Michael Moore’s piece on why Trump will win seems eerily prescient. For example:
Midwest Math, or Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit. I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest. Trump is going to hammer Clinton on this and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the people of these four states. When Trump stood in the shadow of a Ford Motor factory during the Michigan primary, he threatened the corporation that if they did indeed go ahead with their planned closure of that factory and move it to Mexico, he would slap a 35% tariff on any Mexican-built cars shipped back to the United States. It was sweet, sweet music to the ears of the working class of Michigan, and when he tossed in his threat to Apple that he would force them to stop making their iPhones in China and build them here in America, well, hearts swooned and Trump walked away with a big victory that should have gone to the governor next-door, John Kasich.
From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class. Angry, embittered working (and nonworking) people who were lied to by the trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still try to talk a good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who’ll write them nice big check before leaving the room. […]
Moore names 4 other factors in the piece, and they all seem reasonable to me.
Yesterday’s result was a bit like an airplane crash: there are a lot of factors and no single one was enough to bring the plane down. We need to take a look at all of them, and engineer a new party from the wreckage.
billcoop4
Contrapuntally, and written with my college-age students in mind:
Dear friends,
We have just been through the most tumultuous National elections of our lifetimes, and now it’s over. And one of the candidates won.
Some of you may rejoice in his victory—and I congratulate you and him on that victory. The reasons for the win will be studied for a number of years. For those of you who supported Secretary Clinton, I am sorry, and I join with you in that. I urge you to be involved in the process as part of the loyal opposition, and work to replace his policies with ones more congenial to your own views.
But other issues have emerged during this campaign which create unnecessary feelings of threat and dread for many. For those of you who wonder about your place in modern-day America, I offer the following reflection.
John Fugelsang, several times during today’s broadcast of his radio show Tell Me Everything (SiriusXM Channel 121, 9 November 2016) said: “Don’t let them see your despair”. Because if “they” do then they have a handle over you. Instead, mourn privately, and then act publicly to counteract and, indeed, create the change needed to overcome the thing you despair of.
Tuesday night was a difficult night for many people. Those who identify as a member of one or more historically marginalized communities (which I, as a gay man, am) may feel that whatever gains they have achieved are at extreme risk. Folks (especially women) who have survived sexual assault may sense the return of post-traumatic stress. Immigrants—regardless of legal status—may feel less welcome. Muslims will feel more of ‘those looks’, and Jews may hear echoes of the horrible experience members of their family, or of their family’s family, experienced in the 1930s and 40s. Fear is a powerful emotion, and the ability to exploit someone’s fear is the tool and hallmark of the bully.
The election process featured many acts on the part of Mr. Trump and his supporters which may fairly be characterized as those of the bully. They directly attacked the weaknesses of people in large part based on their human identities. He mocked the disabled, he demeaned members of other religions and national origins, he demonstrated that he has regards women at least in part as objects for his desire, and he appealed to and was embraced by white supremacists.
These actions are not those of honest and heated argument and disagreement. Those are the actions of diminishment and exclusion. While the actions of Sec. Clinton over her career are the subject of fair comment, they also lie in the realm of private character, and not public speech. Public speech is peculiarly powerful tool for both the common good and the exclusion of members of the community.
And we must not let it become so now.
I want everyone who reads these words to know that with me, everyone is safe. While in discussion I am open to all ideas expressed in good-will being challenged, I will also protect and defend the lived experience of anyone coming from the margins: racial and ethnic background, sexual orientation, gender expression, religion, sex, or creed. Differences matter, and we must all learn to live with them as we work to restore a civil society—even when (and especially when) we disagree. The manner of your expression matters as much as the content of your expression, and everyone needs to be welcome in my classroom, my office, and my home.
Our national motto is E pluribus unum—out of many, one. Being one does not deny the many—the identities all of our fellow passengers have as we create this national—and international—story together. Being many does not deny that we ought to be one—to seek the common good, for the benefit of all, not some. We may argue over what is, in fact, for the benefit of all—that is the nature of policy decisions. But as we work to determine what is in fact the common good, we ought not exclude others because we don’t like them, or suspect them, or find them icky, or think they have no place.
Everyone has a place at the table. Period.
When everyone has a place, then we can then fulfill the prophet’s description of everyone doing God’s will: doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God (Micah 6:8).
So do not despair—or at least do not let “them” see your despair. Then, we can actually begin to find the road back to the commonwealth.
Trentrunner
Not liking the Michael Moore/Bernie Sanders bro-coalition that seems to be taking over.
People of color and women should be the core of any revived Democratic Party. Done with bros for the mo.
Librarian
You’ll never guess what’s on top of my screen- an ad for a Bellroy passport holder.
Imonlylurking
There are some disturbing things on twitter. Swastikas painted on cars and windows, crosses burned in Kentucky, and some nasty graffiti in A high school in Minnesota. It didn’t take long for the anti-Semitic behavior to start.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Michael Moore rather lives in Michigan and made his name on a doc about the auto industry. Serious question: Has he ever had any successful role in politics in that state, as an activist or in a campaign?
I will say that Crackers the Corporate Crime Fighting Chicken skit on his old show was a hoot.
khead
I was born in 1968. There are certainly people here that are older than I am.
I feel like I woke up this morning and “All in the Family” was #1 on the TEEVEE like back when we could only get 4 channels.
Omnes Omnibus
Wisconsin was probably lost due to voter ID.
Carolina Dave
@Trentrunner: do you mean the same demographics that didn’t turn out to vote in the current election for our side?
I’m trying not to be racist or misogynistic, but white men could have been countered by turnout from both those groups by voting the Dem’s way. I’m not sure what the Democratic party has to offer more to incite support by offering Hillary Clinton vs Donald Trump.
Please educate me.
Quinerly
@Trentrunner:
Agree 100%.
Lit3Bolt
@Trentrunner:
Yeah. Time for the Sanderistas to run on bromentum in 2020. And then when no minorities or women vote for them (because they can’t, new laws!) and Middle America roundly rejects “sushilism” and “union thugs” there will be sadz.
Major Major Major Major
Are you sure? Because I’ve been told it was entirely the fault of the lengthy committee process that decided which brand of engines to buy for the plane, even though it was, you know, shot down.
Another Scott
@Omnes Omnibus: Unpossible. After all, kinda like a reverse Cleek’s Law: Democrats can only fail themselves.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
Yeah, hard to feel a lot of sympathy for rust belt dwellers right now, and I am one. All they had to do was spend 15 minutes looking into this guy, but they were too pumped up with rage to do it.
He’s going to screw them. He screws everyone. I just wish they hadn’t have taken the rest of us down with them.
People don’t develop an entirely new character and set of beliefs at 70. He’s a con man and he’s always been a con man. They’ll be lucky to get out of this with the shirts on their backs. I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned they jumped in front of a train and no one could talk them out of it.
Trentrunner
@Carolina Dave: I don’t like your tone, Dave. At. all.
RareSanity
@Trentrunner:
It is that type of thinking that got us in this mess.
