I’ve been talking with my brother, who’s a Democrat in a deep red state, about our common disaster. One of the topics has been the working class. He sent me this piece on fundamentalism in rural America. Read the whole thing, but the gist of it is that fundamentalist, white America cannot be swayed by reason, by populism or by anything else. I accept that thesis: the White Fundamentalist Working Class (WFWC) is, for the most part, lost to the Democratic party. Nothing we can say to this group will register because the constant diet of bullshit from Fox and the pulpit of their local church drowns out reason about a social safety net and real opportunity. When ~80% of evangelicals vote for Trump, it’s clear that these sheep will vote for Satan if he said he’d punish sluts while quoting a couple of bible verses.
That said, I think we need to separate the White Working Class (WWC) from the WFWC. Obama was elected with a significant number of WWC votes. House districts, and some Senate seats, will swing only if we can swing some of the WWC back to the Democratic column. Erik Loomis is right:
Where the economic anxiety debate legitimately matters is not in long-term Republican counties. It’s in traditionally blue counties in swing states that swung sharply to the right in the last 4 years. Erie County, Pennsylvania went 48-46 for Trump. He won by 2000 votes. In 2012, Obama defeated Romney 57-41 in Erie County, winning by 19,000 votes. Donald Trump won Pennsylvania by about 68,000 votes. It is counties like these–blue-collar union counties with long histories within the Democratic Party, histories that lasted long after LBJ delivered the South to the Republicans in 1964, long after the Reagan era, that voted for Barack Hussein Obama twice. The critical question is why did these people switch their votes at this time. This is where a discussion of economic dislocation and hopelessness plays an important role. It must play an important role. These are voters that Democrats can probably get back without appealing to racism, which it absolutely must never do. That’s the debate we need to be having. Economic issues need to be taken seriously as part of that debate.
Paul Ryan is about to hand us a golden opportunity to talk about economic issues – like how you will die on the street at age 66 of curable cancer after your privatized Medicare vouchers run out. There’s a segment of the WWC that can be swayed if we can package up that issue in a simple, powerful way.
Major Major Major Major
Well, can’t argue with that much. I’m getting the impression that this is what the Dems are going to pick to hammer them on, too.
Mary G
I don’t understand why some people think it’s either appealing to the WWC or championing diversity. We should do both.
satby
We can write it up in crayola in words of one syllable, but as long as the snippets of news that most people hear are slanted to favor the Republican agenda it will be a hard slog. It’s not that they don’t understand the message the Democratic party put out. It’s that it was drowned in a sea of bullshit by the corporate media.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
A mistake, I think, to conflate counties or CDs that switched their votes with individuals who switched their votes. Most Trump switchers switched from staying home
that said, Trump’s consistent if fairly quiet stance on SS and Medicare was a big factor in his primary and GE wins. The MSM didn’t much talk about it because the necessity of “entitlement reform” is as deeply ingrained in their thinking as the idea that the sky is blue, they can’t even process any contrary notions, especially from a Republican. And that said, I think it’s at least 50/50 that Trump will go along with Ryan if the cuts get to his desk.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Right. This post is fine, but uncontroversial to almost everyone.
The bigger question is how we keep those folks with Medicare isn’t in immediate danger.
Davis X. Machina
@Mary G: ‘Should’ isn’t ‘can’. For enough of the WWC for it to matter, diversity per se is the problem.
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is a very very important fact that a lot of people seem to forget, possibly because it’s inconvenient to the point they want to make.
@Mary G:
Same comment as above.
Betty Cracker
Christ Jesus, if I could make it through the rest of my life without ever hearing the words “white,” “working” and “class” in that sequence again, I’d die a happy woman.
debbie
I’m thinking more than a few fundamentalists, having voted for Trump because their pastor/preacher told them they should, will see the error of their ways when Trump either backs off from his promises or fails spectacularly to make America great again.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Was turnout up as a whole in Pennsylvania?
Pogonip
@Baud: According to my cousin who lives there, it was.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: looks like it was about at the same % as 2012 levels, so lower D turnout, higher R turnout.
gogol's wife
@Betty Cracker:
Amen.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: I never thought I’d miss soccer moms.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: So it was more that some Obama voters switched to staying home. If so, that’s more promising.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: by about 200K votes, according to Heavy dot com, a site I’ve never heard of–also, higher turnout in MI, lower in WI. In PA, Stein doubled her vote over 2012, Johnson nearly trebled his. In MI Stein went from about 20K votes to nearly 50K
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: Don’t know why my comment got disappeared. In 2012 in PA, Obama got 2,990,274. In 2016 in PA, Trump got 2,912,941 (maybe still being counted.) So the proposed theory is BS.
PsiFighter37
@Major Major Major Major: As I understand it, the main problem was:
-Clinton won Philly, but by less than Obama, and less voters turned out
-Clinton actually overperformed in the Philly suburbs – which is what the campaign was counting on to win
-But she lost a lot of ground in historically Democratic areas (Erie County, Lackawanna County)
-And then she got absolutely blown out in the ‘T’
It won’t take too much for us to win back PA, I think, but clearly there should have been a lot more attention paid to western and northeastern PA.
debbie
@efgoldman:
Shorter: “It’s not an entitlement. It’s your money.”
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That sounds like a bunch of Obama voters jumped ship to third parties.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: why? He’s saying that Trump’s increased support was from new voters, not obama-to-trump flippers. Your number does nothing to disprove that, and I further suspect that the columnist has access to/cites data backing his analysis.
ETA: many R voters stayed home or went third party as well.
ETAA: @Baud: the new voters not flippers data point is also fully consistent with this.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mary G:
Good luck with that. I cannot describe just how viscerally every Trump voter I know loathes Black Lives Matter. The moment you support BLM, you will lose the support of the white working class.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@debbie:
The hangup here is that fundamentalists don’t think. They believe. They believe that what is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong, and that’s the end of it. Any “facts” or “truths” that don’t fit get tossed aside. If they don’t fit, they can’t be “facts” or “truths” by definition. A lot of these people are lost forever.
