I love that argument: LBJ had worker friendly policies and union voters immediately voted to kick his party out and embraced Nixon. Clearly worker friendly policies are the answer!
I mean... this might be hard to grasp, but black families have workers in them too, as do hispanic families, and they care about things like wages and sick days and maternity leave as well
if you look at how young minorities voted in the primaries of the states that determined this election I think you'll find that we probably shouldn't abandon the idea of fighting poverty, even if being pro labor is something the nasty old white people want
(I mean this is completely disregarding the fact that you can shape messaging on a region by region basis to appeal to the voters of that region: you don't have to run exclusively "trump is a bully" commercials in wisconsin, you can also run "Scott walker sucks dick I'll bring your unions back" commercials)
That's actually a myth. It's worst in the south because it's the least urban. Democrats do OK with urban WWC, they get killed in rural and suburban areas regardless of region. Go to rural Michigan and you'll find Trump voters all over the damn place.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
That's actually a myth. It's worst in the south because it's the least urban. Democrats do OK with urban WWC, they get killed in rural and suburban areas regardless of region. Go to rural Michigan and you'll find Trump voters all over the damn place.
Yeah, let's not forget that Michigan has a crazy number of KKK members and their ilk and that this isn't some sort of weird phenomenon. Rural and suburban and small town white america is racist as fuck.
I love that argument: LBJ had worker friendly policies and union voters immediately voted to kick his party out and embraced Nixon. Clearly worker friendly policies are the answer!
I mean... this might be hard to grasp, but black families have workers in them too, as do hispanic families, and they care about things like wages and sick days and maternity leave as well
if you look at how young minorities voted in the primaries of the states that determined this election I think you'll find that we probably shouldn't abandon the idea of fighting poverty, even if being pro labor is something the nasty old white people want
(I mean this is completely disregarding the fact that you can shape messaging on a region by region basis to appeal to the voters of that region: you don't have to run exclusively "trump is a bully" commercials in wisconsin, you can also run "Scott walker sucks dick I'll bring your unions back" commercials)
So do Democrats.
The problem is, as people keep pointing out, white working class people care more about white supremacy and ethno-nationalism then any of that. Worker friendly policies don't override that.
I love that argument: LBJ had worker friendly policies and union voters immediately voted to kick his party out and embraced Nixon. Clearly worker friendly policies are the answer!
I mean... this might be hard to grasp, but black families have workers in them too, as do hispanic families, and they care about things like wages and sick days and maternity leave as well
if you look at how young minorities voted in the primaries of the states that determined this election I think you'll find that we probably shouldn't abandon the idea of fighting poverty, even if being pro labor is something the nasty old white people want
(I mean this is completely disregarding the fact that you can shape messaging on a region by region basis to appeal to the voters of that region: you don't have to run exclusively "trump is a bully" commercials in wisconsin, you can also run "Scott walker sucks dick I'll bring your unions back" commercials)
This completely ignores my actual argument and is condescending too. So thanks.
My argument is that the white working class are not primarily interested in progressive economic policy. Their primary ideology is white supremacy. That's the primary goal, after that they would like some goodies for themselves, but they care more about keeping their primacy in the racial hierarchy. They're not voting against their interests, they have a different interest than progressives and especially Marxists would predict.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I'm also not arguing against progressive policy on the merits, by the way. It's good, we should do it, hooray. I'm just arguing the politics: it will not win back working class white people as long as the Democratic Party is advocating for better treatment for African-Americans, immigration reform, choice, etc. It's cultural.
Also, everyone should go read Nixonland, which is the best examination of the political structure we've been operating under for the last 50 years I've seen. And how we got here. 2016 was spookily similar to 1968, right down to Humphrey's dumb slogan at the convention being about how Eugene McCarthy talked about change, but Humphrey had the experience to actually create change.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I'm also not arguing against progressive policy on the merits, by the way. It's good, we should do it, hooray. I'm just arguing the politics: it will not win back working class white people as long as the Democratic Party is advocating for better treatment for African-Americans, immigration reform, choice, etc. It's cultural.
Also, everyone should go read Nixonland, which is the best examination of the political structure we've been operating under for the last 50 years I've seen. And how we got here. 2016 was spookily similar to 1968, right down to Humphrey's dumb slogan at the convention being about how Eugene McCarthy talked about change, but Humphrey had the experience to actually create change.
Fears about immigration were also linked to Trump support. However, we find little evidence to support the idea that concerns about trade deals or a rigged system contributed significantly to a Trump victory. Neither the trade-policy baseline question nor a scale of questions about trade policy predicted Trump support.
Questions about whether the political system benefits wealthy elites predicted vote choice—but in the wrong direction. People who agreed that the system benefited powerful elites were more likely to reject Trump. Increasingly, class is simply not a meaningful dimension along which American politics is fought. In our regressions, income predicted support for McCain and Romney, but not Trump.
Rather, the battle-lines are drawn around issues of racial identity and tolerance of diversity. Research suggests that high-income people of color are more supportive of the Democratic Party than low-income whites. In the 2016 election, the traditional Democratic advantage among low-income people was deeply diminished. Corporations, long seen as the enemy for progressives, are increasingly seen as allies on issues like immigration and LGBT rights. Unions, once the backbone of the Democratic Party, have waned in influence, and many found their members receptive to Trump’s message. On the right, nativism has stalled hopes for immigration reform among the party’s business wing.
Trump’s early days in office are not those of a politician concerned about class. Rather, Trump has aggressively worked to enshrine favoritism for straight, white male Christians as the law of the land. The North American Free Trade Agreement, jobs, and infrastructure spending quickly fell off of his agenda, to be replaced by deportations, attacks on trans students and immigrants, coupled with obscure deregulatory measures to appease the business class.
Politics in the United States and much of the globe is now defined by the questions of tolerance and diversity. Progressives still embrace an economically liberal program, but Obama’s election and Trump’s rise has raised more urgent questions about whether the country should have an open or closed society. This helps explain the Democratic coalition, which consists of young people, people of color, unmarried women, LGBT people as well as Silicon Valley tech titans. It explains why Clinton faltered with non-college whites while bringing in more upscale, college-educated voters who traditionally voted for Romney. The current trajectory is towards a political system in which battles about class interest are obfuscated by a clash over the openness of society.
This has always been a thing in the US but is quickly becoming a defining feature of the new emerging right wing movements everywhere. It's about race culture and diversity.
I'm also not arguing against progressive policy on the merits, by the way. It's good, we should do it, hooray.
It is best not to straddle ideals, as somebody said. And Hillary certainly adopted the right economic positions, even if she didn't highlight them enough as seen in the ad spending breakdown. You write about the intransigence of working class whites, but if Clinton had spent more wisely and brought the right message to the right places (i.e. manufacturing in Wisconsin, maybe in a personal appearance or two in the state) she could have gotten just enough of that demo to win.
