Robert Farley has a good post at LGM about the base of Trump’s support in rural communities. His post is based on this story in Vox. The Vox piece is worth a read in full, but one of the points made there was that very likely Trump supporters are the “locally rich” — people who aren’t rich by big city standards, but they’re doing much better than the average person in their rural commuity. A lot of these folks are local business owners, who, as Farley points out, have some practical reasons to vote Republican:
The other thing I’d say is that the antipathy of local commercial elites to the Democratic Party isn’t entirely manufactured; it’s not simply an artifact of the culture war or of false consciousness or some such. Small business owners are not a natural ally of the Democratic Party, something we should probably keep in mind when we mindlessly fetishize the “local.” Those tomatoes at your favorite restaurant may be local, but it’s very possible that the workers at both the farm and the restaurant are paying worse wages and worse benefits than the Olive Garden halfway down the block, and it’s just as possible that the farmer and the restauranteur donate heavily to a bevy of right wing causes. While plenty of small business owners can probably explain intellectually why certain taxes and regulations are necessary and proper, it’s also the case that taxes and regulatory changes tend to fall heavily on small businesses because while they may be big enough to generate sufficient profit to buy a large house on the edge of town, they’re not so big that they can shrug off taxes or ignore the costs of regulatory compliance. Small businesses hated Obamacare not so much because the owners actually hated the idea of people getting health care (although there’s definitely some ideology) as because it generated pain-in-the-ass paperwork that might require hiring outside administrative assistance. Over the last four years this general sense has been compounded by the disruptions of Covid (aid programs being sufficient to keep people afloat but often forcing uncomfortable changes to business practices) and the tight labor market (always absolutely extremely bad for small business), which have moved this group very decisively into the Trump column.
In my experience growing up in a small town, and still visiting regularly, bitching about regulations might be a stated reason that small business owners justify voting for Trump, but the real reason runs a lot deeper and stronger: they want to hire on the cheap. These business owners might have workers that they’ve employed for decades, who they’ve treated “well” in their minds. To be fair, they may have done things like giving them extended time off for family illness, and have a friendly and honest interest in the employee doing well. But there’s no way they’re going to pay these people anything but the lowest wage they can get away with, and there’s no fucking way they’re going to offer them benefits. (Of course, the government takes care of that for them, since the wages they pay leave their employees eligible for Medicaid.)
If you want to get the average rural small businessman frothing with rage, talk about unions. Workers having any sort of power is complete anathema to them. And, frankly, I can think of more than one case where a long-time employee is just as Trumpy as their boss — they’ve accepted their place in life (under the boss’ thumb) and they see it as a violation of natural order when Democrats hold out hope that they could be paid a better wage and get some benefits. A combination of fear over losing their job, and the scarcity mentality that is deeply ingrained in rural culture, makes it almost impossible for them to imagine anything better than they already have. Add in some good old fashioned Fox News fear-mongering, and you’ve got a set of people who are going to be very difficult to turn into Democratic votes.
There’s no harm in trying to bring some more rural voters to the polls to vote for Democrats — as long as there is some kind of Democratic Party organization in the state, then a relatively small amount of money can fund a decent organizing effort. But as long as they’re drinking from the poisonous Fox News well, it’s going to be a real push to make inroads here.
Steve LaBonne
Historically, this class is the backbone of every fascist movement.
terraformer
Republicans have only ever cared about two things:
RepubAnon
Our goal is to shave the margin of victory in the outlying areas, and crush them in the urban areas.
trollhattan
Promising.
trollhattan
@terraformer:
Needs more Crushing your enemies.
TBone
The ones that are gone are already too far gone and have always been gone. To the dark side, I mean. They’ll simply have to deal with the end of the lazy fair as it happens. (laissez faire)
I mean, they have bootstraps! also, right?
Shalimar
In other news, the Trump campaign has accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets. They really might want to avoid looking too closely at Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
TBone
@trollhattan: 👍
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: Promising, indeed.
Did you see this from the NCAAT fundraising post?
NCAAT is organizing to make sure the NC young pups vote in November, focusing specifically on Asian Americans and BIPOC youth.
How much do you want to bet that those young pups aren’t in their “likely voter” model?
SatanicPanic
After my friends wife got fired by her mom and pop coffee shop employer because she got cancer I was like – I guess I’m sticking to Starbucks.
Chris
Honestly, I think the biggest thing there is just class consciousness. Republicans help them pay their employees less, but even more than that, Republicans show them the respect they’re due as the big fish of their little ponds, and recertify the fact that they are, in fact, the right and proper rulers of said pond and that everybody else is their lesser.
(Kind of like cops; sure, the absurdly good deals their unions have negotiated and that Republican politicians generally back are nice, but what’s much more important is the way Republicans constantly praise them as heroes, salt of the earth, and generally better than other people. While Democrats presume to suggest that maybe they should have people to answer to and not just be a government-subsidized mafia).
