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This is true on the GOP side too. Trump won a lot of evangelist votes not because they believed him to be a stellar Christian, but because they knew this was not the time to press the Jesus card. Ted Cruz failed to see that at the primaries and he, too, lost.
I think it was more like the death of Justice Scalia and this was the do or die moment. If Secretary Clinton had won the Supreme Court would have been lost and even if they could politically change the mind of the people the activist Justices would force the government to support the killing of children
Clearly you guys won the election. The nation is divided along the lines of the coasts and big cities in them vs. the rest of the country in the middle. So what exactly do people on the coasts and big cities not understand about what's going on in the middle? Please explain without the vitriol if you can and explain exactly what politicians, especially Dem ones, are not listening to.
Michael Moore actually called it. You can google it for yourself.
There you have it fibonacci, you received a lot of great answers from posters here.
If I were to offer my example; not to long ago there was a Daily Show segment where a correspondent gathered a group of Trump supporters together in a room. He proceeded to grill them on some of the stuff Trump said which were to be fair a bit erroneous. The group still wanted Trump. He went over some other key facts which he deemed to be wrong. The group still wanted Trump. Once last try the smug reporter went over some more "racist" comments Trump made and the group was still unswayed. Why? Because the reporter was one of the most smug, arrogant, insufferably annoying looking yuppie hipster hybrids you will ever see in your life. He grilled them and mocked them and used them to prove his narrative that Trump supporters are dumb and racist and whatnot. He didn't understand and couldn't understand the looks they were giving him, the disdain they had for someone who could be that smug.
Liberals don't get that they're the reason they lost. They won't soul search, they'll just blame it on "racism" or whatnot. They treat their policy/economic ideas and social values as though they're religious doctrine and the only way to be saved is to believe them whole cloth or you're a bigot idiot who doesn't know economics and they will chide you and shame you.
Their whole game was the politics of shaming. Shaming you into voting for their core values and policy prescriptions. Middle America was just tired of it and they said no more coastal elites telling us what to think, how to feel and messing with our pocketbooks.
It's that simple.
This^ ............and the previous post. I hate Michael Moore... but he nailed it.
Well I'm in the Rust Belt and I'll tell you why Dems lost. They are concentrating way too much on culture wars, and not enough on economic issues. The Democrats are more concerned with transgenders and demonizing poor white men than actually helping them. Democrats represent the academic class now and not the labor unions or workers in general.
Starting with FDR, the Democrats represented the interests of the "common working man" against the interests of Big Business. Of course, at the time, "common working man" meant common working white man. There was no help for racial minorities or women.
Starting in the 1960s, race and gender became the dominant issues in the Democratic party, rather than labor and economic issues. Arguably this was a good thing at the time, but there was a downside: the emphasis on race and gender equality distracted from the need to maintain economic equality. Also, white men were alienated and some defected to the Republican Party. Nixon's Southern Strategy was put in place to help them defect. The result: no unified political front against the power of Big Business.
Starting in the 1980s, Big Business took over both parties. Lobbying exploded. Tribal issues like race/gender/God/guns/gays/abortion distracted from this fact. Then in the 1990s, free trade deals were enacted to ensure that Big Business would no longer be restrained by national governments that might try to protect the interests of local populations. Unionized factories were relocated to corrupt third world countries with no labor or environmental protections. Illegal immigration was tolerated because it flooded the market with cheap labor, which benefits Big Business at the expense of everyone else.
So now we have the situation we are in today, where Silicon Valley billionaires and aloof Manhattan socialites are the most vocal supporters of the Democratic Party. The Republicans have become the party of anti-government loons, religious wackos, racists, nativists, and bullies of all stripes.
Bill Maher said it best: the US has two political parties, a Center-Right party and a Crazy party.
Ok I'm a rust belter/Midwesterner and in a 'swing state'. Others articulately covered the economics and some of the social angles. I'll add something different.
Under Obama and establishment leadership, I did not appreciate affirmatively furthering fair housing and other schemes and my government picked neighbors. My neighborhood, large sections of a city, was flooded with 'diversity' by the 1,000s very quickly. There were some home invasions including mine. And an armed robbery. The roads are just so much more congested with traffic on a more minor note.
I didn't like all the muslim refugees and immigrants being placed into my city and the muslim costumes, ugly foreign faces, mean looks, and hearing babbling of foreign languages. I didn't like Hispanics roaming in 'gangs' and crowding around me and trying to test my backbone by trying to steal my shopping cart at the supermarket and check out lines.
I lived in my neighborhood for a long time and it's been completely changed demographically fairly quickly. All the life and vibrancy of before is just being sucked out of it.
I've lived in a border state for a good while in the past so it's not like I'm not use to a lot of 'diversity', but the way it is today is different than in say the 1980s and early 1990s.
Obama and Hillary and democrats/liberals for decades have played divisive group politics and scapegoating of white identity and I don't like it. And democrats have been globalist and free traders for a long time as well.
I'm speaking for many people I know as well. Most won't even say they hate the demographics change for good valid reasons nor seem consciously aware of it but they do.
If you want Real Talk, here it is. You can dismiss it, but you'll only be doing yourself a disservice.
The nation is mostly divided in terms of racially divided urban and rural areas, not coasts.
Covering up the problem will prevent you from solving it.
The coasts happen to harbor especially large cities, hence your misinterpretation of the dynamic.
In the end, when everything is boiled down, it is statistically about race because ALL politics for all groups are at their core about the in-group race.
This applies to Blacks, Asians, Latinos, Jews, and Whites. This is because all politics are about cooperation and competition, and this is always accomplished, on any meaningful intergenerational level, along racial lines.