If it was not clear last night, it is we Democrats that do not have a broad enough coalition to win the White House, not the GOP. No one is saying that we have to hand complete control over to the Bernie bros, but the party is going to have to find a way to appeal to them.
If the GOP can hold together the wealthy, evangelicals, racists, and gun nuts, why can’t Democrats hold together PoC, women, immigrants, and the bros?
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Kay: Amen, Kay. Amen.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
As were Michigan, Ohio, and probably Pennsylvania (their voter ID law got put on hold by a judge, but the WaPo reported today that voters were being required to produce ID anyway).
But that kind of ruins Moore’s conviction that white voters are the only important voters. Who cares if Black people can vote or not, amirite?
Also, bringing my Michigan anecdote up from here: my friend’s brother (who is a strong Democrat) told her that his friends voted for Trump because they think Hillary and Obama give too much support to Black Lives Matter. That would fit into Moore’s point #2, and kind of belies the whole it was all about economic anxiety! line people have been trying to feed us.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@RareSanity: because the bros don’t care about anyone but themselves.
Major Major Major Major
@RareSanity: all of those groups would happily have supported the others’ candidates with one exception, can you guess which?
Mike in NC
Trump tells the morons what they want to hear, despite his history of outsourcing jobs to China and Bangladesh. Imbeciles. USA!
RareSanity
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire):
Neither do any of the groups I named that are part of the GOP coalition.
Do you think Wall St. cares about evangelicals or gun nuts? Do you think the racists give a damn about ANYONE but themselves?
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
Sure we do … but our voters were blocked at the polls. Ask Omnes about Wisconsin’s voter ID laws that prevented Black people from voting. Ask Florida residents about the 100,000 former felons who were not allowed to petition to have their voting rights restored.
Republicans actively prevented minority voters from being allowed to vote and ran an open white supremacist as their candidate to seal the deal, and you still think the problem is that we’re not nice enough to the white dudes who want to take my abortion rights away.
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
Because the bros keep insisting that we have to give up on “identity politics” by PoC, women, immigrants, and LGBTQ and only pursue the things they want to pursue.
That’s not a coalition, that’s just them using all of the non-bros as free labor.
Major Major Major Major
@RareSanity: people of color, women, and immigrants are used to riding shotgun. The bro demographic… is not.
Emerald
I’ve been thinking about Hillary, and all that she has endured.
I really think she needs to get out of the country before Trump takes office. He’s promised to jail her often enough, he has to follow through, with his compliant FBI’s help, of course, to make it all legalish.
Once out, she could become quite an effective spokesperson. The lady never quits.
I fear for her. Also for Eichenwald, Farenthold, and many others.
LookingForACanadian
@Omnes Omnibus: I think almost certainly. Someone should make a chart — we are a pretty visual/Instagram nation these days.
RareSanity
@Major Major Major Major:
My point is, you have to find something that is palatable to the party, that can get them involved.
OK, fine…you don’t even try to get the Bernie bros. Are you saying the plan for Democrats is just to continue to sit back and wait for “shift demographics” to just drop elections in its’ lap? That’s not a plan, it’s a wish…and the GOP will gladly continue at the levers of power while we sit and wait.
Kay
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire):
They were looking a little green around the gills here today in rustbeltland- like the dog that caught the car. Most of their kids are on Medicaid along with their elderly parents, and Title One for their schools and free meals at school.
Oh, well. Elections have consequences. I can afford health insurance and I’m not eligible for free lunches, although half the children in my son’s school are- it’s 98% white. Hope it works out for them. Locking up the bitch meant an awful lot to them. More than health care for their children, apparently.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Mnemosyne: thank you for answering so I didn’t have to. Much better than I could have come up with.
RareSanity
@Major Major Major Major:
Then explain to me why 50% of white women and 36% of Latino women voted for Trump…
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Apparently these purity ponies aren’t interested in protecting voting rights. They are not the ones targeted so it’s just easier to blame the woman.
So sick of this shit.
Major Major Major Major
@RareSanity: I didn’t say you don’t try. We did try. They got (at least) half the platform. They’re assholes.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Emerald: Sarah Kendizor and Katy Tur, as well.
Major Major Major Major
@RareSanity: intersectionality, moron.
RareSanity
@Mnemosyne:
Well then, let’s just fold up the tents…I mean what’s the point?
Donald Trump as the opposing candidate couldn’t deliver white men and women, and a large chunk of latino men and women. Where exactly is the support going to come from?
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
Apparently, there are folks here in 2016 that don’t nderstand that internalized misogyny is a THING.
Emerald
@Kay: Well but that’s how white supremacy works. Yeah, the rust belt white racist gets screwed, but Those People get screwed harder.
And that makes it good. It’s what they want. They won’t complain, as long as somebody more vulnerable gets it worse than they do. Twas ever thus.
RareSanity
@Major Major Major Major:
Really?
Have I insulted you in any way…ever? Just fuck off and continue crying in the corner.
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
Because they’re racists. Jesus fuck, are you listening to anything I’m saying here?
To be fair, the Latinas may just be misogynists who don’t want to see another woman do better than they did. But the white women are mostly racists.
Major Major Major Major
@RareSanity: make sure to tell Mnem and Adria to fuck off and cry in the corner! ?
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
The plan should be to take back the state legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, for starters. But we’ll never do that while the dudebros are hanging around listlessly playing hackysack and refusing to help anyone else unless they get their issues on the table first.
Imonlylurking
Siyanda Mohutsiya has been tweeting about white boy radicalization. Apparently she had been trying to get somebody interested in the story for a while and nobody would run it. I think we’re in deeper shit than I thought-and I thought we were in some deep shit.
Nick
The Democratic coalition includes a lot of men — is it helpful to refer to them as ‘bros’?
khead
@Kay:
Welcome to the dark side. Let it flow. It took me a while to respect your work while also wondering why in the hell you bothered trying. That respect is still there, but welcome.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Mnemosyne: those Latinas will regret that vote. I don’t even mean it in a violent way, because I wish them no harm, but they’ll start seeing their neighbors hauled off never to be seen again, and in the back of their minds they’ll know they could be next.
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
That’s because Donald Trump gave those white men and women, and (probably) a large chunk of those latino men and women what they wanted: naked racism and anti-Semitism. That’s what they voted for.
Oh, and they wanted their Supreme Court justice more than we did, because they think Trump will finally appoint the one who’s going to ban abortion. Meanwhile, the dudebros said liberals couldn’t make a strong push to get Merrick Garland confirmed because he once made a Gitmo decision they didn’t like and they wanted someone more pure. Thanks a lot, fucktard dudebros!
RareSanity
@Major Major Major Major:
They didn’t start name calling. They’re respectfully debating…now, fuck off and go back to crying in the corner.
Mnemosyne
@Nick:
If you voted for Hillary, you’re not a bro. You’re a man, and a full member of the coalition. Welcome.
If you voted for Jill Stein, or didn’t vote at all because Hillary wasn’t pure enough for you, then you’re a bro.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
I’m sure Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are celebrating, but for how long, I wonder?
Major Major Major Major
@RareSanity: do I have to? I was enjoying my dinner.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I was idly wondering in the thread above how long it would take for buyer’s remorse to set in. Sounds like it took less than 24 hours in your neighborhood.