It’s why, as multiple commenters on that LGM thread said, small business owners will bitch about all the paperwork and cost involved in employee health care but are furious if you ever suggest that maybe employees should get their health care from the government. The money and convenience are less important than the status that comes from knowing that you’re the master and the peasant below you receives such life-defining things from you.
WaterGirl
@Shalimar: What do you think you have to eat to get the brain working?
WaterGirl
@Chris: Cops: Unions for me, but not for thee.
Chris
Near as I can tell, the biggest problem with getting rural voters to vote Democrat is that the voters who would be most receptive and have the most actual stake in voting for liberal policies aren’t actually voters at all. Namely, the illegal immigrants who, especially in food related sectors (from the people picking the crops to the disposable and temporary bottom-rung employees in a lot of these restaurants or other small businesses), do much of the actual work for those shit wages that small businessmen want to pay.
KrackenJack
@Steve LaBonne:
People who believe themselves as in charge / self-made are ripe for authoritarianism.
Plus, the advantages of generational wealth are extremely hard to erase:
Sci Am: Wealthier Members of Congress Have Family Links to Slavery
MSN: 70% of the land in Britain is still owned by 1% of the population, largely descended from William the Conqueror’s army
That also applies to companies that got rich on Nazi patronage.
TBone
I noticed that those same small businesses that hated the additional paperwork/administrative burden of the ACA didn’t hesitate to shoulder that burden to receive their PPP money.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-covid-relief-ppp-loans-small-business/
Baud
Almost everyone who votes Republican has a practical reason for doing so, Even one’s social status is a practical reason.
Old School
@Shalimar:
Made me look:
SiubhanDuinne
@Shalimar:
Has anybody seen my emotional support bear cub?
bbleh
@Steve LaBonne: “class” being the key word here.
STATUS is SO important to those folks. In small and medium-sized towns, everybody knows pretty much everybody, and being one of the Better People is a lifelong obsession for very, very many of them. Republicans — and authoritarians generally — play to that, and they come up with all sorts of “reasons” to behave as status-seeking assholes, but at the end of the day that’s what they are, often it’s pretty much all they are, and it’s why they behave as they do.
Shalimar
@WaterGirl: Thankfully my brain doesn’t work so I do not have to worry about that question. :)
Old School
Shalimar
@Old School: I feel like every time Vance says “border czar,” Janet from The Good Place should pop up and say “not a border czar.”
MagdaInBlack
@Old School: Dear god, is he seriously this stupid??
There’s also an AI meme out there of trump protecting a kitten and a duck
FFS
Chief Oshkosh
@TBone: I didn’t apply for PPP money, but my understanding is that there was not much to the application process, and at the end of that relatively simple process, money was given to the applicant with very little oversight and few demands for follow-up. So…not sure how that is analogous to ACA employer administrative burden.
Baud
@Old School: Aw man, RIP.
Baud
@MagdaInBlack: White people scare easily.
WaterGirl
@Shalimar: Sorry! The m and n keys aren’t working on my keyboard at the moment, so unless I catch it, autocorrect changes the word.
That was supposed to be:
SatanicPanic
@Old School: RIP. I’m sure he had many roles in better films but I always think of him as Thulsa Doom
WaterGirl
@Old School: Sad. He was a great actor and a special guy.
Redshift
I can’t help wondering what this class thinks of the “deport all immigrants” plan. Do they just assume it won’t actually happen, it that they’ll magically be protected and it will put workers even more under their thumb, out what?
I know most people don’t really vote based on policy, but you’d think it might make a dent.
bbleh
@Old School: @Shalimar: @MagdaInBlack: and this despite the local PD repeatedly denying it. Because, you see, you don’t take what the Felon and his Mini-Me say literally; you take it seriously. So maybe they don’t actually eat pets, but that’s just the Sort Of Thing that Those People DO. And that’s why it’s SO unfair to say Republicans are racist — we’re not racist, we just don’t think people should kidnap and eat pets! What’s wrong with that?!?
Matt McIrvin
“Nobody wants to work any more” is THE standard small-business-owner complaint.
Shalimar
@SatanicPanic: My landlord when I was in law school was Ben Davidson, who was one of Thulsa Doom’s henchmen in Conan, so that is the role I usually think of first for Jones too.
Chris
@Steve LaBonne:
I call them the Thenardier class. Hugo had their number a hundred and fifty years ago.
For a book that’s one of the most iconic social justice manifestos ever written, it’s interesting that its villains aren’t capitalists in the superwealthy sense, or (still common at the time) aristocracy. Instead, the people inflicting most of the suffering in the story? Are a cop and a pair of small-family-business owners.
Yeah, Hugo really had their number. It’s depressing how well that book has aged.
Repatriated
@MagdaInBlack:
We regret to inform you the duck is racist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkshake_Duck
catclub
What ACA burden?
