Is there some statistical analysis on the reason people vote trump ? I refuse to believe the narrative that Americans are just a bunch of redneck retarded bigots.
You ever stop to think that maybe calling ~50% of the population of your country "a bunch of redneck retarded bigots" could perhaps have some part in it? The media pushing that narrative everywhere certainly doesn't help either.
I'm not a Yank nor do I vote or care to ever vote, but if I were and all I ever saw was every mainstream source of news and media, including sites like Reddit and apparently even HN, calling me a retard (which funnily enough is a pretty bigoted insult coming from the supposed moral & good side) and a bigot non-stop I'd probably say "fuck it" and vote for the guy too.
From where I'm sitting across the pond, the Republicans want stricter border control, smaller government, lower taxes, free speech (which itself is a loaded term that means different things depending on who's saying/hearing it), which is basically what the populist parties across the EU are promising as well.
Yep exactly, this is what won him the 2016 election and the meltdowns were amazing. This time around the dems have also had the economy making them look bad, not to mention the illegal immigration issue finally making it to "big blue" cities like New York.
So it's not really surprising he won, and the margin isn't surprising either.
Actually i think it's the bottom fifth that have benefited the most from wage growth, with the low-six figure crowd getting the short end of the stick and having to pay more for burgers with the tight service labor market.
Yes, and it appears the non-college folks in the suburbs (who've been having to pay more for their burgers) were the biggest shift this election, not the burger flippers themselves.
I suppose but I'm not really sure if the GOP has anything on offer that will actually help. I hope they do because we're gonna be living in it but nothing thus far proposed has been said to be good for the economy.
See this is what surprises me. I would have thought voting for a more regular market with higher taxes to the elite would be favourable to the majority non-tech workers, rather than the billionaires which play the puppeteers to trump
Not a single penny of that "extra tax money from tech workers" would go to the average Joe. That's the problem. It would go straight for the lowest classes or overseas.
It's also the (trying to be) misleading mainstream media. Stuff like "he wants to deport all immigrants" being uttered until the last day - without specifying it's just the illegal ones, which is a very important distinction.
And there are many examples like these, where he's quoted WAY out of context, and that kind of stuff. If you believe that for years and at one point learn that it's actually bs and he didn't say that or the context reveals he was quoting someone else, or negates the comment the next sentence, etc, you start to question ALL your beliefs.
They pushed too far, fabricated just a BIT too much, and people caught on.
Just so you know, i wasn't quoting what I think but what mainstream media says 'indirectly' here in Europe.
Obviously I don't buy it, hence the reason I asked if studies had been made.
It surprises me that I see so many different reason here in the comment why people think others chose trump, when it's clearly their own reasoning.
You say they voted trump because they are fed up of being called bigot, just like YOU would do. Well that's the issue, some Americans might have say fuck them I vote trump but I honestly believe it is marginal.
I believe most cared about the election economy first, but I could be biased and that's literally the reason I asked if studies had been done, beyond the usual blablah.
> You ever stop to think that maybe calling ~50% of the population of your country "a bunch of redneck retarded bigots" could perhaps have some part in it? The media pushing that narrative everywhere certainly doesn't help either.
Yep, it's an own goal. Similar shit has led to the rise of right-wing populism all across the world, time and again. Yet they never learn. They never realize that shitting on the average Joe is not how you get power in a democratic setup.
Turns out, the average Joe is a poor, working dude. He is not a sexist colonialist or any other -ism. Yet the Democratic Party will not stop alienating men.
> and a bigot non-stop I'd probably say "fuck it" and vote for the guy too.
And most people would say that would categorize you as mentally deficient. Voting against your own best interests because you feel people are mean to you isn't usually seen as very intelligent.
Namecalling and shit slinging is exactly what Trump and his supporters do and it seems to work out well for them. They love thinking about people crying over their insults and whatnot. But they also complain loudly if anyone turns the same against them.
You're experiencing an illusion. The few who do embrace the identity of "redneck retarded bigot" will wear the identity openly. The majority who do not embrace that identity will diplomatically avoid discussing their true political opinions with you and you'll just assume their democrats because they're intelligent and sensible, and then you'll be flabbergasted when things like last night happen.
what? plenty of intelligent and sensible people have told me point blank that they're voting for Trump. I'm not surprised in the slightest that he won.
