I believe that also and would agree with your argument, except that I think it’s also possible that people simply didn’t care for her economic message.
To be sure, there are a lot of factors here, and Mrs. Clinton’s 25 years of being The Most Hated Woman In America contribute greatly to that.
I can’t speak for the royal we, but I can listen. I love to learn.
My parents and sibling voted for trump and straight R down the line. My mother was going to vote for Stein, but changed her mind at the last moment to “Make sure that Bitch doesn’t get into office.” Her words.
My sister is anti-vaxx and doesn’t think we’ve been to the moon, my parents lived through polio, so they aren’t anti-vaxx, but they don’t believe in evolution or climate change.
I have a number of clients who have expressed their disdain for hillary, and their love of trump over the last months. I listen politely, and the fact that they keep coming back tells me that they don’t think that I am being condescending. I don’t actually get into discussions about the issues though, as I don’t really believe in mixing politics and work.
I don’t have many friends, well, any really, that are Trump supporters. Most of the people that would be left in 2012, angry at me for supporting Obama. I didn’t ask them to leave, they just saw my sign, and decided that they could not be associated with me.
Good ways to make friends, I 'll agree. Very good advice for children, and even adults who have difficulties getting along socially.
Not so good advise when the entire point of this discussion is how to convince voters to vote for the candidate you prefer. I don’t want to be friends with them (though I don’t mind if I am), I want them to vote.
And how do I respond when their beliefs are directly contradicted by reality? There are actual factual things that actually exist in this actual reality. What do you do with people who refuse to acknowledge that? People who claim that global warming is a hoax perpetuated by China, that Clinton had poeple killed in benghazi, or that she had Vince foster killed. That Hillary’s emails are in any way relevant to a substantive policy discussion.
I have discussed things with fence sitters and anti-clinton people, and I never get to anything of substance. They just want to go on about how evil she is. How evil the libruls are. How evil I am for supporting them.
I can listen. I can try but cannot promise to understand. I can empathize with them as fellow humans navigating their way through this morass we call a life.
But no where in that do I see a plan on getting them to listen to me.
You have said all that I have to do to bend over backwards to comfort these people. Is there any chance, do you think, that they will return the favor? That they will listen to me, and mine? Do you think that they will stop screaming “Lock her up”, long enough to pay attention to fairly complicated economic or environmental science?
If so, it’s worth a try.
Ummm, not really. I was raised quite religious, but always questioned things. My parents and teachers in Church were very upset with many of my questions. I have not written off the idea of some sort of higher power, or purpose to this life, but I do not in any way believe in the words that other men have written.
Well, if the vote had been a popular one we should not be having this thread right now.
This is an excellent illustration of why we need to improve the quality of education in this country. Some people apparently think that “accurately describing” means the same thing as “condescending to”…
Well…it seems to be an effective strategy when the Pubbies do it…
Going back to the issue of minimum wage… how are we to discuss our true feelings on the matter when everyone thinks differently? For example, person A believes it should be abolished, B wants it raised and C couldn’t care less either way. For those who support listening to the other side, is it important to repress our own thoughts in favor of empathizing with whoever’ current viewpoint? Or should we be more honest and, while listening, advocate for those who, say, need a mandated living wage? I’m truly trying to understand the best way to bridge these divides.
JFTR, the “h” is NOT silent…
On a short list of cabinet positions proposed by Trump, Ben Carson has been pointed out as Secretary of Education.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/305354-buzzfeed-obtains-preliminary-list-of-trump-cabinet-picks
They are making the baby Carl Sagan cry…
Considering the source of news a lot of them are locked into, it is more likely they didn’t care for the interpretation of her economic message that was fed to them over and over and over again. You keep harping on this “empathy” kick, but no amount of empathy can counteract the type of media manipulation that exists today and, like I said before, from many years of experience in a company where I dare not give my own opinion I have seen no evidence that listening and/or empathy is something they desire. They want agreement and support. Would you have me lie to them?