Too late, jackasses — enjoy your president, that you personally voted for, and you own.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I think the white women could be misogynist too.
@RareSanity: Why do you assume that Latinas are immigrants?
WarMunchkin
I don’t get this debate that you guys are having. Nobody’s saying to bring back Dixiecrats and play nice with people who want VoterID and healthcare. Likewise, I don’t think people are saying that everyone needs to be a leader of a community group of women, PoC or immigrants.
Democrats are defined by:
1) The belief that great things can be accomplished when we all work together, using all of our talents and all of our potential
2) Government is one of the most potent tools in achieving objectives together
3) A person’s potential is best exercised when s/he can be free and secure in his/her own person
4) A functioning government exists to be accountable to all of the people, not just the privileged few
This is my understanding of the Democratic Party. There’s no reason for us not to include Latino community leaders and Labor/GreatSociety/NewDealers in the same basket, because what defines you as a Democrat is the common thread that everyone should be uplifted.
Mnemosyne
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire):
Someone in the thread above mentioned encountering a Latina on Medicaid who voted for Trump because she’s anti-abortion. I guess policing other people’s abortions was more important to her than her own health. Oh well. She bought it, she owns it.
Timurid
@Imonlylurking:
Our campus had lots of graffiti, including, and I quote, “Fuck your safe spaces.”
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Kay: I’m in central Ohio. I wonder where all the money for rehab programs for all the suburban white kids od’ing on heroin is gonna come from?
marv
goofy meme, which is why I’m putting it pretty far down on a post, but a big fear of mine has become they will destroy Obama’s legacy like they destroyed the legacy of black Reconstruction legislatures after the Civil War. Myths lived for more than a century. So my idea is that I was as skeptical as the next guy about Dylan’s Nobel, but now I’m thinking what three songs might he sing at the award ceremony as a memorial for Obama’s presidency? It would be remembered, if he did. I mean, the guy is an artist. So is Dylan.
I’m thinking: Masters of War (astonishing lyrics), Hurrricane, and then with a salute to the First Lady
Oh Sister
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes, that’s definitely in the stew. I think it’s mostly Mommy Wars stuff — Hillary is the Bad Mommy who went to work and had a career, while they’re Good Mommies who stayed home with their kids (actually, usually who worked crappy part-time jobs to try and pay the rent, but they didn’t want to work, so they’re still Good Mommies).
Mommy Wars shit is vastly underrated as a problem for female politicians. I know this and I don’t even have kids.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Omnes Omnibus:
And therein lies the problem with the bros.
(Not saying RareSanity is a bro, I genuinely don’t know, so….)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mnemosyne: also there’s a whole bunch of prominent women in the media who despise HRC– Dowd, Mitchell, Roberts. And the Junior League on MSNBC, male and female, seem to have internalized the attitudes of their elders.
Kay
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire):
And rural white kids! We have whole programs now. They’re furious that Democrats are funding their trips to Serenity Haven. Lock. Her. Up.
Hey, I might get a tax cut! I’ll donate a 30 day stay after Mr. Trump pulls the plug. Just one though. We can have a competition: “most worthy of charity”.
RareSanity
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire):
@Mnemosyne:
I know everyone is still upset, as am I…and I don’t want to seem as though I’m hostile.
My only point is that, personally, I just don’t think the slip in support can be completely explained away as racism or misogyny. Did it play a large part? Absolutely.
What I’m saying is regardless of how asshole-ish the Bernie bros are, there were aspects of Bernie’s campaign that appealed to them, and none of it was racism or misogyny. I’ll concede that part of their disdain for Hillary was because she is a woman, but that doesn’t explain why they were supporters of Bernie in the first place. It was the ideas that Bernie was expressing.
That is what I’m saying can be tapped into, that’s all.
Lit3Bolt
@Imonlylurking:
Yeah, the gamergate phenom among young whites is real. Raised on the internet, groomed to think in “alpha/beta/gamma” terms, whiny, fickle, Nazi-curious, and used to having their every consumer whim catered to, and oh yeah, totally ignorant of the Bush years because didn’t all that happen in 2004 or something, before Facebook lulz.
RareSanity
@Omnes Omnibus:
I didn’t assume that, they would fall into the PoC and women categories.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@WarMunchkin: We are saying that the inclusion of racist/sexist elements to any coalition is anathema, and that there are many bros who refuse to address issues involving women and people of color.
SiubhanDuinne
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire):
Don’t know Sarah Kenzidor, but I have been worried about Katy Tur for months now. It is shocking the way Trump* has repeatedly called negative attention to her, to the point that on more than one occasion she has had to have police or SS escorts to her car after rallies because his supporters might well attack her in the parking lot, rough her up a little if you know what I mean. Katy’s book about covering Trump since the day he came down the golden escalator — I will buy it and avidly read it.
*(I am usually pretty good about titles, but my fingers simply don’t like to type the words “President-elect” and “Trump” in close proximity, let alone the same sentence.)
Mnemosyne
@WarMunchkin:
I’m happy to include Labor/GreatSociety/NewDealers in the basket. The problem is that the dudebros I’m talking about don’t want to be included in the basket, they want to be the whole basket, or else they take their ball and go home. See also: Bernfeelers, Jill Stein voters, I stayed home yesterday because Hillary just didn’t inspire me non-voters.
Peale
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire): or they don’t actually respond to an invitation into a party that makes them own the illegal immigrant issue. They are citizens. Now, granted, I don’t see any reason why they’d join in with The Republicans, who seem to think that letting so many of THEM in the country was a mistake. But when I looked at voter surveys (I know. Could be wrong) for the Latino voter and the Asian voter, racism and immigration are actually much further down on the list than one would expect. I know, it’s hard to believe, but the Democrats might be underperforming with that group because they expect them to mobilize around that single issue. Every time. And may be treating them like they are all jumping over the fence and know a bunch of people who do. It’s kind of like showing up to the African American chamber of commerce, speaking solely about food stamps, and leaving the room.
Bobby Thomson
@Trentrunner:
This. All the bros, including mistermix, can fuck right the hell off. Everything they’re saying amounts to akskng people of color to STFU and let them run the show.
Kay
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire):
Oh, it’s a huge win for Wikileaks. She’s not the boss of them! Now they get an authoritarian who not only doesn’t understand due process, but would reject it outright if he bothered to learn about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire): May I just say that I am glad you have started to be more active here? You are in central Ohio? Columbusite?
GrandJury
Damn did Moore ever nail it. Not a fan either but damn. He took me into the twisted minds of these people and made me understand what they are thinking. I feel like I understand what just happened a little better now. Cold comfort but I’ll take any comfort I can get.
Peale
@Kay: but there might be a secrecy premium now. We get a secrecy premium.
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
This is my hobbyhorse of the day: the Republicans gerrymandered this election, and they started doing it back in 2012 when Obama beat them a second time. They have been working for four years to cage minority voters so they could turn Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania red and win the Electoral College even if it meant they would lose the popular vote.
And that’s exactly what happened. Trump won the Electoral College, and Hillary won the popular vote.