At least 30 employees? that is not a very small business to me.
OTOH the ACA made it possible for small businesses to actually afford to pay for insurance they could not have gotten before.
Redshift
@TBone:
I will point out that the PPP money was going to them (their business) and the ACA benefits were going to other people.
Old School
@bbleh:
But social media has claimed it’s true!
catclub
Did Hugo write Beauty and the Beast? Local gentry are the villains.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Thus all their guns?
Chris
@Shalimar:
Let me guess, the Haitian immigrants shot a dog and a goat and then wrote a book about it? Maybe there’s something to all these “immigrants taking American jobs!” stories after all!
CaseyL
@catclub:
That is true. I worked for a very small law firm for a short time, and they paid my ACA premium.
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
Yes. I believe that was the original purpose of the Second Amendment.
Steve LaBonne
@Chris: Indeed.
SiubhanDuinne
Oh, I am heartbroken. James Earl Jones has died. What a great actor — and, so far as I know, an admirable human being. I adored him as Terence Mann in Field of Dreams, but he had so many great roles over the decades. And that voice!!
R.I.P.
TBone
@Old School: awww crap 😔
Old School
catclub
@WaterGirl: 93 sounds like a pretty good run.
I have been told that very few (Elijah, Mohammed,..?)get out alive.
catclub
@Baud: Well, slave patrols.
Bill Arnold
@RepubAnon:
Yep. In statewide races including for POTUS, it does not matter where a vote comes from.
Matt McIrvin
@Shalimar: Oh, don’t worry, unless your pets are whales or bears you’re OK.
NotMax
@Old School
So old can remember when persistent rumors spread like wildfire that all Chinese restaurants abducted and served meat from cats.
Phylllis
I’ve heard several stories over the years in the small town area where I used to live that a good bit of development, mostly manufacturing, was diverted from the county because the farmers and other small town employers did not want to lose their low wage workforce and had the land ownership and local political clout to make it happen. Of course now, everyone is crying because there’s been no growth for the past thirty plus years and the place is dying on the vine.
Matt McIrvin
@Old School: He’s one of those people you don’t necessarily think of as mortal.
TBone
@Chief Oshkosh: read the requirements to obtain, and then add in the requirements on spending and how to have that loan forgiven – it’s not a walk in the park, easy peasy process. Granted, it was made easier as it went along, but it wasn’t as simple as your comment makes it sound.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I have a friend like the workers you’re talking about. We didn’t grow up in the country, but in suburban Philadelphia. Philadelphia suburbs are interesting. The lines between high-status neighborhoods and low-status neighborhoods are sharp as hell–sometimes crossing one street will take you from a neighborhood of lawyers and college teachers into one filled with people who work paving roads or for greengrocers and shit like that.
Anyway, my friend and I, we’ve known each other since middle school. He came into middle school from the “bad” elementary school, and I came into it from the “good” one. I went to college. He didn’t. To me, college was something I never even thought about. It was no more than the next inevitable step in life after high school. To him, college was something you never thought about either, because it was something that just didn’t happen; high school was the end of school for him and everybody who lived around him.
Well, today, he still lives in that same part of town. I went to college, and then had all kinds of fun adventures, lived in Central America for two years, went to graduate school, and on and on. He works for some local small business, and he swears by the Republicans, and especially Trump. He’s convinced his taxes were lower under Trump and higher now. He’s against regulations, because it’s bad for businesses. He swears that his boss is fair and generous, and his friend, and he treats him right, so if his boss makes out a lot better than he does under Republicans, well, that’s just the way things are, it’s the way things should be, and by God, his boss will always take care of him.
He’s one of those people who will believe to the end of his days that there’s only so much to go around, and that every bit that somebody else gets, well, it’s going to come at his expense. Yet he doesn’t mind when his boss or people like them get more at his expense, I guess because he has faith that they’ll share it with him. I don’t know what we can do about that.
H.E.Wolf
Interestingly, the 2 bloggers at Electoral-Vote.com touched briefly on the question of rural voters, in their Q&A on Sat. Sept. 7.
It was a good reminder for me that rural voters – like any voting demographic – have variations within their category.
Q: “Kamala Harris has hired a “rural vote director.” Having been born and raised in red states, I’m applauding this, and I know (V) certainly is because, well, how many features has he alone written on this very thing over the years? But my question is, what has taken the Democrats so long?”
(V) & (Z) answer: “Barack Obama also did this, which suggests, to us, two possible answers to your question. First, thanks to enthusiasm, Obama and Harris were/are both awash in money. And when you have money to burn, you can afford to spend some of it on rolling the dice. Second, many rural Democrats are Black. Perhaps Black candidates are more sensitive to the need to connect with those voters than non-Black candidates are.”
TBone
@Baud: 👍
Can confirm – one evening a rumpy neighbor texted me because*gasp* someone in a HOODIE walked down our street!