But if the Dems are reaching out to the working class generally with a progressive economic message (as they should), it's best to do so consistently and in a way that highlights the way the GOP treats workers versus how the Democrats treat workers. A lesson in how to screw that up is happening in Baltimore right now, where the mayor vetoed a $15 minimum wage increase over five years after promising to support it, and literally used GOP talking points to explain why she changed her mind. Can't have that.
Obama got crushed among the white working class. 40% in 2008, 36% in 2012.
In the nation as a whole. Outside of the south, he outperformed previous Democrats.
And again, a voting demographic is not winner take all. Steal enough votes that the other side really needs and you've got the recipe for an upset. Republicans couldn't afford the 40% that went to Obama. They need all the white votes, and stealing just some, not even most, turns the tides. Turns out that both parties are reliant on pieces of the white working class that waffles every so often.
Some more than others, due to various circumstances. That 40% that went to Obama were a temporary alliance in many regions the rest either stayed home or voted (R). The GOP still have managed to hold enormous sway over white votes to remain politically relevant again and again on the national scale, and they did this to gain tremendous power in '16. Courting the white vote for Dems is harder for them, and the alliance weakens whenever a sizable portion think due to crab bucket thinking and/or the GOP made sure the Dems had no credibility to reach them.
It's not so much that the waffling is a problem, as how easily they're swayed by the GOP. It'd be understandable if they went to a Romney or Bush in '16, but they went all in to Donald Trump. If Trump can do that Dems problems with the white vote are bigger than we thought, and if we go in assuming they'll be easily swayed to our side next time we'll repeat Hillary's mistake.
They're all going to difficult to keep in line with a white Democratic candidate, who has to be vocal in courting the minority voting blocs - that is delicate balance that even Obama found hard to pull off.
Examining the white working class and comparing it 2016 to 2012 is generally used as a tool to imply that Clinton was insufficiently liberal in her economic messaging. That ignores that this wasn't the only factor, such as the difference in rhetoric between a Romney and a Trump, the framing of those positions by the media and Sanders and the difference in economic climate between 2016 and 2012 (much improved).
And that idea, that basic bargain, is what brought me to politics, because what I realized was that all the opportunities that I had been getting, there were too many young people out there who weren't getting those same opportunities, folks who were working just as hard as my grandparents or my parents did, that they were finding themselves making less money working harder, while the cost of health care or the cost of college or the cost of groceries were going up.
And so my belief was that I had to participate and fight on behalf of the middle class that had given me so much, so that the next generation would be able to have those same opportunities.
Now, let me say, in 2008, when I started running, we could already see that this American Dream, this basic bargain was slipping away for too many people. But what we didn't realize at the time was we were going to get hit by the worst economic crisis in most of our lifetimes.
And we've had to spend 3½ years recovering and pushing back. So when folks said, let's go ahead and let the auto industry go bankrupt, we said, no, let's bet on American workers. Let's bet on American industries. And now GM is back on top and Chrysler's moving and Ford is going strong.
Manufacturing—starting to come back here in Ohio and all across the country, some of the biggest manufacturing job growth since the 1990s. A lot of folks lost their jobs, but a lot of folks have retrained, and now they're going back and getting jobs in renewable energy and industries of the future.
But for all the progress we've made, we've still got a long way to go. There's still too many folks probably here in Sandusky who are out of work, a lot of people all across the country whose homes are still out of water—underwater and lost a lot of value when the housing bubble burst.
And here's the thing, Ohio. It's not enough just to recover and get back to where we were before the crisis. We've still got to address this basic challenge of how do we build a strong middle class and make sure that the next generation has the same opportunities that we did. And that's a long-term project. It's not going to happen overnight. But we've got to start working on it right now. We've got to move on that right now. That's the challenge we face. It's the central question of this election.
America wasn't built on handouts, it was built on responsibility. And we have to challenge everybody to take individual responsibility in their own lives. But what we also understand—and everybody here has an experience in their lives that underscores this—what we also understand is there's some things that we do together that makes all of us stronger, that makes all of us richer.
If we invest in good schools and our kids are getting great education, that's not just good for those kids, that's good for all of us. If we put construction workers to work rebuilding roads and bridges, high-speed rail, broadband lines, that's not just good for those workers, that creates a platform for everybody to benefit, everybody to succeed. When we invest in basic research that helps invent the Internet or GPS, that gives businesses an opportunity then to come in and take that new knowledge and create new businesses and create jobs for everybody. That's good for all of us.
I'm running for President to make sure that America builds again, that we make stuff. I told you manufacturing is starting to come back, but we can do so much more. Right now we've got tax laws that give tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas. I want to give tax breaks to companies that are investing right here in Sandusky, right here in the—Ohio, right here in the United States of America.
I'm running because I want to implement the Wall Street reform law. I don't want us to have to bail out Wall Street banks again. They've got to act responsibly. And we've got to make sure that the rules are in place so that they don't act recklessly. And I want to balance our budget, I want to reduce our deficit, deal with our debt, but I want to do it in a balanced, responsible way.
Our first order of business has been to recover the jobs and the wealth that was lost in this crisis. But we're not going to stop there. We're going to reclaim the financial security that's been slipping away for more than a decade. Our job isn't just to put people back to work. We want an economy where that work pays off, so that no matter who you are or what you look like or where you come from, here in America, you can make it if you try.
That's what this campaign is about: fighting for the middle class and growing our middle class. And that's why I'm running for a second term as President of the United States.
Ohio, we do not need more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, we need tax cuts for working Americans. We need tax cuts for families who are trying to raise their kids, and trying to keep them healthy and trying to send them to college and trying to put a roof over their heads. We don't need tax breaks for companies that are shipping jobs overseas, we need tax breaks for companies that are investing here in Akron, Ohio.
Its all focused on working hard work fair paying jobs, good opportunities and the middle class. It opposes tax cuts for the wealthy not with calls for higher taxes on the wealthy but tax cuts for the middle class. Tax breaks for outsourcing corporations is derided in favor of tax breaks for corporations that do. The rhetoric is far from the economic message of Sanders in intensity and focus.
Compare with a typical Sanders rhetoric where the foundation of every problem was economic inequality and he was hyperfocused on it
You ask me what I would do as president? Number one, we would fight hard for police reform, for body cameras, for the training that police officers need to know how to treat people who are in captivity with respect.
But the underlying issue in terms of Freddie Gray's community, as I understand it, do you know what the unemployment rate is there?
Schultz: It's extremely high. [crosstalk] — and they've lost so many manufacturing jobs over the last 15 years, the city, the community has not found a way to deal with it.
Sanders: And you can have every police officer in America being a Harvard Law School graduate and you're not going to address this issue unless we give people some hope, unless we give people some opportunity. That means jobs, education, you can't turn your back on neglected parts of America.
...
Schultz: What did you think of the riots the other night?
I want to know, has the social structure gotten to the point where this is the only outlet these people had at that particular time?
I've heard of a lot of officials say, well, this is in Baltimore, they're peaceful for a week until the cameras showed up. But it did happen. The riots did happen and it was in Baltimore.
