> To be really blunt, Trump's entire track record says "if you're white and wealthy, I've obviously got your back", and his words have said, "if you're white and struggling, it's brown people who stand in your way". In that way, he's managed to get an extremely energetic white vote.
yeah and exactly because of this kind of insane, bogus "analysis" you lost.
When or if you find back the connection to reality, you will realize how Trump actually won. By talking about real issues that nobody else even dares to touch.
When or if you find back the connection to reality, you will realize how Trump actually won.
Trump won by appealing to people who historically felt they were and deserved to be the in-control majority but now feel they are the not-in-control minority, and he won by claiming he would make them feel like an in-control majority again.
It is that simple. It is also simply the case that the people who historically felt they were and deserved to be the in-control majority were white men.
Populism in American politics is nothing new. Nor is populism oriented on racial lines. There is no secret "untouchable" issue lurking behind it. You pick a large group, capable of forming a powerful voting bloc, a group that believes it has reason to feel resentful, to feel cheated out of power that's rightfully theirs, to feel that "elites" are conspiring against them to ruin the country, and you tell them they deserve power and you're going to give it back to them.
Exactly 120 years ago, William Jennings Bryan ran on a similar platform of "restoring" political and economic power to people who felt they once had it, lost it, and deserved to have it once again. In the process he delivered one of the objectively greatest political addresses in American history (the "Cross of Gold" speech). The only difference is Bryan lost the electoral college by about the same margin Trump won it by.
Trump won because uneducated white people voted together as a voting block. Do you criticize black people for exercising their power in a similar manner?
But trump over performed with non-whites, and I think lots of people missed this. I think that people going very far into the racial data are on a wild goose chase. The fact is that clearly, voters did not think that stopping trump because he's a jerk was important enough to be the deciding factor. Clinton just campaigned badly. She couldn't credibly articulate a plan of change for America with Obama sitting as president, and made no effort to convince voters that the status quo was worth preserving. She was just running against Donald Trump, and the enthusiasm gap was enough for her to lose.
Did Trump articulate how he would change the US though? I agree that Clinton was mostly campaigning against Trump, but Trump's campaign was even worse in this regard.
Hillary did not have a convincing plan and mostly wanted to continue and see where things go. Trump has promised a lot of fairy tales. It seems to me that the only concrete things that Trump has promised to do is to backpedal on the equality rights.
> Did Trump articulate how he would change the US though
He didn't have to. The amount of vitriol directed at him and his supporters by almost every journalist, academic, intellectual, and establishment politician told the voters everything they needed to know.
This election came down to moral outrage. The duplicity and flat out dishonesty of the media, the simmering anger at Obama's broken promises about health care ("If you like your plan, you can keepy it") and the serious and deep personal flaws of Hillary Clinton was just too much to overcome.
One thing that shouldn't be overlooked either is that while some view Trump's platform as racist, his supporters see him as the exact opposite. He's hard on illegal immigration but otherwise has no particular bias towards Mexicans on a personal level. In fact he has sympathized with them on why so many of them are fleeing for their lives to the USA, something nobody is willing to talk about.
Seriously? He literally accused a judge of prejudice simply because of his Mexican heritage. No supporting evidence. He was not an illegal immigrant. He was born here. There is only one word for that: racism.
Let's look at the data: about 30% of latinos voted for him. This surprised me and I bet it surprised Clinton too. So clearly there's other stuff that they care about more than Trump's racism.
As a sidenote, I catch myself expecting that _all_ minorities should vote 100% for Clinton. This is another example of the kind of complacency that led to this win in the first place. Trump was going on and on about how "democrats feel entitled to black votes without doing anything to help black people". Now, a policy specifically designed to help black people will get waves of criticism from Breitbart, but the point stands, and I think that Democrats shouldn't feel entitled to votes just because they aren't terrible.
Nobody criticizes any plan to help black people based on it's intent. You seem to be confusing intent with desired results, perhaps on purpose. Democrat's intent has been ostensibly to help black people (and certainly rank and file democrats really are altruistic) but the result has been the exact opposite for Black families. It doesn't matter where you go in the country, even in a deep blue city in a deep blue state where evil Republicans are nary to be found, Black people are suffering, and you only have one party to blame. I know to some, just stating this will brand me as a racist but until we can collectively recognize that what we have been trying hasn't worked, we'll never make the corrections we need.