Chris
@bbleh:
IOW, life is played by eternal middle-school rules – the cool kids do what they want, the outcasts suffer what they must, and everybody else is furiously struggling to ensure that they’re, if not part of the first group, at least not part of the second one.
Taking the analogy all the way, if small towns are the middle schools of the real world, big cities are its universities – the population’s just too big to be brought under control by any one clique of cool kids, and it’s diverse enough that you’ll find your people no matter who “your people” happen to be. Heck, even Republicans find their people, even if the only thing they do afterwards is bitch about how much they hate the place that brought them together.
No wonder red-state reactionaries hate universities and big cities.
Matt McIrvin
@H.E.Wolf: If North Carolina and Georgia are in play, rural Black voters are definitely part of the formula.
TBone
@Redshift: riiiiight!
Chris
@WaterGirl:
He’ll always be Admiral Greer to me.
Tony Jay
@SatanicPanic:
It’s the hair. Everything about it said ‘I am a dangerous monster from beyond your comfort zone and I give not a single fuck about you or yours, also I worship Demon Snakes”.
If at any point he’d strapped on a Fender and doused himself in glitter he’d have been a shoo-in for a UK Christmas Number One single.
TBone
James Earl Jones will always be the young guy I saw in Claudine in my mind’s eye. A looker!
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: My university had more Republicans than it had my people. And the Republicans were still perpetually aggrieved at people being un-conservative in their presence.
jefft452
Well said
I will add they tend to be Petty Tyrants
Yeah, not every decision in corporate world is a brilliant move
But despite the Dilbert Pointy Haired Boss trope, if you have front line manager who is either incompetent or gives stupid directions just to prove he can – you can work around them.
And of course, you CAN be fired, but not for arbitrary of capricious reasons. Your manager has to go to his boss, and to HR to terminate an employee. Even a justified firing is looked on as a black mark on your record, frequently trying to fire people would basically kill your career
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
People will look at you like you have three heads if you point this out, but universities used to go pretty well with Republicans – IIRC it wasn’t until Obama that the college-educated vote actually started leaning Democrat. You’d never know that from looking at Republicans, though, who for sixty years before that were endlessly slandering universities as subversive cesspools that made everyone a communist or a homosexual.
More self-aware people would wonder if they hadn’t driven away the college educated vote, but that’s not what they are, so…
TBone
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): That’s where I grew up – you can imagine how out of place I was because of my liberal ways, try as I mightily did to fit in. One of my first boyfriends used to needle my parents while they were treating us to dinner (Mendenhall and other nice spots), about “you bleeding heart liberals…” He was constantly joking around to try to get a rise out of my mom (he liked my parents) and she never rose to the bait, gawds bless her. Just the thought of those jokes and the constancy and confidence he had with that being acceptable makes my skin crawl now, all these years later.
ETA his mom is still alive and she HATES Donvict!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Living near a podunk state capitol in Misery, one got to see where people wanted to work. If they could glom onto a state gubmint job (not easy mainly because despite all the rules about equal hiring, it still came down to “who you knew” in a lot of cases), they would in a nanosecond because of the benefits and protections it afforded.
Class distinctions were obvious and subtle at the same time. Local big-fish business owners never necessarily lorded it over the proverbial serfs but everybody who was in an employee situation like that knew their place.
narom
@catclub: Mohammad made a trip one night to Heaven (as part of the Night Journey), but came back, lived out his life, and died.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: In Virginia in the 1980s, William and Mary had a statewide reputation as “the gay school”. I think I knew most of the out gay people there–they weren’t a gigantic presence, and the place was awash in homophobia of the grossest kind. But just the fact that there were some who were visible was considered this freakish thing.
Jackie
@Old School: 😢 His beautiful baritone voice will be missed. I’ll be rewatching Field of Dreams and The Lion King again…
R.I.P. James Earl Jones
scav
@Shalimar: I’m convinced 67.53% of that august body has been replaced by a random issue selector drawing from the archives of the Weekly World News. The other 32.47% is a random insult generator. No thought whatsoever is invested into the cheap tat sold to the flock so I think the numbers hold out.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Mark Hamill:
https://twitter.com/MarkHamill/status/1833246565168803985
Perfect.
Chris
@jefft452:
People often pointed out, especially during the pandemic, that middle managers (rather than the people at the very top) were often the biggest assholes in a company, because they’ve got power, but not very much of it, and it only makes them that much more desperate to assert it over the small number of people they do control.
… Small businessmen are basically the same people, but freed of any and all the institutional constraints that you point out, and therefore able to run completely amok.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
It doesn’t take much for conservatives to decide that something’s been irreparably tainted.