Major Major Major Major
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: I know libertarians who loathe the whole “safe spaces/PC nonsense” thing and even they know that when a WWC voter says they’re fed up with political correctness, they mean they hate black people.
JPL
24/7 and the other right wing media, told a story about the others who are lazy, using food stamps, and welfare. The majority on food stamps are among the working poor and white. The democrats did nothing to combat the lie, that the others were cheating the system. As long as the Republicans can get away with lies, they will.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: How did Trump do compared to Romney in PA?
goblue72
@Betty Cracker: So you’d be happy with continually losing elections? Interesting. Must be nice on that high horse up there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: not necessarily new, but irregular or infrequent voters. As I understand, that’s what all the polls missed, resentful white guys who didn’t bother to show up for old man McCain and his silly sidekick or the toffee-nosed Willard, but found that Trump tickled their sweet spots. IIRC that’s how Obama explained FL to David Remnick in that big New Yorker interview/article. (the infrequent voters part, not the resentful white guys part)
Baud
Oddly enough, Dems did well in PA at the state level.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
Sorry, Betty. The minute that phrase became its own acronym, you were fucked.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: about 250,000 more than Romney. Hillary got 100,000 less than obama.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: right, non-2012 voters.
Это курам на смех
Then promptly fall into lockstep behind whichever Elmer Gantry makes the same promises. They believe only in lies.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Thanks.
Felanius Kootea
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: So the only way to appeal to Trump voters is to throw core Democratic constituencies under the bus. Republicans do that way better than Dems so what would make those Trump voters join the Democratic Party over a Republican Party that’s essentially embraced White Nationalism at its core? How do the Democrats top that to get Trump supporters? And how many people would be left in the Democratic Party with no Blacks, Latinos or Asians (since minorities of all stripes would need to be thrown under the bus to get the Trump voters on board)?
Look – millions more people voted for Hillary than for Trump. Maybe there should be a national Democratic effort to get left-leaning people to move from high-priced coastal cities to smaller cities in flyover country. That seems like a more promising strategy than discarding what makes the Democrats Democrats in order to appeal to some bigoted Republicans who are not going to switch parties.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: You and me both. What is the difference between WWC and WC? What makes WWC extra special?
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: There were about 216k more votes in PA in 2016 than 2012. HRC actually got 164k more in 2016 than Romney did in 2012. A lot more went to Johnson and Stein, who each more than doubled their 2012 results, but I’m just not seeing numbers that prove a lot of previous non-voters showing up for Trump.
Major Major Major Major
Jesus, I swear, every other comment section on the internet is at best completely pointless.
frosty
@Baud: Anecdata: The polling place I watched in South PA broke their turnout record at just under 80% of registered voters. At best, 15 to 20 percent of the names that got called out were on my list of registered Democrats.
ETA: And there were a lot of people showing IDs, which is required for first-time or infrequent voters. The election judge and poll workers all knew it wasn’t required for everyone.
JPL
@schrodinger’s cat: Breitbart and Fox told them they were special.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat: They live in states and districts that have disproportionate influence in electoral politics.
Yoda Dog
I have a hard time believing that any meaningful block of shitloser voters can be swayed with these things we keep trying to use on them like “logic” and “reason.” Not that we shouldnt try or that its necessarily even useful to differentiate in future elections, but I gotta imagine we would have a much easier time selling the 45% of Americans that failed to vote than any contingent of shitminions..
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: It’s why I don’t leave the boat.
Juice Box
I’m a primary care doc and I’ve noticed that the WWC men of all ages are often unsure how to address me. They aren’t sure if I’m a nurse, if I should be addressed as “Mrs.” or what. They’re not mean, just confused by my role even though female physicians are really common. They’re not misogynists (most of them), but they haven’t become used to women being at the same level as men in the workplace, nor have they had female bosses, whereas they do work with men of color. I suspect that a man with Hillary’s credentials would have been just a little bit more successful with the WWC.
Baud
Right. And getting the voters who lean our way to be more committed to voting, and to give up the whole protest vote or voting third party to send a message.
schrodinger's cat
@JPL: Not just them, they are the media darlings, how many column and article inches in MSM outlets have been devoted to understand them? A very large number.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: who said a lot? And who said they were all in Pennsylvania?
Here is the source for all this, which says it’s a nationwide stat and points to a YouGov analysis https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-democrats-real-turnout-problem.amp.html?client=safari
I’m on the freaking subway and I’m better at Google than some of y’all ?
tobie
Oh good grief…here we go again with another navel-gazing thread on why we lost the election and how we can appeal to the wwc. If you folks didn’t realize how fucked we were after the unanimous verdict not to convict George Zimmerman and the unanimous verdict not to convict the sovereign citizens who took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, then you haven’t been paying attention. White working class resentment has been brewing over the past few years and reached toxic levels well before the primaries. If the election were truly about economic anxiety, Clinton would have won in a landslide. She talked non-stop about growing the middle class. The problem was that for much of the white working class the election was about defending white privilege. Please can we stop it with these stupid postmortems. They’re not yielding new insight and above all they’re not yielding new plans for action which is what we desperately need right now.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat: That always happens, however. I mentioned soccer moms above, but every election season there is some group that gets the lion’s share of attention from the media.
Baud
@tobie: I think that’s what this post is saying. MM is talking only about recpaturing people who voted D before.
schrodinger's cat
@tobie: True, as someone put it, it was about status anxiety not economic anxiety.
The Ancient Randonneur
So the big lesson is the importance of a simple message, and saying it the same way over and over. If you’re going to change it, change it in a big way, and make sure everyone knows it’s a change. Otherwise keep it static.
It bears repeating.
So the big lesson is the importance of a simple message, and saying it the same way over and over. If you’re going to change it, change it in a big way, and make sure everyone knows it’s a change. Otherwise keep it static.
See what I did there?
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: Yup.
Emma
@tobie: THANK YOU!
Baud
@The Ancient Randonneur: Easier said than done. How do you keep the centrists and the leftists from saying that the repeated message is too far to the left or the right?