This is not a problem that is going to be solved by attracting racist white Trump voters to the Democratic Party. It’s going to be solved by working to switch the legislatures and/or governors in those three states to Democratic.
D. Mason
@Nick: This is a strong independent party that don’t need no man…
Omnes Omnibus
@RareSanity: Yes, they responded to something in Bernie’s campaign. But the hardcore ‘bros could never make the switch. Her platform and the ultimate D platform was not radically different from his. The only differences I see in the end are her lack of a johnson or her outreach to minorities.
Mnemosyne
@Peale:
Latin@s are frequently pro-life. That’s probably where Trump’s surge came from — a lot of churches (including Catholic ones) were telling people to vote Trump for the baybeez.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@RareSanity: I am not taking your responses as hostile (mileage for others may vary). Healthy debate is fine and what we need.
Bernie had some great ideas, but the problem was those ideas were not executable. Also, some of his responses to questions (his answer to how he will get the Republicans to work with him was “Look out the window, Mitch!) showed a lack of planning and realism. And I think that is where the disconnect might be between women/POC and the bros. Women, POC, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ all have to contend with reality every damn day. A lot of bros have pie in the sky ideas (good!) with no way to implement them. Perhaps our next steps as a movement should be how to join the two. But if the bros are going to shout down the real concerns that women/POC/Muslims/LGBTQ have over their very lives, then the bros need to have a stadium full of seats.
This election outcome has shown to be about racism and misogyny and the threat of whites no longer being privileged, period.
bemused senior
@WarMunchkin: I like that description very much. Can I quote it?
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Omnes Omnibus: I live near Columbus, though not originally from here. Grew up in the Catskills.
Those protests in NY make me so damn proud!!
weaselone
@Emerald:
I think it would be safest for her to leave and she’s certainly earned the right to get out of Dodge, but I don’t think she will. Contrary to her image, I think she’s tough, principled and a fighter. If she believes that by staying here, being arrested and subjected to a show trial, she helps hold the line, I think she stays.
Kay
@Peale:
Well, they’re anti-government so they should get what they want. No due process for you! Mr. Trump will be ordering appropriate sanctions if they get caught.
GrandJury
@Mnemosyne: Lol..I’ve read so much BS in the comments the past 1.5 days about how it was this or that or the other thing.
One thing it was most definitely NOT were Latinos voting for anyone because, like I told everyone here days ago, they never show up. And SURPRISE, this time was no exception.
Now you are claiming they did and voted for the drumpster fire. I think I have now read every possible excuse from every possible angle.
Read Moore’s article. My gut feeling is that he nailed the actual reasons cold.
RareSanity
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire):
Wait, I’m not lobbying for racists or misogynists…I’m talking about (generally) men that supported Bernie Sanders, aren’t racist or misogynist, but just didn’t feel like Hillary connected with them.
I guess the term “Bernie bros” describes a very specific set of men. I thought it was just “men that supported Bernie”.
Peale
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire): yes. And if too many of our ideas aren’t executable, we lose those voters who came into this with pie in the sky expectations when we never deliver. I mean, honestly, we may have also lost a lot of voters because they knew that even if we won, Hillary would just be bouncing from government shutdown to debt crisis to e-mail hearing. We’ll have the same problem that we had with Obama.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire): I was in C-bus for 15 years for my sins.
Nick
@Mnemosyne:
Well, actually I’m an expatriate who can’t vote — but that’s a good answer. I haven’t followed the intra-party wars carefully, and I wasn’t sure who you were talking about.
For myself, I think the upcoming conversation needs to have two aspects: Democrats agreeing on what they stand together on, and the figuring out what section of non-Democrats we are going to try to bring to us in the next election.
RareSanity
OK, OK…I yield. Bernie supporters are not a good “pickup”.
Back to the drawing board, I guess.
Omnes Omnibus
@weaselone: She and Bill will go exactly nowhere.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Peale: i don’t disagree with you about Latino and Asian voters not really feeling the immigration issue, but they ignore the racism directed at others at their own peril. Seriously. There are too many angry white racists out there who will not care about a birth certificate or a green card if you are too brown, too black, or too Asian for them. Just ask that Hispanic guy in Boston Orange Shitgibbon’s supporters beat up. In Boston.
Imagine how that plays out in Columbus, Milwaukee, or in Michigan.
Mnemosyne
@GrandJury:
I’m riffing off what other people say the percentages were. I don’t know if those percentages are correct.
And you’re totally on board with everything Moore says, right? Including this?
And he also references dudebros, though he calls them “depressed Sanders voters.” That’s right, dudebros, Moore pointed you out as part of the problem.
WarMunchkin
@bemused senior: Sure, I’m just some random on the internet.
@Mnemosyne: Right, so, basically the group you’ve described at the end might loosely be described as people we whose vote we have a chance of winning, but who didn’t join our coalition because of their ignorance. And there’s obvious merit to not wanting to bend over backwards to accommodate those people. But they’re not basket of deplorables tier people. They’re ignorant and hardheaded, sure, but they’re not alt-righters (yet*). If they’re going to oppose and obstruct pay parity laws then fuck ’em. But if you just want them, as a full-sized group, to stay out of the coalition, you’ll just get to what @RareSanity is arguing against, which is sitting tight and waiting for more education and further demographic changes. Which isn’t invalid if we want to keep a sense of party purity, but I always viewed those people as an opportunity to educate.
* Unchecked and without something pulling them back, they probably are set upon by the alt-right and claimed.
Kay
@Emerald:
The “lock her up!” chants really disgust me. I cannot fucking believe Wall Streeters were doing them today. This is sick behavior. It’s a coalition of mean-spirited douchebags as far as I can tell and I don’t really care if some of them live in the rustbelt and work in factories. Some of them live in South Carolina and are high income. The only thing I can see that they have in common is “mean-spirited”.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@RareSanity: oh no no no, BernieBros are a very specific set. Bernie or Bust types. I think a lot of men who supportd Bernie got on board with Hillary once Orange Shitgibbon was her opponent.
@Peale: how can any Dem deliver if we don’t have Congress? Midterms, that’s why. If you don’t vote in the midterms don’t complain if the shit you want doesn’t come through. (Not the specific you, the general “you.”)
@Omnes Omnibus: C-bus isn’t too bad. I lived on Fort Leonard Wood, Misery. THAT was hell. To be honest, though, I kinda wanna go back to NY now. To be in a nice blue state. Where women are seen as human and shit…
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
I don’t want to be a total jerk, but for me, the male Sanders voters who just couldn’t “connect” with Hillary were having a (probably subconscious) misogynist problem with her. It’s like the white voters who just couldn’t “connect” with Obama.
Nope. “Berniebros” are the ones who showed up at the Democratic National Convention and tried to boo all of the speakers down (including Elizabeth Warren) because they were SO MAD YOU GUYS that Bernie didn’t win.
Hillary showed way too much patience with them — they should have been thrown out on their ears.
