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Analysis: Poor turnout not responsible for Trump's victory.

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It's my guess that a big reason those 1/4 of white working class voters switched from Obama to Trump was because they wouldn't vote for a woman. Hilary's shoddy campaign certainly did her no favors. I'm not sure what you're trying to bring to this thread by suggesting race was a factor for people who had previously voted for a black man instead of Mitt Romney. Like, maybe I just don't get it.

It just seems like you're deflecting from the obvious, which is that it's less likely that people vote for a woman than a man (regardless of skin color).

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
 
Hahahahha

Yes, this was Hillary's problem

She was TOO up-front and relatable.

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:DR 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.
 

nynt9

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?

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.
 
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

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.
 

ISOM

Member
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.

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.
 
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.

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.
 
I'm not absolving Hillary of blame, I've talked about their screwups at length before, because they did indeed screw up, and Hillary never should have run in the first place.

If you think that "only one thing can be to blame", you badly need to improve your critical thinking skills.

There were a lot of reasons that Trump was able to barely squeak out the win, and if you don't acknowledge all of them and instead scapegoat one, you are going to keep failing.

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.
 
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.

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.
 

Gallbaro

Banned
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?"
 

pigeon

Banned
I agree on the first three sentences, but I don't think it's that simple. I don't think everyone who voted for trump voted based on a platform of white supremacy. They voted for their own concerns over those of others, and many were probably single issue voters.

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.

I think there is value in distinguishing voters who voted for trump explicitly or implicitly due to white supremacy (and I believe both of those groups exist) from those who voted for him out of their own concerns that don't involve race (even though in reality those affect race). We can win over voters who think their jobs are going away or that they're paying too much for health care, but we can't win over voters who think black people are subhuman. To treat those groups as equal is reductive.

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?
 
Trump is a white supremacist.

People who voted for him voted for a white supremacist.

That is bad.

It actually is pretty much that simple.

It's the people who want to argue that they should bear no moral animus for that choice that have to engage in embarrassing logical chains like "people who voted for Obama can't possibly be racist."

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".
 
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".

The post you quoted and keep misreading says

People who voted for him voted for a white supremacist

This is a fact. It is not saying that everyone who voted for Trump is racist.
 

pigeon

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".

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.
 

nynt9

Member
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!

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".

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?

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.
 

Tarydax

Banned
You're creating a narrative to explain something, rather than being logical. Do people like the ones you described exist? Probably. Trying to say everyone that voted for Obama and then Trump falls in to that catagory is lazy. Things aren't as simple as "those white people that vote for the party I don't like are all racist".

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.


Anyone who looks at an American election and says "It's not complicated!" is being very silly. Trump won because of economic anxiety and racism and sexism and fears of terrorism and hatred of the Clintons and fears of black crime and anti-police violence and voter suppression and Wikileaks and Hillary being unlikable and loss of manufacturing jobs and just plain desire for change.

Within the leftist bubble it's comfortable to dismiss and mock everyone else's genuine concerns about employment, healthcare and everything else and just smear them all as racist monsters.

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.

That's the big, ugly flaw in leftist thinking - that everyone is stupid/amoral except you.

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.

Meanwhile:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/na...ide-in-american-death/?utm_term=.7eaf53eef1c0

But they deserve it, right? Hell, if anything death is too good for them. To even glance at their problems and figure out why they're dying is enabling racism! To examine why people in those situations tend to turn to racism and xenophobia is equally wrong - who cares why racists are racists? It's better to just keep ignoring them, and maybe they'll go away.

No, white people aren't dying more than people of color.

I called up Arline Geronimus, the coordinator for public-health demography at the Michigan Population Studies Center and a co-author of the study, to ask about the Case and Deaton report. The first thing she wants to make sure I understand is that the paper has not been peer reviewed. ”It's premature to make it so public," she says; ”I don't think it does anything to advance the field." Geronimus launched into a laundry list of professional concerns: There's the lagged selection bias, but also an overemphasis on the ages 45 to 54, no attention to measures of lifespan, a questionable particular interest in white people, a focus on individual behavior that's uncharacteristic for the discipline, and far too broad a brush in general.

Public-health researchers look at a very detailed level, Geronimus tells me; they examine local micro-discrepancies in populations and environments, down to the city-block and epigenetic levels. She calls their attention to so-called deaths of despair ”overblown." The Case and Deaton paper ”just isn't a well-developed argument," Geronimus says. ”There are many of us who have been working carefully in this field for decades testing theories, not just making them up."

Despite the headlines, when you compare apples to apples, white Americans remain better off on average than black Americans across the board. For example, to fit black and white rates of heart disease mortality on the same graphs, Case and Deaton had to use different scales (see above). Comparing a range of eight deaths per 100,000 in white women to a range of 40 deaths per 100,000 in black women is to pay closer attention to the former. In these graphs, white lives literally count more, and black lives less. But whether in health, income, wealth, or educational attainment, American white privilege is still very much in effect, and no statistical tomfoolery can change that.
 