MuckJagger
My home town in Maine went 56-44 for Trump this year. Four years ago they went for Obama 63-37. My hometown isn’t that big, but that’s a 500 vote swing in a town where about 2,500 people voted. The smaller town across the bridge even more pronounced Trump numbers: Obama got 65% four years ago, Hillary got 40% this year.
Both my hometown and the town next door have lost 50% of their populations since about 1960 or so. If I had to venture a guess — as much as it pains me to do so — I’d say that the Obama years have been absolutely abysmal to my hometown. So, yeah…you get Trump.
gene108
@JPL:
Young bucks buying T-bone steaks was 40 years ago.
Right-wingers were chipping away at reality decades ago.
But believing blacks are lazy and violent goes back centuries, in this country. It’s not hard to get a bunch of white folks to buy into negative stereotypes about blacks. It’s baked into our culture, at a level most VSP’s do not want to acknowledge.
Chip Daniels
We also need to keep in mind we won the working class.
Working class Latinos, blacks,Asians, gays, and a whole lot of the whites still vote Dem, especially the ones in cities.
Its just that one sliver which contains enough votes to swing important counties.
And, as noted, only a portion of that white sliver is irretrievably lost; most of them really love their Medicare and want to keep it.
Major Major Major Major
@tobie: @Baud: also this post has a call to action pretty clearly at the end.
Kathleen
@schrodinger’s cat: Bernie loves them.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: Who said a lot? I said a lot more went to Johnson and Stein. What I meant was that Johnson and Stein both significantly outperformed their 2012 totals in 2016. Make of that what you will.
I, by contrast, am not on the subway, I am sitting at home in my sweatpants drinking. So I win by default.
Cacti
@tobie:
I’d add male privilege in there too.
Unless there was some qualitative difference between Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton apart from gender that I missed.
NR
@Baud: That would require the Democrats actually delivering for their base instead of their corporate donors. What I’m hearing from them on Medicare is a good start, but it needs to continue.
Baud
@NR: I’m still not interested in engaging with you.
Это курам на смех
OT, but here’s a charming ditty about the year that was. (NSFW lyrics)
The 2016 Song.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: sure, but it seems like you’re contesting the offered fact because it alone wouldn’t have been enough to swing it. Which is true but irrelevant to the fact itself.
OT: here come the clowns, right on schedule after they got their Google alert!
MaryL
@Juice Box:
The more I think about it, the more I suspect a man would be a heck of a lot more that a “little bit more successful.” That swing in Erie tells me that there are places in the country where people otherwise inclined to vote for a Democrat have a visceral negative reaction to a woman in power.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: I like irrelevant facts.
Baud
@Это курам на смех: So excellent.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: That’s good, because there are so few relevant facts.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Just to repeat:
It turns out that there really was a block of untapped white voters out there. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they’re white supremacists who finally feel like there was a candidate interested in their issues.
Yoda Dog
@Baud: Exactly. And this is exactly what I’m seeing in my actual life. I dont know any of these WWC shitgibbon voters who are also not crazy. Maybe they exist, I just cant find em. Meanwhile, I know so many people who naturally lean left, but they’re just clueless as to what’s going on and to the nature of what we’re up against. I ask if they’re worried about shitgibbon and they’re not really. “Cautiously Optimistic” a good friend and known Hillary voter told me. They’re so lukewarm, non-chalant, utterly un/misinformed… While our opponents are relentless and perfectly pitched with their bullshit. This is what has to change, IMO. We have the numbers in theory, but too many good (or at least reasonable) people are sitting on the sidelines, totally fucking clueless.
goblue72
@Felanius Kootea: I keep seeing stupid shit suggestions since the election and it doesn’t get less stupid shit from repeating it.
No Virginia, “get blue voters to move to red states” is not a fucking plan. Its a looney tunes fantasy. But it has the virtue of not requiring Democratic activists to remove their heads from the rear ends.
Coastal “blue” urban areas are, by and large, where the job growth has been concentrated since the Great Recession. Interior, “red” rural and small city areas are where job growth has either been anemic or negative since the Great Recession. People are not going to move from where the jobs are to where the jobs aren’t. If you want to – go right ahead. You won’t have many takers.
This is in part why Democrats are increasingly, geographically isolated. “Blue” voters are more and more concentrated in these urban locations which happen to be the core drivers of economic growth in the 21st century.
Winning elections in the United States is not just about getting the most voters overall. If it was, Democrats would have won the White House and Senate. Its about controlling geographic territory, both as defined by the boundaries of states and the boundaries of House districts. Democrats have a message, platform and strategy aimed at securing the most votes overall. The Party does NOT have a strategy to secure the most territory overall. And thus, the epic losing. The United States is not Europe. We have a BIG geography, with our population scattered over a wide area.
Primary variable in predicting a Clinton vs. Trump voter? – Education level. Clinton chased college educated suburbanites. Her strategy worked. Problem is there aren’t enough college educated swing voters out there.
The majority of Americans do not attend college. A Democratic strategy aimed at talking mainly to the college educated in the language of the college educated is a losing strategy. Especially for a political party that ostensibly sees itself as a “workers” party. Democrats need to stop lecturing the less educated and start talking WITH them.
Davis X. Machina
@PsiFighter37:
Burn a couple crosses, no problem.
Major Major Major Major
@Gin & Tonic: I do too, but I also like precision when disputing them.
@Mnemosyne: yep. The southern strategy’s problem wasn’t demographics, it was that the dog whistles just weren’t loud enough for the rust belt.
ETA: @Yoda Dog: i too know these people.
Pogonip
I lived in eastern Kentucky in the ’70’s. They’re prickly people, always ready to take offense. How you get them on your side when you really do look down on them, I do not know. Maybe an exchange program? Liberal and Deplorable swap lives for a week? Both sides would probably come away with a less stereotypical view of each other.