Well you're wrong, what else can I say. You think you are so right that anything that disagrees with your position must be a racial power issue. It just isn't like that. It is definitely part of it - dont get me wrong, but the much much bigger part is actual policy issues.
You think you are so right that anything that disagrees with your position must be a racial power issue.
I think I've read my history book. I think this has happened before. I think the economic system that working-class white people without college degrees favor is one that only worked so long as people with the "wrong" skin color were either held in literal bondage or legally prohibited from competing with people who had the "right" skin color. I think the past century has seen an enormous effort to tear down the system which protected those white working-class non-college-educated people from competition, on grounds that this sort of protectionism is morally odious. I think the "economic anxiety" of Trump voters is nothing more than a yearning for a return to that sort of protectionism. I think it's possible many of them are viewing history through extremely rose-colored glasses in order not to see the magnitude of the evil that had to be perpetrated to maintain their position, but that doesn't excuse it.
Since when were American politics about issues rather than image?
People who voted for Trump clearly liked his bombastic asshole style, and want to stick it to the "liberal elite". There happened to be more of them this time around than there were people afraid enough of a Trump presidency to vote for a relatively subdued and conventional candidate.
That's, of course, given that there wasn't enough voting fraud to make a difference, which with electronic voting machines in the mix isn't really a given.
Pollers have been spectacularly wrong before.. coming out with some really sorry and unbelievable excuses for their errors. Voters somehow seem to swallow them, however. So the spectacle continues.
Clinton wasn't a very inspiring candidate, that much is obvious. I think there would have been a much better turnout for Bernie Sanders. He got people excited (and he wasn't Clinton, so Republicans fed on a diet of Clinton hatred for decades wouldn't have been so afraid to vote for him). But Sanders was too unconventional for the Democratic leadership. Now hopefully the Democrats learn that being unconventional and taking risks can win elections.
Somehow, though, I don't think they'll learn any lessons. They've dropped the ball for too long, and played the role of the appeasers for too long. They've cozied up to the Republicans and moved their party far to the right, occasionally talking the talk but rarely walking the walk. This is what they get.
> But Sanders was too unconventional for the Democratic leadership.
The DNC Chairperson, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had to resign after showing blatant favouritism towards Clinton at Sanders expense[1]. It wasn't Sanders' unconventionality that was the issue, it was the clear favouritism towrds one candidate over the other.
Sanders fully understood what was going on with the voting base. He got that the middle class is upset and wants the national priorities focused back on improving the American standard of living, not on nation building / war / foreign meddling / boosting globalist policies, et al.
Hillary on the other hand is a classic globalist, backed by Wall Street and an endless parade of billionaires. She was the establishment in an anti-establishment election.
The problem was, if that is true, then Trump already defeated Bernie in the primaries. Those voters weren't going to vote for Hillary, Bernie needed them, but they were already attending Trump rallies.
Only about half of those voting the general election voted in the primaries. The other half (far, far more than the margin that Trump won over Clinton by) had yet to make their choice known by then.
Further, if Sanders had gotten the Democratic nomination, the debates, issues, and media coverage would have been far different, perhaps even swaying those who had wound up casting an anti-Clinton vote by voting for Trump to instead vote for Sanders.
One other thing to keep in mind that the turnout for Trump may have been much smaller had his opponent not been Clinton.
Clinton was put forward because she was to be the first female President. She has been groomed for that position for years now. I think America is ready for a female President, just not her. I think her image (rightly or wrongly) as a liar and a cheat and someone hellbent on doing anything to get that esteemed seat in the Oval Office is what did her in.
> People who voted for Trump clearly liked his bombastic asshole style
Not necessarily. All of the Trump voters I know (in the low double digits) are either single-issue voters on abortion, but who hate Trump- or they are single-issue voters on obamacare, angry because their premiums shot up, but who hate Trump.
Never underestimate peoples' desire to vote based on feelings instead of the big picture.
Not saying I agree, but it seems a good number of American voters agree.
In this way it can actually be seen as a win for American democracy that the very well-funded Clinton campaign lost against what seems more like a movement.
Trump wasn't exactly a lightweight when it came to funding.
Trump spent $367 million vs Clinton's $534 million. The next most well funded candidate, Gary Johnson of the Libertarian party, spent only $10 million.[1]
So money still plays a huge role in American politics. I'm also pretty sure not all of that money is spent on getting candidates elected, and that a lot of back scratching goes on and favors bought.
