Guest post: The same 60 million-ish white middle-class Americans
Originally a comment by G Felis on Trump’s lobbyists.
Trump was elected by the same 60 million-ish white middle-class Americans who voted for McCain and Romney. (He actually received fewer total votes than either of the preceding candidates.) While some of those Trump voters were surely enthusiastic first-time voters from the deplorable categories (white supremacists and such), they appear to have been balanced by the more traditional Republicans who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Trump (but also refused to support Clinton), leaving the total number of votes for Trump roughly on a par with Romney and McCain. That is to say, most of the 60 million Trump voters were the same individual citizens — not the same demographic categories, but the same people (older, but no wiser) — who turned up the last two times to pull the lever for Republicans. Maybe more of them did it holding their nose this time, or maybe they actually bought into his anti-Muslim religious bigotry (and every other possible form of bigotry) — but they voted for him either way.
But that doesn’t make the anti-establishment narrative of this election false. The people who were genuinely opposed to and disillusioned by the DC establishment are the ones who didn’t show up to vote for Clinton, but did show up to vote for Obama in 2008 and 2012. The votes Clinton DID NOT get but Obama DID get are really what decided this election. (See the chart linked below.) And I honestly do think that is in large part because Clinton is seen as the embodiment of the DC establishment. Yes, it’s also due to 30 years of conservatives smearing her and irresponsible media repeating and reinforcing those smears, and due to plain old-fashioned sexism; there’s no separating out or ignoring those factors, of course. But there is also no denying that Clinton was the establishment candidate in an election where the electorate was rife with anti-establishment sentiment — which is why Democratic Party outsider Bernie Sanders had such a strong showing in the primary against her. I don’t at all think that anti-establishment sentiments drove people to vote AGAINST Clinton and FOR Trump; it just led to voters who voted for Obama not showing up to vote for Clinton. And that’s a damned tragedy, because Clinton isn’t that different a person from Obama in terms of political ideals and platforms, and she is probably the more savvy negotiator and hard-nosed political player of the two, and could have accomplished a great deal of good despite being a fair bit more centrist/moderate than I would prefer.
To add to G. Felis’ point, notice also the large decline in D votes from Obama’s first election to his second. I believe that can be explained very simply: Obama stormed in on a progressive platform (“Change!” “Yes We Can!”), but what he delivered was luke warm by comparison to what was promised.
This is partly the fault of R obstruction of his genuine progressive efforts, and there is always the utter lunacy of FOX hyperbole against him, but note also that there were plenty of policies he either implemented or expanded that were not obstructed and were very much not progressive. Middle east involvement via drone and bombing campaigns, telecommunication surveillance, ‘extraordinary rendition’ (kidnapping), ‘enhanced interrogation’ (torture), massive hostility towards whistleblowers on any of the above… all of these eroded his ‘progressive’ cred, and taught new voters a harsh lesson: politicians lie so don’t bother.
Hillary’s election campaign saw a continuation of this trend, which I think might have been averted if not for the perception that the DNC screwed – or at least, failed to support – Bernie Sanders. And so the decline continued and here we fucking are.
“Trump was elected by the same 60 million-ish white middle-class Americans who voted for McCain and Romney.”
In the Focus section of the November 12, 2016 Toronto Globe and Mail (www.theglobeandmail.com/) Doug Saunders quotes Prof. Carol Anderson for the definitive description of the crisis of white extremism: “You know, if you’ve always been privileged, equality begins to look like oppression”. Saunders concludes that white extremism based on social and psychological roots (not economic) of middle class (‘privileged’) white males and families led to Trump’s success.
It’s salutary to see “white extremism” in print.
I agree that this is one possible factor, maybe even the deciding factor, but what I’d like to see from the DNC or someone is a real in-depth analysis of the factors that ‘lost’ the Electoral College votes. What were the messages that folks in PA, OH, NC, etc. saw/heard that caused the ‘swing votes’ to go one way or the other?
You all know what a giant, freaking hole the left has fallen into. My argument is, that from here on out, every vote counts, every election year counts, ever elected office counts, even local judges and county sheriffs.
Here’s an interesting view: http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/
“You know, if you’ve always been privileged, equality begins to look like oppression”
Even on the other side of the planet that has a solid ring of truth to it.
I’ve heard one non-deplorable reason for supporting Trump. Not non-foolish, mind you–I am fairly certain the folks sincerely citing this as their reason are going to be profoundly disappointed. But I can at least see why, if you believe this to be true, you might at least pass your hand over the (R) space on the touch-screen, despite being a generally decent human being:
They think that Trump is less likely to get us into a ground war in Syria or some other Middle Eastern trouble-spot than Hillary would’ve been. This belief apparently played big with veterans and current enlistees. At its ugliest, of course, this becomes rank isolationism, seeking to end all involvement with any part of the world where funny-speaking people with brown skin live. But a good number of people who don’t seem to want total disengagement think that Hillary would’ve just continued the endless bombing of the last several administrations. (Common phrase they use: “The Bush-Clinton Cabal”. Yes, it’s conspiracy-theory nonsense, but only in the idea that the Bushes and the Clintons were working together actively, as opposed to both being influenced by the same big oil lobbies.)