Just make sure that whoever lives Cole’s life for a week is provided with protective gear. Cole lives dangerously.
schrodinger's cat
@Gin & Tonic: Altered reality is not just RW phenomenon,
Baud
@Yoda Dog: I find that most people, even people who wouldn’t think about voting for anyone except the Dem candidate, don’t follow the minutiae of politics the way we do and so don’t ride the same waves that we do.
Davis X. Machina
@MuckJagger:
Now we know why Portland rents are what they are.
tobie
@Major Major Major Major: Yes, but did we need the preamble? Especially when the conclusion is something we’ve all been saying for days: Democrats need to fight like hell everyday to defend medicare and to make plain as day that voucher care will never, ever be enough to cover insurance premiums for the elderly and that this will hurt everyone except the insurance companies.
We should call voucher care what it is: corporate welfare for the insurance industry.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, my bit of anecdata is that my Trump-voting cousin in WI was spending a lot of time posting articles from her pastor explaining that Trump was a jerk but Hillary was a liar, and jerks can be reformed. So, yeah, the fundies were all in for Trump.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Would Trump have to pardon Petraeus to appoint him as SoS?
/snark
Baud
@Mnemosyne: It’ll be worth it for them. I don’t think Roe survives Trump’s term.
Pogonip
@goblue72: One of the things I did when living in lovely Clumbus Ahia, home of THE Ohio State University, was attend an atheist yard sale (good place to pick up a Bible! ? ) put on by big-name atheist Frank Zindler (now deceased). I had some fascinating conversations with Zindler and friends. Their way of looking at things was so different.
Pogonip
@efgoldman: Well, if Trump’s busy trying to grab every woman in America, maybe he won’t have time to appoint any Supreme Court Justices.
Betty Cracker
@goblue72: Eat a bag of dicks, poseur.
MomSense
@tobie:
Thank you.
Major Major Major Major
@tobie: there are front-pagers and commenters here who say that sans preamble. Now, I understand your concern, this being the 22,799th most-visited website in America and all, but I’m sure we’ll have posts coming soon about lighting up the congressional switchboards with this message, etc.
@Pogonip: given that some of them want some of us dead, I’ll leave the exchange program for the breeders, but it’s not an awful idea honestly.
ETA: @Mnemosyne: the fundies are having their prayers answered though. All Obama’s LGBT orders rescinded, a “first amendment protection” act, 1-3 more anti-Roe, antigay SCOTUS judges…
amk
Instead of fixating on the presidential level elections only, the dems, both the grassroots and the ‘establishment’, could concentrate on state level elections. After all, despite the orangegutan, dems have managed to elect women and diverse senators and governors (NC?) this season.
Baud
@efgoldman: Fine with me. I don’t care for either faction. But I’m pointing out the central problem why it probably won’t work for us like it does for them.
Baud
@amk: Agree.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
From what I’ve seen, they were willing to disregard everything else just to get abortion banned. I think the answer is to make a really big deal of their hypocrisy.
Barbara
@Baud: I will get on my hobby horse. I believe – I always believed – that some people would vote against Clinton based on gender. To put my thesis in this way: Women are presumed to be incompetent such that any negative development is considered to validate that presumption. This is a huge burden for anyone, but it was essentially impossible for someone whose flaws were amplified by 30 years of right wing media. I will never be able to prove I am right. People will not admit that they were swayed by perception that was biased by gender. I did, however, have a colleague who went to rural Pennsylvania to work at polls on election day and he said a number of people told him flat out that they would not vote for a woman. I am a woman. It hurts. But we need to recognize that a lot of disparate, negative stuff came together at the end and gender and Clinton’s specific history were two of those things.
Baud
@debbie: Like I said, I think they’ll finally get their wish. I guess it’ll be interesting to see how politics changes once abortion becomes a legislative issue again.
EBT
@amk: NC has traditionally been a dem state though. 100 years of dem control at the state level then 2010 comes in and the GOP hauls NC down to georga/ SC levels. Enough people got sick of it that they technically threw the bums out, but not enough to keep them from legally stealing the seat anyway.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I’m generally pessimistic, but Ryan does seem emboldened and ready to go full metal Ayn Rand. SS and Medicare are words that seem to penetrate the fog of low-information voters’ minds
ETA: @EBT: has McCrory conceded? or is he still pressing on with his voter-fraud gaslight?
Baud
@Barbara: I don’t doubt it. In an election this close, every factor matters.
EBT
@EBT: I’ll eat this crow
https://mobile.twitter.com/RoyCooperNC/status/803410662789615616
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: I think we might manage to stay unified on this one.
Baud
@EBT: Good. And good on the GOP board for doing the right thing instead of the nakedly partisan thing.
Applejinx
@tobie:
She talked a lot of aspirational crap, which is more than Bernie offered as far as specifics, but still useless in a globalized economy.
I suggest folks watch Mark Blyth on Global Trumpism: he’s prepared to chalk a lot of it (and Brexit) up to racism, but makes a bloody good case for the idea that it’s ‘all of the above’. If anybody is researching this and working out what really happened, it’s this guy. He calls the movement ‘Trumpets’, and he’s not a fan… but he has some sharp words for why the center-left is losing and continuing to lose more and more. Learn, or not: this is what we’re up against.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: On Medicare privatization? Agreed. I thought the advice was more generic.
schrodinger's cat
@Pogonip: I think you have who looks down upon whom, mixed up.
@Major Major Major Major: Xenophobia has been the main plank of HRC’s main opponent since the primaries, I might add.
schrodinger's cat
Words I am tired of hearing
WWC
Economic anxiety
Neoliberal
Feel free to add to the list.
Pogonip
@Major Major Major Major: If the exchange program ever happened, and if you wanted to participate, I’ll work out a way to go to your exchange house with you, so you won’t be afraid.
We may have the premise for the next reality show here.
goblue72
@Betty Cracker: Like I care what suburban Boomer mom in Florida thinks. You’ll pull that “D” lever every single election like your life depended on it. Don’t “need” your vote because its already in the bag. So who cares if a change in messaging or platform focus bothers you. You’re gonna show up on election day voting D regardless; no different than the nutty fundagelicals will crawl over glass to vote R, even if the guy running for team R is a serial harasser on his third wife (which said wife posed for nudie photos), who is a billionaire blowhard as far from being a Christian as Osama bin Laden was.
