If you can’t understand why poor rural voters like republicans, it’s because you’re missing information, not them. It’s perfectly comprehensible if your understanding of politics goes beyond what you can get from talk show hosts.

Have you asked yourself why rich people pretty reliably vote Democrat if, according to your model, it’s going to disadvantage them?

> Have you asked yourself why rich people pretty reliably vote Democrat if, according to your model, it’s going to disadvantage them?

Personally, to give others access to education, parental leave, sick leave, vacation, healthcare, access to broadband internet, ranked choice voting, personal freedoms, public transportation, etc.

Obviously Dems are nowhere near perfect, but they at least tick some boxes. But the point is I do not mind voting for someone even if it causes me a loss, as long as I think it helps others.

>>Personally, to give others access to education, parental leave, sick leave, vacation, healthcare, access to broadband internet, ranked choice voting, personal freedoms, public transportation, etc

and to most republicans and libertarians believe none of those things are a proper role for government nor should be provided by the government

> and to most republicans and libertarians believe none of those things are a proper role for government nor should be provided by the government

So then they are wrong.

It's an opinion, it isn't right or wrong

Or you know they believe the constitution actually means something, and no where in Article 2 Section 8 does the enumerated powers of the US Federal Government say the government is authorized to provide (or even regulate) "education, parental leave, sick leave, vacation, healthcare, access to broadband internet, ranked choice voting, personal freedoms, public transportation,"

You really just compared the US Constitution to the Bible..

Really? Ignorance at this level is just something I have no response to. I take it then you have no respect for Individual rights, Individualism, or the founding principles of the US system of government?

Are you alright?

> poor education, racism, and general bigotry

They don't see themselves that way. So when you accuse them of being these terrible things, they resent you. And if they resent you, they are not under any circumstances going to vote for you, even if it might be to their benefit in reality.

We could debate for a long time exactly how we got here, and everyone thinks the other side is entirely responsible.

Allow me to crank the cynicism to 11:

The racism rhetoric isn't meant to appeal to the rural poor or anyone with Real Problems(TM).

Black, white or neon green if you're living paycheck to paycheck you have more important things to care about than whether someone else thinks your a BadThingOfTheDay-ist. You're not gonna vote for someone promising to solve your image problem. You're gonna vote for someone promising to solve your real problems (unless their proposed solution is wildly incompatible with your ideology)

The racism rhetoric is designed to appeal to the suburban white collar class who doesn't have many big pressing day to day problems. If you convince them people who vote against you are racists (which some of them probably already believe at least a little bit) they will vote for you because they don't wanna be called racists and they don't have enough real problems so they care about things like that.

> Black, white or neon green if you're living paycheck to paycheck you have more important things to care about than whether someone else thinks your a BadThingOfTheDay-ist. You're not gonna vote for someone promising to solve your image problem. You're gonna vote for someone promising to solve your real problems (unless their proposed solution is wildly incompatible with your ideology)

There are plenty of people who will tell you to go fuck yourself if you insinuate that you look down on them before offering what they perceive to be a hand out. I personally know many people who don't even bother applying to government programs they qualify for because they view it as humiliating or beneath them, and that's without people shit talking them. Not everything is purely about money.

Also to suggest that the left is solving the problems of the right is somewhat disingenuous. The true problems of the right are largely unsolvable. We're never going to make small farming communities matter again; we're never going to bring back dignity to unskilled labor; we're never going to bring back manufacturing to the degree where manufacturing jobs yield middle class lifestyles; we're never going to change our value systems back to what they used to be; etc. Money largely can't solve any of those problems.

>There are plenty of people who will tell you to go fuck yourself if you insinuate that you look down on them before offering what they perceive to be a hand out. I personally know many people who don't even bother applying to government programs they qualify for because they view it as humiliating or beneath them, and that's without people shit talking them. Not everything is purely about money.

That's exactly what I meant by the bit in parenthesis.

>is solving the problems of the right is somewhat disingenuous.

A healthcare solution that doesn't suck (regardless of which side of the isle it comes from) would help left and right alike. I agree with you on all that other stuff. The 50s aren't coming back.

