Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
I just said sexism is also a factor, but not the focus of this thread or the article it's based on.
I'm done humoring you
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Analysis: Poor turnout not responsible for Trump's victory.
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I just said sexism is also a factor, but not the focus of this thread or the article it's based on.
I'm done humoring you
I mean... she did lose
capitalCORN
Member
You mean after decades of kneecaping by the right, and collusion with Russia, along with over reporting of Hillary 'issues' by the msm, she lost? How?
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Before the election those decades of kneecapping were touted as a positive.
capitalCORN
Member
Now explain the rest.
jack_package_200
Banned
Outside of her terrible ads, she did lay out her policies and how they would realistically help people. She tried (and inevitably failed) to engage and connect voters as rational and pragmatic adults. Her competitor meanwhile offered magic beans and irrational hatred of various minority groups as the solution to all their problems
TL
R The nerdy girl lost to the school bully who claimed we could have two hour recess if we bullied and kicked out the brown kids.Maybe... just maybe, while sexism was probably a factor, she also had many flaws as a candidate? They're not mutually exclusive and you can't point to any single reason as to why she lost.
CrocMother
Banned
Given the data in the article, I feel like sexism very well could be the focus of this thread. I understand all the criticism about Hilary's campaign, but I just don't buy that being the main reason she lost key battleground states.
Millions of white working class voters switched from Obama to Trump. That is what this thread is about. Before data like this was out, I just assumed that a bunch of white voters riled up by Trump's racist rhetoric came out of the woodwork and voted for him. But this trend of voters switching party allegiances is really puzzling. All the answers seem too easy. I'm reaching for the lowest branch by saying that a lot can be explained away by "man vs. woman". But I don't think it all can be. And Democrats need to figure it out before the next election.
capitalCORN
Member
Elaborate.
It was racism. White voters were swooned by Trump's white nationalist rhetoric. And the article in the OP in the OP just confirms my beliefs on that. How you changed your opinion from racism to sexism makes no sense to me.
CrocMother
Banned
The article is talking about voters who voted for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney in 2012, then switched their vote to Trump. Did they become racist between 2012 and 2016? Or would they just have never voted for a woman? The latter just makes more sense to me.
SolidSnakex
Member
I'd argue that acknowledging Hillary's fault in her own loss is most important because of the potential impact of the next candidate. I know there were rumors after the election that Democrats were looking at Tim Kaine for 2020, and if that actually happened then it'd basically be handing Trump another 4 years. Being a good politician doesn't make you a good presidential candidate. Democrats need to realize that. Kaine somehow has even less charisma than Hillary has. Trump, even with how horrendous he's been so far, could easily rally people around him again if he's going up against someone that would struggle to rally the base like Kaine would.
At the end of the day, selection of the nominee is one of the few things in our hands. You can't control who does and doesn't support your candidate or the other candidate and you can't control what does and doesn't come out about your candidate of choice. When you look at the outside factors with Hillary, those were all known before she received the Democratic nomination. It's not like anyone was surprised at that point. But Democrats convinced themselves that those wouldn't matter. And in the end some of them came back and bit her and them in the ass. Because apparently people did care more than her supporters thought or hoped they would matter.
capitalCORN
Member
They were always bigots. They voted Obama because Obama sold them the same song and dance that Trump did. Just a bunch of far-fetched fantasies. Hillary actually pitched a realistic prognosis and solution. But Donald brought the fireworks and sparklers, and people decided to bet the house on the lottery, rather than put it in a well managed fund.
Hillary pitched policy? I remember her basically, lazily, reducing her campaign to "Are you going to vote Trump?"
In the post you're responding to, I don't make a claim about their motivation to support white supremacy, only that they chose to do so.
I don't think their ultimate motivation for voting for Trump matters. The only excuse I could see is if they genuinely just didn't understand that Trump was a white supremacist, and I think even that is iffy because it can be easy to convince yourself not to understand something.