But do need votes from elsewhere.
EBT
@Baud: Yeah, I guess with the lead growing from 4000 to over 9100 they felt that acting would be between looking bad to legally moot if the lead hit 10 001.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@goblue72: are you Malcolm or Martin today, Dwight? The grassroots community organizer from Massachusetts, or the highly paid IT exec with a fancy office overlooking San Francisco Bay, and gentrifying friend of the homeless?
Major Major Major Major
@schrodinger’s cat: I almost wrote ‘white male breeders’ but I didn’t want anybody to accuse me of identity politics.
@Pogonip: there was some reality show where they did stuff like that. I’ve seen the one where some honky tonk guy moved to the castro for a couple weeks or some length of time haha. He ended up softened a little bit but kind of reverted to form when he got home. I forget what became of the gay guy. Still fabulous one presumes.
burnspbesq
There was a piece in WaPo last week that sliced the data at the county level, and it was shocking. The 500 or so counties that went for Clinton generate almost 70 percent of GDP. Winners vote Democratic and losers vote Republican. How do you change that, when the reality is that there is no way to turn most of those losers into winners?
Major Major Major Major
@goblue72: this is appalling.
As a member of a community used to being ignored at best by both parties, let me offer a hearty fuuuuuuuuuuck you!
Emma
@goblue72: Well. I’m going to answer for her, which takes great cheek, but I’m good for it. The day you throws women issues under the bus, we’re gone. The day you abandon POCs, we’re gone. The day LGBT issues are less important than some comfortably well off white guy with a chip on his shoulder, we’re gone. Don’t piss off the women, dipshit. We hold grudges until they die then have them stuffed and mounted so we can study them at our leisure.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: I’m so old, I remember when the left’s message was that Dems should lead on the issues and not sell out their base just to win elections.
burnspbesq
@goblue72:
And you don’t seem to have a clue where those incremental votes are going to come from.
Neither do I. The difference between you and me is that i don’t mind admitting that I don’t have all the answers, and I’m not too intellectually lazy to rethink my assumptions when they’re proven wrong.
MaryL
@Barbara: Yup yup yup.
Baud
@burnspbesq: This.
amk
@goblue72: nice false equivalence, idiot.
Suzanne
@goblue72:
I am fine with that, up to and until it turns into “start a trade war or tear up a trade deal to protect my job and my lifestyle”, and “my ignorance is as good as your knowledge” and “climate change is a hoax”.
I’m not moving to some shitty red rural state. I live in a shitty red state, albeit in an inner suburb and I spend most of my work and play hours in the urban core, and I already am barely hanging on to my sanity. The real problem is….why the fuck are we so underrepresented in our government?! Why does a Wyomingite’s vote count more than triple that of a Californian? This is complete bullshit. Reapportion the reps in 2020 so California gets 75 EVs and a lot more shitholes get 3.
Major Major Major Major
@Emma:
gay bars in SF still won’t sell Coors and Harvey Milk has been dead a little while.
@burnspbesq: surely not the only difference.
tobie
@Emma: Bravo!
jacy
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yep — I see those words and my brain glazes over. They don’t “mean” anything. They’re cheap code and shortcuts.
Mnemosyne
Yes, a mere 47 percent of whites have college degrees. The only group more likely to have one is Asian-Americans.
But, hey, it makes for a cool story, as long as you don’t ask why the lack of a college degree was only indicative of a Trump voter when that person was white. Non-white non-degree holders voted overwhelmingly for Clinton.
Funny how we keep coming back to the fact that the people who voted for Trump were overwhelmingly white. Not the uneducated of all races, not the working-class of all races. Just the white ones.
Hoodie
@tobie:
True, but it may be worth noting that for WWC voters, it isn’t viewed that way. It’s tribal survival. What I’m afraid of is that chunks of the WWC is becoming tribalized like Sunnis in Iraq and, just like ME demogogues, people like Trump are hastening that process. Going from what I hear from my wife’s WWC cousins in Louisiana, they view themselves as a besieged, declining tribe. Although there is no doubt about it’s accuracy, terms like “white privilege” can play into that mentality because they can reinforce the idea that there is some sort of white tribe that can be clearly defined and, therefore, defended against other tribes. Of course, this is ridiculous in their case because, in most ways, they’re more like the African Americans they live near than people like Donald Trump or country club republicans. In other words, it’s crab bucket politics that arise from a false scarcity. Sure, there’s a lot of derogatory stereotyping of African Americans and Latinos, but I think a lot of that is just gut level tribal fear of being eclipsed by other tribes, which may be why Obama was such a watershed moment. For dems to make serious inroads in the WWC will take a lot of bridge building between working class communities of different races and ethnicities, and I don’t see any leaders really taking that on.
Mai.naem.mobile
I am sick and tired of these threads. There’s a bunch of ways Hilz could have won. It’s not just the WWC. This was not some landslide Orange Douche win. A little more GOTV, misogyny, the coverage Orange Douche got,the Comey thing, the emails,the server,the speeches,the racism/whitelash,v other suppression, megachurches/fundies,Bernie,Johnson/Stein,fake stories,o overconfidence ,presidential history. I only wish the Dems,when Orange Douche was doing really well at one point had run a checks and balance campaign for Senate seat campaigns so maybe we could have hung onto the Senate.
Pogonip
@Major Major Major Major: Not only are snarling jackals ignored by both parties, they burn sage and incense to keep us away. Jackal-Americans are just plumb unpopular.
I have eaten 3 Turtles, which is 2 too many, so I’m going to bed. Could one of you jackals please howl loud enough to rouse me if a Walter or Chez Cole update should appear. Thank you. Goodnight.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Unfortunately, that’s not possible unless we change the number of representatives in the House. The best we can do in the short term is win back enough state legislatures in 2020 to help with gerrymandering.