So what's the solution?
Sanders: This is what I think. I think there's a massive amount of anger and discontent. I think it has more than just what happened to Freddie Gray. I think it is people are saying, how come we are living in the richest country in the history of the world, our kids can't go to college, we don't have child care for our kids, we don't have any jobs. I think that's significantly what it's about.
Today, we stand here and say loudly and clearly that; "Enough is enough. This great nation and its government belong to all of the people, and not to a handful of billionaires, their Super-PACs and their lobbyists."
Brothers and sisters: Now is not the time for thinking small. Now is not the time for the same old — same old establishment politics and stale inside-the-beltway ideas.
Now is the time for millions of working families to come together, to revitalize American democracy, to end the collapse of the American middle class and to make certain that our children and grandchildren are able to enjoy a quality of life that brings them health, prosperity, security and joy — and that once again makes the United States the leader in the world in the fight for economic and social justice, for environmental sanity and for a world of peace.
Today, we live in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world but that reality means very little for most of us because almost all of that wealth is owned and controlled by a tiny handful of individuals. In America we now have more income and wealth inequality than any other major country on earth, and the gap between the very rich and everyone is wider than at any time since the 1920s. The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time and it is the great political issue of our time. And we will address it.
Let me be very clear. There is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, and when 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. There is something profoundly wrong when, in recent years, we have seen a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires at the same time as millions of Americans work longer hours for lower wages and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth. There is something profoundly wrong when one family owns more wealth than the bottom 130 million Americans. This grotesque level of inequality is immoral. It is bad economics. It is unsustainable. This type of rigged economy is not what America is supposed to be about. This has got to change and, as your president, together we will change it.
Economics: But it is not just income and wealth inequality. It is the tragic reality that for the last 40 years the great middle class of our country — once the envy of the world — has been disappearing. Despite exploding technology and increased worker productivity, median family income is almost $5,000 less than it was in 1999. In Vermont and throughout this country it is not uncommon for people to be working two or three jobs just to cobble together enough income to survive on and some health care benefits.
The truth is that real unemployment is not the 5.4 percent you read in newspapers. It is close to 11 percent if you include those workers who have given up looking for jobs or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is over 17 percent and African-American youth unemployment is much higher than that. Today, shamefully, we have 45 million people living in poverty, many of whom are working at low-wage jobs. These are the people who struggle every day to find the money to feed their kids, to pay their electric bills and to put gas in the car to get to work. This campaign is about those people and our struggling middle class. It is about creating an economy that works for all, and not just the one percent.
We do not represent the interests of the billionaire class, Wall Street or corporate America. We don't want their money. We will — and I am very proud to tell you, we are the only candidate on the Democratic side without a super PAC. And the reason that we have done so well here in Iowa, the reason I believe we're going to do so well in New Hampshire, and in the other states that follow, the reason is, the American people are saying no to a rigged economy. They no longer want to see an economy in which the average American works longer hours for low wages while almost all new income and wealth is going to the top 1%.
What the American people understand is this country was based and is based on fairness. It is not fair when the top 1/10th of 1% today owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. It is not fair when the 20 wealthiest people in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of America. So you guys ready for a radical idea? Well, so is America. And that radical idea is, we are going to create an economy that works for working families not just the billionaire class.
And when millions of our people are working for starvation wages, we are going to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. And, yes, we are going to have pay equity for women. I've been all over this state of Iowa: We have spoken to some 70,000 people, and in meeting after meeting, I hear people standing up and, they say: "Bernie, I went to college. I graduated college — now I am 60, 80, 90 thousand dollars in debt." That is crazy. That is crazy. They want to get a decent education; they should not be punished.
Tonight, we served notice to the political and economic establishment of this country that the American people will not continue to accept a corrupt campaign finance system that is undermining American democracy, and we will not accept a rigged economy in which ordinary Americans work longer hours for lower wages, while almost all new income and wealth goes to the top 1%.
And while at the start he did talk about the middle class declining and workers having insufficient pay, the constant and overriding central character was the evil billionaire rather than the optimistic middle class worker or small business. And the focus became billionaire vs working class.
Now here's Clinton's way back in April 2015 after she had announced she was going to run but hadn't actually launched her official campaign yet
So when I look at where we are as a country, I'm so absolutely convinced that there isn't anybody anywhere who can outcompete us, who has better values, who can do more to provide more people the chance to live up to their own God-given potential. But we can't take that for granted. So I want to be the champion who goes to bat for Americans in four big areas, four big fights that I think we have to take on, because there are those who don't agree with what I think we should be doing. And they're pretty powerful forces.
We need to build the economy of tomorrow, not yesterday. We need to strengthen families and communities because that's where it all starts. We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment, and we need to protect our country from the threats that we see and the ones that are on the horizon.
You know, Warren Buffett has said it, but so have a lot of other people. There's something wrong when the average American CEO makes 300 times more than the typical American worker or when hedge fund managers themselves make more and pay less in taxes than nurses and truck drivers.
In fact, I heard a statistic the other day that really made a big impact on me, that the top 25 hedge fund managers together made more money than all the kindergarten teachers in America.
And when you think about value, what it is that's going to get us moving again, I think kindergarten teachers are really important. And so—[laughter and applause]—and we've got to make a claim on becoming the 21st century clean energy superpower. Iowa has really helped us. The RFS, the renewable fuel standard and a lot of the investments that have made here, has been one of the reasons why we have made some real progress but not near enough. And other countries are going to seize that title unless we do what we have to.
...
So my bottom line is, we've gone through some tough times, and I think Americans have done everything they could think of to do to get through those tough times.
But now it's not enough just to tread water; we need to get ahead and stay ahead, and people need to feel that their work is being rewarded, that the deck is not stacked in favor of those at the top, that they too have a chance to go as far as their hard work and their aspiration will take them.
So in order to put together a set of policies for my campaign, I really want to make sure that they are in line with the real lives and the real working experiences of the people that I would love to represent as your president.
So we're going to take on four big fights. You know, we're going to fight to build the economy of tomorrow, not yesterday, and make the middle class mean something again in this country. We're going to fight to have strong families and strong communities. And of course, it's no accident that I'm at a [inaudible] whose customer market is between six months and six years. That's — that's right where I am focused these days.
I want to make sure we have a functioning political system. I'm going to fight for that
Well first let me thank all of you in particular our round table participants for being with us today and thanks to Bike Tech for welcoming us to this amazing facility. I'm delighted to have this chance to talk more about small businesses. But I want to begin with what's happening more broadly with America's economy and America's families. Because I've always believed fundamentally that when our families are strong, our country is strong.
And we've come back from very tough economic times. I don't need to tell anybody here that. Our economy and our country are in much better shape today, and in large measure because families worked so hard. They took extra jobs, they skipped vacations, they scrimped and they postponed going to college they saved and made it work.
But the deck is still stacked for those at the top.