UncleEbeneezer
@Matt McIrvin: That and the notion that they’d all be Billionaires if it weren’t for taxes and regulations.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@catclub:
Good point. There are similar carve-outs in other programs. (Minimum wage is $500k or more business, but some businesses don’t make that much.)
rikyrah
RIP James Earl Jones 😞
Sassington, M.C. (@MissSassbox) posted at 4:13 PM on Mon, Sep 09, 2024:
Fun Fact about the one and only James Earl Jones:
James was the first celebrity guest to appear on Sesame Street in 1978.
His character was a movie star in search of the perfect egg cream. He recited the most carefully clear and distinctly spoken alphabet the world has ever heard. Ironically, he believed that Muppets may terrify children and the show may not last long. 😂 Luckily, we all know how things went.
A vocal treasure and the voice of many generations who will never forget his signature rumble.
https://t.co/ePBdTHB1mb
(https://x.com/MissSassbox/status/1833252317287878708?t=r6FRQy8DdumIZEomsCnWIg&s=03)
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: Interesting. One of my classmates from high school went there during that time period. Looking back, I would not be surprised if she had turned out to be gay.
Raven
@rikyrah: Aw damn!
NotMax
@TBone
Lucky enough to have seen him on Broadway in the revival of You Can’t Take It with You several years ago.
Shalimar
@Matt McIrvin: do not google “Robert Kennedy Jr dog” if it is near dinner time.
JaneE
The largest small businesses here are owned by a few (often interlocked) families. Their employees are family and friends first, and then outsiders. Some of those employees have been there for decades that I know of, so they must pay a living wage. Even the smaller small businesses are family operations, where the kids may even be free help. The state and DWP are the big outsider businesses. You can be law enforcement (CHP or local), CalTrans and do road work, or Edison/DWP and do water and power. If you lose your job, there are not a lot of options so rocking the boat is not a good idea. The places that always have Now Hiring signs out are not good options.
Conservative area, was always Republican. Went for Biden in 2020, because the old fashioned Republicans really didn’t like him. Don’t know what will happen now that a Black/Indian woman is running. There is some prejudice against Native Americans here too, and I am not sure everyone knows that Indian means Asian Indian. We will see.
Ohio Mom
I’m reminded of “Deer Hunting with Jesus” by Joe Bageant, which I read a long time ago — my memory is vague, though I remember him dissecting the class levels small town Virginia (where he grew up), with the car dealers and bankers on top.
He presented them as the epitome of big fish in little ponds, people who thought they were the masters of the universe, not essentially nobodies from towns no one ever heard of.
As I remember it, his conclusion was that the people of every station in life whom he left behind were ignorant beyond belief. All in all, his observations match up with what we are discussing here. I enjoyed his writing, he was quite the character.
I sometimes wonder why I bother to read anything, it’s in one eye and out the other, I can hardly remember anything.
Raven
@rikyrah: This is a great scene from “Matewan” , he uses the N word so be forewarned.
https://youtu.be/if43uCcOpCY?feature=shared
K-Mo
@Chris: What Tom Nichols calls the lumpen bourgeoisie
trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Awww.
RevRick
@Baud: Yes. The GOP basically hands out participation trophies of unearned superiority to a wide swath of the white population.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Also, Arizona has a lot of Hispanic and Native people living in rural counties.
I wonder about Republican David Valadeo’s California district. It lies in the southern Central Valley. I think there are plenty of Hispanic people living there; it’s an agricultural area and some of them work the jobs the Okies used to.
Valadeo did not win by much last cycle. I think Democrat Rudy Salas is fighting a rematch this year.
RevRick
@Ohio Mom: Car dealership owners are the largest group of people earning over $1 million per year.
Chris
One more thing I’ll say on the broader topic: part of the reason the small-town elite dynamic has become so toxic in this day and age is that their environment is so self-selecting.
The elites have largely driven out anybody who might give them any trouble, meaning not only the smart kids who aren’t part of their circle (gone to college) or the culturally despised (gays, nonwhite citizens, women who don’t know their place), but any employees who might have given them any trouble and even any employees who might once have had a middle-class lifestyle (replaced by automation or illegal immigration).
What’s left is either their loyal hangers-on, or the illegal immigrants who have no voice in anything. The whole world of these elites is people who agree with them and people who can’t speak up.
I’m not saying small-town America was a joy to live in in 1900 when it was still the default lifestyle. But especially in the North and West, it wasn’t the uniformly reactionary wasteland that it is now. As much as the small-town elites like to bitch about the emptying out of their communities, they’ve done everything they can to help it along, and it’s worked out very well for them.
Jackie
RFK Jr will remain on the Michigan ballot 😁
Hopefully the NC Supreme Court will decide ASAP. Their VBM ballots were supposed to be mailed out last Fri.😡
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Ohio Mom:
A must-read by any liberal who has no clue about red, rurl ‘Murka.
TBone
@TBone:
https://youtu.be/2Fqu3tfxwJU
K-Mo
MrMix- I feel like you had the opposite conclusion of the article. When I read it I came away with, yeah those local big shots are not gettable, but the workers *are*.