JPL
My rep has been named for Health and Human Services. Of course, he will be terrible, but that means maybe, we can get a moderate republican. Democrats don’t have a chance in my district. Hopefully, his wife does not run for his seat, because name recognition would be enough for her to get elected.
Mnemosyne
@Applejinx:
My shorthand for that is that white people around the globe are realizing that they’re economically screwed and they don’t have the will to fix it, so they at least want their social dominance back so they’re not left with nothing.
Smiling Mortician
@Juice Box: Nice, clear description of the difference between misogyny and sexism. The men you refer to are not the former, but they grew up soaking in the latter.
Major Major Major Major
@Hoodie: white privilege and patriarchy *is* tribal survival for them. It’s all they have left.
LAC
@Emma: I admire you for talking to this walking bag of salted dicks. Thread after thread, same shit…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
We’ll probably have a chance to see how effective a leader he’ll be, and I’m not convinced he can do it (I’m willing to be convinced) but that’s pretty much Keith Ellison’s platform for DNC chair.
Betty Cracker
@goblue72: Small wonder that you can’t keep other’s demographics straight when you spend so much time cobbling together cosplay personas for yourself. Maybe one day you’ll treat us to the spectacle of your “off the pigs” radical personality battling it out with your champion of the white working stiff. Or not. You’d be a boring, sanctimonious know-it-all even if you impersonated a fire hydrant.
Suzanne
I am not interested in keeping the “white working class” in the coalition at the expense of social justice and not being concerned about racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. Not interested. I would rather make the votes up elsewhere.
The deplorables can have their own party. They can have their shitty states and shitty towns. Let’s take back more EVs. Or hold back that federal money from shitty states. If urban areas make the money, they can decide where it goes.
Mai.naem.mobile
I would also like to see the Dem controlled states to decrease the number polling places in high Republican voter areas. Two people can play this game albeit the GOP can be more efficient. Some of these states and seats have pretty close elections.Suppress the rural vote and you decrease more of the GOP vote, less of the Dem vote in total numbers so that should help with some congressional seats and statewide seats for sure.
Betty Cracker
@Emma: What you said! :)
Suzanne
@Baud: They reallocate the same 435 reps every ten years. We need to fight like hell to get more to big states.
Major Major Major Major
@Suzanne: that’s the other thing. They haven’t been in the coalition since, like, Carter.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was kind of meh on the recounts, but if they’re doing this to Hair Furor….
jacy
@burnspbesq:
Heard a bit of an interesting piece on the radio this afternoon — talking about the thoughts of a WPA type infrastructure program to put these “rust belt” people who are so worried about the loss of industry to work. The econ professor ended by making the point that infrastructure will be built in the cities, which are already on better economic footing, and would require people to relocate from rural areas, which they either can’t or don’t want to do. Add to that that the jobs provided by “infrastructure” are not really low-skill labor jobs anymore. (You don’t have 100 guys with shovels, you have one guy with a lot of training in operating a machine, for instance.) The gist ended up being that the rural America is kind of a wasteland that there’s no easy answer for.
Baud
@Suzanne: Right, but it’s a formula. Like @efgoldman said, the only variable is the population change reflected in the census.
Smiling Mortician
@MuckJagger: My county in western Washington has gone for the D in every presidential election since the 1920s. Without exception. Until this year. I don’t get it. I mean, it’s a largely white county. But that didn’t seem to be a relevant point until this year. Now it seems like the only relevant point.
Mandalay
@Baud:
As always, you are being too kind. While the State Board may hate McCrory with the heat of a thousand suns, the reason they told him to go put a cucumber up his ass was that his argument had no merit:
It looks like McCrory was given piss poor legal advice.
My heart goes out to the poor broken man. I fear he may now retire to the library with a bottle of whisky and a loaded pistol.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I saw a clip of Ellison on CNN (I think), and I was really impressed with his pitch for the job. I don’t know if he’s the right person or not (should be a full time job, IMO), but he does recognize that turnout is the #1 issue, and he made a great case for how his own experience as a Muslim and a black man representing a majority white district shows it’s not necessary to throw nonwhites, non-Christians, etc., under the bus to chase white voters.
Major Major Major Major
@jacy: there’s a super easy answer. Move. Millions do. I did.
Sure, there are some who can’t, but the whiny WWC trump voters we’re talking about pulling down $70k+/yr. aren’t them.
Mnemosyne
@amk:
I will jump back onto my favorite new hobbyhorse: we all need to become precinct captains and get involved in party politics on the local level. Here’s Meteor Blades from 2015 to explain why.
Baud
@Mandalay:
That doesn’t usually stop the GOP. Hence my praise. Yes, I’m grading on a steep curve here.
debbie
@goblue72:
It’s really very stupid (and short sighted) to think you can take any vote for granted.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: I prefer Ellison over Dean but for that one fact. I think if he wants it, he should resign his House seat. It’s a safe D district.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I bet if they tried to take his phone away now, he would rip their throats out.
jacy
@Major Major Major Major:
That was kind of the point of the thing — these people don’t want to move, or can’t because they don’t have the requisite skills or knowledge, or the economic wherewithal because it’s cheaper to live rural than city. So they stagnate and complain that the world left them behind. Then you end up with people with skills and knowledge being concentrated in blue areas, while people without skills and knowledge end up in the emptying red swaths. Unfortunately the EC gives those emptying red swaths nominal control over the blue concentrations. And there’s no easy way to change that, because the economics won’t work.
Major Major Major Major
Don’t progressiver-than-thou types usually tell us that nobody is owed anybody’s vote?
ETA: @jacy: right, but there’s nothing left to do short of cash handouts to them. Which is fine, I’m all in favor of giving people money. But they have to elect folks who want to do it first. I have little sympathy.
Mandalay
@Baud: Gotcha. Well put another way, they saw that McCrory was going down for the third time. They faced the choice of going under with him, or throwing him an anvil.
They chose wisely.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Jeff Zeleny responds
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Excellent.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: I voted twice! In the spring and the fall. They just let you!
Emma
@Mandalay: Wheeeee!