People aren't getting a fair shake. Something is wrong when CEOs earn more than 300 times than what the typical American worker earns and when hedge fund managers pay a lower tax rate than a truck drivers or nurses.
I'm running for president because everyday Americans and their families need a champion and I want to be that champion. I want families to do more than just get by — I want you to get ahead and stay ahead. I want to make the words "middle class" mean something again.
Well first let me thank all of you in particular our round table participants for being with us today and thanks to Bike Tech for welcoming us to this amazing facility. I'm delighted to have this chance to talk more about small businesses. But I want to begin with what's happening more broadly with America's economy and America's families. Because I've always believed fundamentally that when our families are strong, our country is strong.
And we've come back from very tough economic times. I don't need to tell anybody here that. Our economy and our country are in much better shape today, and in large measure because families worked so hard. They took extra jobs, they skipped vacations, they scrimped and they postponed going to college they saved and made it work.
But the deck is still stacked for those at the top.
People aren't getting a fair shake. Something is wrong when CEOs earn more than 300 times than what the typical American worker earns and when hedge fund managers pay a lower tax rate than a truck drivers or nurses.
I'm running for president because everyday Americans and their families need a champion and I want to be that champion. I want families to do more than just get by — I want you to get ahead and stay ahead. I want to make the words "middle class" mean something again.
,..
As we have since our founding, Americans made a new beginning.
You worked extra shifts, took second jobs, postponed home repairs... you figured out how to make it work. And now people are beginning to think about their future again – going to college, starting a business, buying a house, finally being able to put away something for retirement.
So we’re standing again. But, we all know we’re not yet running the way America should.
You see corporations making record profits, with CEOs making record pay, but your paychecks have barely budged.
While many of you are working multiple jobs to make ends meet, you see the top 25 hedge fund managers making more than all of America’s kindergarten teachers combined. And, often paying a lower tax rate.
So, you have to wonder: “When does my hard work pay off? When does my family get ahead?”
“When?”
I say now.
Prosperity can’t be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers.
Democracy can’t be just for billionaires and corporations.
Prosperity and democracy are part of your basic bargain too.
You brought our country back.
Now it’s time -- your time to secure the gains and move ahead.
And, you know what?
America can’t succeed unless you succeed.
That is why I am running for President of the United States.
...
Now, we can blame historic forces beyond our control for some of this, but the choices we’ve made as a nation, leaders and citizens alike, have also played a big role.
Our next President must work with Congress and every other willing partner across our entire country. And I will do just that -- to turn the tide so these currents start working for us more than against us.
At our best, that’s what Americans do. We’re problem solvers, not deniers. We don’t hide from change, we harness it.
But we can’t do that if we go back to the top-down economic policies that failed us before.
Americans have come too far to see our progress ripped away.
Clinton's economic rhetoric and policies much more closely matched Obama's than Sanders did, and she was really to his left on most of that kind of rhetoric. And if anything she was angrier in her positioning because its even worse for a black guy to appear angry than a woman. So if the argument is "Look at Obama vs Clinton's white working class numbers" and your chosen variable is economic populism, the lesson would be to dial it back. Remember, Clinton also did better in the 08 primary than Sanders did in 16 among white working class voters. And Clinton beat Trump among voters who voted on the economy. The Democratic Party's problem in 16, recent years and going forward is not insufficiently angry or leftist populism.
And just to clarify I reject the idea that this election was about populism. But if we proceed from that assumption the evidence to the extent that it can be parsed says more moderate language on economic matters will tend to play better among working class whites, which was the previously existing conventional wisdom. And while that kind of compromise might needed in say the Montana at large special, I don't think it's generally what people vote on except when the economy is in the toilet
I'm actually using the white working class argument a little differently than a neg on Clinton. I believe the way to appeal to them has not been found by Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Sanders.
I think we're both wrong. The sway of the white working class is not simply economic populism. But it's also not simply white supremacy. Neither of those theories explain voting for Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump.
I think all 2016 has proved is that nobody believes you when you say you will carry on the legacy of the previous President. I mean, a lot of people do. A lot of people will reward the party for good performance. But due to our election system, white working class votes just matter more than anything else. They're the lynch pin in the electorate. And unfortunately they sway republican.
Am I overestimating the importance of the white working class vote? I don't see any victory models where they can be ignored.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Turnout did have an effect on the election, but the bigger parameter was white working class flippers. They don't always vote republican; they voted for Mr. Obama in droves.
I think the white working class is the driver of my cyclical general electorate theory: white working class voters are perpetually unsatisfied and will flip every time a changing of the guard is due.
I think the Democratic Party will be fine as long as they abide handing the presidency over to Republicans every 8 years. The alternative is permanently capturing white working class voters, and who needs that burden?
I actually think this is a HUGELY powerful factor in this election. The whole 'its someone elses turn' crowd (who aren't all white working class, but are spread across the nation in many groups) swung this election (alongside many other factors)
The reason why they are so interesting and important is that they WILL swing back over the next 8 years, some will swing in 2, some will swing in 4 and all will have swung back in 8. Nothing the government, Trump, democrats or anyone can do will change that. Recession? Economic boom? War? Peace? They don't care and never have. Its someone elses turn. People talk a lot about incumbency advantage, but in reality what we see in history is a big swing away from the controlling party over 8 years. And Paladin is right, a lot of these white working class folk are people who vote for the person whose turn it is to be in charge (for many the reason is that they are always unsatisfied, gazing backwards at the imagined dream lives they think their parents lived)
Still, I think these perpetually swinging back and forth voters (who I'm sure identify themselves as STRONGLY partisan right after and before they vote) are a huge factor in US elections.
That is the aim of Bannon, i think, to get white people voting at the same proportions as blacks, or even hispanics, for the Republican party, because then it's game over for the Democrats outside of inner cities until 2050.
Part of white privilege so far has been not feeling compelled to vote on race as a white person. A large number of whites did and still do, but they haven't been courted for their whiteness, but on some other demographic basis.
Much good discussion here. Most of it I have an opinion on and either ether agree or disagree. There is one issue that I cannot parse at all and come to an opinion about.
Why/how did a not-insignificant number of people vote for Obama and then vote for Trump? The cognitive dissonance is stupefying. It's downright schizophrenic. Are these swing voters a myth?
Much good discussion here. Most of it I have an opinion on and either ether agree or disagree. There is one issue that I cannot parse at all and come to an opinion about.
Why/how did a not-insignificant number of people vote for Obama and then vote for Trump? The cognitive dissonance is stupefying. It's downright schizophrenic. Are these swing voters a myth?
It makes sense when you think of "anti-establishment" as an issue strong enough to support anti-establishment single issue voters.
Which it is, for several reasons. For starters, a good chunk of the US will never forgive the establishment for not putting banksters to jail. "But Trump was lying". So? I readed over and over and over again "well, he may be lying, but we know that Hillary won't do shit against the banks". Also, Trump was, as Michael Moore said "the biggest "Fuck You" ever recorded in human history".
