This election was about bigotry beyond anything else.

[pnwmom]

It was about racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, religious bigotry, and xenophobia.

Trump's voters are WEALTHIER than Hillary's voters. The idea that they were voting for him primarily because they are deprived economically just doesn't hold water. He was able to tap into the anger of people who are disturbed by our increasingly diverse culture. He doesn't represent CHANGE. He represents a return to America's mythical past.

[R B Garr]

1. Absolutely. I don't know many Trump supporters, but

they ones I do have all said they are tired of being politically correct. That to me translates to being tired of having to curb theiri hostility. That further translates into admitting they are intolerant bigots.

[MyNameIsKhan]

2. Makes sense...

[Buckeye_Democrat]

3. That was part of it, for sure.

I'm sure that many uneducated and struggling white people voted for him too. I don't even need to see how the poor counties in states like Kentucky and West Virginia voted because I'm certain of the answer.

I've seen that Trump's voters had higher average income already, but I'd rather see the distributions. I'm also confident that many of the most wealthy Americans voted for Trump too (hoping that he'd follow through on promises of lower taxes for them), and those people could skew the average upward.

Are we otherwise supposed to believe that people without 4-year degrees (another strong Trump group) are also the highest paid on average?

[pnwmom]

5. His supporters without college degrees made more money than HERS without degrees.

That's the comparison that should be made.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

7. That might be true.

I still think Michael Moore was vindicated when he predicted that Trump would win the Rust Belt with his rhetoric against economic globalization and promising to make it harder for companies to sell their products here if they moved their operations outside the country.

Not that Trump was sincere about it, but it surely had an effect on people. I worked for two large companies that both moved to Mexico several years ago. If I didn't know that Trump was a scam artist, he could have possibly swayed me with that rhetoric alone.

[boston bean]

30. Michael Moore want to tak our party back?

Who do you think he wants to take it back from.

Just because someone is progressive, doesn't mean they can't be a misogynist POS.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

33. Huh? Is Moore that way?

He seemed to be very pro-Hillary and pro-woman in his recent movie.

I thought Moore was being too negative about the election and I ridiculed him for it, but his concerns about the Rust Belt states seem prophetic now.

Hillary had more going against her than being a woman. I'm know there's some men (and even some women) who'd never want a female President, but she had many other things working against her. I just never dreamed that someone as intellectually weak and morally flawed as Trump could beat her (in electoral votes or otherwise).

[boston bean]

34. Michael Moore has always been about the white working class and how they have been

left behind..

Now he wants to take the party back to focus on that.... I'm sorry, but they aren't voting on economics, they are voting based on bigotry.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

35. I could have easily voted on that because it's affected me and I've seen it...

... affect others around me.

If Trump wasn't such a hateful, misogynist bigot and obviously in over his head, that kind of message could have worked on me.

PoC and women have been hurt too, but the Democratic party is going to be in trouble for awhile unless it tries to appeal to a wider audience which includes blue collar white folks too.

The Democratic party should more strongly make the pitch that social programs and greater opportunities for the less affluent in this country will help EVERYONE in the long run. We shouldn't need a threat of attack by Germans and Japanese (during WW2) in order to draw people together and get the more wealthy to open up their wallets and invest back in this country. That's what finally pulled us out of a depression.

[boston bean]

36. I think you didn't bother to listen to Hillary and other dems.

Cause if you had, you wouldn't be saying what you are saying.

How do you explain Sherrod Brown in Ohio?

[Buckeye_Democrat]

37. I think you might be misunderstanding me?

So let's cut to the chase and you tell me what you THINK I'm saying.

I voted for Hillary in the election, and all Democrats on my ballot, so I'll just get that part out of the way.

What about Sherrod Brown? I like him too and would love to see him run for President. Same for Elizabeth Warren.

[boston bean]

38. Sherrod Brown lost in a landslide with white working class folks

Why do you think that is? That he didn't cater to them enough? Or do you think it was a whitelash against dems? They would have rather of voted for a man who peddled racism and diviseness and one who was a complete misogynistic sexual assaulter. WHY OH WHY didn't Sherrod Brown win if all it takes is for someone on the left to sound like trump to win white mens and their wives votes?

That is what I am asking? That is what I am saying.

It is not all just economics... it is in fact bigotry.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

39. Sherrod Brown is still a Senator.

Are you talking about Ted Strickland?

