Support NeoGAF

[faisal233]

Yep, you can really tell where reactionaries have made inroads by what the "moderates" are saying.

Negative 6 million vote inroad /s

Saying that Clinton should have also reached out to our rust belt base isn't "moderate". It's common sense. They didn't vote trump. They just didn't vote at all. That's all on Clinton.

But let's all focus on the impossible problem of why GOP voters suck, instead of solving the easy problem of why our base didn't vote.

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

You completely missed the point.

"I don't like her, she obviously doesn't give a shit about me, so fuck her I'm just not going to vote."

WI didn't magically lean right. The blue just straight up decided to stay home.

The Blue voters who stayed home are OK with letting a candidate supported by the KKK and Stormfront become president.

These are democrats who don't give a fuck about white supremacists because it doesn't affect them and I'm not going to blame the Clinton campaign for not grabbing the votes of people like that.

But let's keep using campaign strategy to deflect from the fact that most of America doesn't care about minorities.

 

[Frozenprince]

Nah I think I'll demonize em since they fucked me over without a care.

That's just fair play.

 

[Lumination]

Considering we have an entire political party who created and still use the Southern Strategy whose entire purpose is demonizing minorities and framing everything as an "us vs them", this is a weird request; where local, state, and federal laws and representative are put in place to further entrench this view.

Doubly so when the other party's policies are basically the last life line of rural America at this point even if they're unaware of it (Once again I confer to statistics that show rural Americans utilize and stay on social welfare programs as long as any other group despite the narrative they don't).

The blame for that squarely lies on the Republican politicians. They are the real enemy. People in the Rust Belt are victims too. Antagonizing them further does nothing for us.

 

[Jonm1010]

Slapped this together real quick:



Basically, from my POV, Hillary lost rural white america at multiple key spots. I'm not going to say they're all bigots or racists but I would imagine many of them would not have, ah, gotten along on GAF, and yet they voted for Obama, and I doubt it's because they were suddenly enlightened as to the validity of social issues in America.

It's been a while, but from what I remember of Obama's campaign he generally wasn't very antagonistic. '08 was "Hope" and "Change". '12 was "Forward". Many Democrats actually hated his lack of bite, if I recall correctly. He wasn't dropping the hot takes like everyone wanted but this, in retrospect, turned out to be a winning strategy.

This is what I mean when I said:

Which is what happened over the course of the last... two years? Maybe more. People were coming off the high of Obama's 6+ years and seemed to lose sight of the reality of the electorate.

Very good work.

Yeah, I am all for having the moral argument about racism in the Trump brand for its own informative sake(I think to at least some level, it is present amongst a large portion of his base and polls seem to back this up) but at the same time, if you have any concept of how political change is achieved, people need to step out of their moral superiority bloviating bubble and think about how you go from personal ideals to societal achievement. And stuff like what you are posting are insights into aspects of the political landscape and the electorate that are necessary to maneuver through in order to do that.

This sort of attempt to shut down people who are attempting to explore this discussion or encourage turning your back to them, are essentially advocating ignorance and paralysis toward the sort of context one probably needs in order to mobilize behind ideas and candidates that can win elections and achieve the very ideals they claim to be striving for.

 

[faisal233]

One question that needs answered is how we should feel about apathetic voters in the face of a clearly racist dangerous idiot running on the other side.

In my mind, not voting for Hillary is just as much an acceptance of Trump as voting for Trump is.

Clearly a lot of these people were disenfranchised by the repeal of the voting rights act, but not all 6 million of these people were stopped from voting, surely many of them chose not to vote.

99% chance of Clinton victory + not addressing their economic concerns. I guess the same reason why Kaepernick is a trump bigot.

 

[Captainbojanglesiii]

The Blue voters who stayed home are OK with letting a candidate supported by the KKK and Stormfront become president.

Obviously these people exist, but then how do you address minorities who didn't vote?

 

[SolidSnakex]

Honestly?

We had 8 years of Obama and under Obama not everyone prospered. They wanted change from the status quo and no matter who was put up to battle against Trump they probably would have floundered as much, if not more.

Hillary promised progress on Obama's legacy, and Trump promised blowing it all up and starting over. Her vision was compelling to me, but I ain't who she needed to convince.