Much good discussion here. Most of it I have an opinion on and either ether agree or disagree. There is one issue that I cannot parse at all and come to an opinion about.
Why/how did a not-insignificant number of people vote for Obama and then vote for Trump? The cognitive dissonance is stupefying. It's downright schizophrenic. Are these swing voters a myth?
Because it was the Democrats turn, and then it was the Republicans turn. Things kinda suck in my small town, so I'm going to vote for who-ever isn't in charge. Also, sexism was a MASSIVE factor. Obama was a man, so OK to vote for him, Clinton was a woman, so not OK to vote for her. And then you've got racism. Obama was 'One of the good ones' you see, he could be everyones black friend. He never had to talk about race issues. But then Clinton said she was going to do all these things for Black people! Can't have that. So vote Trump.
Those factors are more than enough to account for the swing.
Also, a pattern repeated over and over again is that the losers on a social system, if their position is bad enough, have no reason to care about the survival of said system.
Also, a pattern repeated over and over again is that the losers on a social system, if their position is bad enough, have no reason to care about the survival of said system.
Except that they really aren't the "losers" in the system - those would by the ranks of the dispossessed, which are made up of predominantly minorities and other marginalized groups. And they, for the most part, support the system, because for as flawed as it is, it's been the tool that has allowed them to gain in our society, and that they realize that their position would be even more precarious without it.
No, the people with the "burn it down" mentality tend to be those who were in a position of some privilege, who are seeing that privilege disappear as our societal structure changes. Again, to the privileged, equality feels like oppression.
Also, a pattern repeated over and over again is that the losers on a social system, if their position is bad enough, have no reason to care about the survival of said system.
That's what's aggravating about this. The white folks saying "burn it all down" are mostly not the real losers (some of them very much are, but not most). The urban poor are the real losers. All of this kerfuffle is just over a relative loss of status for lower-middle-class white folks, who still have it much better than the urban poor, even if they can't appreciate that.
Much good discussion here. Most of it I have an opinion on and either ether agree or disagree. There is one issue that I cannot parse at all and come to an opinion about.
Why/how did a not-insignificant number of people vote for Obama and then vote for Trump? The cognitive dissonance is stupefying. It's downright schizophrenic. Are these swing voters a myth?
It makes sense when you think of "anti-establishment" as an issue strong enough to support anti-establishment single issue voters.
Which it is, for several reasons. For starters, a good chunk of the US will never forgive the establishment for not putting banksters to jail. "But Trump was lying". So? I readed over and over and over again "well, he may be lying, but we know that Hillary won't do shit against the banks". Also, Trump was, as Michael Moore said "the biggest "Fuck You" ever recorded in human history".
They were so anti-establishment that...they swept in incumbent members of Congress by the score.
So no, I'm not buying the argument that there is some bloc of anti-establishment voters, especially when bigotry, discrimination, and privilege explain the results better.
Much good discussion here. Most of it I have an opinion on and either ether agree or disagree. There is one issue that I cannot parse at all and come to an opinion about.
Why/how did a not-insignificant number of people vote for Obama and then vote for Trump? The cognitive dissonance is stupefying. It's downright schizophrenic. Are these swing voters a myth?
It makes sense when you think of "anti-establishment" as an issue strong enough to support anti-establishment single issue voters.
Which it is, for several reasons. For starters, a good chunk of the US will never forgive the establishment for not putting banksters to jail. "But Trump was lying". So? I readed over and over and over again "well, he may be lying, but we know that Hillary won't do shit against the banks". Also, Trump was, as Michael Moore said "the biggest "Fuck You" ever recorded in human history".
They were so anti-establishment that...they swept in incumbent members of Congress by the score.
So no, I'm not buying the argument that there is some bloc of anti-establishment voters, especially when bigotry, discrimination, and privilege explain the results better.
Yeah, I don't buy the 'this was punishment for not going after the bankers' thing. This was people who...
1) Think the president is in charge
2) Think things kinda suck
3) Blame the person in charge more and more the longer they are in charge and they still think things suck
It's anti-establishment, but not for any reason they could tell you other than 'things suck, and the guy at the top isn't doing anything to help'. They likely view their own representatives as just being in the same boat as them. Random dudes who think things suck and can't really do much about it.
Much good discussion here. Most of it I have an opinion on and either ether agree or disagree. There is one issue that I cannot parse at all and come to an opinion about.
Why/how did a not-insignificant number of people vote for Obama and then vote for Trump? The cognitive dissonance is stupefying. It's downright schizophrenic. Are these swing voters a myth?
It makes sense when you think of "anti-establishment" as an issue strong enough to support anti-establishment single issue voters.
Which it is, for several reasons. For starters, a good chunk of the US will never forgive the establishment for not putting banksters to jail. "But Trump was lying". So? I readed over and over and over again "well, he may be lying, but we know that Hillary won't do shit against the banks". Also, Trump was, as Michael Moore said "the biggest "Fuck You" ever recorded in human history".
They were so anti-establishment that...they swept in incumbent members of Congress by the score.
So no, I'm not buying the argument that there is some bloc of anti-establishment voters, especially when bigotry, discrimination, and privilege explain the results better.
Another case of cognitive dissonance and people not really thinking. It's well documented that people hate "Congress", as an institution/faceless mass, then turn around and say "oh, but my guy is okay."
They do hate/blame the establishment, but seldom their own representative(s).
Much good discussion here. Most of it I have an opinion on and either ether agree or disagree. There is one issue that I cannot parse at all and come to an opinion about.
Why/how did a not-insignificant number of people vote for Obama and then vote for Trump? The cognitive dissonance is stupefying. It's downright schizophrenic. Are these swing voters a myth?
Because it was the Democrats turn, and then it was the Republicans turn. Things kinda suck in my small town, so I'm going to vote for who-ever isn't in charge. Also, sexism was a MASSIVE factor. Obama was a man, so OK to vote for him, Clinton was a woman, so not OK to vote for her. And then you've got racism. Obama was 'One of the good ones' you see, he could be everyones black friend. He never had to talk about race issues. But then Clinton said she was going to do all these things for Black people! Can't have that. So vote Trump.
Those factors are more than enough to account for the swing.
Ugh a couple months before the election I had a 22 year old woman tell me that she didn't think Hillary should be president because she didn't think a woman could do the job.
Much good discussion here. Most of it I have an opinion on and either ether agree or disagree. There is one issue that I cannot parse at all and come to an opinion about.
Why/how did a not-insignificant number of people vote for Obama and then vote for Trump? The cognitive dissonance is stupefying. It's downright schizophrenic. Are these swing voters a myth?
It makes sense when you think of "anti-establishment" as an issue strong enough to support anti-establishment single issue voters.
Which it is, for several reasons. For starters, a good chunk of the US will never forgive the establishment for not putting banksters to jail. "But Trump was lying". So? I readed over and over and over again "well, he may be lying, but we know that Hillary won't do shit against the banks". Also, Trump was, as Michael Moore said "the biggest "Fuck You" ever recorded in human history".