People who voted for a white supremacist because they think they're paying too much for healthcare have explicitly chosen to value their healthcare over the lives of people of color.
If anything, those people are more problematic to me. The people who are devoted white supremacists are at least morally clear! The people who transactionally support white supremacy appear to some people like potential allies, but are ultimately never trustworthy. Who know when the next person will come along and offer them a bribe enticing enough to abandon us?
Camper Van Beethoven
Banned
Racist people can vote for Trump, that doesn't mean everyone that voted for him is racist. Your world view is reductive. This isn't a black and white issue. Unintended pun. There's more at play than just "those damn racists".
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
The post you quoted and keep misreading says
This is a fact. It is not saying that everyone who voted for Trump is racist.
jack_package_200
Banned
So none of her speeches of the debates?
We know her ads were shit but to say there was no policy discussion at all is a falsehoord
I think a worldview that seeks to divide people into definitively racist and definitively not racist is the reductive one! Some choices are immoral, some choices are racist. People don't have immutable characters.
I do think that supporting a white supremacist for president is pretty clearly a racist choice. Does it make you irredeemably a racist? No, but redemption requires contrition.
You think people who value their own lives (healthcare) over the lives of others can't really be faulted for doing so. Literally no one is going to go "I can't afford the medicine I need to survive, but at least I helped minorities".
I think this is naive. You don't need to trust people. You just need them to vote for the candidate you want. If you only rely on guaranteed allies, I don't think you can win. Each election is a case by case basis of how many swing voters you convince this time around.
I mean, ideally we'd have a strong supporter base of people who are guaranteed to vote for us and win elections every time and not transactionally support white supremacy, but I don't think that's going to happen any time soon and I don't think that's an election-winning strategy. Wanting to win the moral victory is great, but I'd rather win the election and worry about the morals when a white supremacist isn't in the white house.
Pigeon's "narrative" isn't lazy - it's accurate. Does it apply to every single white person who voted for Obama and then Trump? No. The majority? Absolutely.
I don't know why I'm bothering. This is probably one of your typical hyperbolic drive-by posts.
Most voters preferred Clinton over Trump on the economy, healthcare, and national security (and terrorism in particular). Voters who saw racial diversity as a threat were more likely to vote for Trump than for Clinton. Calling Trump voters "monsters" (which pigeon did NOT do) is a smear. Calling them racist is anything but. If you want to treat Trump voters like children who don't know any better in an exhaustive attempt to excuse their actions, that's your business, but you're not treating them any better than the people who call them stupid outright. At least those people are upfront about it. But you? You're not doing Trump voters any favors.
Pigeon isn't arguing that Trump voters were stupid and deserve to die; that's just you exaggerating like usual. If you actually read his posts, you would know that he's really saying that Trump voters knew exactly what they were going to get. That's the complete opposite of saying they were stupid. Again, if anyone's treating Trump voters like they're idiots, it's you.
If only you got this angry about the real economic anxieties experienced by people who didn't vote for the most blatantly racist candidate we've had in decades.
No, white people aren't dying more than people of color.
soundscream
Member
Ummmmmm.......when exactly did he say this?
I mean...this is literally the basis of morality. You're not supposed to vote for other people to suffer so that you can extract benefits from them. This is, for example, why slavery is considered bad.
This argument would let literally anybody off the hook for voting for anything, no matter how loathsome, as long as they can say they thought they would benefit personally. That's not morality at all, that's just the will to power.
My goal isn't to win elections, my goal is to make sure my daughter can live in safety in America.
encephalon
Member
The point is that voting for Obama does not mean that someone is not racist. It's not proof that racism played no role in the decision making process of these voters. There are varying degrees of racism and it takes many forms. There's a reason why many people who hold racist views can convince themselves they're not racist because x y z.
