His message appealed to people in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Yes, it's pretty sad that people were willing to vote for him despite the racism, sexism, and general demeanor. Did many really vote for that, or did they vote to get out of NAFTA and introduce protectionism under the idea that they might get some of their former glory back. They hear MAGA and think back to when Detroit had the highest average income in the country. When Flint didn't have poison in the water. It's about you first, others second. It's a powerful message, one that people who don't support trump seemed to fail to recognize under all the absolutely horrible awful things constantly coming at us.
Compare that to Hillary basically saying "meh, they'll vote for me". How much extra effort would it have taken to keep those 3 states democrat.
I don't think a person who's construction job was taken away by an under-the-table worker really cares what color the other person's skin is, the milk and bread he can't afford now leaves the same hole in his pantry.
Same thing for software development offshoring - is it racist for those out-of-work Disney engineers to want their jobs back?
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/upshot/even-as-hispanics-l...
The parent of my comment was saying that this was abnormal, whereas it is (sadly, perhaps?) quite common in voting.
So apparently he's no more abnormal than McCain and Romney were, to those voters. Or at least they felt their other options this time were a lot worse. Or something. It's hard to draw a hard conclusion from the numbers here.
People really, really, really, don't like it when you deny or trivialize their experience. I think it was the final straw that led to the Trump victory.
This is a good thing to touch on, because it very handily demonstrates an area where differing opinions became a crux upon which the election turned. Trump was "on the record" joking around in a manner that, despite Clintonian assertion otherwise, is not at all uncommon, amongst men and women. It is, also despite assertion, not universally accepted that offensive words are equivalent to harmful actions. For instance, although I did not vote for Trump, I will never accept this precept as valid.
The racism and sexism are sort of victims of their own overuse. I've said, unto exhaustion, that fighting sexism with sexism and racism with racism is equivalent to fighting a fire with fuel, but political beliefs state that racism against whites and sexism against males is justified and therefore non-existent, so it gets deployed rampantly. This election is one obvious result.
Or possibly there's just a lot of it around.
Yes, I supposed we could fix that by not complaining about them being racist and sexist.
No attempt at political correctness will ever impact the freedom to believe anything at all, hateful, loving, or totally rational. That freedom is fundamental to being human. It is not granted by any organization and cannot be revoked using any known mechanism, no matter what your opinion on those thoughts.
We don't need code to believe and express that we are free to say hateful things. Even those on the left believe they are free to say hateful things about people on the right. They've simply fooled themselves into believing that feeling justified about that hate means that they aren't being hateful.
Here's a spoiler alert for being human: everyone feels that exact same justification. It is literally meaningless.
Again its not about ism although they play a part. Its about establishment vs anti-establishment. Hillary Clinton was the candidate of international finance and military complex.
The more people insist it was racists and sexists behind the vote, the more they miss the point. Part of the Trump vote was reacting sharply to the labeling + ridicule technique.
There are other options. Learn more about why they feel the way they do, understand them. These are (most of our) countrymen, fellow humans at the very least.
Education, understanding, compassion. Not ridicule.
The fact that the average American knows so little about the political process that they think the president can just tell a corporation where they have to employ people makes my head hurt. Badly.
The message of this election was: just lie to people. Even if there's no factual basis in our known reality to back up your statements, if you tell them what they want to hear they'll believe it. And that's really, really sad. I feel for the people who have lots manufacturing jobs, but the way out of that hole isn't voting for a guy who's going to remove any social safety net you previously had available...
The poll states that 44% of the queried republicans said "No" to the question.
I've never believed that these polls offer wisdom into the mindset of people - they're too reductive and simplistic.
13% think Obama is a Christian. 77% are not sure if he was born in the US.
I agree the "mindset of the people" is more complex than this, and such a belief about Obama may not be the main driver of their voting behavior.
But they are being truthful about saying they believe what they believe, right? They either believe it or they don't. In my eyes this kind of mass susceptibility to conspiracy theories is a huge sociological phenomenon that should be explored.
How much did they try to understand Obama voters? Not at all. We got 8 years of racist attacks, "you lie!", and scorched earth tactics. I appreciate your invitation to be magnanimous but I'm not feeling it yet.
This is a cycle.
I assert that it is probably no longer a factor for the majority of Republican voters.
I think this is the source of the narrative, rightly or wrongly. I don't see any evidence it had anything to do with the Reagan or Bush presidencies.
In my lifetime I didn't see the uptick in overt white supremacy until President Obama took office. I think it is a combination of cyclical liberal excuses and some legitimate labelling.
> America hasn’t put its demons — including racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny — behind it. White people still make up the vast majority of the electorate, particularly when considering their share of the Electoral College, and their votes usually determine the winner.
By intentionally continuing to attempt to associate support for trump with a litany of unacceptable -isms that are the guilty burden of being white (men), he exposed the attitude that people are revolting against.