Understanding Trump supporters, with empathy

boing
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He’s not stupid and obviously people are underestimating him.

His campaign adviser is the guy who used to gather voters for Koch’s Tea Party. Remember that group of angry losers who never made sense and the only thing they could agree on was hating Washington?

Well… Trump took them. He took the Tea Party then he added the rest of the nutbags, The ones not even the Tea Party wanted.

He writes his own tweets.

There have been a number of people saying ‘lets kick the muslims out of the country’ for years. Cranks. Drunk Frat Boys. People’s crazy uncles around the Thanksgiving table and everyone looks mortified. That sort of shit.

They are legion. Crazy ignorant Americans are legion. Seriously. We BREED THEM.

He’s exploiting them in a new way. Saying dumb shit.

Its gonna be beautiful.

America’s gonna be great.

But there’s more.

Mostly its what he’s not.

A regular republican. This shit is very important to them. Because they feel they’ve been betrayed by their loser party. They don’t know WHY a black muslim was elected. Just whose fault it was.

They just know who the fuckers were that let it happen. And they think its because they weren’t represented.

While we’ve been having a decent time and having mixed feelings about Obama. They have not. They believe a very different picture of the world.

Its sensational, and it doesn’t make sense, and its emotional.

And Trump makes them feel better. They like his zingers. They like he’s the richest and clearly stands up their and says I’m the best. I’m rich as fuck. I don’t NEED to be president. I’m Donald Motherfucking Trump.

And these losers couldn’t beat a black muslim.

And all the losers hate him. Giving him a powerful brand.

Brand is interesting. It’s got to be polarizing. You want to be split into two tribes with a brand. People that love them, and people that hate them. Weak wishy washy feelings won’t work.

It has to be polarizing. Love him or hate him.

He’s certainly got that down.

He’s also got name recognition. And the field of republican candidates is weak. Again.

The one thing I knew about Hitler was… he had some pretty strong fucking political feelings.

This guy I don’t think has many. I think he’s apolitical.

I expect him to split the ticket by splitting from the Republicans, because then its a real popularity contest.

The reform party was such a strange group. A cult of personality. From a guy with some very strong political beliefs.

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Bravo!

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If you don’t have anything original to say – something that requires thinking for yourself – don’t bother; another squawking parrot is a waste of everyone’s time.

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Oh yeah. That whole show was amazingly casted. EVERYONE is perfect and amazing. That’s the reason I imagine the actors in the books now, they were just that good. Almost to an actor, they owned those roles.

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Care to unpack that for us?

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Unpack it? Sounds like lib-tard talk to me! /s

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Death predicts whether people vote for Donald Trump

A few weeks ago, following the Republican Iowa caucuses, I pointed out an eerie correlation in the voting data. It seems that Donald Trump performed the best in places where middle-aged whites are dying the fastest.

That wasn’t a fluke. The relationship between white mortality and Trump support is real, as the fresh results from Super Tuesday confirmed.

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Is voting for Trump really the last voluntary act they want to have on their conscience as they go to meet their Maker?

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Sure. Fits right in with the “fuck you, I got mine” mindset. Won’t sit on their consciences for even a second.

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Specifically, though, middle-aged white death.

It’s a kind of staggering increase in death rates, actually. Even if we ignore the expectation that death rates should have declined like they did in other developed nations, +34 death rate among white males is maybe 35,000 people dead per year. People don’t like to talk about how poor economic conditions have body counts associated with them because it forces us to put a moral spin on things like austerity policies. But there’s the body count (and it’s much higher since it’s really affecting all demographics and just being offset by other factors).

The other number that leaped of the page for me was this:

If an additional 12 percent of adults had jobs (which is roughly the gap between the 75th and 25th percentiles), Trump would have lost about two percentage points of the vote in the primaries.

12 percent is the the difference between the 25th and 75th percentile for employment. That sounds like a really big gap in employment from county to county (especially since unemployment doesn’t go to zero in the rich places).

Overall I don’t think it’s a surprise that Trump’s supporters contain a lot of desperate people. Death rates are a good sign of just how desperate things are in an area, probably.

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See also:

Donald Trump Needs 7 of 10 White Guys

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