“Royal I”. Okay, we. What makes you think we haven’t been paying attention? I used myself as an example, because I know my own experience, but last I checked, most of the people here don’t live in San Francisco. We know Trump supporters. Czarcasm works surrounded by these people and he’s clearly not on your side on this one. We’ve heard them, loud and clear, this entire election. It’s just that they’re wrong. That the way they see reality is objectively fucking crazy. When you look at how often Trump has lied, and how often he changed his position, and then you look at the polls that consistently showed that he was rated as more trustworthy than Clinton, it should be obvious that something has gone totally wrong.
Broke my own rule of reading the post aloud before hitting send-Sorry.
Listen first. Don’t advocate. Don’t explain. Just listen.
Yes, in that sense you’ll have to repress your own thoughts. Just like you would with a Pagan explaining their religion, or a Hindu or a Shinto or a Communist. There are two goals: to learn and to create a bond.
There’s an old Chris Rock bit that I like where he asks “Who knows what the 4 most important words are for a happy relationship?” Someone in the audience yells out “I love you!” and he points out that they are wrong, that’s only 3 words and not the most important. The answer is “How was your day?” because all anyone wants is a chance to run their fuckin’ mouth. The whole bit is somewhat misogynst as it plays on male and female stereotypes, but the core is true: All anyone wants is a chance to run their fucking mouth. (It’s why we all love the Dope, isn’t it?)
Remember the goal: get people on your side. Get them to like you by listening to them. Get them to respect you by showing that you respect them. Understand their point of view. “Do I have that right? I don’t think/feel/do that, but do I understand your point of view correctly?” Empathize with them. “Ddamn that sucks.” “That’s awesome; I’m so happy for you!”
Personal bonds can overcome religious and political differences, IME. The power of a charismatic person is that they are able to forge those bonds quickly and without much overt effort. Those of us who fall short of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or Sammy Davis, Jr. (seriously, this guy was so universally well-liked that it is hard to describe; I have dozens of stories from people who used to work with him) have to put in a little extra effort, but it can be done. And once people respect you, they’ll respect your post of view, maybe even to the point where they start to reconsider their own POV.
Agreed and agreed.
There are legitimate arguments that may be made against any one or more of her platforms.
However, a very large proportion of her detractors did not make those informed arguments. They rejected her out of ignorance not informed opinions. They rejected her based on hate and prejudice encouraged by Trump and parroted by his surrogates.
There are good reasons to oppose a relatively high national minimum wage without making any statement about ‘empathy’.
Costs of living vary widely in a huge diverse country like the US. Hence what’s still a relatively low wage some places is high enough other places to seriously distort the labor market, eg. $15/hr in San Fran or NY v rural KY. This is assuming we accept the concept that at some level mandated wages become counter productive, or else we could just double our average national standard of living by mandating everyone get paid twice what they earn now. 
So, if one size fits all would be suboptimal, why not have modifications/corrections to address this…but then why not leave it to states and municipalities, which is another basic philosophical difference obscured by pretending, or maybe some people honestly believe it but are misguided IMO, that every issue is a moral issue and moreover pushing for left-tending big federal govt solutions is what good people do, and ever opposing them is what bad people do.
And minimum wages in general, even where they aren’t high enough to seriously distort the labor market, are a less efficient way to redistribute wealth than just taxing some people and giving the money to others, subsidizing low wages. That latter doesn’t increase the cost of labor at the individual job, thus doesn’t reduce the demand for labor for that job, which a min wage will always do to some degree, the question being how much. And again that’s potentially significant if the single national min wage is far above what the labor is actually worth (what the market would pay for it with no govt mandate) in a particular locale.
So a min wage is itself a compromise policy, if it’s judged that the polity wouldn’t support wage subsidies. At least almost all economists would agree on that, though some people uneducated in economics might actually believe a min wage not to have any negative side effects. It still does, except in the limit where it’s not raising the wage much above where the market would put it anyway (you’ll find that ‘studies’ saying min wages don’t decrease, or even marginally increase, employment are in high cost areas where the min wage isn’t much different than what employers would have to pay to fill the jobs with no min wage).