If I mean Sanders voter (meaning just a normal person who preferred and voted for Sanders, but was willing to vote for Hillary), I’ll say Sanders voter. A Berniebro is the guy who stayed home on Election Day because he was still SO MAD YOU GUYS that he didn’t get his way. Which should be sounding like a theme at this point.
Peale
You know, no one is saying we have to jettison everyone’s concerns in the futile attempt to replace millions of voters with rural white males. But what if we could steal away 10% of them?
Omnes Omnibus
@GrandJury: Your gut feeling, pantswetter, and $4.25 still doesn’t get me a cup of coffee.
Mart
I spend a ton of time in mid-west factories,that still produce a shitload of stuff. But the steel mill that emloyed 15,000 back in the day makes more steel now with 5,000. The car factory that had 4,000 employees now has 400. The man cheats around the edges by hiring lower wage with shitty benefits non-union contractors to install and maintain equipment, sweep the floors, and maintain the guard gates. The man loves to buy a factory where he can fire everybody, dump the union; and hire back the best of the lot at half the wage with crap benefits. It’s not just that the factories have left, the ones left are robotized and labor that is left is competing with the globe. This trend will not end by breaking up trade treaties.
Mnemosyne
@WarMunchkin:
I don’t want them to stay out of the coalition. I just want them to recognize that it is a coalition and their priorities will not always and forever be the coalition’s priorities. Sometimes they’ll get the front row, sometimes they won’t. Be part of the team, and the team will support your priorities. Be a prima donna, and no one will play with you anymore.
WereBear
With nights below freezing all this week, we once again have no heat.
About a month ago, we got a new neighbor in this four apartment old house. She parks her truck across three parking spaces, in a way that will guarantee the snow plow guy can’t plow the lower parking area, the one we all use in the winter.
And if she feels too hot in her apartment, which has the thermostat, she just shuts off the heat. So that everyone else has none.
We’ve lived here almost twenty years, with many different tenants in that apartment, and this has never happened before. If you knock on her door, she has a dozen reasons why she didn’t do that, when she did.
This is simply a tiny mirror of what the whole country is dealing with right now. Selfish, thoughtless, bullying actions that could burst the pipes and make us all homeless.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Peale: how do we do so? They don’t care about economic arguments. They’d rather see their kids starving as long as the black folks down the street are starving AND homeless.
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@Mart: well said!
Omnes Omnibus
@RareSanity: Berniebros are the people who could not accept that he lost and even now are popping in and crowing that Bernie would have won. The folks who voted for Bernie and shifted to Hillary are not an issue. They are on the left of the party and we need them. The people who could make the move that Bernie made are not rally a part of coalition. And to bring them in, we would have to sell out our real base. So, fuck them.
Does this help?
Adria McDowell (formerly LurkerExtraordinaire)
@WereBear: I am so sorry. Selfish people suck ass.
Msut77
@Trentrunner:
What does this even mean?
khead
@Peale:
I only know how to deal in 100% spite.
No One You Know
@RareSanity: The GOP groups define easy, voluntarily and self-segregated units: vertical niches. The Democratic groups are more universal. Even PoC is broad.
Mart
I am a huge Michael Moore fan. His movies are instructive and often awesome. Why not a fan? Never see a conservative critique a batshit insane documentary, but plenty of Dems attack Moore for making pre-war iraq look to ideallic. Whatever.
GrandJury
@Mart: I can’t remember the exact reasons Michael Moore fell out of favor but I don’t think it was that. I think he was kind of going off on all sorts of wierd tangents and attacking all sorts of people. I think he was critical of Obama on some things for awhile.
Mandalay
@GrandJury:
I second both parts of that. And he wrote that 15 months ago, while everyone else in the media is struggling to explain why they were so wrong just 24 hours ago.
This bit really resonated:
I recall the pundits in the Village tut-tuting and clutching their pearls in horror at the notion that Trump hadn’t read a book. Meanwhile, millions of Americans were thinking “Hey, this guy isn’t like the other politicians – he’s just like me!”.
And then they gave the pundits the middle finger and voted for the guy who hadn’t read a book.
WarMunchkin
@Mnemosyne: Ok fine. If you take away just waiting for demographics to change, what changes do you propose to get more voters?
GrandJury
@Mnemosyne: I have no idea what point you are trying to make. What exactly is it Moore said that you are trying to “gotcha” me with?
Are you people still in denial about Latinos not showing up same as always? They never show up, I told you they never show up, they in fact did not show up….and you people are still trying to argue with me that this time they showed up…lol.
Peale
@GrandJury: when he left the Democratic Party and supported Nader in 2000.
Omnes Omnibus
@GrandJury: Pantswetter.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: This is allllllll about tribe. Democrats are sucking at this because they still think that policy positions and their results matter to people. They do not. Voting is no longer seen as a fundamentally social act by most people. It is an exercise in personal branding. It is the social equivalent of wearing sunglasses with a giant-ass logo on the temple. I read a piece in the Atlantic that I don’t want to dredge up the link for, but I was surprised that it didn’t get more attention. The writer pointed out that Trump people didn’t give a fuck about his positions. In fact, most of those voters were pro-trade, but then Trump said trade deals were bad, so they changed their positions. Fred Slacktivist points out that people don’t get their politics from church, they choose a church that fits their politics. They vote the way they do because it is a way of marking their participation and their membership in a certain social group.
And right now, they are throwing a giant social temper tantrum because that social group used to garner more respect and cultural power than they have now. It’s not measurable or economic or legitimate, but it is real. The Hillbilly Elegy guy is right: most of us in this coalition fall somewhere between mildly condescending sympathy to outright disdain for rural/exurban working class white people. I certainly include myself in that.. Our cultural products are costal and global, and even before, they may have been poor, but they had more respect.
Hillary lost because she didn’t fucking get that doing a good job doesn’t matter to these people. And the Democrats will continue to lose if we do not make the Democratic brand have as much cachet as an iPhone. We need to be the brand of educated, global, socially liberal, sexually enlightened, non-religious (or at least not orthodox) people, but those people are not more than 50% of the electorate. Trump won because he realized that this is not an intellectual exercise. It is a marketing exercise.
Tripod
Silver noted her coalition was narrow path in terms of potential states. I suppose that translates to rural Rustbelt going out, urban Sun-belt coming in, with not enough solid in either for a 270 firewall.
GrandJury
@Tripod: It was apples and oranges. She had 25 years of history they could attack her on. Trump has 0 political history, 0 experience, and didn’t even release his fucking tax returns. He will never release them now.
So the Hillary problem was one of the problems for sure. Not the only one. Bernie would have done worse so it’s not like there were better alternatives. It wasn’t the establishment saying it was her turn either. She won the primary fair and square and didn’t need the superdelegates to do it.
Omnes Omnibus
@WarMunchkin: U do not read gud.
PJ
@Mnemosyne: As usual, you miss the point. Moore isn’t saying that the Rust Belt Trump voters are right (quite the contrary), but that by refusing to acknowledge their grievances, arising from a really shitty economic situation for the past 40 years, with more than a “that’s too bad”, the Democratic Party and Hillary were going to lose this election. They needed those states, and they needed enough angry white men to vote for them. Instead, the angry white men cast the “fuck you” vote against the “elites” and every one of us is going to feel it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: He also took advantage of restrictive voting laws. We had WI and MI under pre-asshole laws.
kdaug
Nobody has to pay taxes anymore, right?