Elmo
@Mnemosyne: I had a conversation back when Trump first looked to be the Repub nominee, with a union guy from NJ who was as horrified by him as I was. I said then that my biggest fear was that there was a reservoir of untapped votes that hadn’t turned out for patrician Romney or admiral’s son McCain, but would respond to Trump.
I allowed myself to be dissuaded from this fear over the summer, but it lingered in the back of my head.
Mary
@Smiling Mortician:
I think we are grossly underestimating the impact of gender. The more I hear about areas that were solidly blue flipping for the first time ever, I have to start wondering what makes this candidate different than every other Democratic candidate in history.
Baud
@Mary: Emails! Historically D, rural, white counties care a lot about IT security.
Major Major Major Major
@Mary: she was running against a white supremacist. I think that’s the biggest part, according to my new “the rust belt was the last untapped reservoir of white resentment” theory.
@Baud: Don’t forget ethics in gaming journalism!
Mnemosyne
@Mary:
Yep. And all the dudebros on the left who absolutely loathed Hillary with very little logical reason only make me more suspicious that misogyny had a whole lot to do with this result.
@Elmo:
I keep saying that this result reminds me of the 2010 midterms, and a similar thing happened then, too. People who did not vote in 2008 showed up to vote against Obama. It was a relatively small number, but it was enough to flip the election.
schrodinger's cat
@jacy: I live in a pretty rural area of a blue state, with working farms. My town voted almost 80% for Hillz. So it can happen.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
Every fucking time one of these threads starts I’m going to quite commenter Drex at LGM:
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Last I saw, 20 percent of Black men voted for Trump. That, my friend, is misogyny in action.
Baud
@Mnemosyne: Wow. That’s insane.
Suzanne
@Mary: Yes. There are a lot of people who are just squicked out by women in leadership, and they find/invent reasons to hate them.
@jacy: They need to move, as their lifestyle is not sustainable. Or they can stay, but I don’t want to spend tax dollars to do make-work shit out in BFE, and so they’ll have to figure something out. I’m sorry. I’m not sympathetic. People move every day.
Not to mention, the same people that called Detroit a dying, crime-ridden hellhole are now wanting me to have sympathy for residents of other dying, crime-ridden hellholes, but it’s different because they’re white? Hell no. They didn’t even give us Motown.
jacy
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh, I have no sympathy. In fact, the opposite. But these are nominally the “WWC” voters people keep saying we should reach out too. I think a) there’s no reaching them because they’re too tribal (racist, xenophobic,misogynist.), and b) there’s nothing we can really do for them. We can’t fix the problems they want fixed. The world has moved on.
Major Major Major Major
@jacy: Yep. Fuck them.
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Are we actually still discussing these people, though? All I see are journalists chasing the newest shiny object, (most) liberals mocking the ‘economic anxiety’ thing, and Dems circling the wagons around medicare. ETA: Even this thread didn’t turn into a pie fight.
@Mnemosyne: I didn’t say white supremacy was the only factor.
jacy
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think it’s a little different in a blue state — there’s more success in rural areas there, because the overall state structure is better. It isn’t rural voters exactly — is rural voters in the deep red. And interesting thing a college professor of mine posted on FB recently showed a regional map that was split into the areas of the country as if they were separate countries where the populations are more homogenous. I’m in “New France” which is the most liberal part of the South. Cold comfort, but it’s nice to know I’m in a small pool of blue. (East Baton Rouge Parish voted for Obama twice and Hillary.)
Suzanne
@jacy: The other thing that gets me here is this: when inflation starts really climbing, or there’s a trade war with Asia….. guess who is the most fucked by the climb in prices? If you answered “the people who shop at Walmart”, you’d be correct.
More of this “keep the parts I like and get rid of the parts I don’t like and it will all be perfect!” thinking. If the GOP had any fortitude or honesty, they would explain why this doesn’t work. You want $99 Blu-Ray players, that isn’t happening without globalization.
James Powell
@MaryL:
I’d say the same for the Upper Ohio Valley. Most of America still has a default setting for white, male, (ostensible) Protestant.
El Caganer
@Suzanne: That 435 number isn’t mandated by the Constitution. We need to expand the size of the House and make it more representative. There are 630 seats in the Bundestag, and Germany has, what, about 1/3 the population of the US?
Baud
@El Caganer: It would also help reduce the influence of money if districts were smaller.
James Powell
@jacy:
If you look at the post-election punditry for every Democratic loss since Nixon in ’68, you will find people arguing that Democrats have abandoned white working class men, that they only care about blacks, women, LGBT, immigrants, non-Euros, etc. This is done so that the aspirations and needs of those American communities continue to be pushed down and to the back. So far, it has worked every single time.
Guaranteed at least two Democratic candidates for president in 2020 announce that capturing the Great White Whale of the Democratic Party is central to their campaign. They will both be ignored by the suburban and rural whites who absolutely hate them because they are just too friendly with all those other people that they absolutely hate.
jacy
@Suzanne:
There’s a) a lack of education; b) lack of exposure to people who are different; c) reliance on authoritarian forces (religion for one) that tells people what to think, so they don’t have the discomfort of questioning things. So there’s this really closed tribe that just keeps reinforcing itself. That’s why I think it’s useless to try and convince them of anything. I say forget the “white working class.” They’re the last holdouts like the Japanese soldiers in their holes after the war. We need to reframe who we’re trying to reach, because they’re not it. We think we need to, because they tipped a close election — but they weren’t the only force. There were so many other things. If we keep talking about them like they’re some kind of magic key, we’re going down a path that leads nowhere.
Suzanne
@El Caganer: Honestly, I think the number of representatives shouldn’t be fixed. Each rep should get, say, 100,000 people plus or minus, and the district should have a contiguous boundary. Some reps have just a staggering number of constitutents, and they can’t really get to know their issues with that many people.
George
@Baud: The Wasserman spreadsheet shows that turnout was up 4.9 percent in Pennsylvania when compared to 2012. Nationwide it was up 4.3 percent overall.
