The only way to win is to have an inspiring candidate on the left that liberal centers will vote for. It’s not like more people voted for Trump than did for Romney, fewer did. It’s just that a lot fewer voted for Clinton than Obama.
Actually, no, we can’t. We need to understand what the tradeoffs would be. In Omelas, is their economic growth best?
No, we can’t. What’s the price for helping the ecology, and how much help does it bring?
You don’t get to define the conditions like that.
An example: what if there are fewer jobs but a more moral nation? How much economic loss is worth a better moral fiber? And why do you think you are qualified to judge that answer?
Hard to do. She was right: at least half of them are deplorable: they are bigots, racists, Islamaphobes, homophobes, poorly educated, ignorant, xenapobes, low information people who are full of hate and anger.
How can we value such people? They are a blight on the landscape of a beautiful, free America.