The left created Trump?

[Benton]

(11-23-2016, 11:46 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: I mentioned something similar in a thread a few days ago. I asked some moderately conservative friends of mine on FB how they could hate Trump, but still vote for him (one friend is the daughter of a Japanese immigrant and another has two adopted black children). Their responses were similar to what was in the Politico article: "the Left has become elitist", "the Left ignores the views of many in this country", they couldn't "bring themselves to vote for Hillary", they are "sick and tired of being called racist all of the time", etc.

I don't necessarily agree with all of their reasoning, but I think there is something to this. At some point Democrats stopped trying to convince people of the merits of the Left (yes, some of the stuff they believe in is good and positive) and started playing the insult game with anyone who appeared to have even moderate Right-wing ideologies. This was exacerbated by Right wing pundits who encouraged the insult game, and benefited from that. To make this more clear for people on the Left: Your job was to convince people to vote for your causes, not to insult and berate those who had one or two views which you don't like (i.e. gun rights, religion, "all lives matter", etc.). Democratic leadership completely forgot this.

several years ago I interviewed a state rep who "retiring". He talked a lot about his early years and am old timer who taught him what, in his opinion, was something younger lawmakers hadnt learned: How to explain legislation to voters. Instead of telling voters what it dies and why it's needed in ways they can understand, they use talking points.

(11-23-2016, 02:03 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: But the fact is, Trump beat a deplorable candidate in a year voter turnout was way down.

The bigger story is how and why he won the Republican nomination in the first place.

that's the big question. But the short answer is the GOP base and gop party aren't on the same page. The same can be said for the other side.

[Dill]

(11-23-2016, 01:20 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I'm a bit disappointed that neither of you actually addressed the article's point.  That being that the attitude of the far left the past few years pushed many voters towards Trump that otherwise may not have voted for him.  I personally know may people who, while not maybe voting for Trump, would absolutely not vote for Hillary due to this exact phenomena.  Anecdotal to be sure, but that seems to be stock and trade of the media right now so please forgive me.

Well I'm not running for office so I don't mind telling you why I disagree with the article's point.

When even mainstream press articles can unproblematically refer to a few college students and BLM as "the far left" then the Faux news right has securely defined the terrain of US political discourse.

Conservatives have been complaining about the smugness of universities and students ever since the late 19th century, when they turned from the Bible and became research universities.  When unpacked, "liberal smugness" turns out to be a preference of science over Biblical doctrine and climate denial, and a penchant for targeting racism and sexism as something bad. It was during the Nixon administration that Republican leadership began defining the press as a de facto opponent of the Republican party and therefore mouthpiece of the Democrats--a cry reaching its crescendo when Nixon was investigated for ordering and then covering up break ins.  

 The right wing complaints described in the article are just the latest round of charges against something called "the far left" (a designation which baffles our European and Asian friends) and the complicity of the press with the party that tends to side with science, environmental protection, Wall Street regulation, and civil rights--I.e., the public interest. "The establishment isn't listening when we want to kick blacks off welfare, ban Muslims and deport dreamers." This to the party that fights to protect their social security, supports their unions, and bailed out the auto industry after the recession (while the other party said "let it fail").

White nationalists are not celebrating Trump's victory as a victory for the economy.  Trumpsters chose the party most supportive of the free trade policies they think harmed them and most likely to destroy their Medicare and Social Security, because that party's leader welcomed their darkest impulses, constructing a narrative of white victimization with the appropriate "non-American" scapegoats. It buttressed this narrative with fantasies of an all powerful authoritarian leader who would "drain the swamp," crush foreign enemies and "take their oil," and end NATO welfare starting day one--all aimed at a base with little sense of Constitutional limits on the presidency or the complexities and history of foreign policy, but angry at smug liberals who would be taken down a peg by a politician whose racist and sexist statements marked him as unfiltered and therefore "sincere."  I doubt any Trumpsters who aren't college students give a flying fig whether professors on some campus talk about "trigger warnings", other than to spin this into their narrative of illiberal liberals and privileged media elites. 

The article is correct to point out such voters cannot be reached by the message "America is great because it is good," but, any discussion of what went wrong with Dem messaging needs to take into account that this election was primarily thrown by whatever foreign power hacked the DNC and turned over the pirated emails to the vengeful Julian Assange. What might a hack of the RNC or the Trump campaign have yielded--especially Steve Bannon's account? We may never know, unless Trump disappoints Putin. Running a close second here would be the Fox News driven Benghazi investigation which, as Kevin McCarthy noted, tremendously damaged Clinton's poll numbers even before it discovered the private email account and server.