She lost in part because she didn't even try to show people that she cared about them. She took an entire state that Obama won easily and that was critical for her to win, Wisconsin, and decided to just outright ignore it by never setting foot in it. The end result is that Trump beat her by less than 30k votes while only getting 1,500 more votes than Romney. Obama beat Romney by over 200k votes. Trump didn't bring out a huge amount of new voters to suddenly vote for him. Hillary just bled so many of Obama's votes because she took them for granted.

 

[Afrodium]

The point isn't that we need to appeal to racists, but that maybe we should try to understand what underlying factors caused a deplorable candidate like Donald Trump to win so that we can ensure it never happens again.

For the last year liberals have been smug as fuck laughing at the Republicans for putting forth such a ridiculous candidate that could never possibly win. We were so confident that instead of opening a dialogue with Trump supporters we told them to fuck off and made them into caricatures. Now the GOP controls the House, Senate, and Executive branch and the ramifications will last a generation. Sure, we can decide that all the people who voted for Trump are sexists/racists/misogynists and decide we never want their vote, but that path is just going to keep them controlling the government.

Did a large party of the country vote for a candidate they knew was bad for women and minorities because they thought he would make their life better? Yes. Is that terrible? Yes. However, pretending that these people are cartoon villains who voted for Trump only because of his racism and misogyny and not because they might have real issues of their own that were completely ignored by one candidate will achieve nothing and ensure that no progress is made.

We need to communicate, we need to educate, we need to work, we need to heal. Patting ourselves on the back for insulting straw men on social media and online forums had failed spectacularly.

 

[Albino_Yeti]

I'm pretty close to just believing moderates are also racist.

So are you saying that only die-hard liberals are good human beings? Because that attitude won't win Democrats any elections ever again.

 

[faisal233]

The Blue voters who stayed home are OK with letting a candidate supported by the KKK and Stormfront become president.

These are democrats who don't give a fuck about white supremacists because it doesn't affect them and I'm not going to blame the Clinton campaign for not grabbing the votes of people like that.

But let's keep using campaign strategy to deflect from the fact that most of America doesn't care about minorities.

Minority vote also came in lower. Those bigots.

99% chance of victory + message that doesn't also address their concerns will do that. But nah, all racists.

 

[Bossking]

"But minorities, getting frustrated with racists doesn't do anything! You need to EDUCATE them!"

Fuck you. Trump's campaign was ran entirely on misinformation, lies, and "feelings". You had fucking stormfront, fucking /pol/, the backing of the KKK and neo-nazis headlining this campaign with racist propaganda and deception. Anderson Cooper had to ask Trump on a political debate if whether he understand that what he said he did was sexual assault, and had to explain to Trump why you can't just "sneak attack" ISIS, and this still did nothing for his voters. When senators complained about "rising crime rates", people showed them the evidence showing that crime is WAY down. Their response? It still "feels high". Despite two clearings by the FBI and no evidence to prove otherwise, Hillary is still painted as a war criminal, a murderer, a liar, and nothing will convince them otherwise. You want education? People were more than thrilled to educate people on every terrible thing Trump has done. The Billy Bush tapes, his execution ad, his bankruptcies, his tax returns, his tax dodges, his draft dodges, his sexual assault cases, his very character.

Nothing. Nothing deterred these people. These people rejected any sort of "education". No, they pride themselves on being anti-intellectual, on being "deplorables". There was no convincing here. Trump's voter-base consists of proud racists and bigots, or at the very least, cowards willing to comply with racists and bigots. Paint it however you want. Maybe you genuinely think the self-professed King of Debt who is under investigation for fraud, won't release his tax returns, refuses to pay his workers and has brought financial ruin to Atlantic City is actually really good at money because hey, he's rich. Maybe you only care about abortion. That still means that you find these issues more important than the safety and well-being of America's religious and ethnic minorities and were unwilling to compromise. You might not consider yourself a racist or a bigot, but you clearly don't care about your fellow Americans that aren't straight or white.