They were so anti-establishment that...they swept in incumbent members of Congress by the score.
So no, I'm not buying the argument that there is some bloc of anti-establishment voters, especially when bigotry, discrimination, and privilege explain the results better.
I think that turnout actually is the most significant deal for off year elections, which is unfortunately when the last redistricting happened. But I think there is some anti- establishment sentiment there too, resulting in the tea party and freedom caucus.
I'd love to find solutions for Congress much more than the presidency because that's where the money is. The white working class may not be the key to midterms. What is? What is in the Democratic party's blood that prevents them from voting in midterms?
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Much good discussion here. Most of it I have an opinion on and either ether agree or disagree. There is one issue that I cannot parse at all and come to an opinion about.
Why/how did a not-insignificant number of people vote for Obama and then vote for Trump? The cognitive dissonance is stupefying. It's downright schizophrenic. Are these swing voters a myth?
It makes sense when you think of "anti-establishment" as an issue strong enough to support anti-establishment single issue voters.
Which it is, for several reasons. For starters, a good chunk of the US will never forgive the establishment for not putting banksters to jail. "But Trump was lying". So? I readed over and over and over again "well, he may be lying, but we know that Hillary won't do shit against the banks". Also, Trump was, as Michael Moore said "the biggest "Fuck You" ever recorded in human history".
True. However, they're missing the nuances in this (plus, I'm sure W. was in charge when the banks imploded), as well as the fact voting symbolically never works. Because Trump is ultimately going to fuck them too. He sure as shit isn't going to do anything with the banks, either. In fact, he'll likely to worse on the front. So they burned the country for - nothing.
edit: Wait, no. Not nothing, they voted to destroy their now lives - like Trump getting rid of the ACA etc. They'll also have learnt nothing when Trump is finished stabbing them in the back with a smile.
A federal judge in Kentucky is the latest to take Trump at his word when he says something controversial. Judge David J. Hale ruled against efforts by Trump's attorneys to throw out a lawsuit accusing him of inciting violence against protesters at a March 2016 campaign rally in Louisville.
At the rally, Trump repeatedly said “get 'em out of here” before, according to the protesters, they were shoved and punched by his supporters. Trump's attorneys sought to have the case dismissed on free speech grounds, arguing that he didn't intend for his supporters to use force. But Hale noted that speech inciting violence is not protected by the First Amendment and ruled that there is plenty of evidence that the protesters' injuries were a “direct and proximate result” of Trump's words.
“It is plausible that Trump’s direction to ‘get 'em out of here’ advocated the use of force,” Hale wrote. “It was an order, an instruction, a command.”
Nothing will come of this, I'm sure.
But hey, our President may be successfully sued for inciting violence while campaigning. Good job, America.
For those still wondering if Obama voters can be racist, I give you Jamelle Bouie's column about Andrew Sullivan, who fits the bill. Also remember he got the Bell Curve mainstreamed 25 years ago. And he fucking loved Obama.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Also prominent "small-c" conservative and exhibit A for why I have no patience for that as a political philosophy. He could have easily farted off a generic anti-Clinton screed and called it day, but then had to remind everyone of his anti-black-people editorship of the New Republic, ironically by complaining about its more race-conscious present incarnation.
At least he's capable of writing cogently unlike David Brooks.
The Clinton campaign in 2016, for instance, never saw the Bernie Sanders campaign as being driven by millions of people who over the course of decades had become dissatisfied with the party. They instead saw one cheap stunt pulled by an illegitimate back-bencher, foolishness that would be ended if Sanders himself could somehow be removed.
"Bill and Hillary had wanted to put [Sanders] down like a junkyard dog early on," Allen and Parnes wrote. The only reason they didn't, they explained, was an irritating chance problem: Sanders "was liked," which meant going negative would backfire.
Hillary had had the same problem with Barack Obama, with whom she and her husband had elected to go heavily negative in 2008, only to see that strategy go very wrong. "It boomeranged," as it's put in Shattered.
The Clinton campaign was convinced that Obama won in 2008 not because he was a better candidate, or buoyed by an electorate that was disgusted with the Iraq War. Obama won, they believed, because he had a better campaign operation – i.e., better Washingtonian puppeteers. In The Right Stuff terms, Obama's Germans were better than Hillary's Germans.
They were determined not to make the same mistake in 2016. Here, the thought process of campaign chief Robby Mook is described:
"Mook knew that Hillary viewed almost every early decision through a 2008 lens: she thought almost everything her own campaign had done was flawed and everything Obama's had done was pristine."
Since Obama had spent efficiently and Hillary in 2008 had not, this led to spending cutbacks in the 2016 race in crucial areas, including the hiring of outreach staff in states like Michigan. This led to a string of similarly insane self-defeating decisions. As the book puts it, the "obsession with efficiency had come at the cost of broad voter contact in states that would become important battlegrounds."
If the ending to this story were anything other than Donald Trump being elected president, Shattered would be an awesome comedy, like a Kafka novel – a lunatic bureaucracy devouring itself. But since the ending is the opposite of funny, it will likely be consumed as a cautionary tale.
Shattered is what happens when political parties become too disconnected from their voters. Even if you think the election was stolen, any Democrat who reads this book will come away believing he or she belongs to a party stuck in a profound identity crisis. Trump or no Trump, the Democrats need therapy – and soon.
As Pierce argues in an excellent recent post, the point about disappearing Trump is particularly important. Analyzing the outcome in the Rust Belt while mostly ignoring Trump is like sports talk radio callers who view a playoff loss solely through the lens of the losing team, while ignoring the plays the opposition had to make to win. I suppose it’s possible that a generic Republican nominee could have scrambled the electoral map like Trump did — but it’s far more plausible that they wouldn’t have. Either way, you can’t just ignore Trump, a very unique candidate both in terms of his strengths as well as his weaknesses, when you’re trying to figure out why he won. And perhaps better tactical choices could have caused Clinton to outperform the structural models by an even greater margin than she did, but the fact that her campaign had the same internal disagreements every campaign does isn’t actually evidence of this.
You should also definitely read Pierce's piece, which gets further into the issue - a push to shove all of the responsibility for the 2016 election results solely on the Clinton campaign and the Democrats, absolving both the Republican Party and their voters for any responsibility. There's also the studious avoidance by Halperin and Taibbi of the cultural forces arrayed against Clinton - for example, a complaint is leveled about her campaign not bring able to articulate why she was seeking the office, while ignoring how female ambition is treated in our society.
I'm pretty skeptical of a book that ascribes motivations like "the Clintons never saw the Sanders campaign as driven by millions of supporters" when the entire purpose of a book like that is to be as salacious as possible to sell copies.
It's bullshit and it keeps trying to pry open the wound that Sanders should have been the nominee and that Hillary secretly hated him and his supporters.
a complaint is leveled about her campaign not bring able to articulate why she was seeking the office, while ignoring how female ambition is treated in our society.