He's nothing like Brown. He also had the misfortune of being Ohio's governor while Dumbya was screwing up the country.

[boston bean]

40. Yes, that is who I meant.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

43. I voted for Strickland, but I wasn't very excited about him.

It didn't help that I knew he was going to lose badly, but he's still better than Portman.

I really LIKED Hillary, and I wanted her to win, but I've been around enough blue collar people in this area to know:
(1) Many people didn't like Bill signing NAFTA (and they tend to put it on him despite mostly Republicans pushing for it), and Hillary is married to him.
(2) Hillary seemed too "cozy" with bankers and Wall Street types according to some people.
(3) I've heard more than one person say "where there's smoke, there's fire" in regard to the many Republican witch hunts against the Clintons in the past... ignoring the fact that the Republicans largely provided the smoke in the first place.
(4) There's a bunch of gullible people who believe Trump will fight to keep their jobs in this country because he said so, and they're too intellectually lazy to go back to school to learn something new that sounds too high-tech like green energy jobs. Many of them at least know that they weren't good students in high school, so they'd like to hear specifics of what kinds of new jobs might come their way... jobs that they think they could do besides flipping burgers at a fast food chain. That doesn't mean they're total morons because it still takes some intelligence to understand electronics and other "trade skills," but I think many of them know that they'd struggle if the work became a little more technical and education-based.

[pnwmom]

42. Making that pitch won't help it draw in anyone who was willing to vote for Trump.

They were WILLING to vote for a racist, sexist, POS as long as they felt their own selfish interests would be served.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

44. Yeah, there's unfortunately many people that way.

Like I mentioned in another post farther down in this thread, a candidate could be a saint and pledge help for the most needy people on this planet as a first priority, but that person wouldn't have a chance at winning because most Americans would question how it would benefit them.

[Yavin4]

47. Get ready to pay 5000 for a cell phone with a one year waiting list

We don't have the capability to make that phone here to match the scale of the demand.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

49. Is that supposed be alarming to me in some way?

Cell phones? I have an old and cheap flip phone because I can't afford a smart phone, and I mostly keep it for emergencies anyway.

If they're being manufactured elsewhere, it's probably for the cheaper labor. That's one way to increase corporate profits. By law in this country, corporations are required to seek higher profits for their shareholders,. One way is to reduce their costs, and the American workers be damned if they stand in the way.

Those same corporations love the security that this country provides, so they'd be eager to have our military get involved if a foreign power seized their assets overseas. We helped put a dictator in charge of Iran over a democratically elected one who wanted Iranians to have ownership of their oil reserves, and that resulted in anti-USA sentiment and Khomeini seizing power years later.

The lack of adaptability has been in corporate America and our corporate-guided government, not in the American people who have the same abilities as workers from other countries... but punished for their higher cost of living.

I've never heard any Ohio factory workers expressing worry about losing their jobs to Europeans or Canadians with high standards of living. It's competition with people willing to work for very little that's most troublesome to them.

I've never earned more than $30k a year despite having degrees in math and physics, and I spent a big chunk of my life never earning more than $9 an hour. Yet I'd be willing to be paid far less if the cost of living was lower.

[Yavin4]

53. You don't represent the global marketplace

Like it or not, we live in a global economy. What you, or any other American, wants from time to time will conflict to what the rest of the world wants.

A company like Apple sells its products around the world. Forcing them to manufacture only in the US would mean that they would incorporate some where else and continue how they run the business. Unlike most Americans, they can easily go to Canada.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

55. I never suggested that they only manufacture in this country.

That was your stray interjection.

If someone doesn't try to keep better paying jobs in this country at some point, however, the economy will collapse from lack of consumer demand anyway.

It's also a security risk because we don't even manufacture our own transformers anymore. Can we count on China to ship them to us if they're all wiped out by a coronal mass ejection from the Sun or a high-altitude nuclear blast?

A global market would be great under a global government. We don't have that.

We have more of a global banking system, and only a deluded fool would think money men are more powerful than force when push comes to shove.

[BainsBane]

10. Clinton's biggest margin was among voters earning under 30k

According to the exit polls, which may not be accurate.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

11. She did the best in Ohio among people without high school diplomas according...

... to a Baldwin Wallace poll before the election.

Next best was among people with 4-year degrees or more.

Trump had a huge lead among Ohioans with "some college" or two-year degrees. I'm guessing that many of them have been affected by loss of manufacturing jobs in this state. There are many of those jobs that indeed require some kind of "skilled" training, and the responsibility for it was long ago transferred from companies to individuals at most places.

