Ivanka Trump speaks at the 2017 Trafficking in Persons Report Ceremony at the State Department in Washington, DC, June 27, 2017.
Credit: Reuters / Yuri Gripas
Why is it so hard to believe that Trump supporters really do support Trump? The New York Times is always checking in with folksy rural conservatives in search of cracks in the wall. Remember the article just a few weeks ago with the white evangelical woman who put a Beto O’Rourke sticker on her car and drove it to church—and there, in the parking lot, was another car with a sticker for Beto?
For almost three years now, reporters have been begging tired farmers and miners eating their pancakes at Josie’s Diner in Smallville, Nebraska, to say they’ve seen the light. They never do. White evangelical women sneaking away from the Republican Party make for a good story—but they didn’t stop Ted Cruz from getting 81 percent of the white evangelical vote in Texas.
After Trump took the White House, and even after political scientists and pollsters figured out […]
My main take on this article – it’s primary point is a good one – is that getting non-voters to vote is generally an only slightly less uphill task than changing a trump supporters made up mind.
Those who feel voting is pointless also have very strong beliefs of THEIR opinion being correct.
But it’s worth trying that avenue, because changing minds of the ultra right supporters is futile in extreme. I thought pussy grabbing was going to end it for him. Nope. Blinders.
I do have one disagreement with her article. I disagree that a tendency for some liberal condescension had nothing to do with trump’s getting elected. Just as blue collar former democrats had lost faith with the Democratic Party for ignoring how deeply their needs (for jobs disappearing and fears over an eroding way of life) weren’t being given serious attention by Dems in recent decades, so too had much of middle America become to degrees turned off by some of the smugness of political correctness.
Democrats did lose touch with much of middle America. We imagined that our ideas, because they were “good”, would magically become the ideas and values of people who were not inclined to readily see their validity. That is smugness and condescension. You can be nearly completely right, and still be a bit condescending or smug.
That’s something we need to better face.
This is a comment to the article as posted on “The Nation” website. I could not have said it any better.
Victor Sciamarelli says:
November 24, 2018 at 9:33 am
It is misleading to define the boundaries of racism and hate, and then place the blame on nonvoters. If we want to understand the 2016 and 2018 elections we should take a close look at the 2014 midterms. This is not just a democratic problem, in fact, both parties are collapsing.
First, recall that in 2008 Obama received 69 million votes, ten million more than his opponent, and collected 365 electoral votes. He won Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. In contrast, Clinton lost all of these states and collected only 227 electoral votes. What went wrong? Clinton was not blameless, however, eight years of Obama’s betrayals and neoliberal policies had more to do with her loss than anything Trump ever said.
In December 2014, in “Americans Are Sick to Death of Both Parties: Why Our Politics Is in Worse Shape Than We Thought” Thomas Ferguson and Walter Burnham wrote, “The real story is much uglier: 2014 was fundamentally a democratic debacle. It likely heralds a new stage in the disintegration of the American political order.” They state, “The reason is stark: Increasing numbers of average Americans can no longer stomach voting for parties that only pretend to represent their interests.”
The authors note, “The drop off in voting turnout from the presidential election of 2012 to 2014 is the second largest of all time, –24 percentage points. The largest drop off occurred in 1942 when the country was being uprooted to fight a world war. Thus, 2014 is, in fact, a most significant event in the history of US elections.”
2014 followed the previous worst drop off which was 2010. Ferguson and Burnham state, “2010 was yet another vote of no confidence after the administration’s timidity and intransigent Republican opposition combined to dash the soaring hopes that had accompanied President Obama into the White House. That election saw the third greatest drop off in voting turnout in American history and a Republican landslide in the House.”
Liberal democrats have an opinion about what constitutes racism and hate, but they can’t imagine that many people view: grotesque inequality, which grew worse each year of the Obama presidency, or lack of universal healthcare, austerity, working full time and living in poverty, or the preventable foreclosure on millions of homes in order to benefit investors, as severe forms of hate and racism.
Moreover, the continuous efforts to court Wall Street, refusing to penalize financial corruption, vacations in Martha’s Vineyard, 6-figure speaking fees, makes it all worse. In addition, 2014 marks the first time economic issues were equally important to both women and men.
You can’t blame the nonvoters when it is obvious to everyone that both parties are beholden to wealthy donors and corporations, and candidates, once elected, govern in the interests of the 1%.
Ferguson and Burnham continue, “By contrast, 2014 suggests that the Democrats’ ability to retain any mass constituency at all may now be in question.”
We do not need to “convert” anybody, democracy is about persuasion and convincing people that progressive ideas will benefit most of us. Red and Blue State Americans understand a $15 minimum wage is a pay raise, and the cost of education and healthcare is rising while their paycheck is stagnant.
Thus, if we want to win broadly in 2020, stop pretending we are fighting hate and racism when, in fact, hypocritical corporate democratic policies are exacerbating it, and instead, promote progressive ideas that benefit red and blue state Americans.
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Avery good comment by Victor
But the Democrats refuse to acknowledge those realities.