The democrats are not socialist and they don’t call themselves that. Socialists may or may not cast a D vote, but if they do it’s a monumental compromise.
The Dems are terrified of accidentally seeming too left. Republicans have no problem embracing the more extreme right, whereas Dems would rather cowtow to the imaginary swing voter and lose than get called the S word.
Every far left extremist (which have no clue what communism even means) has an analogous far right extremist (who also have no clue what it actually means), both are idiots and shouldn't be let anywhere near government.
Admittedly the US had a choice between someone unfit for office and a lawfully convicted felon, I don't envy this situation.
What? Kamala would have done great, where is this coming from? Trump for better or worse is about to get Weekend at Bernie'd by his cabinet just like Biden did.
It's not 50% though; in 2020, only ~240 million people were eligible to vote (out of 330 million, so about 72% of people); only ~158 million people actualy voted (48%). Oversimplifying, only 25% of the population of the US voted for Trump, and it's probably even less due to the system of electors.
This is why democracy is broken, because not everyone gets a voice.
I've never understood this argument. When performing scientific studies, there is a sample size of n = x hundred/thousand, and we then generalise the result across the entire population. Having 48% of the population participate in this "study" is likely to be very indicative of the likely voting choice for the remainder of the population, right? You really think that the proportion of votes for each party for those people that haven't voted would be any significant difference from those that did?
> Having 48% of the population participate in this "study" is likely to be very indicative of the likely voting choice for the remainder of the population, right?
That isn't how statistics work. Sample size reduces your error relative to the population you are randomly sampling from.
When you don't have a random sampling, then you sampling method is what determines how generalizable your findings are. A good sample size with a bad sampling method tells us little to nothing about the general population and only informs us about the specific sub population for which the sample can be considered a random selection from.
With significant differences in voting rates across many different demographics, votes are absolutely not a representative sample of the overall population.
After seeing this guy become elected for the second time I have come to the opposite conclusion. This is what America wants, and this is what America is. The rest of the world should acknowledge this and act accordingly, and the people of the US, especially the Democrats, should as well.
Pretending like "this isn't us", "this isnt real america" is just keeping them from doing any real introspection.
No, urban areas voted Democrat once again. If anything, 2024 has really showed the widening divide between urban and rural areas, both in the US and in Europe. Probably everywhere else as well.
While it is true that democrats carried urban centers it is worth noting that their support appears to have eroded somewhat in these areas. Republicans picked up a statistically relevant number of votes there.
If I were a betting man I'd wager that switches like that are purely due to inflation. Shit's too expensive and people think that changing the party they vote into the seat of the presidency is going to change that.
It’s all that matters in the presidential race. But barely over half of the population wanted him as president. The other side doesn’t disappear just because they lost an election.
I'm in the UK and I was just listening to Andrew Neil, a political commentator over here, and he mentioned something interesting. There was apparently a 3 to 2 ratio of Hispanic/Black voters voting FOR Trump. A possible explanation is that the border policies have had an impact on minimum wage workers, of which Hispanic and Black voters are disproportionately a category of. The Democratic Party will have to do a post mortem, but there's likely to be many issues found where the Democrats failed their voters.
In particular, I believe the economic rhetoric Trump used worked very well with many lower income people. I don't remember Harris taking any strong stances there, or maybe what she had I store was not communicated well.
I think this is accurate, a big chunk of the vote seems to be "my bills/food/rent went up when Blue in office, Red says they _will_ fix it, so let's try Red"
Of course not statistical, but seems to be a large trend in discussion
Yeah, I think that's it, or at least a large part of it. People were unhappy and when you're unhappy you vote out the incumbent (and in a two-party system there's only one other choice).
I also think that's the same reason the exact same guy was voted out four years ago. Pretty bizarre if true, so it's probably not the whole story.
This is the challenge that the Democrats have; the Republicans have a policy that appeals to a significant enough percentage of the population, while the Democrats have to try and appeal to "everyone else". A two-party system is not a democracy, it's a compromise, and only a political revolution will fix it.
Of course, that's also what the Republicans / Heritage Foundation are aiming for, if they have their way they will do away with democracy. Which isn't exactly what I was thinking of.
Promises from an incumbent can hit differently. If Democrats were willing and able, they should have done it in the last 4 years. If not, then why promise?
I have no doubt Harris would have delivered on improving the conditions for the poor. Unfortunately Trumps rhetoric was simply too effective, perhaps because of what you say in the second sentence.