[BainsBane]

12. Guesses are just guesses

We need some reliable data, which at this point will fall to political scientists to collect.

[pnwmom]

14. We're not going to get more reliable data than the exit polls,

that show she had more support among lower levels of income, and he among higher.

[BainsBane]

18. Exit polls are notoriously unreliable.

And there is already some research indicating that they were significantly off in terms of Latino turnout. They have a history of errors with Latinos though. They may be more accurate on income.

[pnwmom]

19. Since we have a secret ballot there won't be anything more reliable. But it isn't surprising,

is it, since she has much more support among minorities and wage discrimination means minorities and women tend to make less money.

[BainsBane]

20. Not true

Political scientists can look at aggregate data, including actual vote counts from precincts. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2610762


Here is an article questioning the estimates for the Latino vote. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/11/15/why-the-exit-polls-are-wrong-on-latino-votes/?utm_term=.477c80dc0b62

[pnwmom]

21. And why do you think her minority and female supporters would make more money

than his largely male and white supporters? Yes, he has white working class supporters -- but Hillary has minority working class supporters and they're not making more money than his.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

15. I agree.

I think the data has already shown a wide array of "explanations" for the results, and racism/misogyny isn't the whole story by a long shot.

I think most people will support the candidate that they THINK has their best interest at heart.

If some candidate came along and ran on a platform of helping the most needy across the planet, first and foremost, that would be very noble. That candidate would also have no chance of winning in this country despite how even our poorest citizens often live in far better conditions.

[BainsBane]

17. Sad but true. Nt

[Buckeye_Democrat]

22. I've observed the "how does this affect me?" attitude a lot.

I have a very rare genetic condition that causes early blindness. Almost no research is done because it doesn't affect most people.

When I was being prepped for another injection of Avastin into an eyeball, a new aide made a comment that she felt so bad for the elderly people who got those injections for their macular degeneration. I replied that vision problems are all sad, but at least most of those old people are already retired and they don't need good eyesight to work and support themselves. I also mentioned the premature babies who are born with detached retinas and how their treatments must seem like torture for the sake of torture to them.

She answered, "I dunno. I still feel the worst for the old people."

TRANSLATION: I'm not a premature baby and I don't have some rare eye disease, but age-related macular degeneration MIGHT affect me someday.

Maybe my "translation" was wrong, but I bet I was right.

[BainsBane]

23. Maybe so

It still strikes me as odd she was less concerned about children. Babies tend to generate empathy.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

24. Me too.

I heard some babies SHRIEKING in there, and it sounded like they were being burnt alive or something.

A doctor once told me that a preemie baby was just "acting up" over getting speculums in it's eyes to hold them open.

By the way, I just wanted to admit that I'm also guilty of some self-focused thoughts. I probably didn't need to tell you that since you've surely been around enough people to know everyone is that way to some extent. Some people are off the charts in their lack of basic empathy, though.

[BainsBane]

25. Of course. It's human nature

We do have to think about ourselves. It's self preservation. Hopefully we also think about others.

I'm sorry about your eye condition. It sounds really painful.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

26. It's not too bad.

The eye is numbed before the needle goes in, and it enters from the side. There's no way I could handle it if it went straight into the pupil, for whatever reason, unless I was knocked out. It sometimes feels like there's a splinter in my eye later, but that seems hit-or-miss with mostly "miss" for me.

The worst part is the crappy eyesight. I'm already blind in one eye, and the other one is slowly "fading" for me. I'm constantly editing my posts here because I sometimes can't tell when I skipped a letter or something.

I might need to LIE about my acuity someday because there's a wide gap between being unable to drive and secure work because of bad eyes and the ability to qualify for disability. Worse than 20/60 (with corrective lenses) takes away your license, but it needs to be worse than 20/200 to be considered legally blind.

My oldest brother dealt with slow vision loss years ago, but he at least had Mom & Dad to provide him with food and shelter after he lost his job as an electrical engineer and then struggled to keep even low-paying manual labor jobs as companies got fed up with his understandably slow performance due to bad eyesight. He really regretted leaving a government job when he was young (at Wright-Patt AFB) because he was convinced that they would've been more accommodating with vision aids and the like. He sometimes cussed at the old guys -- not at them, but when thinking back on it -- who urged him to leave for private industry where there was supposedly more "opportunities" for a young man like him (back in the 70's).

