Exactly, and that’s what is worrying the party machines. It has been a very cosy system for a long time in many Western countries, and democracy has been greatly weakened because, in effect, the same social class runs each of two main parties, so although there are differences, the underlying assumptions are largely the same. Marx, of course, analysed this a century and a half ago. But by a Marxist analysis, Sanders and Trump are not left wing. Sanders is actually a bourgeois social democrat, and Trump is a populist. Sometimes their aims will apparently coincide, sometimes they will be opposites. But they both threaten the party machines with disruption - new players, people losing jobs.
That is why Corbyn (Labour leader) has such opposition in the UK; both Labour and Conservative parliamentarians recognise him as a threat to the establishment, bringing new people into politics who won’t accept the covert agreement between the two main parties. Obama was defused by Republican intransigence, but if the same happened to a President Sanders I think the US public will be far more critical of them.
So most likely the election will have Clinton and Trump as the presidential nominees. I think an interesting question is what tactic do those candidates use when choosing their running mate?
Does Clinton choose Sanders to try to sway / keep his supporters on her side? Does she try an all-female ticket with Elizabeth Warren (who ruled out running for President, but not being selected as VP)? If not one of those two, who?
Does Trump choose Cruz or one of the former Republican candidates, or does he play the wild card and choose someone completely unexpected?
Well, basically I would like to make a difference in the world, and I find that whenever I form the idea in my head that some very large heterogenous group can be very simply categorized or protoyped I’ve crippled my own capacity to sponsor change.
In that sense I see the article’s author as intellectually lazy - he essentially downplays everything about Trump except his appeal to white racists, and claims that Trump is creating an enduring political movement that is fundamentally about racism, and that’s all there is to it. Certainly, many racists will vote for Trump, just as they did for Obama (although for very different reasons). But every Trump supporter I have met (which is admittedly exactly two) and every Trump supporter who has shared their opinion with me in writing (admittedly also a very small number) didn’t care one whit about racialism. Instead, they had legitimate beefs and they mistakenly thought that Trump would address those beefs.
If I just throw up my hands and say “everybody who votes for Trump is a racist” I am giving up. Because racists won’t listen to me no matter what I say; I am, in their eyes, a race traitor. But if I say “Trumps supporters include racists”, instead, then I can continue to try, I still have a viable path forward. That matters to me.
So you automatically share all the values and positions of every person you’ve ever backed? That’s not going to work for me; that makes nearly every single person in the world a monster. It makes every Obama backer “some shade” of murderer, given what Obama’s drones have done!
The fact that some Trump supporters are intelligent does not mean their reasons are also intelligent. Smart people do incredibly stupid things all the time, as I’m sure you know.
BUT, your question (if put in a less confrontational way) is the key to getting somewhere… because if you know the reasons an intelligent person wants to vote Trump, then you can point out what is wrong with those reasons and give them a better option.
Which is why I shared the letter to the editor from my local paper, above.
Yup.
James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom is essential reading if you want to get your head around American politics. The descriptions of antebellum politics will be strikingly familiar to current-day readers.
The Trumpists, the Tea Party, the Klan, the Confederacy; it’s all the same fucking thing. Same people, same bullshit, just different times and places.
I think that is highly unlikely. Obama would not have chosen a black running mate. The risk of losing is squared that way.
Sanders would refuse an offer to be Clinton’s VP, and be right to do so.
I wouldn’t put it past Clinton to try and pick a VP that appeals to Trumpists. Jim Webb?
Joe Lieberman isn’t dead. Maybe he could help screw up another campaign?
The problem is, none of these reasons make any sense. None of them distinguish Trump.
I.e. (and note that “you” is Sandy, not Midievalist):
- You want a businessperson? Fine: did you support Romney with as much enthusiasm as you do Trump? If not, why not? Romney was far more successful at business than Trump and had run a state, too!.