Even if this election was a win against money in politics, and a boon to democracy in that sense, it's a major loss in many other ways. Trump is pretty clearly an egotistical anti-democratic dictator in the making, who has nothing but contempt for the democratic process (ex: he stated he'd only accept the election results if he won). Now that he's won, expect a steamrolling over his perceived enemies in the very antithesis of democracy.
At the risk of sounding like I'm speaking for all Americans, I think most Americans are more comfortable with a politician spending their own money to get elected rather than be influenced by someone else's money.
How many Americans are aware that most of that money isn't Trump's, I'm not sure. But he's a billionaire! and he's against special interests! So how would a man like that just turn around and take contributions?
sigh.
There are good things that can come from this, however. We shall wait and see. My prediction is that Trump is the most bombastic, blowhard of a president, but his actual policies end up being mild.
I don't agree with Trump either, I was trying to question the idea that American politics are based almost exclusively on image and that makes it impossible that this election could have been influenced by actual issues.
>I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about n*, and they stomped the floor.
-George Wallace
He took a very simple road. He appealed to the fear of the Other.
Those are the real issues that were discussed. People talk as if it's normal that blacks and latinos mostly vote as a block, well now white working class does as well.
Exactly. And now it is wrong that blue collar workers from fly-over states have voted as a block. Yet nobody questions Hillary for organizing a rap concert to attract African American voters and expecting them to vote as a block.
Most of all, I think they would be surprised to find out how many Bernie Sanders supporters have switched to Trump. Some I imagine will never admit it to their co-workers or friends, but I know many have never forgot being back-stabbed.
The funny thing is, the Democrats could have easily win this. They screwed up so badly, multiple times in a row, despite all the media help, and all the money donated to them, all the help from the DOJ and POTUS.
> They screwed up so badly, multiple times in a row
I hope one of the things they learned about this was that negative campaign ads dont work. I dont want to hear what shocking, Bad Thing the other guy said. In a 30 second radio spot, tell me what you're going to do, why that will help, and how its better than the way the opponent will handle it. You can only smear dirt on a surface once.
I assume he's referring to a lot of blue collar workers getting the shit end of the stick on trade deals. It's the rust belt that carried him to the presidency after all.
I think admiration goes a bit far, but and even if he does, it's far better than the default "Russians are bad mmmkay" attitude that most politicians have. There is a real opportunity for nice relations with Russia here. As a European I prefer it much to the war mongering of Kelly that damaged Russian and European business and relations and just fosters hate.
The EU is already taking Ukraine. Not by force but by politics, we already helped Poroshenko in place there. too bad some countries prefer not to associate with corruption ridden Ukraine [0]. But hey, EU leaders usually don't care what voters think (we got the Treaty of Lisbon after we voted no on the EU constitution).
EU surprisingly did take strong position when Ukraine crisis started. Only way EU countries can stand against Russia is if they have backing of NATO. Without this noone will take the risk.
Because we have a vested interest in keeping peace in Europe. As a country it has worked to our advantage to keep large markets under our protection. Having a dumpster fire in your neighborhood is bad for business.
Extending the zone of safe and free society is definitely in our interests. I don't know when it became in vogue to openly shit on the Democratic Peace Theory, but it's certainly not for a lack of evidence. I guess it's something that you people have committed us to relearning.
But you didn't extend the zone of safe and free society; if anything, you reduced it. And it's not like you can claim it was an unforeseen consequence: Russia told you explicitly that they would "take military and other steps along its borders if ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia join NATO" [1], an then they proceeded to do just that in Georgia [2].
So you poked the bear without having any way to contain it, and you shouldn't be surprised that people blame you for it having razed the village.
Why do russia need baltic states? Name at least one reason. It seems that's just baltic horror. I can see only few microscopic countries without resources of strategic significance but with dead economies and most of young population in other EU countries. But yeah "Russia really wants to conquer us"
First, historic precedence. Russia has attacked & occupied the baltics multiple times. Imperial Russia occupied Estonia during 18th - 20th century, and Soviet Russia once again occupied for half of the 20th century. During this time they sent the natives to Siberia, while importing Russians here and imposing other forms of russification [1] to obliterate our culture. It's more than just about land, it's about the survival of our culture which has been under systematic attack by Russia for the overwhelming majority of the last 300 years. The current Russian regime isn't much different and holds a strongly anti-Estonian view, so of course self-preservation is the #1 political issue for us.