Baud
@Ohio Mom:
That’s how I feel here.
Chief Oshkosh
@TBone: Wevs.
Like I said, I didn’t apply for PPP, but sounds like it was easier and had much more direct benefit to the applicant. I still don’t see how that is comparable to a small business owner, or any business owner, fully participating in the ACA process. I’m not saying it’s right, wrong, or indifferent. I am saying that the PPP process appeared to directly benefit the applicant. The ACA process for a business owner as applicant did not.
No matter how much the dice cup gets shaken, the final roll is the same. It’s human nature. Money in my pocket? Sure, I’ll fill out your forms. Helping my employees? Sure, I’ll do that…real soon now.
I just don’t see PPP overhead as a useful analogy to ACA overhead.
WaterGirl
@Old School:
Ha! He has definitely displayed A SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT to EXTRAORDINARY RELIEF.
Glad the court didn’t agree with him! :-)
Melancholy Jaques
@Baud:
Our very own Buddy Garrity.
Mike in Pasadena
@terraformer: When dumpy rounds up millions of people for deporting, will the rural bidnessman still have his ready pool of cheap labor.
Miki
I worked with those people for @20 years – but in the city. What they have in common with rural workers is a lack of post-secondary education and a giant chip on their shoulders. It’s that fucking chip that gets in the way of learning anything new about either the rest of the world around them or even themselves.
It’s a heavy left to get through/around that stuff.
TBone
@NotMax: 🤩😍 that’s very lucky!
Redshift
@bbleh: “There have been reports” = “it was on Fox News.”
And yes, I do believe Vance, despite his education, is stupid enough to believe things on Fox are true (or like Trump, has the con man’s ability to sincerely believe his own BS while he’s telling it.)
I think a big part of how the GOP got to its current dystopian it’s that the people who knew conservative media is a con for the rubes moved into wingnut welfare or retired, and were replaced by people who grew up in it and believe it.
narya
@Raven: There’s a lovely piece about JEJ in John Sayles’ book about making Matewan. If I still had my copy of the book I’d find/quote it.
Chris
@Redshift:
I don’t think you can run that kind of con long term without ending up believing in it, at least to some extent.
Raven
@narya: Ah, I’ll look it up. Thx.
Thinking In Pictures: The Making Of The Movie Matewan
Citizen Alan
@Chris: And I don’t think it’s even because of anything Obama did! I think it’s the reaction to Obama that repulsed college educated people to the point that they developed a negative view of the GOP, a situation only exacerbated by 4 years of Shitgibbon crapping all over the country.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: There was a sociology professor there who was infamous for being super-racist and homophobic in a Harvey Mansfield-like way–it was kind of under the radar until an exposé in the school paper written by a student named… James Comey. Yes, that James Comey.
(but when I was there, he was still teaching a required course.)
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
He made up for that good deed.
Ruckus
@Mike in Pasadena:
No.
A lot of this country, as many/most may know depends on cheap labor to run their businesses and counties. I have owned 2 small businesses and it is a tough road but one thing I know for sure is that if you want your company to run well and make money, in most instances you need workers who actually want to work for you. And if you are living in luxury and your employees are barely or not scrapping by you are doing it WRONG. Now my businesses were skilled labor businesses but in my experience ALL businesses need workers that are successful so that the business is successful. And one doesn’t get that by fucking over their employees. Now in some areas you may find enough people that are barely or not getting by so they will do whatever to be able to eat. But if you are screwing your employees, you need to fail and fail badly. There are always people that are going to get rich, and people that are going to be somewhat hungry in any large gathering of human beings. Getting rich off their health and well being is NOT the way to get there.
Ruckus
@Redshift:
Bingo!!!
Raven
@narya: ordered!
Bill Arnold
@Old School:
The Raven read by James Earl Jones (YouTube, 7:56)
Kayla Rudbek
@@mistermix.bsky.social: In my field of law, a small business is under 50 employees, and a micro entity is 4 employees or fewer. It mostly makes a difference in how much money they pay to file patent applications. Employment law is an entirely different matter.
Jackie
Mike Johnson and TCFG think a GQP government shutdown just before the Elections is a GREAT IDEA:
This is one shutdown threat I hope causes several MAGA House members to lose their seat this Nov 5.
206inKY
@terraformer: This is true of the small-town rich described in the OP, but not the bulk of the current GOP base. They do not give a shit about low taxes or cheap labor; their venom toward migrants shows that white ethnonationalism is much higher on the list. Their obsession with controlling sexuality and women’s bodies always had a religious edge, but under creeps like Vance and Tucker Carlson it has become eugenics 2.0 trying to manufacture as many white babies as possible while slamming the door on racial others.
