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To me Trump and his followers are the true RINOs, at least in two key areas:
1) They like overly intrusive government when it comes to trade policy. Trump himself tweets at companies he thinks need to alter their business plans for chrissake! Look at Harley for example. If that isn’t attempted central planning I don’t know what is!
2) Trump and his followers want to reduce legal immigration thus depriving markets of needed labor capital, which will be sorely needed as our birth rate continues to fall. Construction labor costs are already rising rapidly, and increased immigration could likely help with this. But as the baby boomers age we will need more of all types of workers including home health aides etc. Trump wants to make this situation worse by restricting legal immigration.
Trump and "his followers" want people migrating into this country to do so LEGALLY. Is that really hard to understand?
One thing that has not been fleshed out in this thread is the immense rise in automation and development of leaner manufacturing- cutting not just labor but the number of parts/components to a minimum. And having final assembly in separate areas from the component parts.
Our district has actually benefitted from these trends since we have port access and can compete with other regions now that having a large bank of skilled labor trained across multiple fields is not a prerequisite.
And looking back at the original thread topic- manufacturing did not come into play in this district. Whatever gains Trump made among blue collar/manufacturing & mining workers have been lost to defecting suburban voters. If you look at where Arrington came up short- it was swings in how Mt Pleasant, West Ashley and James Island vote. She also had narrower margins Dorchester and Berkeley than Sanford has. This basically followed the trend of suburban voters abandoning the Republicans. We are such an R heavy state/district that only the one house seat and a couple of statehouse seats came into play. But Rs are going to have to decide if they are willing to run a Sanford or RINO type candidate to keep this district locked down or whether they want to risk it by running someone further right as the district inches to the center.
I wouldn’t say this indicates suburban voters are abandoning Republicans. A candidate like Sanford would have performed much better. Had Cunningham been more of a Bernie Sanders disciple, Charleston County would have voted the other way. This place is overall pretty moderate.
The whole “Dems didn’t win back as many seats as GOP” misses two important points:
1. They actually have won back more (House seats) than the GOP if you count the Entire two years (including both presidential elections). That is, if you Count seats won back from 2008-2010 for GOP vs 2016-2018 for Dems.
2. They’ve had to do this with more unfavorable gerrymandering than the GOP faced since GOP has had more disproportionate state control starting early this decade.
Funny though gerrymandering may end up backfiring as GOP loses the suburbs.
And the trade war is already causing issues in the Midwest particularly with farmers. He’s paying them off, but trust me 2 more years of this, there’s a decent chance things just get worse with his chaotic trade policy. Even if we started trading too much too quickly with China in the early 2000s, the pain of really going back could be deep for certain regions if he can’t figure out a coherent strategy. Just because someone is run over the solution to help them is not necessarily backing up to run over them again. People have adapted to global trade over the decades: pulling back now, if we really do, will cause pain. And it’s not the right solution long-term. That’s why Britain is struggling so much with Brexit. They know deep down it’s bad for them long term but the old people don’t like the changes happening within Britain because they think (but are likely wrong, as nurse shortages grow higher) that they won’t have to endure the downsides. Well, the young people will certainly pay a price if they go through with Brexit.
It sounds like you’re trying to find a silver lining, but the reality is that Obama started off with a super majority, then lost the House, then the Senate, the vast majority of State Houses and Governors mansions, then eventually the presidency to a celebrity who never even ran for public office before. Given all the negativity over Trump and record Democratic funding and voter turnouts, even the midterms ended up pretty underwhelming.
The bright side for Dems is there isn’t much left to lose anymore. It can only get better from here.
Trump and "his followers" want people migrating into this country to do so LEGALLY. Is that really hard to understand?
That’s fine. What I don’t understand is also wanting to LESSEN LEGAL immigration. It is not the right strategy to try to limit free enterprise labor capital especially when our birth rate is declining and it’s made us very wealthy compared to other countries for hundreds did years being more open. Who’s going to take care of all the baby boomers?
It sounds like you’re trying to find a silver lining, but the reality is that Obama started off with a super majority, then lost the House, then the Senate, the vast majority of State Houses and Governors mansions, then eventually the presidency to a celebrity who never even ran for public office before. Given all the negativity over Trump and record Democratic funding and voter turnouts, even the midterms ended up pretty underwhelming.
The bright side for Dems is there isn’t much left to lose anymore. It can only get better from here.
It’s more than a silver lining. Just think about how bad the economy was back in 2010 compared to 2018 after years of Obama growth + it continuing to do well after Obama, at least for now.
That should give any Trump supporter pause that he could lose this bad when the economy is mostly still decent. We haven’t had enough time to see the full potential effects of the tariffs. If we do, watch out. Tariffs also will likely affect specific regions more than others so overall economy might look ok while certain industries in certain areas struggle.
It sounds like you’re trying to find a silver lining, but the reality is that Obama started off with a super majority, then lost the House, then the Senate, the vast majority of State Houses and Governors mansions, then eventually the presidency to a celebrity who never even ran for public office before. Given all the negativity over Trump and record Democratic funding and voter turnouts, even the midterms ended up pretty underwhelming.
The bright side for Dems is there isn’t much left to lose anymore. It can only get better from here.
Obama did not lose to Trump. He served both terms and was not eligible for re-election.
And given Dem gains in the House, Governorships and a host of state races they are on decent footing. I'm not sure how a US House majority and a strong (46-48seat) Senate majority is nothing left to lose. Dems had a weaker Senate minority after the 04 elections. Rs were at 40 seats after the Specter party switch in 2008.
The electorate was all over the map this election. We are either seeing states/regions politically re-aligning or we are seeing a lot of dislike for incumbent parties. Pete McCoy only held onto his James Island seat by 50 votes and one of the Berkeley County seats switch r to D while Arrington still won the county in the US House race.
One thing that really helped Rs/hurt Dems were the number of states that saw Republican gerrymanders following the 2010 elections. In some states Dems could outpace Rs by a significant margin in votes but still come up way short in districts because of how the maps were drawn. This is the exact scenario that occurred in NC. Dems won Judicial seats and had a couple of hundred thousand vote lead in House votes but it remains a 10-3 R delegation. South Carolina is basically a 55-45 state but until last week our Congressional delegation was 6-1 R. With Charleston having so much growth and the Clyburn district being used as a minority/Democratic vote sink hole by the folks in Columbia it will be interesting to see how they redraw this district after the next census. We are not be a D district but might be a competitive district- at least one where Rs have to pick a candidate strategically. They shored it up last go round because Linda Ketner came within a whiff of Henry Brown. We'll see...
It’s more than a silver lining. Just think about how bad the economy was back in 2010 compared to 2018 after years of Obama growth + it continuing to do well after Obama, at least for now.
That should give any Trump supporter pause that he could lose this bad when the economy is mostly still decent. We haven’t had enough time to see the full potential effects of the tariffs. If we do, watch out. Tariffs also will likely affect specific regions more than others so overall economy might look ok while certain industries in certain areas struggle.
As I’ve said before it’s a short term power play to get China to be a better trade partner, not a long term goal.
As the thread has moved on from local to national politics, I think it's best for all of you to also move to the national politics board to discuss those issues.
Closed.
Yac.
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