[kebob]

4. K & MEGA R

Definitely the #1 factor!

[pnwmom]

6. Welcome to DU, kebob! n/t

[kebob]

8. Thanks

I joined late last month. In a weird sort oof way, I'm actually glad the site was hacked on Election Day, because, as Trump's "victory" unfolded that night, the things I would have said here about him, his wife, Ivanka, and especially Jim Comey would have almost certainly gotten me banned!

[pnwmom]

13. Then a lot of people would have been banned because your feelings, I'm sure,

are shared by many.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

16. I was kind of thankful too.

I don't think I would've been banned, but I suspect it would have made that night even more depressing for me... and I know that I would've been here despite those suspicions.

I'm also glad that I didn't try to attend some Democratic election night party like I had considered. I instead had the freedom to repeatedly cuss by myself and make remarks about Comey that I wouldn't want the "wrong people" to overhear,

[JI7]

9. yup, just look at the reaction to Beyonce on CMA

[bettyellen]

27. Yep- and they would have used taxes as an issue (and Jewish) against Bernie and the media

Would give them a pass and claim it about taxes... but that would have been because they are afraid the taxes would help brown people. The sexism and racism was staring in our faces, and the media looked the other way as long as they could.

[TrekLuver]

28. It's was also about FEAR...

[pnwmom]

41. Fear of the OTHER. n/t

[treestar]

29. Amen!

I am not going to "understand their pain." They have no pain but what they like to inflict on others.

[mcar]

31. K&R

[jmg257]

32. I think you got it - they make more money and want to keep more money.

They do not want to share, especially with those they would typically deem lazy or whatever..

[LAS14]

45. So glad you're back!! I've been looking for you every day.

[pnwmom]

46. Thank you LAS14.

It's good to see you, too.

[Yavin4]

48. The narrative of the White unemployed factory worker due to trade deals is getting tiresome

Factory jobs started leaving the rust belt as early as the 1970s. Twenty years before NAFTA. Hell, listen to the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen's song, "My Home Town", which came out in 1984 when Reagan was president.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

54. True. It's been happening for many years.

My father moved to Ohio from Kentucky at age 16 in 1944 and found work right away. He quit his job at GM because he didn't want to "waste his life" putting a screw in a hole all day and worked as an auto mechanic instead. He later found machinery work, received extensive training from his employer, and eventually retired as a designer of automated machinery. (So he played a role in lost jobs too!) He did that without a high school diploma. I was born when my parents were in their 40's.

My parents dissuaded me from attending college despite my good high school grades in college prep courses and high SAT scores (especially in math), instructing me to find a factory where my hard work would get noticed and rewarded. In other words, do like Dad. It didn't happen. The harder that I worked, the more that I was expected to do without any pay raises while management was more richly rewarded for their "decision making" that was often Trump-level ignorant.

The main difference between Dad's experience and mine, I now suspect, was that he worked for privately-owned businesses where the actual owners would see and reward hard work. I only found jobs at corporations where owners never saw or managed anything. There were instead corporate executives in charge, and their MAIN motivation was themselves... not truly the welfare of the companies.

As it turned out, my parents proved to be correct and the college degrees indeed didn't help me (at least around here) except in one case when I applied for a QA supervisor position at one of my companies. The manager of that department noticed my education listed on my resume and didn't believe me at first because I was doing one of the lowest paid and dangerous jobs for the company at the time (working around splashing hydrofluoric acid), at least until I showed him my transcripts. That company eventually moved to Mexico for cheaper labor. Before that happened, management mostly tried to save their own butts because the "top brass" wanted lower costs, and we had a case of "too many chiefs and not enough Indians" before the move was finally made. Granted, it was a dying industry anyway (cathode ray tubes for TVs), but those kinds of moves happen in other industries that have more long-term viability as well.

[ismnotwasm]

50. A whitelash

It the best description I heard.

[DemonGoddess]

52. This!!!

[heaven05]

51. thank you

the whole truth and nothing but the truth

[randr]

56. Oldest trick in the book--divide and conquer

The racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, religious bigotry, and xenophobia you speak of were mere tools.
The election was about the conquering of America by fascists pigs.
We have something far more terrifying than these manipulative aspects of human nature.
We are facing the rule of a Demigod and all the mad men who support him.
We can challenge racism etal with institutions. Once the institutions of Democracy and its laws are abandoned we are left powerless.