UncleEbeneezer
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): I’m mostly familiar with the Montgomery County suburbs. And what you say rings true. Places like Blue Bell and King of Prussia right there next to Norristown and Conshohocken. It was always rather jarring how different things looked from one town to another. Ambler PA, where I lived for awhile, had a literal set of train tracks that if you turned once you crossed them, you would go by a bunch of really run-down row homes. I’m guessing they’ve been torn down and gentrified now, but back in the late 90’s the class divisions were very stark.
Bill Arnold
Also, the Simpsons adaptation that uses the James Earl Jone’s reading
The Simpsons – Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven (YouTube, 4.40)
JaySinWA
While he may tut-tut this in public, if he really believed this he would be cheering them on. Waterfowl foul water. Without effective predators ducks and geese are problems in municipalities.
https://www.neefusa.org/story/water/waterfowl-and-water-quality
Of course this is BS, to foul politics, not protect pets and wildlife
ETA around here duck soup is an algae bloom. Although Geese are the major culprit.
NotMax
@TBone
Unintentional (in the original) laugh line from that production.
RaflW
I marched in the annual Corn Parade in a small Wisconsin town on Sunday (Darien, WI). The Trumpers booing us because we were the Walworth Co. Democrats looked to be probably 50% on-the-edge-of-broke working class, and yeah the other half maybe plumbers, auto repair shop owners, etc.
I get that regulatory shit hits them fairly hard. But because some asshole dumped motor oil full of toxic sludge years ago, every auto shop now has to be more careful and thorough. These people hunt and fish and often enjoy nature (mediated by things like 200hp bass boats or big ATVs), but still these PITA laws benefit them, too.
I know folks are more complicated, but it’s all too easy for me to just see resentful people who’ve found an asshole-in-chief so they feel free to boo and gesture rudely at a float they don’t like in a parade.
(Other people clapped, smiled, thumbs-uped, etc so it wasn’t pointless.)
Baud
@RaflW:
Good for you for marching.
Bupalos
This is right but it feels like politically we’re missing the point- that the truly ungettable rural economic elite that will always vote red for capitalist ideological reasons is not that numerically significant. Their electoral significance is in setting the culture through local advertising, charity, etc. The opportunity is with the workers and hoi polloi, and the path would be to try and supplant and dilute some of the local elite’s cultural investment.
brantl
@SatanicPanic: SuckBucks is just as shitty.
trnc
@Old School:
JV, your boss literally said he fell in love with a North Korean guy who eats dogs.
brantl
@SiubhanDuinne: No shit!
A Ghost to Most
No matter if they are greedo Republicans or christian supremacist Republicans, they’re still domestic enemies.
trnc
@TBone:
Did you ask if he was armed with a bag of Skittles?
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Old School: I went to college in Springfield OH. It was down on it’s luck back then and I think things have continued to go downhill since or at least according to Wikipedia it has continued to lose population which is generally not a good sign. It was great for college because of campus housing was dirt cheap which suited me. Never really liked going to bars packed with college kids but there were always off campus parties to go to.
It has the bones of a prosperous little city – still has some very fine looking Victorian homes. I feel bad for those cities that weren’t quite big enough to thrive in our urbanizing age.
Lyrebird
@Old School: OH WOW.
Rest
in
POWER!
…sniff… so the last pitch he made in his amazing voice was for Kamala.
Steve LaBonnego
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: You’re a Wittenberg grad? I’ve been sorry to see the stories about the financial crisis there. The town will be in even worse shape if it goes under.
Jeffro
I believe it.
The “nouveau riche”?
The “local bullies”?
The “I made a pile…why don’t I feel better about myself?”
The “why am I still stuck here in X?”
Nothing worse than folks with a ton of resentment and insecurity, and new-found wealth to spend on trying to ease those feelings.
Jeffro
fixed! =)
Jeffro
You’d almost *have* to believe in it, or else whatever scraps of conscience and/or cognitive dissonance you might have would start to kick in.
Jeffro
FYI, That Paper dropped a surprise today: as the debate looms, trump’s age and incoherence present a problem for him and his campaign
where was this shit back in Feb, Mar, Apr, May, June, July, Aug?
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
One of the first movies I ever saw as a kid was James Earl Jones’s searing portrayal of Jack Johnson in “The Great White Hope”
Also stood out as Josh Gibson in “Bingo Long” and as a detective in the comedy “Let’s Do It Again”
trollhattan
Why do these Nazis keep showing up on my Twitters? Area Woman edition.
“I’m-a start a race war and sit around until we win” is Charlie-Manson level shit and I’m pretty confident he didn’t invent it, either. Get better material, jerks.
Rachel Bakes
@Chris: my daughter spent the last 18 months obsessing about Les Miserables and Hugo’s writing. We’ve had countless dinner and car ride lectures from her and she used it in her AP Lit exam as well. She agrees
Geminid
@Jeffro: Trump’s incoherence at that New York Economics Club speech was compounded by his mournful monotone. It was like Trump was giving a eulogy for someone he didn’t really know. Maybe he was.