I'm sorry but this take comes across as someone who has never interacted with people who are/were effected by racism nor interacted with people that support policies that have been perceived as racially motivated and are completely looking in from a different state or area.

It's a nice thought to want to pretend all the problems of poor people are the same regardless of color but it's not true. I have multiple family members that were alive during Jim Crow and had to go-to the segregated black schools. Those people protesting integration as an example didn't just disappear and their opinions didn't either even though America has tried to pretend they have.

>I'm sorry but this take comes across as someone who has never interacted with people who are/were effected by racism nor interacted with people that support policies that have been perceived as racially motivated and are completely looking in from a different state or area.

Those people exist and I am sympathetic to their plight but they are not the target demographic that politicians are trying to convert using the racism rhetoric. They were mostly already voting for the people pumping out the racism rhetoric. The fact that they may see those politicians as further allies is just a secondary or tertiary bonus.

You need to look at this from the perspective of a political strategist with a moral compass that makes Nixon look like Jesus.

> You need to look at this from the perspective of a political strategist with a moral compass that makes Nixon look like Jesus.

That is the single best piece of advice in this entire thread. I will probably end up paraphrasing this at some point, because it drives the point home pretty effectively.

I think you proved the parent comment's point with this statement by accusing a whole class of people of being guilty of something the vast majority had no part in and would find abhorrent.

It's understandable that they would resent such blanket statements. No one alive today participated in slavery, the vast majority of their ancestors did not participate in it. Many families hadn't even immigrated yet and may have had their own discrimination issues to contend with.

> This is more "both sides are the same" rhetoric that is only used to empower the fringe beliefs and extremism in the American right.

This is exactly the sentiment the parent comment is alluding to. I think the American left is more guilty recently of avoiding introspection and dismissing criticism, to the detriment of advancing their mostly positive goals.

You’re only making it even clearer that you do get your political understanding from talk shows, or their informational equivalent.

If you think hundreds of millions of people are acting irrationally, you’re probably wrong, and you’re probably using some busted first-order approximation “rational” model.

As an Ohioan, its the "poor education, racism, and general bigotry" name calling that is alienating a large voting block. If you are on the fence, you're not going to vote for the party calling you a racist because of the color of you're skin and where you live

I understand the sentiment, but I haven't seen facts back it up. Who are these Democrats calling Ohio voters racists?

While I share your strong negative feelings, we need to be a bit more honest. There are such people as one issue voters that are perfectly aware of how the GOP will vote on other issues and do not like it (or even hate, e.g., Trump), but are abortion or 2nd ammendement absolutists.

For many, the Democratic party left me and swung to the left. I'm all for policies which are low taxes & limited government (remember under Trump & before corona, we had record unemployment even among minorities). Hence my move to a red, growing state (Texas). It's a vote between economic growth and personal freedom over culture/identity politics.

I don't see where this bill supports "limited government", it seems like the government is expanding it's powers by restricting yet another thing. I'm more of a quality-of-life kind of person, but to each their own. If I was optimizing for "personal freedom", I'd try find a state that allows you to do things like use legal marijuana, bet on sports, purchase a Tesla in-state, automatically register to vote, etc.

And while Texas does have an impressive economic growth record, some other states (California and NY) are actually growing faster [1]: The most trusted measure of economic strength says California is the world-beater among democracies. The state’s gross domestic product increased 21% during the past five years, dwarfing No. 2 New York (14%) and No. 3 Texas (12%), according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

I remember before Corona, we had record deficits and government spending. How is that an example of limited government?

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-14/califo...

Unfortunately you misunderstand not just the indicators of a healthy economy (hint: look at cost of living and changes in wealth distribution and not just employment figures) but also the reasons for why such indicators change over time.

On economic issues, people ascribe far too much blame or thanks to whoever happens to be president at the time. Whatever positive indicators you think pointed to a healthy economy in 2017 or whenever probably have nothing to do with the regime at the time; that was just the continuation of a decade of post-recession growth.

Anyway, where are you going to move to next now that Texas is slowly turning purple?

"Record unemployment" gives a lot of credit for something that largely happened under Obama. What was the percentage improvement?

"Trump didn't screw it up" isn't as impressive a claim though, I suppose...