I think you missed the point entirely. Just to recap (and hopefully clarify for you):
In post #134 I gave two examples of times Trump has encouraged violence:
A) a veiled allusion to “Second Amendment people” (which can certainly be argued both ways, but I concede here for the sake of furthering the discussion)
B) “the handful of times he told people to handle disruptive protesters at his events”
and then I asked “Did I miss something else?”
Your response, in #135 started with “Yes.” Presumably, that was in response to my “Did I miss something else?” question in the preceding post. You then go on to cite one of the times that Trump “told people to handle disruptive protesters at his events”. That’s not something ELSE though. That’s just an example B. It’s something I already acknowledged (which I tried to explain to you in post #136).
So what are you bringing up Clinton for? I never claimed Clinton said something comparable. I don’t think anyone has.
yes, generally speaking, you are not going to educate deplorable out of adults. The education boost needed starts in preschool, integrated preschool, and continues throughout 12 grades with an emphasis on logical thinking and a respect for scientific method.
College educated people don’t generally become deplorable. We need to increase the percentage of high school graduates from 83% to close to 100%. We then need to provide a clear, inexpensive path to at least a 2 year degree.
Me: “There’s violence to be found on both sides, but only one has a candidate encouraging it.”
You: “Was there a Democrat campaign headquarters that got firebombed that I missed?”
What follows after that is you citing times when Donald Trump was encouraging violence. I’ll cheerfully admit I misread your reply - it looked to me like you were saying he wasn’t encouraging violence, or at least that he wasn’t really encouraging violence. If that wasn’t your point, then I admit I don’t know what your point is. I’m not sure I do even now.
I brought up Clinton, implicitly, with the initial comment “There’s violence to be found on both sides, but only one has a candidate encouraging it.” i.e. Clinton was the candidate who was not encouraging violence. That was in response to a comment by TwiSpark.
Anyway, Trump has encouraged thuggishness, Clinton has not. Trump is now trying to pre-explain his loss by calling the system rigged. I assume pending-president-elect Clinton has no such qualms about democracy in America.
This is a very good point. If Trump support was driven primarily by stupidity we should be expecting high rates of black and Hispanic support, especially among those without college and/or HS degrees, yet it’s obvious that Trump is far more successful college educated whites then with non-college blacks and Hispanics.
You can go to a forum like this https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-politicalrhetoricbusters/why_should_we_vote_hillary_if_we_have_no_pussy/ which is full of people who read Breitbart to get all their political information, and relay it in Memes. Join the forum AND REACH OUT TO A TRUMPSTER AND TRY TO FLIP THEM. Post well written New Yorker, Washington Post articles, or your own opinions, in hopes they will learn to appreciate good writing and journalism and develop a life long love of reading.
Being a Trump supporter is not the same as being a ‘deplorable’. College educated people are simply less subject to racial or sexual bias, in general, than the ‘underclass’ of ‘deplorables’ that HRC validly called out as being the type of people who are prone to become supporters of simple solutions, blaming their problems on immigrants, minorities and eggheads.
Those college educated Trump supporters don’t go around with shirts “grab me here, Donald”, an arrow pointing to their crotch. They don’t chant “lock her up”, or threaten assassination and other forms of revolution if HRC is elected. Some college educated people certainly remain bigoted and socially conservative, but more than likely, such supporters that Trump has with a college education are making a calculated guess that the country needs a degree of tension to get Washington to get off its collective ass and do something constructive.
As long as Trump supporting types are less than 40% of the population, they are helping the country. They are assuring that the Republicans can’t nominate a reasonable candidate to promote their platform: the pro-military, anti-gay, pro-wall-st, anti-poor, anti-any-race-besides-white, anti-any-religion-besides-Christian platform. Trump is exactly the candidate the democrats should want to represent the GOP. He exposes the ugliness of his own supporters.
I look at GOP leaders like Paul Ryan and John Kasich, and without a doubt they are better people than Trump. They would make better leaders. But they would also take our country backwards in policy, in my opinion. The rural, Trump loving, education hating, racists are currently the Democrats’ best hope to stay in power.
That won’t work. Well written articles? You’re talking about people who think a giant wall built on our border is a good idea. You need to speak their language. Memes. Humor. The stuff about Trump wanting to give millions in tax breaks to the rich should be effective, but you need to put it in even simpler terms.
What these people respond to is the blame game. Trump has given them targets to blame for their dissatisfaction with their economic struggles: it’s the illegal immigrants, or it’s the Washington elites who let jobs go overseas. The way to respond to this is not to try to defend against this charge with an eloquently worded essay, outlining the 7 reasons Trump is wrong.
If democrats truly want to flip these people, they need to play the blame game. Blame the executives who pad their profits by moving jobs overseas. Blame the Republicans for squashing government jobs through shutdowns and stopping infrastructure repair bills. Blame them for preventing new investments in wind and solar power, which could give rural people lots and lots of jobs.
This is pretty much the strategy outlined in one of the wikileaked Podesta emails. The problem is that winning the presidency won’t be enough. Large swathes of the country are slipping towards ungovernability.