Whether or not the Hillary campaign lost because of its own failures isn't really relevant to the argument that racism coupled with economic populism is compelling for many Americans. To clarify, this isn't an argument against weighing all the different elements at play in the election and figuring out what happened and why. But data seems to suggest that racism did play a role in the election and that we should discuss it with that understanding. If you want to discuss hypothetical situations in which Bernie had won the primary, you should probably keep this in mind if you want to discuss whether or not Bernie's message would have won out against Trump's.
sooperkool
Member
It's everything that those poor Whites wanted to hear.
"I'm rich"
"I'm white"
"I'm going to bring your jobs back so you can be like me."
"America is the best!"
"I'm going to stick it to those Blacks, Mexicans, and Arabs that have caused you all these problems"
tearsintherain
Member
I know most people here despise bowtie Tucker Carlson but some of the reasoning behind why he strongly believes Trump won, and also believes why republicans did not get the message and will lose in the future, was discussed at a talk he gave at a firefighters conference a few weeks ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2dct9ErA_g
I think the tl;dr version of "people are sick of lying politicians" has been true for thousands of years of politics but 2016 was just a perfect storm of a super insider candidate, a super outsider (literally 0 experience in politics) candidate who had no filter on his mouth, an exceedingly overconfident establishment, all politicians smugly assuming their talking points were hailed as gospel truth by their side of voters, and a population that has an exceedingly difficult time understanding, sympathizing, empathizing, etc people different than them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2dct9ErA_g
I think the tl;dr version of "people are sick of lying politicians" has been true for thousands of years of politics but 2016 was just a perfect storm of a super insider candidate, a super outsider (literally 0 experience in politics) candidate who had no filter on his mouth, an exceedingly overconfident establishment, all politicians smugly assuming their talking points were hailed as gospel truth by their side of voters, and a population that has an exceedingly difficult time understanding, sympathizing, empathizing, etc people different than them.
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Russia meddling and the MSM being shit are not things under the Clinton campaigns control. Spinning being the recipient of decades of partisan attacks as a positive were. You know what else was under their control? Losing the Rust Belt. That Blue Firewall they took for granted? They didnt even take it for granted.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/438481/chuck-schumer-democrats-will-lose-blue-collar-whites-gain-suburbs
Who gets the blame for that lapse in judgement?
They were ALWAYS that way. There's even a Gaf thread on how former Obama voters turned on him and his legacy because he talked about Black issues like Trayvon Martin.
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
I would argue that while people are generally good at rationalizing narratives of their own morality, in the privacy of the voting booth, the vast majority vote according to what they think will benefit them and theirs at that moment in time, with wider moral concerns retrofitted around their decision after the fact. Political success in a democracy is always going to be about keeping the messaging such that it draws people in, and actual moral and logistical rectitude secondary.
I couldn't find anything about it.
I don't ever recall Obama saying that. It's a ridiculous notion.
I don't have any kind of numbers for the impact of this nor do I know for sure how to research it, but I think there's merit to a particular theory in regards to Obama votes that switched to Trump votes.
Something I think gets overlooked is that smartphones didn't really become that commonplace and start shaping culture until Obama's presidency was underway. Suddenly a majority of people have this device in their pocket keeping them wired into their internet echo chambers 24/7 and able to immerse themselves in something to be outraged about at any time. And during this same time we see racial tensions flare up, especially in Obama's second term, due to the technology exposing the victimization that minorities suffer to those who are willing to see it while showing the "waves of destructive rioting" that have come about in protest to it, with vloggers and bloggers and social media commenters coloring everything to fit their audience or narrative.
It's easier to think that we're living in a post-racial world when you can more easily isolate yourself from other racial and ethnic groups, but less so when anyone can expose a different corner of the world and has the ability to paint it however they please.
