I don't know if your arguments are miscolored, but they all seem to apply just as much the other way around. How exactly do Trump supporters get ignored or denied? Trump's primary policy seems to be that he wants to ignore and deny various minorities. It really appears to me that the primary reason Republican voters are angry at liberals, is that the liberals don't want them to discriminate foreigners, LGBT people, and women. Republicans claim they're being persecuted merely because other people are receiving the same rights they have. Many of Trump's policies are specifically about hurting people, denying them rights, and protecting people who hurt people.

Do you understand why I find it hard to have any sympathy for that?

I absolutely do. Being able to understand other individual's point of view is at the center of my argument. May I suggest that you conflate support for Trump and support for his policies? It is not a meaningless distinction. Without going too much into the weeds and reciting quotes from "Hillbilly Elegy", it helps to understand that Trump supporters, on average, were not in that great of a shape financially. They were literally abandoned by the elites, called various forms of deplorables, and then expected to vote for not-Trump, because... what exactly? They just had their livelihood decimated by trade deals that brought money to conglomerates, but left them in the dust. "Their" representatives in congress and senate pay lip service to what they think they want to hear, but nothing ( some cynically note by design ) gets done. Their farms are slowly being bought out by agrobusiness as they are effectively forced to compete with low wage immigrants. No politicians would dream of suggesting companies should stop hiring them, so fines don't follow, but a token level of enforcement makes it look like something is going on.

Along comes Trump and uses that pain to his advantage. We won't go after the companies, but we will sure deport them all. Kinda stupid idea given the sheer number of illegal aliens, but it is better than nothing. Some people nod. We will then build a wall. Kinda stupid, but it is a good visual. Some people nod. We will renegotiate NAFTA. People are listening. They know this is one of the reasons their little community fell apart. Nodding intensifies. And so it went on.. Trump was better than doing nothing.

It was a scream for help and it was ignored by everyone, but Trump, Bernie and Yang. Everyone else pays lip service, but do not seem to understand the underlying socio-political current in the US.

And more to your point, all the policies that you disagree with, the discrimination and all that jazz stems straight from that pain. Those people feel persecuted not because someone is getting equal rights, but because the country that they were born and raised in, sold them out in a truly American fashion. They felt betrayed. They would likely give zero to no shits about LGBTs, foreigners or women if their bellies were full and were left alone. But they are not and were not. Foreigners are a proxy for NAFTA issues. LGBT is a proxy for change. ( I think you may be onto something with women.)

And you have no sympathy for that? And you are surprised they are lashing out?

Then get ready for another 4 years of Trump. Unless you.. we somehow manage to go beyond our comfort zones and openly talk about what ails us, there is no hope for reconciliation, the polarization will increase with likely even worse results than what we have now; though I fear to speculate.

Thus, little sympathy is advised.

edited voting record out

I have sympathy for their economic problems, absolutely. But they vote for the party that's primarily responsible for those economic problems. Over the past 40 years, the middle class has been hollowed out, and that's been done primarily thanks to Reagan. Before Reagan, the US had more left-wing economic policies and a stronger middle class. They'd be better off voting for Sanders than Trump. Trump hasn't realy done anything for them except some symbolic gestures, but he has made it harder for them to export their agricultural products.

They keep voting for the party that's hurting them, because that party keeps lying to them, and they keep buying those lies.

I will open by saying that the US party two party system is the root of a fair amount of issues in US. Normally, I would argue for some sort of rebalancing to ensure that the system works, but the power centers are too firmly entrenched and any real change would require major political capital. After all, levers are known. Who knows what kind of levers new system would introduce. In that sense, the party system is too far gone.

And it is a feature Trump successfully exploited. It is interesting to note that Sanders and Bloomberg are also exploiting that system; just in different fashions. And I am perfectly OK with both of their approaches though I favor Sander's as it seems more honest.

All that said, with your point about being better off under Democratic reign of terror versus Republican reign of terror, I just gave you an entire list of grievances of the forgotten class ( as the current president sometimes dubs them ). Those grievances did not get addressed by either party over the last 40 years. Worse, Clinton signature is on NAFTA papers.

I would agree with you on Trump vs Sanders as they, amusingly, shared a lot of the populist message. I have my pet theories, but they would just derail this thread altogether.

I would like to note that it is hard for me to argue that Trump policies ( with exception of Soybeans and the bailout there ) has not done anything for them. For better or for worse, Trump is very keen on listening to his core supporters. He seems to genuinely care about his ratings, which does lead to all sorts of theatrics ( as you note ).

That said, note that regardless of how it was achieved and how we are going to pay for it in the future, unemployment now is low and entry level wages are up. Just that fact alone should give you pause, because that likely means that some do feel relief under Trump.

You have to admit that from that perspective a voter may be inclined to vote for Trump again in 2020.

I certainly agree that the two party system, and correspondingly, the first-part-the-post district system, is crippling the US political system. Proportional representation in Congress and some sort of ranked or approval voting system for the president and similar offices, would do a lot of good.

I certainly think it'd be good if the Democratic and Republican parties both disappeared, but it's not true that both are equally corrupt or equally guilty to the problems facing the US. It really is since Reagan that economic inequality started to rise, middle class wages stagnated, and national debt started to spiral out of control. It's absolutely true that the Democratic party has been controlled by its conservative wing, with presidents Clinton and Obama not significantly changing the neoliberal direction set out by Reagan. Even so, the current economic recovery in the US was started by Obama, and that's what Trump is currently benefiting from.

But if voters want real change, the progressive wing of the Democratic party would be a better bet than voting for increasingly conservative Republicans.

I think I agree, but I wonder whether people actually want change. Hell, I hesitated myself when Sanders announced US-wise rent control.

The big obstacle is that everybody with power is afraid to lose it. A multi-party system would be much better at representing the will of the people, but to change that, the party in power will have to give up much of that power, and that's unlikely to happen. Especially in the current political climate.