Rachel Bakes
@Chris: absokutely Admiral Greer
stinger
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: Great White Hope, yes — also has Jane Alexander. Powerful film.
Some of the best 10 minutes of TV you’ll ever see is the opening scene of Gabriel’s Fire. It’s basically just JEJ laughing.
His character, Gabriel, has just been released from prison after 20 years (wrongfully convicted, natch). He walks up to a hot dog stand. The owner asks him what he wants on it. After some communication difficulties, it is finally borne in on Gabriel that he can have whatever he wants on it. Whatever. He. Wants. The understanding, along with returning memories of his pre-prison days, sinks in and he begins to laugh. And giggles and laughs and chuckles and laughs and roars with laughter till the tears come.
Ruckus
@MagdaInBlack:
Yes, yes he is.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift:
Well, historically, that’s kind of what’s happened. Right-wingers announce a crackdown on undocumented immigrants, there are some big showy raids (which somehow never go after the employers), then when they lose interest, the bosses can keep using the threat of those raids to frighten the remaining ones who work for them.
But it’s a delicate balance. Every so often you get some people in power who are enough of xenophobic true-believers that they actually do some damage to the cheap workforce. And then there’s some dissatisfaction. But they never keep connecting the dots for too long.
Harrison Wesley
@TBone: Fetterman was campaigning in your neighborhood?
MagdaInBlack
@Ruckus: FFS 🤦
trollhattan
They’re waitin’ for you in Bellevue, with their oxygen masks.
Thots n’ predators.
sxjames
@Old School: These reports of new immigrants eating pets is just a lazy racist trope. I remember hearing the same thing about newly arrived Vietnamese and Laotian immigrants (in the mid ’70s), Before that it was said about Irish immigrants.
Of course, we are talking about JD Vance, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
Anyway
@Geminid: but then he received applause for that rambling incoherent “statement” on childcare—like he said something profound. I don’t know what goes on in RWers brains …
Jackie
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: Bingo Long! Love, love, LOVE that movie! And, yes, JEJ was great 👍🏻
Another movie I need to rewatch. I actually have the DVD.
EarthWindFire
@CaseyL: That’s what my dad did with his very small law firm when the ACA came. He’d been offering insurance before the ACA. But Obamacare saved him money and, even more importantly from a billable hours’ perspective, time.
Ruckus
@Redshift:
I think this is a very reasonable take.
Anyway
@Matt McIrvin: this talk of rounding up immigrants makes me so mad and nervous — one of my good friends is from West Africa — he’s a legal, naturalized citizen but it scares me that he and his nephews and nieces are going to be targets. Just one of many non-native born acquaintances in my circle . Most of the time I think this is an exaggeration and won’t happen but just the thought that it’s even discussed pisses me off.
Gwangung
@Anyway: I NEVER think it’s an exaggeration. I take them at their word. Some of us have to. From experience.
mrmoshpotato
@Anyway:
Not meaning to add to your anxiety. but remember the Muslim ban?
We beat these bastards at the polls (and Electoral College) and beat them enormously.
BethanyAnne
This fucking guy is spreading lies about people eating pets? And thinks we *shouldn’t* call him weird?
Jackie
@BethanyAnne: I wonder if it’s Projection. JV’s weird enough…
OGLiberal
I won’t make a lot a long comment about small business owners but a good portion of them cheat and feel justified in cheating. It’s a big reason why they like Trump…because he cheats. They are either proud of it or aggrieved they get called out on it. Of course, most of them were already inclined to be this way because they didn’t want to give things to lazy brown people…whom they hire because they are, generally, cheaper. Also, they rarely blame the big corps who hire that cheap labor away from them. Trump will never really stop “illegal” immigration – the folks who fund him depend on those folks to be their underpaid, uninsured workers. But he fools the rally racist folks who vote for him by saying he will.
OK, that was kind of long.
brantl
@Chief Oshkosh: The point is that they were bitching about the idea long before they had any idea what the paperwork would actually be (for health care) but they were ready for that PPP money, as soon as they could apply (“For me, but not for thee!”).
catclub
@narom: Thanks, I was not sure about that.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
He is aging out. It happens to most of us if we live long enough. But his is earned aging out. Meaning he is going deeper into insanity because of who he thinks he is and the fact that he actually got into power, which he screwed up like every other single thing he’s ever tried to do. He is an absolutely useless fuck born into money, who has failed every thing he’s ever tried to do. His siblings did OK, he is the epitome of fuck up. Well educated but learned crap. And proves it daily.
Cheryl from Maryland
@SatanicPanic: Two or three years ago, it was just another snake cult …
Rugosa
@TBone: Upvote eleventy times. It’s all about greed with small business owners. My own experience has been with small time landlords – the guys who own a few properties. Their mindset is that every cent they take in is supposed to be profit – maintainence isn’t a necessary cost of doing business, it’s an unfair bite out of their profits.