Can you expand on this for me? It seems like knowing why you're running for president is pretty basic, whether or not there's a broader societal problem with accepting ambitious women.
a complaint is leveled about her campaign not bring able to articulate why she was seeking the office, while ignoring how female ambition is treated in our society.
That seems like a serious cop-out. Being a woman doesn't get her out of needing to form the basic parts of a campaign, and her lack of message probably contributed to her public persona of being owed the presidency.
a complaint is leveled about her campaign not bring able to articulate why she was seeking the office, while ignoring how female ambition is treated in our society.
Can you expand on this for me? It seems like knowing why you're running for president is pretty basic, whether or not there's a broader societal problem with accepting ambitious women.
Simply put, our society says "proper women don't want to be President." It's not just a matter of saying why she wanted to be President (a question, by the way, that her campaign did routinely answer), but to do so in a way that didn't trigger the usual societal opprobrium over female ambition.
If that sounds like a Catch-22, that's because it is.
We now know that appealing to that side of the American public does not win elections
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
a complaint is leveled about her campaign not bring able to articulate why she was seeking the office, while ignoring how female ambition is treated in our society.
Can you expand on this for me? It seems like knowing why you're running for president is pretty basic, whether or not there's a broader societal problem with accepting ambitious women.
Simply put, our society says "proper women don't want to be President." It's not just a matter of saying why she wanted to be President (a question, by the way, that her campaign did routinely answer), but to do so in a way that didn't trigger the usual societal opprobrium over female ambition.
If that sounds like a Catch-22, that's because it is.
I don't think it's unfair to cast aspersions on people who want to be president simply because it's there, though i agree that hitting Clinton, but not anyone else, with that is definitely sexist.
In these days when even the most bog-standard corporation has a mission statement, it should be expected of our leaders too.
a complaint is leveled about her campaign not bring able to articulate why she was seeking the office, while ignoring how female ambition is treated in our society.
Can you expand on this for me? It seems like knowing why you're running for president is pretty basic, whether or not there's a broader societal problem with accepting ambitious women.
Simply put, our society says "proper women don't want to be President." It's not just a matter of saying why she wanted to be President (a question, by the way, that her campaign did routinely answer), but to do so in a way that didn't trigger the usual societal opprobrium over female ambition.
If that sounds like a Catch-22, that's because it is.
I don't think it's unfair to cast aspersions on people who want to be president simply because it's there, though i agree that hitting Clinton, but not anyone else, with that is definitely sexist.
In these days when even the most bog-standard corporation has a mission statement, it should be expected of our leaders too.
Hillary didn't want to be president "simply because it's there" though.
Posts
I mean... this might be hard to grasp, but black families have workers in them too, as do hispanic families, and they care about things like wages and sick days and maternity leave as well
if you look at how young minorities voted in the primaries of the states that determined this election I think you'll find that we probably shouldn't abandon the idea of fighting poverty, even if being pro labor is something the nasty old white people want
(I mean this is completely disregarding the fact that you can shape messaging on a region by region basis to appeal to the voters of that region: you don't have to run exclusively "trump is a bully" commercials in wisconsin, you can also run "Scott walker sucks dick I'll bring your unions back" commercials)
Yeah, let's not forget that Michigan has a crazy number of KKK members and their ilk and that this isn't some sort of weird phenomenon. Rural and suburban and small town white america is racist as fuck.
So do Democrats.
The problem is, as people keep pointing out, white working class people care more about white supremacy and ethno-nationalism then any of that. Worker friendly policies don't override that.
This completely ignores my actual argument and is condescending too. So thanks.
My argument is that the white working class are not primarily interested in progressive economic policy. Their primary ideology is white supremacy. That's the primary goal, after that they would like some goodies for themselves, but they care more about keeping their primacy in the racial hierarchy. They're not voting against their interests, they have a different interest than progressives and especially Marxists would predict.
Also, everyone should go read Nixonland, which is the best examination of the political structure we've been operating under for the last 50 years I've seen. And how we got here. 2016 was spookily similar to 1968, right down to Humphrey's dumb slogan at the convention being about how Eugene McCarthy talked about change, but Humphrey had the experience to actually create change.
This is a good quick read on this. I think it might have been linked before in here, but still:
https://www.thenation.com/article/fear-of-diversity-made-people-more-likely-to-vote-trump/
This has always been a thing in the US but is quickly becoming a defining feature of the new emerging right wing movements everywhere. It's about race culture and diversity.
It is best not to straddle ideals, as somebody said. And Hillary certainly adopted the right economic positions, even if she didn't highlight them enough as seen in the ad spending breakdown. You write about the intransigence of working class whites, but if Clinton had spent more wisely and brought the right message to the right places (i.e. manufacturing in Wisconsin, maybe in a personal appearance or two in the state) she could have gotten just enough of that demo to win.
But if the Dems are reaching out to the working class generally with a progressive economic message (as they should), it's best to do so consistently and in a way that highlights the way the GOP treats workers versus how the Democrats treat workers. A lesson in how to screw that up is happening in Baltimore right now, where the mayor vetoed a $15 minimum wage increase over five years after promising to support it, and literally used GOP talking points to explain why she changed her mind. Can't have that.
Some more than others, due to various circumstances. That 40% that went to Obama were a temporary alliance in many regions the rest either stayed home or voted (R). The GOP still have managed to hold enormous sway over white votes to remain politically relevant again and again on the national scale, and they did this to gain tremendous power in '16. Courting the white vote for Dems is harder for them, and the alliance weakens whenever a sizable portion think due to crab bucket thinking and/or the GOP made sure the Dems had no credibility to reach them.
It's not so much that the waffling is a problem, as how easily they're swayed by the GOP. It'd be understandable if they went to a Romney or Bush in '16, but they went all in to Donald Trump. If Trump can do that Dems problems with the white vote are bigger than we thought, and if we go in assuming they'll be easily swayed to our side next time we'll repeat Hillary's mistake.
They're all going to difficult to keep in line with a white Democratic candidate, who has to be vocal in courting the minority voting blocs - that is delicate balance that even Obama found hard to pull off.
But for the sake of argument let's reduce it to just that. If we are using Obama as a baseline, Clinton was far more left in her economic rhetoric from jump street. Using http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/2012_election_speeches.php?candidate=44&doctype=1150 let's look at Obama's language in the Rust Belt
Compare with a typical Sanders rhetoric where the foundation of every problem was economic inequality and he was hyperfocused on it
Now here's Clinton's way back in April 2015 after she had announced she was going to run but hadn't actually launched her official campaign yet
Clinton's economic rhetoric and policies much more closely matched Obama's than Sanders did, and she was really to his left on most of that kind of rhetoric. And if anything she was angrier in her positioning because its even worse for a black guy to appear angry than a woman. So if the argument is "Look at Obama vs Clinton's white working class numbers" and your chosen variable is economic populism, the lesson would be to dial it back. Remember, Clinton also did better in the 08 primary than Sanders did in 16 among white working class voters. And Clinton beat Trump among voters who voted on the economy. The Democratic Party's problem in 16, recent years and going forward is not insufficiently angry or leftist populism.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I think we're both wrong. The sway of the white working class is not simply economic populism. But it's also not simply white supremacy. Neither of those theories explain voting for Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump.