They're not so numerous; due to the way the system is set up, they have outsized impact. Wyoming with 500k people has the same amount of influence in the Senate as California with 38 million people.
That said, so far she hasn't won the popular vote either, so that's not what we should be blaming in this election.
My question is, why can't democrats see how bad and average intell. their candidate is? Trump can at least talk, give interviews and all. But other one???
For one, the population is way more spread out in the US than in other countries. There are only 9 cities with more than 1 million people in a country of 350 million inhabitants.
Those are local administrative areas, not cities. Using any reasonable functional definition of a city, the number of cities with a population >1 million is around 50.
I think you’re confusing the electoral college with the Senate.
There are two senators per state regardless of population, so low-population rural states have an outsized influence in the Senate.
In the electoral college, each state is weighted by population. It’s unavoidably biased (just by the nature of chunking votes into seats and states) but it doesn’t consistently favor either side.
Each state gets a number of electors equal to their Congressional delegation: Representatives *and* Senators. So the overweighting of small states in the Senate does, to a smaller degree, affect the Electoral College as well (as every state gets two "free" electors).
The electoral college for one. Massively oversized benefit, especially since the house size has been frozen. Basically every level of our government is designed to give small rural areas the advantage. It’s no wonder we are the only prosperous nation without universal healthcare and post secondary education. We give the people who contribute the least to our society free rein to run it.
No, basically every level of our country is designed to balance the voices of heavily populated areas with rural areas. It's completely ignorant of the history of our nation to claim it's intended to give rural areas an advantage, when in fact it is an attempt at compromise. And let's not forget: without that compromise our nation literally would not exist, as the large and small states wouldn't have come to an agreement otherwise.
This is also what billionaires and the rich want, which is how you can tell rural USA isn't going to gain anything. But they'll blame immigration or some other issue instead of the people swimming in gold coins, making them work harder for less money year over year.
I'm surprised this take isn't gaining more ground in these discussions.
people keep talking about how "this is what all these Americans want" - bologna I say. They're just voting how they've been programmed to believe.
Find me a Trump supporter that has only researched him from first-hand credible sources and has not been influenced by friends, family, social media, or mainstream media. I would be very surprised if any person like this exists.
>The left won’t accept this awful truth about the American soul, a beast that they believe they can fix “if only the people knew the Truth.”
>But what if the Truth is that Americans don’t want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance–and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left’s wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America’s rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it’s not so much Goering’s famous “bigger lie” that works here, but the dumber and meaner the lie, the more the public wants to hear it repeated.
Everyone is throwing ideas, excuses and explanations into the mix, but maybe people just want what he’s proposing - strict border control, low regulation, small government, low taxes, free speech etc.
Im not American and barely engaged with politics at all but all of that sounds like a pretty good idea to me without looking at any stats or trying to find out why my fellow citizens were confused into making the wrong choice.
Except they're lies or false promises; low regulation is only for companies, allowing them to infringe on workers' rights, increase poverty, etc, which goes towards oligarchy. Small government means more power to less people, which goes towards autocracy. Low taxes means less money to social programs, which means people will literally die from being unable to afford health care, which is eugenics. Free speech for me but not for thee, it's Musk's flavour of free speech where words like "cis" are banned.
But sure, on the surface they sound good I suppose.
It isn’t about why his promises appeal to some people. The question is why people buy the ”free ice cream for all every day if I’m elected class president!” from a pedophile-rapist criminal. And instead of class presidency it’s real presidency.
I wouldn’t trust literally anything in this guys hands’ and even less a country.
My take is that the democrats are being blamed for the ever higher cost of living.
There are people who vote because they want the insular America and to bring jobs back from China/Mexico/etc, those who vote to burn down 'the establishment' because they feel no hope, and those who just hope that any change means cost of living drops.
If you use Twitter you would know. People hate the lackadaisical attitude to illegal immigration, the inflation in the economy, and the idealogy-centered government (yes, this has been a popular sore point).
Yet the Senate passed a bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year that basically had nearly everything Republicans asked for, and the House wouldn't even take it up because Trump didn't want to lose immigration as an issue.
And inflation is almost down to normal levels, and Trump is promising wide ranging and massive tariffs that it is hard to see not causing a significant rise in inflation.
So its hard to see how people who are concerned about those issues would vote for Trump.