J R in WV
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
They believe the most insane tripe, too. Dolts leading the mentally infirm in most cases!
I once worked with a “saved” computer “programmer” who asked me to help her with her task of documenting the functionality of a complex system by telling her how a specific program operated. I showed her things I knew, and when she asked me a question I couldn’t answer, I said “Let’s look at the code…” and when I opened the code, there was her name as the code author.
I knew a brilliant guy with a crush on her had helped her a lot… but to not even look at it first to see if she was supposed to know how it worked. But that wasn’t the worst. She got a little desktop aquarium, with pretty fish.
Then one day one of the fish died of fin-rot. She got a powder to add to the aquarium for cure them. Then she prayed, and laid hands on them, so gawd could cure them. Because she wore a ton of perfume and makeup, which was on her hands, they all died immediately.
No logical ability, because if it was gawd’s will – well, logic didn’t matter.And if it weren’t, even more so.
Suzanne
@jacy: I agree with you.
The critical issue for me is that more people voted for HRC. The will of the people have been subverted. The fact that the wingnut welfare states, the ones that don’t produce much for the economy, have disproportionate electoral power really doesn’t sit well with me.
debbie
Not even the right thread.
NR
Well I sure am glad we’re all agreed on the problems we have–namely, that the people who didn’t vote for us are all just terrible people. That means we don’t have to think about anything or change anything. Thank god, that’s much easier than trying to figure out where we went wrong and make changes.
And I’m also glad we’re all agreed on the solution–explain to these people smugly and oh-so-patiently that what they really need is more corporate-friendly neoliberal incrementalism, with a heaping helping of calling them racist on top of that. Oh, and I guess now sexist, too. Cool. We’ve got it all figured out. I’m already looking forward to 2018 when we win back Congress and 2020 when we take the White House.
Gosh, that was easy. I wonder why no one figured this stuff out sooner?
glory b
@Baud: Dems have won every statewide election in PA for the last 3 election cycles, except president and senator this time.
All of our state officials are dems, and the majority of all 3 appellate courts are dems also.
Maybe smell a rat? I don’t know.
Villago Delenda Est
White evangelicals = fascists.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Villago Delenda Est
@NR: There must, MUST be a fire you can find to die in, shitweasel.
LAC
@Villago Delenda Est: even then, NR would be running his fucking mouth through the whole thing.
Это курам на смех
@NR: Yes, the people who knowingly, willfully bestowed the nation’s highest honor on its most execrable citizen are indeed terrible people. Fuck ’em, we don’t need them. And fuck you if you think they deserve our respect. There are plenty of decent people left; we just need to get them to turn out and to fight all voter suppression.
NR
@Villago Delenda Est: Wishing death on someone who challenges your worldview? You’d fit right in with the Trumpkins.
NR
@Это курам на смех: If only they awarded electoral votes for smug superiority, eh? The election wouldn’t even have been close then.
Davis X. Machina
@jacy: We’re talking the ungovernable tribal areas…..
Davis X. Machina
@Barbara: Those people loved themselves some Sarah Palin, though….
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: She was the VP candidate.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: Because you’d be President-for-Life?
Omnes Omnibus
To the point of this post: if someone can explain to me how the white working class has different legitimate issues than the rest of the working class, I would appreciate it. I am all for working class solidarity and I am willing to join in as soon as I finish this bottle of Bollinger, but, for the life of me, I don’t see a non-shitty reason why the white working class sees itself as different from the rest of the working class. Maybe NR can enlighten me.
Goblue72
@Emma: The majority of white women voted for Trump. So you protestations fall on deaf ears.
Sorry if losing hurts. It should hurt. Because your candidate sucked.
Elections aren’t about being “better”. They’re about winning. You’d rather take the high & mighty road and lose? Fine. You don’t get a say then.
You know who gets a say? Winners.
Omnes Omnibus
\@Goblue72: Shooting “pigs” is a winning strategy? It is advice you have offered. Which issues are you willing to toss overboard to get your “majority?” Please enlighten us.
ruemara
@Goblue72: Our candidate didn’t “suck”. Elections are about being the better candidate and if these were – you know, fuck it. Fuck Trump voters, especially women and POC. Fuck them, may they get what’s coming to them harder and faster than they wished it on us. And fuck you.
Applejinx
@jacy:
But WHY? How is that a rule? Supposing cities (such as in the area of Silicon Valley) are booming and jacking property values to the sky until the economic footing is largely composed of only the richest people even being able to live there anymore, of people packed voluntarily eight to a room just to be in the damn area. That translates to ‘better economic’ but is it good planning? Fuck no.
This is free market fundamentalist talk, affecting judgement. #notalleconomists. It’s also strategically and militarily unsound. One of the big advantages of the USA is, we’re on shitloads of land. We CAN BE very decentralized. That’s a strength. It would require infrastructure that’s not just directed by the blind and dead hand of the free and unregulated market.
For fuck’s sake, we look at Republicans trying to privatize things like the Post Office and we throw a fit… or do we? Is that still a thing?
And yet we’re willing to swallow crap like this.
No, infrastructure will not be built in the cities forcing people to relocate because economics.
Economics can goddamned well follow what’s good for the country, and that’s extending infrastructure to everywhere we have people, like we’ve done many times in the past. We can be decentralized. There is no good reason not to be, this is the future, remember? We have the internet, even if it’s way poorer than that in third world countries because it’s all privatized now and the third world countries leapfrogged over a bunch of infrastructure?
When we get so that people WILLINGLY move back to small towns because there’s as much opportunity there, and find that the small towns are seeing more hope and prepared to be civilized in order to attract city-refugee settlers, that’s when we will have won this battle. The notion of economically-driven forced migration to miserable conditions in huge cities just to survive is a dystopia and should be treated as such.
Matt
No, the critical question is whether it should be balloons or streamers to decorate for the “WELL YOU VOTED FOR IT SO ENJOY GETTING IT GOOD AND HARD YOU DEPLORABLE FUCKSTICKS” party when they find out their Medicare is getting cut.