Second, there is both strategic significance and resources here. We're talking about the previously western border of the Soviet union here. Uranium mining, nuclear submarine bases, missile silos. Better access to the Baltic sea, and closer reinforcement to Kaliningrad.
Well, there's another historic precedence - Baltic Germans. Do you afraid that they maybe coming due to historic precedence too? Ask Czech Republic about them and "obliteration of culture". Do Czechs afraid of Germany coming back?
Again, I'm not trying to say that "big scary bear" is actually teddy bear. I just cannot imagine Russia being able to invade any country in EU. It's like saying there's a chance Russia would invade USA. Is it worth uranium and some bases? Doubt so. Does Russia have any resources or technical capabilities to confront EU? Doubt they ever will.
Also, about self-preservation - look at your emigration proportions [2] (shame they don't show trends - just pie charts :( ). Only this year trend is positive, but still estonians flee the country.
Good question and I would say the difference is the current regime and their actions.
Germans have been very cautious after WW2. They haven't been acting aggressively, they haven't been holding parades to celebrate Nazis as heroes, they don't have statues of Hitler in the middle of their cities.
Meanwhile Russia still celebrates everything Soviet as the biggest heroes that have ever lived, and have an amazing number of Stalin statues/paintings everywhere. Then they fund & organize attacks on Georgia [1], and annex Crimea [2]. Then, as recently as 2014, the FSB came into Estonia and abducted one of our intelligence agents. [3] This agent was denied contact with anyone, and was given premission to only use a Russian appointed lawyer. In a charade of a trial he was quickly sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was later exchanged for a FSB agent who was sitting in our prison. [4]
So you see, it's not only about precedence, but it's also about the continuation of the theme and actual real events that keep happening.
Crimea? Sebastopol port has always been part of Russia and the center of their fleet because it does not get frozen in Winter like other ports.
Having ships under frozen water is the same as not having ships at all.
Easter Ukraine? It is were the industry of Ukraine is. It is very near Russia and as most of Russia is plain, it is very easy to invade the country(Russia) from it.
Russia wants to have a buffer around their country in the same way the US does not let anybody to have military bases and missiles near the country, like in Cuba.
Russia needs Crimea to secure it's excess to the Black see. Losing Crimea to NATO (or losing it at all) would be a huge problem. As long as you have Crimea - you basically control most of the Black Sea.
As for the Eastern Ukraine - best case scenario - securing a terrain pass to Crimea. Worst case scenario - destabilisation of the the country and more 'ground' during negotiations over any deal. Almost like taking hostages.
Military base is not stronghold anymore. You don't need to protect it from siege. Kaliningrad is just a place of location of strategic missiles of medium range. It single-use weapon. You don't need ground path to Kalinigrad.
Crimea - it's were russian navi is. The former soviet military harbors for Black sea were rented by Russia. When power changed in the Ukraine to be USA/NATO oriented Russia did everything to keep it's military presence.
As for Eastern Ukraine - I feel like Russia doesn't need it per se - just as distraction and zone of destabilization in order to protect Crimea.
Russia never "took" Eastern Ukraine, even today. It mostly sat on the sidelines whilst a civil war between pro-EU and pro-Russian forces played itself out, at most sending weapons and special forces just like the West did.
Because Baltic states were part of Russian empire once and USSR later. Putin would be forever glorified in Russia and could rule till the end of days if he'd manage to "restore the glorious Russian Empire". Another reason is that Baltic countries stand as a gate to (old) Europe for Russia in both economical and military meaning.
RE: "restore the glorious Russian Empire" - his latest customs/economic union with Kazakhstan and Belarus is a joke. And there's two most pro-russian regimes as of now. CIS is also as good as dead. USSR is gone and won't be restored.
How Baltic countries gate from Russia in "economical meaning"?
Peaceful coexistence is all well and good, but if we're peacefully coexisting while Russia annexes more of, well, the world – that's not acceptable to many.
But those simpletons will then not assign blame to the new overlord or to themselves. The culprits will be immigrants, jews, muslims, environmental activists, journalists or whatever they don't like.
yeah and exactly because of this kind of insane, bogus "analysis" you lost. When or if you find back the connection to reality, you will realize how Trump actually won. By talking about real issues that nobody else even dares to touch.