Depending on the age bracket. (And given the average age of Trump’s voters we’re talking a pretty old age Bracket) And location. Their parents and especially Grandparents likely voted straight Democrat.
Remember until that whole Dixiecrat thing, and the civil rights act with its fallout. The DNC was the party of Jim Crow. And the Republican party originated as an urban abolitionist party. There’s been a massive reshuffling of political ideologies between parties the last half century or so.
Tradition can’t factor that much into it. Our current political climate has its roots under Nixon. But it didn’t come to full fruition until Reagan
In addition to the issue of getting unguarded access; rather than a more or less impenetrable press flack(whether the traditional, more restrained, style or the presidential favorite of someone who can deliver insane troll logic, straight faced, to an audience until the clock runs down); I suspect that the difference in style matters:
There are some white collar Trump supporters you can get juicy anecdote from(the “alt-right” types have a hard time resisting the spotlight, at least when they sense a risk of it moving to one of their colleagues); and the I-can’t-I-don’t-even incident with Mnuchin’s wife’s instagram meltdown was the stuff of which stories are made; but to really delve into some of the more dangerous characters you pretty much have to shift from writing human-interest-with-poltiical-angle(which appears to be popular and comparatively low effort); and move into the grim business of investigative journalism grinding; poking at technical details of how a given agency is being hamstrung without actually being shut down through assorted internal rule changes and dysfunctional staffing; or the overwhelming details of some cabinet pick’s web of conflicts of interest.
This is important work; but it’s harder, slower; and probably doesn’t get read as readily. “Some postindustrial rust-belters have all the feels about coal and values” distills into a light, readable, piece pretty readily. “Seriously, this is a smash and grab job on a scale you’d need a small army of accounting, econ, legal, and regulatory types to even summarize”; less so.
It occurs to me that even Woodward and Bernstein would have a hard slog of getting to the bottom of the cesspool that is current Washingtonian politics, let alone rendering it into something as readable as All the President’s Men. And they date from the days when there was no researching online, just physically pounding the pavement, calling up sources, and praying for someone like Deep Throat to come forward.
Grimly amusing, especially since “free” market extremists and establishment conservatives use the same rankings when they deploy right-wing populist rhetoric to cover for their own pillaging of those self-same white people. They’re always ready to point out (even when they show up here) that the city-dwelling Coastal Elites aren’t Real Americans™ like good Midwestern (unspoken: white) folk who live in exurbs and small towns and who know their place in the Great Neoliberal Chain of Being. It’s tiresome, but they persist even when they’re called on it.
There are a plethora of people who otherwise hate the R party - but vote based on one of two issues. Guns and Abortion.
Abortion won’t go away until it’s part of the constitution because they god damn well believe if they stack the courts with R judges they will eventually overturn Roe V. Wade. - The gun debate - frankly - and I mean this (as a gun loving liberal who does believe in gun control) is such a fucking lost cause. Our politicians are too fucking milktoast to do anything about it in the worst mass shootings of the country (how many in the past 10 years?) - fuck it.
The gun problem needs to be dropped. Go whole hog - be the party of full automatic weapons. No… but seriously just drop it - as long as we are willing to be wastes of life on the issue when we are the opposition party and not in power anyway for fear of the gun lobby we need to drop the issue from the party completely and just capitulate - it would win us elections.
It. Would. Win. Us. Elections.
Give up the guns. Get enough power to push abortion to the constitution and take the damn religious debate away from the crazies. I get the gun debate - but if given a choice I’d rather focus on the thing that actually impacts individual rights the most - that is autonomy over ones body. I don’t want to be shot - but when given the two as options one is more evil than the other.
I’m sorry, but where exactly are those millions of poor voters that no longer support him? Because all I can see is that in spite of the corruption, lies, and white supremacy, nothing, absolutely NOTHING can budge his polls lower that the deplorable dumbfuck 1/3 of America that voted for him. And yes, it is worth reporting on because it should scare the everloving shit out of anyone that has to share a planet with this insane administration and its cheerleaders. “Sane person deplores Trump” is not a headline. And even “Former idiot has moment of rational thought and no longer adores Trump” while sadly rare, is also not newsworthy. But hey, “WE ARE ALL FUCKED AND FULLY ONE THIRD OF THE COUNTRY WILL BURN THIS FUCKER TO THE GROUND JUST TO OWN THE LIBS” is a tad more newsworthy. Or at least, nightmare worthy. Whatever.
In both rural and urban areas, the defining characteristic of the Trump base was whiteness. The secondary characteristic was wealth.
All income groups of white people voted for Trump, but the white working class supported him at a lower rate than any other income group. And the working class of all races were the only economic group in which the majority opposed Trump.
Yeah, Trumpists are idiots. But they’re overwhelmingly middle-class suburban idiots, not impoverished yokels.
So, ask yourself: why has the corporate media been pushing so hard and so persistently on this bullshit narrative about white working class Trumpists? Why are they so desperate to deflect blame onto a relatively insignificant and disempowered portion of those responsible?
@OhhJim wrote “still support”, obviously they supported him when they gave him their vote. If only the democrats had offered a viable alternative, who knows what would have happened. When I think about what it would mean to have Sanders instead of Trump as the Potus right now, it boggles the mind.
Thanks for that link - it was very interesting. I was too young to understand all that stuff - but I do know that the opinions and attitudes changed - I just didn’t have the actuality of why. That was very eye opening.
The vote broke urban/rural in my state and in my extended family and among my many friends on both sides. The whiteness factor reflects that demographic. Every breakdown of the voting record that I’ve seen that goes down to the fine details of voting districts has reflected that divide.
So, in the interest of posting something upbeat, I’m reliably informed that my rural relatives have stopped posting pro-Trump screeds on Facebook. Only a tiny, perhaps unrepresentative data point, but still encouraging. Yay?
Oh yeah, there’s plenty of suburban mega-church going folks that got great jobs even under Obama that are clearly Trump’s voting base. They’re just more shy about admitting it because they might get ejected from their next yoga class downtown or not invited to the next craft beer tasting by their friends who didn’t vote for Trump. Basically, they’re cowards. They don’t like being called out on their nonsense so they pretend to be progressive on certain issues until that one moment it becomes unbearable and they blame everyone else for why they’re bigots.
Shortly after the election Boing Boing linked to someone’s article where the guy spoke to Trump voters who were basically as you describe. Interviewing such people didn’t reveal much of anything and the whole thing was on the same WHY DID YOU PUSH THEM AWAY slant that pisses me off with the other profiles.
Journalists right now just cannot be trusted with this shit. I don’t know why. If I had to guess, it’s because the journalists are more like these people than the people these people complain about. They personally feel fragile and afraid and want to be loved and understood, and rather than wonder if other people less like them ALSO are afraid and want to be understood and may have thoughts and points of view that could shed light on the petty cruelties of their own ignorance and self-obsession, they just get upset that they aren’t being coddled enough. So they find people more likely to inspire pity and rub our noses in it.
That or they want to foist the image of hateful conservativism on the rural poor like the town putting their sins in a goat so they can kill the poor I mean goat. Cough.