Again it all amounts to a very murky situation once you try to apply a moral filter or test to most actual policies. And of course a lot of the reasons people vote for A or B, or don’t show up, don’t have to do with policy specifics anyway. And I disagree with the otherwise articulate poster who said gut feel considerations are any more prevalent with ‘conservative’ voters in the US (Trump isn’t really a conservative, some of his voters are others aren’t either) than 'liberal voters, or GOP v Democrats.
And at risk of too long and too many topics, IMO it’s key to focus on the drop in turnout among Democratic groups in this election; a big wave of super-positive on Trump voters is not mainly what happened. Why was the Obama coalition demoralized by HRC? That’s really more the core question than ‘flawed’ Trumped voters (with the almost unbelievably arrogant implication that non Trump voters aren’t also flawed).
Your first sentence is undoubtedly true for a lot of people; no doubt this a complex subject we are discussing with many, many factors contributing to the whole.
I’m sorry your employment situation is so stressful for you.
Yes, people want agreement and support, and empathy is a form of that. As a general rule in life, I don’t advocate lying.
I do advocate being assertive. If you feel you cannot disagree with anyone at work, that seems like a bad work situation. The money must be great or something for you to stay in a place, helping people you don’t like make even more money. Have you thought about finding a place to work that had a better balance between your personal goals and the goals of the people you work with and for? Or are there reasons that preclude such a search?
They rejected her. That part is over. Figuring out why they rejected her is where we are right now. Figuring out how to deal with that is the next step. But until we know what they thought, what they felt was wrong, and why, no effective strategy to counter can be devised.
It isn’t enough to declare: they did it out of ignorance. I can guarantee that exactly zero Trump supporters, when asked “why did you vote for Trump?” will answer “Ignorance.”
Yup. As I mentioned on the other thread, if Hillary had gotten the same votes as Kerry in PA, MI and WI she would have won. She didn’t even need the full Obama coalition. So ultimately it doesn’t matter whether Trump voters are racist, sexist, flawed or whatever. The Dems need to figure out why they couldn’t get their voters out. I think part of the answer is that Hillary was a weak candidate and part is that the Dems took their white working class voters in the Midwest for granted.
I hear what you’re saying but I want to point out that it’s a two way street. Just as the candidate must put in the work to listen to his/her audience, so must each individual in the audience put in the work to make sure what he/she is being told is factually correct, or whether it just feels good.
For a very large number of them, it came down to two things:
Except, as people keep on saying, it ain’t fuckin’ true. It largely comes down to the crap they were fed by the right-wing media.
At this point I am not sure if you are giving advice to individuals or candidates, but I am going to assume that this advice is not for candidates, as it would be impossible for even a local pol to spend as much time as you are suggesting. I mean you are kind of giving universal advice that only works on a personal level.
So, rather then gernalirties, I am asking specifics here.
You are the liberal friend, I will play a Trump supporter. I am not being snarky, I am going to ask you the questions or make the statements that I have had made at me, and I had no way to repsond.
Here goes.
“The Clinton’s had Vince Foster killed!”
“Global warming is a hoax by the [elite, china, liberals, scientists]”
“Evolution is a lie.”
“The pyramids were built to store grain.”
“Black people need to know their place.”
“Homosexuals should be castrated and imprisoned.”
“Vaccines cause autism” (yes I know this one spans both side of the aisle, but I am curious as to how you would deal with this sort of non-reality.)
“Hillary … Benghazi” I think I’ve heard every possible combination of words in that phrase, you can pick one, or I can clarify later if you like.
“Solendra…” This one is a bit old, but I heard it only about a month ago with a trump supporter talking about how useless the liberals policies are.
“She’s a felon! Lock her up!”
“The government has no place in bankruptcy. They shouldn’t determine what you get to keep.” Not a national cry, but one from an acquaintance. I must admit that I was flummoxed by this. If the govt were not involved in bankruptcy, you lose everything and go to debtor’s prison. This person had been through a bankruptcy, and was angry with the government over it.
eh, I could go on, and on, and on, but I 'll leave it there.
If you have any desire to help me to respond to these questions and statements, that would be great. If not, I understand, because I had no good answer to them either.
Do you think a vote for something that feels good counts less than a vote for something that is factually correct?