 

[Vincent Alexander]

She lost in part because she didn't even try to show people that she cared about them. She took an entire state that Obama won easily and that was critical for her to win, Wisconsin, and decided to just outright ignore it by never setting foot in it. The end result is that Trump beat her by less than 30k votes while only getting 1,500 more votes than Romney. Obama beat Romney by over 200k votes. Trump didn't bring out a huge amount of new voters to suddenly vote for him. Hillary just bled so many of Obama's votes because she took them for granted.

She had way too much of a strategy of "You liked Obama? Well I'm just like him!" And I hope she understands how that lazy strategy backfired in her face.

 

[marrec]

So are you saying that only die-hard liberals are good human beings? Because that attitude won't win Democrats any elections ever again.

Let's be honest, there are racist fucks in every part of the voting block. Lots of Liberals are only Liberals in so far as it doesn't hurt white folks.

 

[Squalor]

So are you saying that only die-hard liberals are good human beings? Because that attitude won't win Democrats any elections ever again.

I'm saying that whenever a minority complains, white moderates tell them to shut up and deal.

If it's not racist, it's racist adjacent. It's disgusting.

And if you can't understand that, you are the problem.

 

[Frozenprince]

Like any of this is new to any of us anyway. We make inroads only for once again rural white America to day "nah, you get to move forward after WE move forward, not o one minute before that."

Like this hasn't been the last, what, entire history of America?

 

[borghe]

There should never be a fucking middle ground where we have to appeal to bigots. You have to be outta your fucking head to actually believe that minorities should just open their arms out to people who've never given a fuck about them in the first place.

A) rural America aren't "bigots" you're acting just as ignorant as you claim everyone else of being. In fact most rural Americans are just as stuck in their area and lot in life the same as most minorities. Low education due to lack of quality schools, low skills, low opportunity, poverty, inability to get out and city "mighty whitey" looking down on them pretty much to the same degree as minorities.

B) if you aren't willing to reach out to them why should they be willing to reach out to you why would you be willing to reach out to them why would they......

Rural America is nowhere near the caricature or stereotype you seem to believe. In fact their situation is a lot closer to yours than you'd probably figure. Only instead of metropolitan ghettos they have manufacturing factories that pulled out 20 years ago half bankrupting the town, only to have the other half bankrupted in the local Walmart crater ten years later.

 

[The Illiterati]

I'm white, and an empathetic person. I cannot separate the disgusting hate spewed by the man Trump from his ignorant electorate, no matter their reasons for voting for him. Anyone who voted for the racist, sexist, xenophobic, anti-intellectual is inherently complicit in his now and future crimes.

Don't compare this to voting for Obama and his drone strikes. If Obama's platform was "Imma drone strike women and children" and then went on to do it, you might have something.

Trump's platform is and was hate. If that or his views on health care or some other tiny policy benefits you in some small way, it was up to you to give that up for your fellow man. You were supposed to have common decency and give a shit about what people around you were saying. So yeah, I agree with the OP.

 

[Jonm1010]

"But minorities, getting frustrated with racists doesn't do anything! You need to EDUCATE them!"

Fuck you. Trump's campaign was ran entirely on misinformation, lies, and "feelings". You had fucking stormfront, fucking /pol/, the backing of the KKK and neo-nazis headlining this campaign with racist propaganda and deception. Anderson Cooper had to ask Trump on a political debate if whether he understand that what he said he did was sexual assault, and had to explain to Trump why you can't just "sneak attack" ISIS, and this still did nothing for his voters. When senators complained about "rising crime rates", people showed them the evidence showing that crime is WAY down. Their response? It still "feels high". Despite two clearings by the FBI and no evidence to prove otherwise, Hillary is still painted as a war criminal, a murderer, a liar, and nothing will convince them otherwise. You want education? People were more than thrilled to educate people on every terrible thing Trump has done. The Billy Bush tapes, his execution ad, his bankruptcies, his tax returns, his tax dodges, his draft dodges, his sexual assault cases, his very character.

Nothing. Nothing deterred these people. These people rejected any sort of "education". No, they pride themselves on being anti-intellectual, on being "deplorables". There was no convincing here. Trump's voter-base consists of proud racists and bigots, or at the very least, cowards willing to comply with racists and bigots. Paint it however you want. Maybe you genuinely think the self-professed King of Debt who is under investigation for fraud, won't release his tax returns, refuses to pay his workers and has brought financial ruin to Atlantic City is actually really good at money because hey, he's rich. Maybe you only care about abortion. That still means that you find these issues more important than the safety and well-being of America's religious and ethnic minorities and were unwilling to compromise. You might not consider yourself a racist or a bigot, but you clearly don't care about your fellow Americans that aren't straight or white.