Obama's message on racism never changed. Hillary's was different than his.

Obama never said "people really should quit being racist." He said that America was past racism.

Hillary specifically said "no, actually racism is a clear and present problem and people who are racist are bad and should check themselves."

Ummmmmm.......when exactly did he say this?
 

pigeon

Banned
You think people who value their own lives (healthcare) over the lives of others can't really be faulted for doing so.

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.

I think this is naive. You don't need to trust people. You just need them to vote for the candidate you want.

My goal isn't to win elections, my goal is to make sure my daughter can live in safety in America.
 
Do you think the average Trump supporter from Indiana or Pennsylvania thinks that Obama is "one of the good ones"?

No, Obama and Trump both effectively sold a version of America that appealed to these voters. They had stronger messages than their opponents, both of which played in the theme that America is not working for you, so I'm coming in to change that. Trump's campaign slogan and Obama's 2008 slogan are virtually the same message. Hillary's campaign slogan was "I'm with her." It's not just slogans either, it typifies their campaigning.

The Clinton campaign seemingly never did a retrospective for why they nearly lost to Sanders in the primary, and performed poorly against Sanders in working class districts. Sanders played on the same anti-chinese, anti-mexican, pro-worker fear mongering that Trump did, and it hurt Clinton both times.

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.
 
Me neither, but I've resigned myself to the fact that his hardcore supporters are absolutely a people who will always be lost to us. The best we can hope for is that the 5-10 million moderates and former obama voters come to their senses the more Trump's facade crumbles. I used to think it was just maybe ten million or so true "deplorables", but the scary truth is that we're probably looking at multiples of that amount in reality. That is a scary realization to arrive at.

"He tells it like it is"

What some desperate, easily fooled and racist voters will wheel out when pushed into a corner. Many are already under a spell concocted by big corporate money and ideological maniacs and Trump just tells them that the world is exactly what they've been brainwashed to believe. You can't underestimate how powerful that sense of validation can be for voters.

She was one hundred percent correct. What she (and I along with many others) didn't realize was just how insane the electoral college really is. It didn't hit me until this election when I realized that 100% voter turnout in New York and California still would have amounted to a fart in the wind had all other turnouts in Trump states stayed the same. The system can literally tell a candidate with 5 to 10 million more votes to take a hike with the right wins in the right places. That is literally insane. It spits right in the face of Democracy, it's wife, it's children and damn near anyone or anything else important to it.

insanity


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"
 
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.
 

water_wendi

Water is not wet!
Now explain the rest.

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

At least publicly, Schumer has no worries about his party’s dwindling fortunes among working-class white voters. “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

Who gets the blame for that lapse in judgement?
 

ISOM

Member
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.

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.
 
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.
 

Kaiterra

Banned
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.
 

Dai101

Banned
Anyone who looks at an American election and says "It's not complicated!" is being very silly. Trump won because of economic anxiety and racism and sexism and fears of terrorism and hatred of the Clintons and fears of black crime and anti-police violence and voter suppression and Wikileaks and Hillary being unlikable and loss of manufacturing jobs and just plain desire for change.

Within the leftist bubble it's comfortable to dismiss and mock everyone else's genuine concerns about employment, healthcare and everything else and just smear them all as racist monsters. That's the big, ugly flaw in leftist thinking - that everyone is stupid/amoral except you. Meanwhile:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/na...ide-in-american-death/?utm_term=.7eaf53eef1c0

But they deserve it, right? Hell, if anything death is too good for them. To even glance at their problems and figure out why they're dying is enabling racism! To examine why people in those situations tend to turn to racism and xenophobia is equally wrong - who cares why racists are racists? It's better to just keep ignoring them, and maybe they'll go away.

small-violin.gif
 

LionPride

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.

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"
 

mo60

Member
Because the WWC is the largest demographic and that wins elections? You can convince all black voters and still lose an election.

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.
 
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.
Wow. You're so invested in your narrative that you're throwing candidate Obama under the bus. Incredible. Almost ironic?
 

Kaiterra

Banned
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"

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.
 

Flo_Evans

Member
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.
 

LionPride

Banned
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.

People wanna forget that the midwest wanted him GONE, shit was gravy until he made them remember he's black...
 
People wanna forget that the midwest wanted him GONE, shit was gravy until he made them remember he's black...

They wanted him so gone they voted for him...twice.

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.

Yeah they so badly want to absolve Hillary of the blame, they're throwing Obama under the bus.
 
Wow. You're so invested in your narrative that you're throwing candidate Obama under the bus. Incredible. Almost ironic?

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.
 

mo60

Member
Why only the midwest? Why didn't white people in new england and the pacific coast vote the same as the midwest?

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.
 

nynt9

Member
My goal isn't to win elections, my goal is to make sure my daughter can live in safety in America.

And do you think losing elections to republicans is going to make America safer for your daughter than winning elections for democrats?
 

pigeon

Banned
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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