Even if they don't like Democrat approaches to those issues, or really dislike Democrat ideology which might explain voting for Trump now when the only real choices were Trump and Harris, what about during the Republican primaries?
Republicans used to have many reasonably competent people in the primaries. How the heck could they not find anyone better than Trump?
I find it hilarious when people say democrats are "idealogy-centered government" [sic], but Trump isn't. What do those words mean to you? Are you saying that Trump has no ideology?..
As someone who voted for Harris, I’d say trump is less ideologically driven than democratic candidates. He’s insane and erratic, which don’t follow ideology.
Then Idk, he openly says that government agencies should have less power (epa, fda...). I mean, he doesn't sponsor this view, but he openly said he'll make musk give less and less agency to gov. Companies that aren't deemed worth of it, whatever it means
It.. unironically seems so? Not long ago Trump used to be a Democrat. He has often backtracked and tweaked his public ideology to whatever gets the most populist support, e.g. Abortions.
It’s framed as an equality movement whereas it takes as an axiom that society is built on systemic oppression - that’s the unquestionable tenet. And then the prescription is using governments power to impose “preferred” outcomes, no matter the cost.
Thanks, but no thanks - I prefer to live in a meritocracy.
Also my personal pet peeve - having a cultural preference is not racism, god damn it! Not all cultures are the same, and we should be allowed to state and fight for our preferences! (Unlike discriminating on the basis of physical appearance or features, which is actual racism).
The fact that America equates the two is asinine to me (as an immigrant)
It's anecdotal, but the easiest way to understand them is to just travel to a conservative state and talk to them. Even if you won't agree, you'll see that they exist
Well that's all wrong. You don't need to travel to find a Trump voter. And merely talking to them is not going to be sufficient to truly "understand" them. If only.
Maybe it's just cope for the massive disappointment I'm feeling about the state of my country, but I'm somehow also disappointed that you could somehow read my comment and misunderstand it so badly. Of course I wasn't arguing that people should not talk to one another.
And I would add, listen. Don't immediately check out mentally because you disagree with what they are saying, don't argue, simply listen and try to understand. It's really hard for humans to do, but it's important. You cannot hope to change minds or appeal to voters if you don't understand what motivates them in the first place.
And when I say you have to understand people I mean truly understand, not intellectually lazy crap like "oh they're just stupid" or "they're racist" like you already see in this thread. Stupid/racist/etc people do exist, but that isn't most people and it isn't most Trump voters either. They are normal people with real concerns and needs, not caricatures of evil.
I do try. The problem is, a lot of times what they're saying is just nonsense.
"The economy is terrible" -- well, no it's not. We had some inflation a few years ago, but so did every other country in the world, and the US has had far lower than most other places. The Biden administration has been doing a great job with the economy. And you know those business people who want Trump to win because they want lower regulations? Yeah, they're not on your side -- they're trying to screw you over. You feel economic pressure, and so you're going to vote someone who's going to make it worse?
"Libs are weaponizing the justice department" -- People who have flagrantly tried to flout laws and undermine our democracy need to be held accountable. I mean yeah, "Always prosecute the outgoing party" is something we want to avoid, but "Never prosecute anything any politician does" is just as bad, if not worse. And at any rate, if that's something you're actually concerned about, why is your solution to vote for "LOCK HER UP!" Trump?
"Biden / Harris are just as bad" -- I mean, no? Trump literally sent an armed mob to attack his own vice president. Nothing you think the alleged "Biden crime family" comes anywhere close (and BTW there is no "Biden crime family").
"Immigrant gangs are invading our country" -- I mean, just no.
Not everyone is like this, but a lot of people are just living in a fictional reality constructed by Fox, Newsmax, and now Musk.
> "...so did every other country in the world, and the US has had far lower than most other places..."
And you fail to see why that might be uninteresting and unconvincing to a low income voter struggling even harder to make ends meet? Maybe even infuriating enough to vote against whoever said it?
I'm trying to treat people like adults. They're suffering because of worldwide macroeconomic conditions that are out of Biden's control, but Biden's administration has managed to make the suffering less than in other places. Other sources of suffering include policies which the Republicans themselves have been pursuing.
Imagine someone buys a Kia hoping to reduce how much they pay in gasoline; but then the price of gasoline doubles, and they end up paying more than they were before anyway; and so they say, "Kia is a terrible car, it's so expensive to fill up, I'm going to buy a Hummer instead".