- You think “he will cut the puppet strings to the lobbyists who are the real power-brokers running the country. Donald Trump doesn’t owe anyone anything” - really? Why do you think that’s true for him and not other billionaires who have run, including Romney? Would you be as enthusiastic about Bloomberg?
- You think his immigration plan “would work”? Including the wall? Including mass deportations? Really? That only works if you ignore all of the analyses that show all the reasons it won’t work. More importantly, these are not new policies - they pop up every election and are not even unique in this year’s GOP field. But even more importantly: what is your end goal with this type of policy? The answer to that question leads to your true reasons for supporting Trump.
- “We need someone not afraid to dole out a few black eyes.” That does ring true. A literal strong man.
Sandy could easily be starring in this perfect ad for Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg0pO9VG1J8
I’ll be honest, this whole primary system have made me want to abolish term limits and get a third Obama term.
It’s time we got honest with ourselves.
If you stop denying you’re making a mistake, it’s a lot easier to stop making it.
That doesn’t make sense.
Running a state makes you guilty of stateism. We want someone who is an outsider! Someone willing to smash the state to bits and repurpose what’s left towards profitmaking enterprise!
When I say “racist”, assume I mean racism, misogyny, homophobia, and bigoty against Muslims. Too many words to cram in.
I agree that Trump’s supporters mistakenly think he’s going to solve some problem. The thing is that Trumps framing of the “problem” solved is racist, and his solutions are racist. Trump’s solutions involve building a wall to keep the Mexican murderers/rapists out (and save our jobs that Mexican thieves are stealing), mass deporting all Muslims from the US, ban Muslims from traveling into the US, bringing back torture for foreigners, extending Voter ID universally (to keep “urban” Democratic voters from engaging in vote fraud), eliminate birthright citizenship (he actually used the term “anchor babies” to justify this), somehow rolling back gay marriage, etc. It’s not that Trump’s a racist (and sexist, homophobe), it’s that the majority of the policies he promotes are racist to the core, and the more racist they are the louder he is about them (building walls and deporting Muslims are his favorite talking points)
So if someone mistakenly thinks Trump’s policies will help them, it’s because they’re a person who thinks that Trump’s various racist policies that hurting some people (of other races/religions, with policies that are really heavy on hurting other people), will help them, and if they’re fine with the harm to Muslims, Hispanic people, gay people, women, etc., it’s because they’re prejudiced against them.
It’s not that Trump is a racist but that he’s a racist who wants to implement racist policies as his platform. If you support that, you’re some shade of racist.
Why not both:
I remember this lady screaming that the Indians made more money off their casinos and were doing better off as a whole than the white people!!
The horror!
I’ve got your back!
clicks the Like button
I am going to take a page from the Trump Playbook and refuse to believe that this is true.
Or perhaps I will try and square the cognitive dissonance by reframing the cited statistic as “Majority of Americans still have not met a Muslim”.
I’d support a ban on granting visas to people traveling from countries we suspect terrorists might be coming from…
That’s a decision that governments make. All the time.
Banning a religious point of view? How the fuck can you tell?
Are you a muslim?
Nope.
Clear!
But how would that work in any meaningful way (i.e., one that actually stops terrorist attacks?
How does it stop terrorists that were home grown (i.e. UK-born terrorists, the Boston Marathon bombers, etc.)? Or terrorists that come from countries that are considered safe/allies (like Saudi Arabia)? Or terrorists that use forged documents? Or arrive via non-conventional means?
Moreover, how is it fair (or make any rationale sense) to ban everyone from a country when there is a minuscule chance that an individual may be a terrorist (the majority of people aren’t!)? Or that many of those people may be fleeing terror in their own countries?
How does this proposal do anything to make us more secure?
The answer is that it does not, and only serves to further isolate and estrange a huge number of people in the world who could kinda sorta like us (except for the problem that we keep dicking them over and labeling them all as terrorists).
It isn’t like there is some magical country of Terroristan that exports all the world’s terror attacks.