The right-wing media manipulation of white, working-class anger (with the complicity of Russia) has delivered that class to the Ryan budget--many in that group being the same people who claimed they were tired of being fooled by establishment Republicans in the past.  And no Dem running for office can really explain this to these angry voters without appearing even more smug.  But I am not terribly worried about this conundrum as I expect Trump will soon be driving enough of these angry voters back to the Democratic party to secure the next election. Dems should be preparing an explanation and welcoming message which eases the transition.

[Dill]

(11-23-2016, 12:13 PM)fredtoast Wrote: This is like claiming the Civil Rights Movement created the Republican majority in the southern states.  It may be true, but that does not mean the Civil Rights Movement was a bad thing.

Rep 

[Dill]

(11-23-2016, 03:14 AM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: The investigation proved little more than she is an idiot, but it continued to promote the "crooked" Hillary story line IOT foment voter mistrust. To quote W., "Mission accomplished." Which isn't actually a W. quote, it was on the sign in the background when he declared major combat operations had ended. But, it serves to reinforce how difficult it is to dispel a cultural myth once it has taken hold of the public psyche; such as social issues, rather than the economy, pushed reluctant voters towards Trump. 

I agree the baseless Benghazi "investigation" was part of what turned the election against the most competent candidate.

But I think your last statement needs some qualification. The economy plays a major role in all elections, including this one.

But there is not an either/or here regarding the economy and social issues.  Social issues, like those driven by race and gender, are rarely if ever separate from the economy.  Anxieties about employment and falling wages make people ripe for manipulation and scapegoating arguments. "Whitelash" is all about the economy, even though its public manifestation is people tired of "political correctness" when it appears to benefit other groups.

[Dill]

(11-23-2016, 04:29 AM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where-the-economy-is-weaker/

According to this source, people with less education, less job training, and less job skills who work in the types of jobs which lend themselves to out sourcing voted in favor of the guy sending their jobs overseas and defrauds them with scams like Trump University because they inexplicably think the guy sending their jobs overseas is going to stop sending their jobs overseas.

Because for some reason they believe they can't trust "crooked" Hillary, so Trump was their only realistic option. Even though Trump lies more than Clinton, but plenty of people will disagree because fact checking sources are just more liberal media bias. 

Rep    

In a nutshell, yes--a fundamental misrecognition of interests. And Trump still managed to get more women than expected, even among the college educated, while people who still preferred Clinton were not motivated to vote.

Fox and Trump talked about liberal media bias while repeating "Benghazi emails Benghazi emails Benghazi emails" for months.
I listen to Sean Hannity several times a week and he is still insists the mainstream media are completely compromised and cannot be believed about anything.  Thank heaven for Fox.   (To be fair, though, he now seems baffled by some of Trump's cabinet considerations, especially Romney.  Could he be catching on, finally?)

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(11-23-2016, 03:38 PM)Dill Wrote: I agree the baseless Benghazi "investigation" was part of what turned the election against the most competent candidate.

But I think your last statement needs some qualification. The economy plays a major role in all elections, including this one.

But there is not an either/or here regarding the economy and social issues.  Social issues, like those driven by race and gender, are rarely if ever separate from the economy.  Anxieties about employment and falling wages make people ripe for manipulation and scapegoating arguments. "Whitelash" is all about the economy, even though its public manifestation is people tired of "political correctness" when it appears to benefit other groups.

You are correct social issues and the economy are not completely seperate. The 538 link I posted discussed how they affected each other during the election, but to explain it was way beyond the scope of my post. 

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/22/donald-trump-lost-most-of-the-american-economy-in-this-election/

An interesting read. Not sure what to think of it, yet.

[Dill]

(11-23-2016, 05:03 PM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/22/donald-trump-lost-most-of-the-american-economy-in-this-election/

An interesting read. Not sure what to think of it, yet.

A number of good points in that article.

“This is a picture of a very polarized and increasingly concentrated economy,” said Mark Muro, the policy director at the Brookings metro program, “with the Democratic base aligning more to that more concentrated modern economy, but a lot of votes and anger to be had in the rest of the country.”


and

There's a downside, though, for a candidate such as Trump, whose economic appeal was rooted in a promise to restore coal, manufacturing and other jobs lost in the shifts of the past several decades.

That task will be difficult, Muro has written, in part because manufacturers have grown substantially more productive in recent years, meaning they probably won't be adding millions more workers even if Trump pursues major changes in trade policy that result in more goods being made in the United States.

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(11-23-2016, 05:03 PM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/22/donald-trump-lost-most-of-the-american-economy-in-this-election/

An interesting read. Not sure what to think of it, yet.

I think they forgot to take something huge into account when they say who won what percentage of the economy.