Omnes Omnibus
@PJ: You and he are wrong.
PJ
@Omnes Omnibus: Hillary lost white working class areas where Obama prevailed by more than 10 points: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/upshot/why-trump-won-working-class-whites.html
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, for sure. But the voter ID shenanigans are just another tactic in this culture war. We have to make a country with these redneck assholes, and they know that we think they’re gross, and they just gave a primal scream.
Omnes Omnibus
@PJ: How could she have won?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Sanders was against TPP but he was never in favor of tariffs or withdrawing from trade agreements or forcing quotas on Apple.
Sanders also didn’t hysterically blame mexicans for taking away working class jobs or stoke fear of muslims or promise a trade war with china or promise to reopen shuttered factories. .
The issues he focused on like a laser was raising the minimum wage, free college, and breaking up the banks. . that’s great, but I don’t see how that captures the heart of 40 something manufacturing workers angry at brown people.
and are manufacturing workers known to be opened minded enough to vote for someone who opposes the death penalty (1988 redux) and doesn’t pray to blonde blue eyes Hay-Zesus.
Look if he runs in 4 years I will support him 150%, but let’s act like he didn’t have his own unique problems that the corporate media and trump would have hammered.
Litany
Anyone who attributes this all to racism or misogyny needs to take a look at the numbers. These things undoubtedly helped, but Donald Trump gained ground with both minorities and women. Does internalized misogyny and racism explain some of it? Sure, social justice is intersectional. But I think a lot of it also has to do with a climate that Democrats badly misread. We were told that none of Clinton’s scandals really mattered, that we shouldn’t be worried that she struggled to fill high school gyms as populist candidates ran rallies in the tens of thousands, that identity politics would prevail and minority voters and women would rise up and hand the election to the Dems. That all failed. Badly.
This is painful for me because there doesn’t seem to be any middle ground in this dialogue between full-on Bernie Bro and unwavering Dem apologist. I voted for Bernie in the primaries because he spoke to many of my beliefs. Once it was clear Clinton was the nominee (which for me was far earlier than the convention) I was all in the tank for her. I did GOTV, proudly voted for her, and vocally supported her up til the bitter end. But many of the critiques of the party in the aftermath of the election have a lot of legitimacy. The DNC has lost the plot. They put their thumbs on the scales of the primary bigly even before it started– why clear the field for an “inevitable” candidate with as many negatives as Clinton?
Omnes Omnibus
@PJ: I talked about Wisconsin. Try not to be stupid as fuck.
Mnemosyne
@PJ:
Yes, and as I quoted above, Moore realizes that one of their top grievances is based in race and misogyny:
Trump promised his white voters that they will get to be on the top of the social heap and oppress everyone else from now on. And they loved that message and voted for him.
Mnemosyne
@Litany:
I guess you missed the multiple discussions of voter suppression.
But, yes, white voters voted for Trump because of racism and misogyny. It was not the only reason — pro-life evangelicals picked Trump as their candidate to kill Roe v Wade — but of the two candidates, only one of them was proposing a $12 minimum wage, child care, and free college, and it wasn’t Trump.
dogwood
@Suzanne:
This isn’t something online liberals really want to hear. Too many want to fight this out over ideological differences within the party. They think that it’s leftist policies that will win the day, when most voters don’t have strong ideological policy preferences. These are the people who would rather be right than happy. The shock that the Republicans got this time around was the fact that all their conservative principles mumbo jumbo didn’t mean shit to most republican voters.
Mandalay
@Litany:
This x 1000. As an example of the system being rigged, the DNC shilling for Clinton behind the scenes, while pretending to be neutral, is as good (bad) as it gets.
Brazile and DWS have deservedly had their reputations shredded. The further they both stay away from anything to do with the running of the Democratic Party the better.
PJ
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, despite your charming prose, I’m not persuaded by your argument, because you never provide any support. I linked to a NY Times article discussing how Hillary lost significant percentages of white working class voters in the Rust Belt, and, in fact, the article attributes her loss to this. If you have some evidence, you should cite it. I bothered to Google the Wisconsin ID laws, and what I did see was an article from the spring claiming that as many as 300,000 voters could be denied the right to vote, but then a ruling from the summer that those without voted ID could still go ahead and vote. I didn’t find any article claiming that any specific number of voters were turned away at the polls in WI. It may be that many were, but you never cite any evidence, and yet you expect people to believe you as if you are some specially gifted snowflake.
PJ
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m not sure she could have. A different candidate (Biden most obviously) wouldn’t have had all the NAFTA baggage, Goldman Sachs payouts, and insane hatred of the Clintons. A better speaker and politician would have been more persuasive. For whatever reason, she was a lot less popular than Obama in those areas.
PJ
@Mnemosyne: I get the feeling (based on talking to the all of 2 Trump voters I know) that while racism and sexism were an obvious part of Trump’s appeal, some of them wanted to stick it to the establishment and vote for someone who was going to fuck things up. They didn’t really care if it hurt them, because in their minds, the Republicans and Democrats don’t give a shit about them and this would send a message. And, boy, did it ever.
WereBear
Since I have never, ever, understood cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face, I am finding sympathy for Trump voters to be in short supply, and dismiss attempts to “reach” them. There’s a bunch of people who don’t vote who might more easily persuaded to do so than to convince someone with a Confederate flag fetish that they shouldn’t be so loud and proud about being an asshole.
When being an asshole is all you’ve got, it’s a cold dead hands situation.
Litany
@Mnemosyne: I haven’t forgotten about voter suppression. I know as well as anyone how stupid Robert’s long-awaited Day of Jubilee was. Still doesn’t explain the results. Clinton is perceived as just as untrustworthy as Trump among a lot of people. It’s bullshit, but she gives them way too much ammo– have you heard her speak down south with her accent? She triangulates furiously, and as someone who has followed her campaign closely for the past 18 months I still don’t know how she honestly feels about some issues. As Suzanne points out, no one gives a shit about policy anymore. Politics in this post-truth world is an exercise in marketing, and Clinton comes off as a corporate,shady, disingenuous candidate. There are reasons for that, and there are more to them than “she’s a woman.”
dogwood
@Litany:
There won’t ever be a coming together of the Berniacs and the Hilbots because neither side wants to face reality or look at things with an objective eye. And that includes you. Once I read the “DNC cleared the field” meme, I knew you were either dishonest or woefully ill-informed about what these relatively weak institutions, DNC and RNC actually do. Truth is, neither party attracted primary candidates who had broad-base appeal. So you get a low turnout election.
Suzanne
@dogwood: I know. Online liberals are people who read and are ostensibly making their choices somewhat rationally. That is not how most people make decisions, even really critical, expensive decisions. It is entirely about image. The best brands make people feel that they are part of a larger community, that the person inherits the qualities of the brand through association. HRC is a nerd and doesn’t care about that shit, but we need someone in the Democratic Party to get it.