I think all 2016 has proved is that nobody believes you when you say you will carry on the legacy of the previous President. I mean, a lot of people do. A lot of people will reward the party for good performance. But due to our election system, white working class votes just matter more than anything else. They're the lynch pin in the electorate. And unfortunately they sway republican.
Am I overestimating the importance of the white working class vote? I don't see any victory models where they can be ignored.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I actually think this is a HUGELY powerful factor in this election. The whole 'its someone elses turn' crowd (who aren't all white working class, but are spread across the nation in many groups) swung this election (alongside many other factors)
The reason why they are so interesting and important is that they WILL swing back over the next 8 years, some will swing in 2, some will swing in 4 and all will have swung back in 8. Nothing the government, Trump, democrats or anyone can do will change that. Recession? Economic boom? War? Peace? They don't care and never have. Its someone elses turn. People talk a lot about incumbency advantage, but in reality what we see in history is a big swing away from the controlling party over 8 years. And Paladin is right, a lot of these white working class folk are people who vote for the person whose turn it is to be in charge (for many the reason is that they are always unsatisfied, gazing backwards at the imagined dream lives they think their parents lived)
Still, I think these perpetually swinging back and forth voters (who I'm sure identify themselves as STRONGLY partisan right after and before they vote) are a huge factor in US elections.
Part of white privilege so far has been not feeling compelled to vote on race as a white person. A large number of whites did and still do, but they haven't been courted for their whiteness, but on some other demographic basis.
Why/how did a not-insignificant number of people vote for Obama and then vote for Trump? The cognitive dissonance is stupefying. It's downright schizophrenic. Are these swing voters a myth?
It makes sense when you think of "anti-establishment" as an issue strong enough to support anti-establishment single issue voters.
Which it is, for several reasons. For starters, a good chunk of the US will never forgive the establishment for not putting banksters to jail. "But Trump was lying". So? I readed over and over and over again "well, he may be lying, but we know that Hillary won't do shit against the banks". Also, Trump was, as Michael Moore said "the biggest "Fuck You" ever recorded in human history".
Because it was the Democrats turn, and then it was the Republicans turn. Things kinda suck in my small town, so I'm going to vote for who-ever isn't in charge. Also, sexism was a MASSIVE factor. Obama was a man, so OK to vote for him, Clinton was a woman, so not OK to vote for her. And then you've got racism. Obama was 'One of the good ones' you see, he could be everyones black friend. He never had to talk about race issues. But then Clinton said she was going to do all these things for Black people! Can't have that. So vote Trump.
Those factors are more than enough to account for the swing.
Except that they really aren't the "losers" in the system - those would by the ranks of the dispossessed, which are made up of predominantly minorities and other marginalized groups. And they, for the most part, support the system, because for as flawed as it is, it's been the tool that has allowed them to gain in our society, and that they realize that their position would be even more precarious without it.
No, the people with the "burn it down" mentality tend to be those who were in a position of some privilege, who are seeing that privilege disappear as our societal structure changes. Again, to the privileged, equality feels like oppression.
That's what's aggravating about this. The white folks saying "burn it all down" are mostly not the real losers (some of them very much are, but not most). The urban poor are the real losers. All of this kerfuffle is just over a relative loss of status for lower-middle-class white folks, who still have it much better than the urban poor, even if they can't appreciate that.
They were so anti-establishment that...they swept in incumbent members of Congress by the score.
So no, I'm not buying the argument that there is some bloc of anti-establishment voters, especially when bigotry, discrimination, and privilege explain the results better.
Yeah, I don't buy the 'this was punishment for not going after the bankers' thing. This was people who...
1) Think the president is in charge
2) Think things kinda suck
3) Blame the person in charge more and more the longer they are in charge and they still think things suck
It's anti-establishment, but not for any reason they could tell you other than 'things suck, and the guy at the top isn't doing anything to help'. They likely view their own representatives as just being in the same boat as them. Random dudes who think things suck and can't really do much about it.
Another case of cognitive dissonance and people not really thinking. It's well documented that people hate "Congress", as an institution/faceless mass, then turn around and say "oh, but my guy is okay."
They do hate/blame the establishment, but seldom their own representative(s).
Ugh a couple months before the election I had a 22 year old woman tell me that she didn't think Hillary should be president because she didn't think a woman could do the job.
It was heartbreaking.
I think that turnout actually is the most significant deal for off year elections, which is unfortunately when the last redistricting happened. But I think there is some anti- establishment sentiment there too, resulting in the tea party and freedom caucus.
I'd love to find solutions for Congress much more than the presidency because that's where the money is. The white working class may not be the key to midterms. What is? What is in the Democratic party's blood that prevents them from voting in midterms?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
True. However, they're missing the nuances in this (plus, I'm sure W. was in charge when the banks imploded), as well as the fact voting symbolically never works. Because Trump is ultimately going to fuck them too. He sure as shit isn't going to do anything with the banks, either. In fact, he'll likely to worse on the front. So they burned the country for - nothing.
edit: Wait, no. Not nothing, they voted to destroy their now lives - like Trump getting rid of the ACA etc. They'll also have learnt nothing when Trump is finished stabbing them in the back with a smile.
Nothing will come of this, I'm sure.
But hey, our President may be successfully sued for inciting violence while campaigning. Good job, America.
At least he's capable of writing cogently unlike David Brooks.
You should also definitely read Pierce's piece, which gets further into the issue - a push to shove all of the responsibility for the 2016 election results solely on the Clinton campaign and the Democrats, absolving both the Republican Party and their voters for any responsibility. There's also the studious avoidance by Halperin and Taibbi of the cultural forces arrayed against Clinton - for example, a complaint is leveled about her campaign not bring able to articulate why she was seeking the office, while ignoring how female ambition is treated in our society.
It's bullshit and it keeps trying to pry open the wound that Sanders should have been the nominee and that Hillary secretly hated him and his supporters.
Can you expand on this for me? It seems like knowing why you're running for president is pretty basic, whether or not there's a broader societal problem with accepting ambitious women.
That seems like a serious cop-out. Being a woman doesn't get her out of needing to form the basic parts of a campaign, and her lack of message probably contributed to her public persona of being owed the presidency.
Simply put, our society says "proper women don't want to be President." It's not just a matter of saying why she wanted to be President (a question, by the way, that her campaign did routinely answer), but to do so in a way that didn't trigger the usual societal opprobrium over female ambition.
If that sounds like a Catch-22, that's because it is.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I don't think it's unfair to cast aspersions on people who want to be president simply because it's there, though i agree that hitting Clinton, but not anyone else, with that is definitely sexist.
In these days when even the most bog-standard corporation has a mission statement, it should be expected of our leaders too.
Hillary didn't want to be president "simply because it's there" though.