A lot of people work in cities, but live outside of them. It's not terribly uncommon anymore to work in a different county than you live. Even here, I know a lot of people who live in Clermont or Butler county (won by Trump by 41 and 29 points, respectively), but work in Hamilton (won by Clinton by 9 points). I have sibling and their spouse who both work in DC, but live in Virginia.

Just because a county produces that economy, doesn't mean the people who do the jobs to produce that economy live in those counties.

I think Clinton probably would have still had a larger portion of the economy even when taking that into account (all those Hollywood people paraded out one after another, Silicon Valley, NYC), but it'd be less so than that article lists.

[Penn]

(11-23-2016, 01:20 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I'm a bit disappointed that neither of you actually addressed the article's point.

I'm calling them Trumplicans.  People who usually either vote Democrat or don't vote at all but voted for Trump.

Not only in this thread, but most of the extreme leftist I know won't address the point.  I know many Trumplicans.  One of them told me trump had extremely higher votes in demographic groups that usually clearly go to Democrats than is usually seen for a Republican.  You want people to stop ignoring a certain truth, if it is indeed a truth, post those numbers.  I'm just going on what I have observed by talking to people and not statistics.

I am not ignoring the simple fact that Trumplicans exist.  I believe a different way to pose the same question SSF is putting out there is, why do they exist?  What is it that a large part of country is seeing that the leftist holy lands of California and New York didn't see.  Hell, even Pennsylvania and Michigan saw it.  If you are a leftist, I caution you, to give an honest answer to this question you have to step out of yourself and try to understand the viewpoint that won the election.  If you don't, you are continuing a cycle.

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(11-24-2016, 12:20 AM)Penn Wrote: I'm calling them Trumplicans.  People who usually either vote Democrat or don't vote at all but voted for Trump.

Not only in this thread, but most of the extreme leftist I know won't address the point.  I know many Trumplicans.  One of them told me trump had extremely higher votes in demographic groups that usually clearly go to Democrats than is usually seen for a Republican.  You want people to stop ignoring a certain truth, if it is indeed a truth, post those numbers.  I'm just going on what I have observed by talking to people and not statistics.

I am not ignoring the simple fact that Trumplicans exist.  I believe a different way to pose the same question SSF is putting out there is, why do they exist?  What is it that a large part of country is seeing that the leftist holy lands of California and New York didn't see.  Hell, even Pennsylvania and Michigan saw it.  If you are a leftist, I caution you, to give an honest answer to this question you have to step out of yourself and try to understand the viewpoint that won the election.  If you don't, you are continuing a cycle.

Post the numbers and let's examine them. 

[Dill]

(11-24-2016, 12:20 AM)Penn Wrote: I am not ignoring the simple fact that Trumplicans exist.  I believe a different way to pose the same question SSF is putting out there is, why do they exist?  What is it that a large part of country is seeing that the leftist holy lands of California and New York didn't see.  Hell, even Pennsylvania and Michigan saw it.  If you are a leftist, I caution you, to give an honest answer to this question you have to step out of yourself and try to understand the viewpoint that won the election.  If you don't, you are continuing a cycle.

The viewpoint that won the election?   What did they see?

Hmmmm. Months of Fox News trumpeting political correctness everywhere from the war against ISIS to college campuses, the war on Police, Obama's "feckless" foreign policy, illegal immigrant criminals hiding in sanctuary cities, the wonderful depth of Republican candidates running for office, "leftists" under every bed, the biased liberal media, Hillary's emails, and Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi?

You are going to tell us what "it" is, right, cuz you know?

[treee]

(11-24-2016, 12:20 AM)Penn Wrote: I'm calling them Trumplicans.  People who usually either vote Democrat or don't vote at all but voted for Trump.

Not only in this thread, but most of the extreme leftist I know won't address the point.  I know many Trumplicans.  One of them told me trump had extremely higher votes in demographic groups that usually clearly go to Democrats than is usually seen for a Republican.  You want people to stop ignoring a certain truth, if it is indeed a truth, post those numbers.  I'm just going on what I have observed by talking to people and not statistics.

I am not ignoring the simple fact that Trumplicans exist.  I believe a different way to pose the same question SSF is putting out there is, why do they exist?  What is it that a large part of country is seeing that the leftist holy lands of California and New York didn't see.  Hell, even Pennsylvania and Michigan saw it.  If you are a leftist, I caution you, to give an honest answer to this question you have to step out of yourself and try to understand the viewpoint that won the election.  If you don't, you are continuing a cycle.

The honest answer is that Clinton did not inspire progressives to the polls. 

She lowered herself to Trump style reactionary politics and got beat because it's not want progressives wanted to see. 

Basically both sides activated partisan fear mongering this election cycle, and that is a voter turnout tactic that clearly gives Republicans an advantage. 

Democrats failed to understand the very way their voters think.