PJ
@Suzanne: Obama got it. He had solid policy proposals but he was also able to condense his message into brief, feel-good, slogans. It helped him that the US was coming out of two shitty wars and had just fallen into a deep recession, so that he looked like the candidate of change, but he also “looked” like the candidate of change – young, handsome, funny, and, to quote Joe Biden, articulate (I normally steer clear of the “A” word). In a word, he was persuasive. Hillary isn’t, really, if you aren’t already on her side. Hell, how many people who read this web journal would have sooner voted for a third Obama term than give Hillary a chance? I bet most of them.
NotoriousJRT
“They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks. Foreman says these jobs are going boys, and they ain’t coming back”.
Obama did what he could for the auto industry and Republicans would not help with infrastructure. And still they rejected him for a snake oil salesman.
They deserve what they voted for, Michael Moore. Guess who gives not one shit what you think?
NotoriousJRT
@Kay:
Were they hoping for a firewall to keep their votes in the “protest” category?
ruemara
@Litany: hey just in case no one said it, fuck off. Fuck you, fuck your identity politics comment.
NotoriousJRT
@WereBear
Four apartments & one thermostat?
Dee from Texas
I’ve read several comments here from people who want to use their own definition of “Bernie bros”–which just isn’t going to work out well–especially in written communication. When a governor is criticized for referring to “colored people,” which actually was a neutral term once upon a time (NAACP), why does anybody think they’ll get away with their own personal definition of the new slam term? Many men will think it means like ‘any man who supported Bernie Sanders’–who the speaker obviously resents for whatever reason. How many times do you want to have to say, “Oh no, I didn’t mean YOU”??? Why risk insulting your friends (or allies)?
Wait till it shows up in the dictionary.
NotoriousJRT
@PJ:
So, what? How do reach them? It IS too bad. That isn’t meant to blow them off or imply there is no real pain involved. It is meant to engage them with the probability that things can’t just be flipped back to the fifties. Their LOCAL leaders have failed them. What are local leaders doing to reinvent the rust belt and ready their citizens for that economy? Getting “tough” with China ain’t bringing back universal family wage jobs straight out of high school. No matter how hard working you are,
NotoriousJRT
@Mandalay:
Hey, the DNC is the Democratic not Independent-dropping-by-to-use-your-infrastructure to campaign National Committee. Why does it surprise or outrage you that they had more loyalty to a life-long party member than to a marriage of convenience?
dogwood
@PJ:
Hillary Clinton seems to have made a deliberate choice to completely separate her public and private life. All public figures must do this to some degree in order to maintain their equilibrium. But she guards her privacy to a degree I’ve never seen. She refuses to use stories and anecdotes from her decades of broad public experiences to connect policy to specific stories about the people she has met. She has never told an amusing or endearing story about Chelsea or her grandchildren. For me her best moment of the campaign was in the DNC video where she told the story of her mother’s horrific childhood and how it shaped her passion for children. It choked me up, and it should have been part of her stump speech, and should have been worked into a debate. But she refuses. Obama is a master at linking policy to a great story. He tells great stories about his kids. This doesn’t threaten his family’s real privacy. Every politician has baggage. If he/she has a strong emotional connection with voters, they’ll carry the bags away, if she doesn’t , she’ll carry them alone.
Litany
@ruemara: I don’t have a problem with identity politics. I believe wholeheartedly in the Democrat’s social agenda, and I’ve voted, agitated, protested, and lobbied my state legislature in order to implement it. I don’t want the Democrats to abandon that platform, but I do want them to understand that it is NOT in of itself a winning platform. There needs to be genuine economic progressivism to go along with it. For fuck’s sake, that big block of white voters we lost? They were the union vote. I wouldn’t be pushing the Dem’s to expand their tent if I didn’t think it could be stretched in such a way that it still covered the most marginalized in society.
Linnaeus
@NotoriousJRT:
They’ve been working at it for a few decades now (and some have done a better job than others). Thing is, it’s really hard to do.
For one thing, it takes time to get people trained up for the jobs of the future that they’re supposed to have. That training, furthermore, has to be for jobs that are actually there or will be there in a reasonable period of time. You can train all the X-ray technicians you want, but the rain doesn’t follow the plow – if there’s nowhere for them to work, more of them isn’t going to help.
There’s also path dependency effects. You need resources – a lot of them – to shift an economy that’s experienced deindustrialization, offshoring/outsourcing, etc., but the resources are coming from the very economy that’s producing fewer and fewer of them. due to wider forces that local leaders have no real control over.
Which is not to say that mistakes haven’t been made. One thing that local leaders anywhere often try to do is copy what’s working in other communities, which seems sensible, because if it’s working there, why not here? But again, going back to path dependency, there are limits to that. Not every place can be the next Silicon Valley, nor should it. You have to find a way to build on the strengths that you still have, repurpose all of that capital, and do something “new”. That’s a challenge for even the best councilperson, mayor, or governor.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Linnaeus: Yes, but I am from Pennsylvania, those people didn’t even try. I mean the damn town I am from kept on re-electing the same family over and over again for three generations and 40 years all the on the grounds they wouldn’t raise taxes. Even back in the ’60s my dad could see the writing was on the wall for the mills and it wasn’t until the 90s before the local leadership began talk about getting something new in. He left because at the height of the 60s, the so called golden age of that region, the best job he could get with a collage degree was being a delivery driver at his dad’s place.
And oh yes, let’s not forget my union member relatives who vote constantly Republican because of abortion.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Thank you Kay
Suburban Mom
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne: This. And it makes me a tiny bit optimistic that Roe v. Wade will not be rolled back. Based on my canvassing experience It has been a gift to the Republican Party in terms of fund raising and votes by single issue voters, especially religious woman. I expect to see many onerous restrictions, but it is hard to believe the party will give up this particular grift.
sherparick
@Lit3Bolt: Let’s stop the circular firing squad stuff. First, the main point Moore, and Steve M. at No More Mr. Nice Blog were making before the election is that the trade agreements that Clinton was identified with TPP, WTO (China), and NAFTA were unpopular across the working class, White, Black, and Hispanic in the Midwest. In the primaries Hillary received the lower % of the Black vote (although still getting a majority of it) in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio because of those agreements. Frankly, Moore was right and was warning that Clinton was in trouble in these states back in July. Unfortunately, the Democratic campaign did not particularly listen and took them for granted while chasing votes in Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina. In 2012, Obama was able to make the persuasive case that he had rescued the Auto Industry and hundreds of thousands of jobs with GM and Chrysler bailouts in 2009, his one big decision against the advice of Geithner, Rubin, etc. consensus, while the Mittster would have “let the market” do its thing and laid everyone off. That Obama used his political capital in his second term on the TPP was a mistake not just in policy but in politics. Maybe it is a “different” kind of trade agreement (although it is not), but it was terrible optics for these workers who quite rightly believed they were being thrown under the bus for Silicon Valley and Big Pharma, the primary beneficiaries of TPP.
Even with this burden, I still believe, given the extremely narrow margins in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin (1% to 2% of the vote), that Comey’s letter was the critical factor between a narrow victory and a narrow defeat. We should also remind the media and Republicans that the majority of the country voted Not Trump and that Clinton won the plurality of the popular vote. They have no mandate.