This is not my opinion or my desire that this is the reality of politics, it is only the unalterable reality of politics. People who do not come to grips with this are political children at best, and unwitting political tools of hostile in-groups at worst.
1. White Americans are tired of being told that their specific interests are evil, while the interests of minorities, no matter how advantaged over whites, are not.
The presentation of this dynamic is served as a new morality by the press, minority groups, and institutions, and yet the presentation of this inconsistent double standard clearly illustrates that it has nothing to do with morals but only with amoral political gain of out-groups at the expense of Whites.
Telling us that it is about morality hurts your credibility as a sociopolitical partner. Giving biased or otherwise partially or wholly invented accounts of history, as a retort or excuse, hurts your credibility as a sociopolitical partner.
To wit, the ADL explains that any Whites who are invested in their group interests are Nazis, while they unapologetically defend Jewish interests and those of the ethnostate of Israel who keeps 4 million Palestinians in an open air detention area (an act that the world widely and logically views as racist to an extremist degree). Latinos have LaRaza and other groups, and Blacks also have innumerable press-sanctified interest groups.
No Whites, in the core of the group, are going to willfully give up political space or give extra rights to out-groups. Until you want legal equality and only legal equality across all law, there is absolutely nothing to talk about. This begins with Affirmative Action.
2. White Americans are tired of the press inventing false racial scandal for the aforementioned minority political gain as well as for greater change throughout institutions (in the last administration: policing was the top target).
We are watching every time the press incites riots, for nothing, and inspires the burning of townships and murder. We have not forgotten the Dallas five, nor will we. We have not forgotten Zemir Begic, nor will we. The blood is on the hands of the liberals and their press.
3. White Americans are tired of having our actual positions ignored in the press, in favor of the press "libsplaining" that we are merely hurting economically and are uneducated.
The fact is that we have group cultural and political interests that extend well-beyond economics; and we are educated enough to well-articulate them. Until that is addressed and legitimized in the press, you will be at continued risk of what you just witnessed in this election.
Framing us and dismissing us 'economic man', and thus ignoring culture and group political interests, is a Marxist tactic and we recognize it as such. We reject the Marxist view of the world.
4. We recognize the "white privilege" movement as racially hypocritical and dangerous in the manner that anti-Semitism is dangerous to Jews.
They are both positions that paint and demonize the entire group, and thus they are both dangerous to the group through a parallel mechanism.
The unchallenged promotion of this movement is racially dividing this nation, and rightly so.
We resent being targets on campus, in the workplace, and in the streets. We also resent that the promoters of this ideology are allowed to conduct their lives, and even get paid for its promotion, uncondemned by the MSM and other groups whose business is supposedly rooting out hate (but in reality whose business is only advocating for the political interests of chosen groups).
5. We don't want men to be given permission to be in women's bathrooms. Full stop. For cultural reasons, no further discussion ever will be entertained. This is the hardest of lines, and we will note anyone who pushes against it and from which groups the advocate from. Create a mandate for three bathrooms if you wish to do so.
6. Gay marriage was a huge risk on your part, and it was rammed down our throats. For that action alone, you should have expected the 2016 election result and, frankly, for that action alone you have no credible platform from which to complain about the result. There are deeper legal reasons why this was a bad idea, that aren't spoken about in the press. These reasons present a threat to the institution of marriage in general. We still don't want it, and you will likely see strong opposition to your platforms from here on out because of it. Enjoy it, as it should be worth it for you for what you have given up in political cooperation from us. We will note any twisting of our traditional cultural and moral values as "hate" by the press.
7. We want you to stop appealing to women as if they are their own political interest group. They are not. They are our wives, mother, grandmothers, sisters, daughters, and they are with us.
Their interests are our interests and vice versa. They could not survive as a separate group without us anymore then we could without them. We see the liberal pandering to women as a divide and conquer tactic meant to fracture or families and the group at large. The women at the core of our group do not agree with your condescending characterization of them, and we recognize the tactic and widely resent it as underhanded. If we don't see you as an honest sociopolitical partner that can be trusted to not attempt to politically divide the core of our group, the family, then there is nothing to talk about.
That should get you started. Though, I have a feeling that it wasn't the radical honesty that you were after.
I won't talk about the economic issues because so many others covered the exact issues so perfectly in the posts before mine. But for me, a Southern educated mixed race woman, it's the condescension and smugness liberals have for the people of my region. We're made fun of, we're called rednecks, we're called ignorant, we're called backwards, we're called moochers, we're called crazy, we're called clingers, we're called uneducated even when we're not, we're called racists unless we're not white and then we're Uncle Toms or betraying our race. We're the butt of their jokes and we've had enough. They can take their condescension and smugness and find someone else to vote for them. Even if I agreed with their economic positions, I am sure their attitude would always make it damn near impossible for me to consider voting for a liberal.
I'm read the posts of the people of middle America. And the blame is geared towards dems and the clintons. I am with you on being against the elite 1%. But that included both trump and hilly, I am with you on jobs going overseas, but the have for 30 plus years and many belong to repubs based Cos. Trumps clothing lines / OS. But nobody will even speak it... I agree with you on illegals in the country, I know for a fact,, really I know, many of those hiring are republican . The 1% has depleted all of us, but they are not just dems. Do your research. I cannot see trump and a republican congress, hurt their ineterests. But let time show you, but what we want is the same!
That is very true. For example, carpenters used to earn $25/hour before illegals infiltrated that trade. Now, they earn $12/hour, less than half.
Anyone who doesn't understand the severe damage illegals have done to wages in the construction industry hasn't been paying attention or is completely out of touch.
You can add so many of the trades on there. Plumbers, millwrights, roofers, landscape (the whole industry), framers, and on and on. About the only non-illegals left in the industry, it seems, are those who own the companies and the managers/supervisors.
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