I get the frustration, the need to vent, this is an incredibly sobering and upsetting election, but as someone that desires eventual political change for rectifying things like systemic racism, my next question is, so what do we do about it?

 

[Lumination]

They're putting their ideologies above the rights and well being of minorities. I'm sorry to have to tell you, but that makes them bigoted.

Let me flip the script a bit. You're also putting your idealism above the suffering of rural America.

They have a right to not starve due to no fault of their own just as much as you and I have a right to not be treated like second-class citizens. We lost the Rust Belt because they saw no path forward for themselves and their families with Hillary just like you and I saw no path forward with Trump. He sold them a dream and they took it. It doesn't make them bigots.

 

[Frozenprince]

Lol Trump didn't teach out to rural America. He fucking lied to them.

That's not reached pop tarts using them and their believes that ask their problems are other people's fault and that their jobs are coming back. The rust belt is dead. That's just the sad reality.

 

[marrec]

I get the frustration, the need to vent, but as someone that desires eventual political change for rectifying things like systemic racism, my next question is, so what do we do about it?

I don't think we can expect a decent answer to this question tonight.

Lots of thinking needs done though, and real soon, cause 2018 ain't going to wait for us to sort our shit.

 

[MThanded]

A lot of people normalizing today.

 

[Vincent Alexander]

At the end of the day, I just want it clear I love all you fuckers on Neogaf. I'm disappointed as shit with how things turned out, but I have faith we can hold and come back from this disaster. At least I hope so. I'm white. My fiance is white. And my son is black. It scares me more than anything thinking what kind of country he is growing up in.

 

[Spirit of Jazz]

The blame for that squarely lies on the Republican politicians. They are the real enemy. People in the Rust Belt are victims too. Antagonizing them further does nothing for us.

People aren't victims when they support a person who preaches such a venomous platform. Their positions are understandable but it doesn't alleviate them of the consequences of their vote; they're still putting themselves above people who are even worse off and due to that I'd have to consider them to be pretty shitty people. That's even assuming that a majority of them don't supports Trumps hateful shtick.

 

[Squalor]

*Same tired bullshit*

We already reached out to them. They turned us down when Clinton was in office. They vehemently turned us down when Obama was in office. And now they've turned us down again to support a bigoted fascist.

They are racist. They are poor. They are uneducated. They are religious. And they keep voting for Republicans who don't care about them and never address their actual strife.

 

[Frozenprince]

"we need to figure out the next step try combat systemic racism" say people who don't realize that we've been fixing doing that for talk near two hundred years.

 

[Lumination]

Lol Trump didn't teach out to rural America. He fucking lied to them.

That's not reached pop tarts using them and their believes that ask their problems are other people's fault and that their jobs are coming back. The rust belt is dead. That's just the sad reality.

And how is any of that their fault?

 

[Angelus Errare]

I'm pretty close to just believing moderates are also racist.

<Insert MLK quote about the white moderate here>

 

[smokeandmirrors]

Like any of this is new to any of us anyway. We make inroads only for once again rural white America to day "nah, you get to move forward after WE move forward, not o one minute before that."

Like this hasn't been the last, what, entire history of America?

Not even America. Pretty much been this way since the beginning of the colonial era

 

[faisal233]

Let me flip the script a bit. You're also putting your idealism above the suffering of rural America.

They have a right to not starve due to no fault of their own just as much as you and I have a right to not be treated like second-class citizens. We lost the Rust Belt because they saw no path forward for themselves and their families with Hillary just like you and I saw no path forward with Trump. He sold them a dream and they took it. It doesn't make them bigots.

False narrative. Clinton lost cause her voter stayed home, not because they switched.

How many people here didn't vote because poligaf pushed the 99% God Wang narrative?

 

[ishibear]

It's almost like minorities are living up to their title!

White people are the majority. If there weren't so many racists among them, Trump would not have been elected.