That's what voting for Trump in this situation is like: at minimum he's going to enable rich oligarchs to squeeze low-income voters even harder, and at worst he's going to trash the economy by raising tariffs, deporting working immigrants, and politicizing the federal reserve (lowering interest rates and triggering even more inflation).
I think normal voters are perfectly capable of understanding this. It's you who seem to be saying that low income voters are incapable of understanding this and should instead be lied to.
> "I think normal voters are perfectly capable of understanding this. It's you who seem to be saying that low income voters are incapable of understanding this and should instead be lied to."
I offer in rebuttal the election results (which, to be clear, I myself am not happy about).
The Democrats could have promised a lot more programs and initiatives to relieve the pain of the working class than they did. They could have made economic relief a lot more central to their advertising. People want their pain acknowledged and sympathized with, not waved away with an airy "it's not so bad".
I think we basically agree then. As far as I'm aware, the Democrats didn't attempt even to make the "making the best of a bad hand" argument, much less make a case for how they were going to address the situation.
One thing that Trump is incredibly talented at at is getting everyone to talk about him. I've always thought that the way to get him beat wasn't to trash him, but to talk about the great things about the alternate candidate. So I made it a point to avoid talking about Trump on my social media.
After the DNC, I thought we were going to get the same thing from the Harris campaign -- but it seems like in the last few weeks, Harris went hard on attacking Trump, hoping to get women out to vote for reproductive rights, leaving me nothing really to share or talk about on FB.
Trump, on the other hand, went hard on getting young adult males, who typically don't vote at all, to come out and vote for him. Both efforts had their effect, but Trump's bet seems to have paid off more, and put him back in the white house.
You especially see it if you pay attention to framing. On every mainstream platform, social issues are always first and foremost framed as "how can we afford this expensive social program!?!". It's always business friendly and worker hostile.
I swear that has been something that, as an European person, left me quite speechless. We've heard a lot about Biden mental situation, but nothing about the other guy struggling as well
He's nowhere near as bad as Biden. The media downplayed Biden's senility until the disastrous debate made it impossible. Americans got to see both candidates talk without a teleprompter for a couple hours, and Trump was able to handle it easily, while Biden exhibited clear signs of mental decline.
Trump has a rambling oratory style, but that is more of a stylistic affection.
The question isn't if he's better or worse than Biden, the question is if he's well enough for the presidency. And he's shown very clear signs of mental decline the last months.
Neither Trump nor Biden should have been chosen as candidates, yet all the focus has been on Biden.
You know, nothing gives me competence in my incompetence than seeing just how fucking successful Trump and Elon have been despite their lack of competence
You mean the same majority of the major media outlets of all types that has been consistently hostile to Trump for many years?
If it's the oligarchs in the media who were a factor in this second victory, then it was through one truly spectacular mass-scale reverse psychology of getting exactly the opposite of the narrative they almost consistently pushed. That would be one very interesting story if it were at all true.
More realistically: to a very big (and apparently growing) swathe of the American voting public, the kind of shit that mattered most was what much of the media and their progressive political supporters in the major cities derided enough for all those millions of voters to dig in their heels and ignore them. Trump symbolically and often also literally, vocally represents this resistance to that media narrative, and thus he won again.
Musk, Bezos and Murdoch are three that come to mind. Two are legacy media. Between Fox and Washington Post that surely is not even half of the 'mainstream media'. What other oligarchs are there that I'm overlooking?
- Mark Zuckerberg owns Facebook/Instagram (issued the statements in late Aug 2024 about Biden administration pressuring about censoring Covid-related info)
- Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of LA Times/San Diego Union Tribune, and other newspapers, LA Lakers, billionaire biotech person
- Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, owner of Time magazine
- Laurene Powell Jobs, billionaire widow of Steve Jobs, owns The Atlantic Monthly
- Masayoshi Son, Softbank CEO, USA Today/Gannet media group owned by New Media Investment Group via Fortress Investment group via Softbank
[edit - added below]
- Michael Bloomberg (former mayor of New York city) owns Bloomberg
- Sumner Redstone owns Paramount/Viacom/CBS
- Thomson family (Canada) owns Thomson Reuters via Woodbridge Company
- Brain L. Roberts, CEO Comcast, son of company founder, NBCUniversal, Sky Group, owned via 33% controlling supershares
- Donald Newhouse, son of company founder, Conde Nast (New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue), newspapers, controlling stake in Discovery Comms.
