That is actually precisely the attitude that leads to Trump.
Let’s try some alternatives:
I get it now, and I’m worried, but I have to believe in China. The Greatest Human Experiment on earth is definitely in process
I get it now, and I’m worried, but I have to believe in India. The Greatest Human Experiment on earth is definitely in process
I get it now, and I’m worried, but I have to believe in [my country]. The Greatest Human Experiment on earth is definitely in process
Privilege begins with believing you are better and more fortunate than other people because of where you live, your religion or, equally absurdly, your skin colour.
Edit accepted. However, I like the word enabler. It doesn’t let one off the hook. Sort of like the difference between active and passive voice. I feel the next revision will improve upon this.
Well, we’re certainly in agreement that evil is winning at the polls. I can’t say I agree with you about how to respond, though.
You seem to say that it’s worthless to have a principled position if you don’t build enough of a consensus to actually win elections. That’s true, but if you only worry about the consensus, you soon sacrifice the principles that made you want to win elections in the first place.
That’s exactly what Republicans have done, for many years, making whatever promises it took to build their team’s numbers. Through them, conservative Christians have “won” by wiping their asses on faith, hope and love. Fiscal conservatives have “won” a government that only increases spending and cuts taxes. Conservative intellectuals have “won” a political culture that celebrates moronism. Business interests have “won” a government managed by Donald Turmp; etc. In fact, the only Republican interest group that might get what it wants is the vengeful, reptilian hindbrain of the baying mob.
Of course you can go too far the other way. Demanding the world agree with you is neither effective nor a good strategy for being right. But if you believe people should help one another, and Trump supporters believe in fucking over other people, there’s no common ground there. You lost, and will continue to lose until those people change their minds on at least that point.
Personally, I would argue that it’s patronising to ignore the evil things someone is saying and go straight to understanding their pain. It shows more respect for their agency to hear what they say and reply “fuck you; you are morally deficient and a dumbass”. These people have a high-school education and the internet. They can take responsibility for themselves.
The thing is though that people did just that. And then tried to formulate coherent, nuanced responses to it. Saying “I will rebuild the coal industry so you can have your jobs back” despite there being no coal, and it being a hideously dangerous practise, is a lot easier for the former coalminers to understand and embrace than someone saying “I will develop new forms of power generation that will have a longterm positive effect on the environment and will create new types of jobs that your children will benefit from and which will help to rebuild your communities but no, we won’t be mining any more coal.”
Both of those arguments are addressing the concerns of those former coalminers. I have more respect for one of those arguments, but I also understand why the other wins elections.
From that same chart in Wikipedia, 67% of whites without a college degree voted for Trump. 75% of non whites without a college degree voted for Clinton. This fits what the article said, which is that working class whites supported Trump. Also, again, I’m not sure why we think these exit polls are any more trustworthy than the polls that said Hillary would get about 300 electoral votes.
You’re assuming that “no college degree = working class”.
I don’t think that that is a safe assumption; the correlation between income and education is strong but not absolute.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find that a narrow majority of working-class whites supported Trump. The data just isn’t in yet.
Even if that is the case, however, it doesn’t change the facts that (a) Trump was supported by a majority of middle class and higher voters, and (b) Trump was not supported by the majority of working class voters. The working class did not elect Trump. White working class voters aren’t any more “authentic” than the black and brown working class.
Exit polls do not suffer from many of the access and response biases (lack of landlines, people not answering unknown numbers, etc.) that affect pre-election polling. I certainly don’t see any reason to trust the pre-poll numbers more than the exit polls; they might not be better, but they’re unlikely to be worse.
I don’t think we need to shift right. Our agenda is pro-human, and Trump supporters are humans. We just need to persuade them over to our side. It can be done. If you believe in a progressive platform, you must also believe that it can stand on its own merits in the face of cultivated skepticism.
You’re missing the 16 point swing away from Democrat in that lowest income bracket. Clinton absolutely hemorrhaged working class support this election because of her record of fucking over blue collar workers that she did less than nothing to address.
And what record is that? Something when she was Senator? Or the TPP that her State Department continued to negotiate during her time there, but now looks like it’ll never have a chance to fuck over blue collar workers? You’re not confusing her with Bill Clinton are you?
Really? Really? Because I seem to recall someone acting like a snotty, supercilious asshole getting enough votes to e elected president over someone who repeatedly said “When they go low, we go high.”
No.
NO.
We need some goddamn populism from the left.
We need a charismatic, young (or at least younger than Bernie), uncompromised (fuck you sideways, Anthony Weiner and Gary Hart) face of the party to make the case for labor unions and a safety net, and against the kind of free trade that fucks everyone in a race to the bottom.
Oh, and we need Hillary Clinton to publicly give $100 million of her own money to a superPAC laser-focused on getting actual left-of-center progressives elected in the midterms.
Okay, but how about the white working class? Is that chart about race and income, or only about income? If it’s the latter, I’m not seeing a lot of value in it.
ETA: I see you acknowledged that, but not it’s significance, here:
As far as I can tell, no one has released race-by-income crosstabs yet. We won’t know for sure what the white working class numbers are until they do.
Right. So let’s not go about saying “The working class did not support Trump,” without adding that the white working class supported him in much higher numbers than did other members of the working class, hmm? And how about we through region in there too? Just look at an election map – rural white working class voters overwhelmingly voted for Trump. You know, a group of people who by and large used to be Democrats.
No not most but just enough.
All in all this election was not won through bigotry but hubris.
The Democratic elite believed in the Clinton coronation mythos and did not spend one minute trying to court anyone who wasn’t fully" with her"
The prevailing thought was either" we don’t need your vote straight white man"
Or screaming “check your privilege”
… they choose unwisely.
PS I voted Green. I’m not playing the lesser evil game