Stop throwing the blame and claim what you did. You were so proud to vote for Trump but now you're deflecting? Weak.

 

[Crossing Eden]

"we need to figure out the next step try combat systemic racism" say people who don't realize that we've been fixing doing that for talk near two hundred years.

.

 

[Frozenprince]

And how is any of that their fault?

Because they choose to remain ignorant and core for a man who will abandon them and day it's the liberals fault again.

Two minutes on Google would have shown them he's from of shit.

 

[Bossking]

False narrative. Clinton lost cause her voter stayed home, not because they switched.

How many people here didn't vote because poligaf pushed the 99% God Wang narrative?

She still won the popular vote.

 

[Squalor]

And how is any of that their fault?

They chose to ignore facts. They chose to vote for a racist and a liar. Actually, they've been choosing that for decades.

 

[Lowmelody]

I'm pretty close to just believing moderates are also racist.

Pretty much. The outcome is no different, they enable and propagate. There is no effective difference between them and the hardcore aside from the fact they have the actual numbers to make or break progress.

 

[Captainbojanglesiii]

"we need to figure out the next step try combat systemic racism" say people who don't realize that we've been fixing doing that for talk near two hundred years.

And what do posts like this do to help? You have people genuinely asking, and you're replying with snide remarks. No shit it's been a problem. It's the problem. Opening up a conversation is certainly better right now then playing the blame game, or acting woe is me.

Stop throwing the blame and claim what you did. You were so proud to vote for Trump but now you're deflecting? Weak.

I'm quite certain no one in this thread voted for Trump, and very few voted Clinton, so I don't know who this is directed at. Most Trump supporters are not backing down.

 

[cheezcake]

She still won the popular vote.

By 0.2% which is a joke vs The Cheeto

 

[jdstorm]

We already reached out to them. They turned us down when Clinton was in office. They vehemently turned us down when Obama was in office. And now they've turned us down again to support a bigoted fascist.

They are racist. They are poor. They are uneducated. They are religious. And they keep voting for Republicans who don't care about them and never address their actual strife.

Its funny. I seem to remember a thread on GAF recently about minorities shouldnt have the burden of educating others. It sure takes a lot of hubris to decry others for their lack of inteligence while refusing to share new knoweledge with those same people.

 

[Squalor]

And what do posts like this do to help? You have people genuinely asking, and you're replying with snide remarks. No shit it's been a problem. It's the problem. Opening up a conversation is certainly better right now then playing the blame game, or acting woe is me.

How many times do we have to tell you that we (our ancestors) started the conversation for-fucking-ever ago, and white people weren't interested, and they still aren't?

I suppose the dissonance is too strong for most people to handle.

 

[marrec]

"we need to figure out the next step try combat systemic racism" say people who don't realize that we've been fixing doing that for talk near two hundred years.

Politically speaking, we need to figure out what the fuck to do about the 2018 elections. Nobody is going to "figure out" systemic racism, it's built right into America's core and will take many more decades to even get a proper handle on, especially if we don't do shit about the election in 2 years.

 

[evilromero]

Trump and the GOP acted recklessly and irresponsibly in their quest to win at any cost. In that quest they normalized bigotry and unified a white nationalist vote that was not nearly as strong when Romney was running. The moderate in this case has no defense. They are allowing oppression to occur and injustice to run rampant.

 

[Frozenprince]

And what do posts like this do to help? You have people genuinely asking, and you're replying with snide remarks. No shit it's been a problem. It's the problem. Opening up a conversation is certainly better right now then playing the blame game, or acting woe is me.

Because it people actually have a shit this fight had been going on already. It's not new. It's not something we need to "learn how to engage" there is no needed education or whatever.

Treat minorities like human beings. That's it. That's the one simple inroad we got. I'm sorry I'm done bloviating about this needless pontifical bullshit but it's time to collect our check.

This isn't a new battle. If people have a shit they'd have tried fighting the institution that allowed Donald Trump to run for president in the first place

Nobody helped us, as always. So forgive me for having no patience left to teach more blessing heart white centrists how to not be shitheads.

 

[Bossking]

By 0.2% which is a joke vs The Cheeto

She won, but still didn't win hard enough, so give the actual victory to Trump.

