Yeah, I can’t blame her for highlighting how awful he was. But given her lack of charisma and the dynastic suspicions you mention, at a certain point she had to give Dems (especially younger ones) very compelling reasons to vote for her. A continuation of Obama’s policies, while obviously better than the alternative we now have, was not enough.
That could be the reason, since the big (and inter-related) electoral divides have been old vs young, uneducated vs educated, and rural vs urban. Even so, I find it hard to wrap my head around any Democrat voting for the Apricot Il Duce. It’s a whole new level of spiteful self-destruction.
I don’t find it all that weird. Trump seemed to care about those who voters apparently won him the election, and Clinton only pretended to, when she seemed willing at all to even acknowledge them. For many voters, that Trump seemed (emphasis on seemed) like a lot of men they know and love, such as racist uncles or sexist grandaddies, made his racism and misogyny easy to overlook. Especially when compared to what seemed even worse, the careless elitism represented by Clinton, who clearly wasn’t going to get the elitist establishment to suddenly start caring about them, effectively and otherwise.
This is America, not Denmark. In this country, tens of millions of people choose to watch FoxNews not simply because Americans are credulous idiots or at the behest of some right-wing corporate cabal, but because average Americans respect viciousness. They are attracted to viciousness for a lot of reasons. In part, it reminds them of their bosses, whom they secretly adore. Americans hate themselves for the way they behave in public, always smiling and nodding their heads with accompanying really?s and uh-huhs to show that they’re listening to the other person, never having the guts to say what they really feel. So they vicariously scream and bully others into submission through right-wing surrogate-brutes. Spending time watching Sean Hannity is enough for your average American white male to feel less cowardly than he really is.
There was a well thought out, honestly presented single-payer health plan on the ballot in Colorado last month. It went down in a pretty decisive defeat.
Now, if it had been marketed as “Free Health Care for Everyone, Paid for by Someone who is Not You”, it could very likely have won.
This is a terrific insight, and spot on. I just spent a few days at the office of one of my clients down in Tennessee, and everyone I talked to was a Trump voter. When the topic of racism came up, they’d just laugh and wave their hands and say “aw, he doesn’t mean any of that really,” or “that’s just politics, he’s a good ol’ boy” or a similar folksy aphorism. To these guys, Trump was the kind of fellow you could have a beer with or drive a truck with (despite the fact that he lives in a freakin’ gold tower and poops in a gold toilet). Hillary? She reminded them of a shrill, mean, nasty schoolteacher, and she probably wanted to take away their guns or something.
“I put my bags up, I sat down, introduced myself as Mohammed,” Amer told the Guardian. Then he got straight to the point. “I said: ‘I’m a Muslim. I’m not gonna do that Muslim ID thing. That’s not gonna fly.’”
Eric Trump’s response was not exactly on-message with his father’s campaign. “His exact words were: ‘come on, man, don’t believe everything you read, we’re not going to do that’,”
I am sure all those bloody European Historians puzzling over the beginnings of the 1st WW for the past century are glad to be told how it really was by Christopher Clark.
Irony alert!
I take great exception of British know-it-all (in Clark’s case an Australian working in Britain) telling us Central Europeans–what really has been going on in the Balkans–as mostly no one really has a conclusive clue.
Again. This was such a historically wrong statement that it pretty much disqualifies all your comments on Central Europe.
For the historical record Österreich (which means the Empire of the East in translation) incorporated from its onset in 1521 (Reichstag from Worms) Bohemia and Hungary (although much of it was occupied by the Ottomans) through a convenient marriage. Austria as you call it never existed without Hungary (aside from a tiny princedom, but it’s really difficult to talk about nation states, or even nations in medieval Europe).
In the wake of the revolutionary movements in1848 Europe, Hungarian Nationalists demanded that Hungary is named in the Kaisers’ title. There were many nations (meaning people) living under the Habsburg banner (at least 10 of which / are part of separate countries today e.g. Romania / Czech Rep/ Slovakia / Kosovo…) Austria was not one of those nations! Tiroler or Kärtner and Voradelberger are all considered individual nations, in the sense of peoples, who happen to live within the boundaries of Austria today and thus are Austrians today–they were not Austrian under the Habsburgs they were Tirolers etc
I am being pedantic on this because the rise and fall of the Habsburg Empire has valuable lessons for us today about the co-existence of cultures within the country boundaries and the movement of large populations.
And it is really important, that especially those whose understanding of Empire / Nation building is through an anglo-saxon lens, explore other forms of national “co-habitation” and the Habsburg Empire just happens to be a good such example within the European context.
Please, do read up on the Central European history.
I’m sorry, have I been doing that? If so I sincerely apologise. I always read your replies to my posts and, tbh, I pay attention to your occasional criticisms because I respect them.
LOL, what are you even on about, in what congressional reality are you
living in that such a small distinction about funding would even matter?
All these ‘neoliberal’ epithets are so hilariously misguided–there is no
movement among Democratic politicians to sell out anybody, what exists is a
structural bias toward smaller, whiter, older states, and a depressing
inability in the Left to turn out voters in mid-term elections that
virtually guarantee Republican interference in any affirmative Democratic
agenda.
The world we live in right now was shaped by our performance in the 2010
elections, and FYI, we did a really shitty job. Maybe you think that’s
because the Left didn’t push single-payer, but I think it’s far more likely
that those identity politics that Sanders wants us to get over played a
pretty important role in the racist backlash, given cover in credulous
reporting of the Tea Party.