- John Malone, former CEO of TCI cable, largest shareholder of Liberty Media, et al.
I just did. Unfortunately I did not learn much. The first few letters were pro-Trump, but with for me unconvincing reasoning, I think OP asked for something better - and I read it because I too wanted to hear something with more substance. Most letters were even against Trump.
Most pro Trump arguments seem to be some vague statements about freedom of speech and "weaponizing of the Justice Department", which I find unconvincing given the things Trump said several times during the last few months, indicating he would do exactly that and worse.
The letters are as vague as this example:
> My concern is that Ms Harris will at a minimum continue the leftist direction of America that has been pursued, or at least tolerated, by Joe Biden. Not to mention the violation of basic constitutional rights that the president tried to introduce with his vaccine mandate during the pandemic.
or
> Mr Trump will cut bureaucracy and regulations to unleash creativity and productivity in the American economy, especially manufacturing. Ms Harris will inflict taxes and spending that will spur higher deficits and inflation.
or
> You overlooked the unacceptable risks posed by the Democratic Party and Vice-President Harris. These include support for censorship, political correctness, selective prosecution and soft totalitarianism. The Republicans spend more, impose tariffs, and obsess on immigration whereas the Democrats tax more, regulate more and censor. Neither party confronts the hard choices required to limit monetary expansion, deficits and entitlements that gnaw at the dollar. I choose the Republicans because I value freedom of speech and oppose the totalitarianism implied in weaponising the Justice Department.
and that's most of the pro-Trump statements already.
I have no doubt the arguments exist, and those I wanted to hear, because I too share OPs question.
Wrong? I made no such statement! I was talking about the quality of the argument, not about the direction.
I'm not "dismissing" anything either. I have no opinion on Trump vs. Harris, as strange as that sounds to those with strong believes.
I merely observe that OP asked for arguments, and that link points to opinion letters that don't even attempt to make one. Which is fine for them - this is about this sub-thread's context. OP asked for arguments and the link does not provide them, this is not a dismissal of whatever is going on in that linked page itself, only whether it serves to satisfy OPs request here.
If you think there are plenty of places out there to get a wedding cake or a gender transition cake, and people should just leave people alone whom they disagree with, who do you vote for?
Recently there’s been an influx of illegal immigrants from Venezuela including some associated with Tren de Aragua that have been highly publicized and politicized. While most people do want America to be a melting pot of people from everywhere, whether you want your borders so wide open to allow criminals and gangs to sneak in is another question, and also probably something we all agree on, but in this case one candidate has been in power and has appeared to have not solved the problems.
Yeah, but you have to be somewhat deranged to trust a multiple bancrupt and proven grifter with that — especially since the economic record of his last administration hasn't been stellar at all.
But if you are lucky he will allow you vote for the other side in 4 years again and then you will vote republicans after and back and forth we go.
What‘s most striking is that a sober dialogue on opposing views/ideas has been replaced by partisanship and hatred of the othet side, whatever the subject. What do we need to do to get out of this mess?
A friend of mine just sent me an article from a Danish newspaper where they cover the reasons as to why people would want to vote for someone like Trump. They interview Arlie Russell Hochschild who has written two books on the topic: "Strangers in Their Own Land" and "Stolen Pride".
One explanation from Hochschild is that you have a group of disenfranchised votes, who see "everyone else" get to "jump the line" for help. Not only do they get to jump the line, they see the president (Obama back then) help these other people (immigrants, women, people of color, LGBTQ, an so on) move ahead of the line, while they are left behind to fend for themselves.
I haven't read the books yet, but I definitely plan to. From the article it certainly sound like it would help me understand why some Americans vote the way they do.
> "A friend of mine just sent me an article from a Danish newspaper where they cover the reasons as to why people would want to vote for someone like Trump...."
And this illustrates the problem. Hochschild is a professor emeritus of sociology at Berkeley. Why in heaven's name would you think that good insights will be garnered by reading a Danish article about a book written by a Blue professor about another group of Red people... when you can go on x dot com and read for yourself why people voted as they did?
I can say for certain - from reading and listening to what Trump voters have said themselves - that Trump voters are absolutely done with this kind of framing.
If your own political conviction influence your works as a professor, then you're perhaps not that great a professor, but if you do good work, then maybe you have the tools to write about that work and target it to a group of like minded people, communicating in a why that they/I better understand.