 

[Jonm1010]

"we need to figure out the next step try combat systemic racism" say people who don't realize that we've been fixing doing that for talk near two hundred years.

I mean if you want to throw up your hands thats fine.

The people genuinely saying "lets figure this shit out" are the people that recognize the difficulty of the fight and the ugliness of the process, but want to find the best way to put the next step forward in the long, hard trek that likely won't be fixed next election and perhaps even fully in our lifetimes.

 

[Squalor]

Its funny. I seem to remember a thread on GAF recently about minorities shouldnt have the burden of educating others. It sure takes a lot of hubris to decry others for their lack of inteligence while refusing to share new knoweledge with those same people.

"I didn't go to college" doesn't mean "I am racist."

They could educate themselves. They don't. They don't need to be racist. They could say "Why do I hate a group of people just because they look different? just because they love differently?" They don't.

It's not hubris. You just want to defend bigotry and bigots because you seem to be one.

 

[Salz01]

The point isn't that we need to appeal to racists, but that maybe we should try to understand what underlying factors caused a deplorable candidate like Donald Trump to win so that we can ensure it never happens again.

For the last year liberals have been smug as fuck laughing at the Republicans for putting forth such a ridiculous candidate that could never possibly win. We were so confident that instead of opening a dialogue with Trump supporters we told them to fuck off and made them into caricatures. Now the GOP controls the House, Senate, and Executive branch and the ramifications will last a generation. Sure, we can decide that all the people who voted for Trump are sexists/racists/misogynists and decide we never want their vote, but that path is just going to keep them controlling the government.

Did a large party of the country vote for a candidate they knew was bad for women and minorities because they thought he would make their life better? Yes. Is that terrible? Yes. However, pretending that these people are cartoon villains who voted for Trump only because of his racism and misogyny and not because they might have real issues of their own that were completely ignored by one candidate will achieve nothing and ensure that no progress is made.

We need to communicate, we need to educate, we need to work, we need to heal. Patting ourselves on the back for insulting straw men on social media and online forums had failed spectacularly.

Great post.

 

[faisal233]

She still won the popular vote.

So we are going to bitch about the EC now? We knew the rules of the game. Clinton broke the DEM firewall because of her hubris.

Lost PA, WI, MI.

I don't give a fuck about the gop voters. They were never for me. I care why she couldn't bring home our base. They just stayed home instead.

 

[Desparadina]

A) rural America aren't "bigots" you're acting just as ignorant as you claim everyone else of being. In fact most rural Americans are just as stuck in their area and lot in life the same as most minorities. Low education due to lack of quality, low skills, low opportunity, poverty, inability to get out and city "mighty whitey" looking down on them pretty much to the same degree as minorities.

B) if you aren't willing to reach out to them why should they be willing to reach out to you why would you be willing to reach out to them why would they......

Rural America is nowhere near the caricature or stereotype you seem to believe. In fact their situation is a lot closer to yours than you'd probably figure. Only instead of metropolitan ghettos they have manufacturing factories that pulled out 20 years ago half bankrupting the town, only to have the other half bankrupted in the local Walmart crater ten years later.

Okay and? They have never tried to start the conversation as far at least understanding where people like me come from. In fact, trying to start those conversations just leads to them spewing more bigotry and rooting themselves deeper into their ideology and you want me to appeal to that? That's what white moderates want me to do? To appease a group of people who have given absolutely no thought to voting for someone and not thinking about the consequences because of how desperate they are?

If their situation is so fucking close to mine then why in the fuck do they continue to support bigotry? Why haven't they come around and tried to garner empathy for my community and their struggles? Why am I being the one tasked with giving them sympathy as if they are entitled to it when they voted for someone who could very well impede on my quality of life? You expect me to give them everything when they have done not even the slightest to makes amends. I dont need to stereotype them they seem to do that just fine when they decide to vote for fucking Trump.


They have no problem continuing to immerse themselves in the idea that people like me are the other. That I am the cause of their problems, and y'all really expect me to sit here to open my arms to some dumbassery like that so I can get fucked over again by not only them but by the failures the Democrats have proven themselves to be in this election cycle?


I'm not here for it.