Finally, except for Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman, and of course minorities, you see all the Chris Matthews types saying Trump was just BSing and did not mean any of it. No, he is as serious as heart attack and what I expect will be the worst Justice Department in U.S. history (and that includes A. Mitchell Palmer, John Mitchell, Edwin Meese, and Alberto Gonzalez). It will be a fierce persecutor of voting rights groups, minority groups, BLM, environmental groups, and will be targeting leading Democratic politicians, starting with the Clintons and the Obamas, for prosecution.
Applejinx
@Litany:
This speaks for me in pretty much every respect. Litany, have a look at this video where Mark Blyth, vs. Wendy Schiller, deconstructs what happened.
It’s shocking to me and mirrors this discourse. Wendy yells loudly and goes on forever about demographics and marketing-style talk, and at the beginning there’s even this little exchange:
Wendy: I think both of us are a little surprised at the outcome of the election…
Mark, interrupting, shaking head VIOLENTLY: No, no, no…
Like so many Balloon Juice posters, Wendy’s in an epistemic closure bubble so severe that she doesn’t understand her fellow professor, TWO months ago (and also, as early as this May) publically gave Trump 60% odds of winning and has never diverged from that prediction. Mark called this months and months ago, and is far from pleased by it or the side-effects we get, and Mark goes on to predict a series of MORE ‘Brexits’ in upcoming elections around the world (such as the Nazis ruling France through winning their election) and lays it out in simple, mic-drop terms. (I’m still watching this video but paused it to post).
He closes his first segment (apart from interrupting when Wendy outright claims he’s surprised by a thing he has been publically predicting for months) by dropping a little statistic. “In 2015, Wall St. bonuses (not compensation, BONUSES), seven years after they were bailed out with the public purse, totaled 28.4 billion dollars. Total compensation to every single person in this country who earns minimum wage, 14 billion dollars. …I’ll stop there.” *mic fucking dropped*
Nation of racists, my ass. It is not impossible to thoroughly defeat racism and sexism in this country. For God’s sake people pay attention and stop fucking around and insisting white people have to be incredibly racist, especially if, like Wendy Schiller, you’re in an epistemic closure bubble so severe you can put words in the mouth of your co-presenter so egregiously wrong that he’s compelled to frantically deny it on the spot.
That part blew me away. She’s given talks with him before, he has been saying this for months and months, and the subject is exactly ‘what the hell happened to cause the thing Mark gave 60% probability of happening, to happen’ and she STILL literally said ‘I think both of us are a little surprised at the outcome’.
Don’t be like Wendy Schilling. Please don’t. It’s important, and you lose elections with potentially serious consequences when you do epistemic closure so intensely that you can’t hear or remember people’s MAIN GODDAMNED POINTS. Mark’s entire theory for years now has been resoundingly confirmed by recent events. His projections are not all bleak. Thinking he’d be surprised by a Trump victory literally means you have not heard a word he’s ever said, and that is mentally unhealthy: even if you’re debating someone to beat them it’s well to have some understanding of their position and background.
imonlylurking
@Omnes Omnibus: I just got called a Hillbot for the first time, because I pointed out to a BernieBro that this election was won on White Supremacy and there is no way a White Supremacist would vote for a Jewish Soc-ialist. Absolutely no response to my data-backed statement, just name calling. That was fun.
tobie
This has been a frustrating thread to read and I know I’m coming very late to the game. Folks, there is no one factor that entirely explains the rust belt vote–not NAFTA, not racism, not misogyny, not the Wall St bailouts, not voter suppression, not the relentless media assault on the integrity of HRC etc.–though ALL of these factors clearly played a vital role.
If you recall, Obama went to an RV factory in Elkhart, Indiana, which was literally saved by the auto bailout and the workers there still said they wouldn’t support him or Democratic candidates. That tells you something. A lot actually.
The economic collapse in 2008 specifically and globalization more generally revealed to everyone but the super rich just how vulnerable we are. Everything we’ve worked for could vanish overnight.
I agree that Clinton didn’t make this theme the center of her campaign. She WAS damn good when she spoke about how to revive manufacturing in the US but didn’t hit it everytime, and the theme of cultural inclusion alienated white rural America, which as far as I can tell IS deeply racist. I suspect a slogan like “Rebuilding Manufacturing” would have been more effective than “Stronger Together” but that’s just a hunch.
This was a low turnout election. The truly down and out did not come out to vote. The white rust belt voters who did turn out had on the whole recovered from the economic devastation of 2008 but still felt insecure and blamed that insecurity on all sorts of groups: blacks, Latinos, Muslims, the LGBT community, Planned Parenthood, Jewish financiers, etc. As far as they’re concerned, they are the true-blooded Americans who have worked hard and never been given a handout, and everyone else is a free-loader. There is no way Bernie would have appealed to this crowd as a Jew, a liberal, an intellectual, a believer in the welfare state, so please cut it with the shoulda, coulda, woulda. They identified with Trump because they thought he was one of them: blue-collar, a construction guy, an old-fashioned job-creator maligned by the elites. The only candidate who might have been able to counter this is Joe Biden…and even there I have my doubts. The media destroys anyone who actually believes in anything. It’s as if they want a candidate who embodies their cynicism–nothing matters, it’s all hype, all a game, a reality TV show.
That’s why at the end of the day I blame the media above all else for the results of the election and the question for me is how to change that beast before the midterms.
Applejinx
@tobie: Yeah, but you can’t revive manufacturing. (that and it was completely implausible Clinton would do that even if she wanted to, which seemed doubtful). You can’t revive manufacturing in the USA.
Not without establishing a communist regime where people literally weld cars or dig coal mines for the government. That is the only way that can happen. Otherwise you are pitting inefficient human laborers in a global marketplace against robotics and automation in places like Indonesia, Korea, China etc. and they will fail. You cannot revive manufacturing. Period. ‘Stronger Together’ was the best we could do.
tobie
@Applejinx: If that’s the case, and I’m doubtful it is, then don’t friggin tell me this was all about TPP and NAFTA!
I agree that certain kinds of manufacturing jobs are not coming back. You can’t wish-away automation, nor can you wish-away a global labor force that can compete for jobs in the US due to container shipping. Not even tariffs would help. I’ve been saying this all along.
But there are lessons to be learned about how a high-wage country like Germany has been able to maintain it’s manufacturing base. A key thing is the emphasis on the manufacturing of precision instruments that can’t be done in less developed nations. That’s why whenever Clinton spoke about manufacturing, the key word was “advanced manufacturing.” It’s also why she emphasized technical training, apprenticeships, etc.–all things modeled on the German example.
Applejinx
@tobie: The Germans have not. They’ve maintained their GDP, which is not the same thing as ‘maintaining the jobs of the people who do manufacturing work’. Exactly the same problem there, as here.
They’re not immune either. Their technical jobs are going away as automation and robotics get better and more efficient. They can sell all the precision instruments and BMWs they like, and Germany can ‘make money’, but it won’t be paying manufacturing workers.