Something I think gets overlooked is that smartphones didn't really become that commonplace and start shaping culture until Obama's presidency was underway. Suddenly a majority of people have this device in their pocket keeping them wired into their internet echo chambers 24/7 and able to immerse themselves in something to be outraged about at any time. And during this same time we see racial tensions flare up, especially in Obama's second term, due to the technology exposing the victimization that minorities suffer to those who are willing to see it while showing the "waves of destructive rioting" that have come about in protest to it, with vloggers and bloggers and social media commenters coloring everything to fit their audience or narrative.
It's easier to think that we're living in a post-racial world when you can more easily isolate yourself from other racial and ethnic groups, but less so when anyone can expose a different corner of the world and has the ability to paint it however they please.
This is the topic of the More Perfect Union speech.
The midwest wanted Obama fucking gone because he talked about Trayvon
People didn't become racist, they voted for the man despite him being black until he made mention that he was black and they were like "Fuck him"
Kid Kamikaze10
Member
Seriously. To me, it sounds like the people always talking about personal responsibility really don't want to be held responsible for their actions, rhetoric, and the consequences of them.
Which is childish.
You don't need to win WWC to win presidential elections in America. You just need turnout to be decent among minorities and to win them by huge margins and to spilt the WWC vote in the right way. A democrat can theoretically win an election in America if they spilt WWC like 37%-63% or something close to that.Hilary could have theoretically won the election last year with a spilt similar to what she got last year as long as she was able to win more white college educated voters and minorities.
poppedcollar69
Member
Wow. You're so invested in your narrative that you're throwing candidate Obama under the bus. Incredible. Almost ironic?
Basically this, IMO. At least Obama was smart enough (sadly that he had to be) to not really wade into those waters until his second term outside of that very poorly received "Beer Summit." By the second term, though, it was basically unavoidable.
I mean I regularly see people in my social bubble here in Northcentral Wisconsin (one of the places that flipped!) refer to BLM as a terrrorist organization second only to ISIS so uh... Yeah.
I've always hated Hillary.
Her mistakes were numerous and well documented but honestly if she would have fixed one or 2 errors it would have put her over the top.
Lots of stuff beyond her control and I think she had a steeper hill to climb than some give her credit for.
You also have to give some credit to Trump. The dude deflected some of the most insane blunders/scandals and trounced the entire field of career politicians.
It's still insane to me that he won. It still doesn't make sense. I think in the end if you had to boil it down to one thing it was sexism. The people that flipped couldn't get over all of Hillary's faults but gave Trump a pass.
Her mistakes were numerous and well documented but honestly if she would have fixed one or 2 errors it would have put her over the top.
Lots of stuff beyond her control and I think she had a steeper hill to climb than some give her credit for.
You also have to give some credit to Trump. The dude deflected some of the most insane blunders/scandals and trounced the entire field of career politicians.
It's still insane to me that he won. It still doesn't make sense. I think in the end if you had to boil it down to one thing it was sexism. The people that flipped couldn't get over all of Hillary's faults but gave Trump a pass.
People wanna forget that the midwest wanted him GONE, shit was gravy until he made them remember he's black...
soundscream
Member
Care to show some reciepts because you're making a claim that I dont think I have ever heard anyone associate with anything Obama said.
Henchmen21
Banned
They wanted him so gone they voted for him...twice.
Yeah they so badly want to absolve Hillary of the blame, they're throwing Obama under the bus.
Why only the midwest? Why didn't white people in new england and the pacific coast vote the same as the midwest?
I just did? Read the speech!
capitalCORN
Member
I'm not trying to throw Obama under the bus. Since you're a mod, you can search my post history for the specific ads that I'm referring to.
Edit: I thought you were modbot. Silly me.
Way more college educated voters live in new england and on the pacific coast then in the midwest. The only states in the midwest that seem to have a lot of college educated voters from what I recall are Illionis and I think Minnesota.
And do you think losing elections to republicans is going to make America safer for your daughter than winning elections for democrats?
Depends on how much the Democrats compromise with white supremacists in order to win those elections.
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