Personally I'm not interested in going on Twitter, or Facebook, because those are going to be the most extreme people, at both ends. I'm also no prepared to do the filtering required to identify trolls or propaganda. My interest is in the vast majority of people who don't really have a voice online. I can't go out and talk to them, I'm on the other side of the planet. I'd still like to know why they vote the way they do, because I'm directly affected by how rural America votes. I wish I weren't, so I guess that's one opinion I share with Trump.
As someone who has listened to both (or many, since there are not just two) sides, I can say for certain there is a severe disconnect between what Team Red says and what Team Blue writes about what Team Red says. If you are really interested in what Team Red says, do not listen to Team Blue at all about it. Not CNN, not Harris, not Blue politicians, not Blue journalists.
> If your own political conviction influence your works as a professor, then you're perhaps not that great a professor
Indeed. This is a major ongoing crisis in academe. And journalism.
As a self check, if you think that Trump's "very fine people on both sides" remark referred to white supremacists as "very fine people", then you need to upgrade your sources. Find the extended original video. It is hard to do! If you give up, let me know and I will send you a link. The search is instructive, however.
A careful, generous reading 'fine people' thing shows that he probably didn't _mean_ to include supremacists in the praise. But those groups heard as compliment and endorsement, and thanked him for it.
One has to think that this palimpsest property of his speech, be it intentional or accidental, is key to his appeal. Every listener to parse the message they want to hear out of his language.
>A careful, generous reading 'fine people' thing shows that he probably didn't _mean_ to include supremacists in the praise.
Not all. No need to be careful or generous. A very straightforward, plain reading of his statement makes it clear he explicitly excluded the neo-Nazis and white supremacists, because he explicitly did so in the same speech, practically in the same breath: "I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally." He said it that clearly, but you cannot find a clip which includes that quote from NYT nor WP nor CNN nor from any outlet to whom Team Blue is likely to listen.
... which illustrates my main point. A helpful answer to the question of why anyone would vote for Trump will simply not be found in Blue sources. Blue sources will only impart a conceptual model of Trump's victory that is frightening and the opposite of helpful.
> One has to think that this palimpsest property of his speech...
Support Trump or not, most of the controversies regarding his speech are similar deliberate misreading of his intent by people we had hitherto entrusted with the curation of facts to be used in our national dialogue.
And in the breath before the condemnation, he equates Lee and Washington/Jefferson as slaveholders, which aligns entirely with the groups he condemns in the next breath. This is what I mean by palimpsest. You read the condemnation and hear just that. The condemned group hears their talking point and the earlier equivocation and celebrates him as an ally, condemnation be damned. The left reads the earlier equivocations (in the quote, and the preceding events) and the talking point and discounts the condemnation as insincere. You can argue that your understanding of his utterance is his true meaning, but other groups can hear, and plausibly defend, the message they want to hear too.
> The left reads the earlier equivocations (in the quote, and the preceding events) and the talking point and discounts the condemnation as insincere.
The left did not hear or read the condemnation at all, as we have established. Rather, they continue to be presented with curated sounds bites crafted to bolster a very particular narrative.
It really will serve you to listen carefully to what your fellow Americans, including your President, are actually saying. You don't have to agree, but you will have a better idea of what's happening. It will not serve you to consume third-hand think-pieces discussing what they really meant by that "dogwhistle".
Refusing to hear the dogwhistles is much motivated listening as refusing to hear his condemnations of the far-right groups in that quote. Every listener has the privilege to infer the meaning and mind of their interlocutor given his utterances, and every speaker bears the responsibility of crafting their utterances to make their intended meaning understood by as clearly as possible by their audience. Yes, some listeners might interrogate an utterance in vain, looking for hidden meanings that just aren't there. But accepting the facile meaning of an utterance with total credulity is equally a losing strategy.
Perhaps, but in my opinion this incident does not demonstrate it. His explanation is plausible.
> "So I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye (Kanye West), who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else, and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed ‘advice’," Trump wrote in a message posted Saturday to his Truth Social account. "He shows up with 3 people, two of which I didn’t know, the other a political person who I haven’t seen in years. I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win. Fake News went CRAZY!"
His explanation is not printed at the beginning. It is printed near the end, only after quoting 10 people who disapproved of the meeting, plus an extensive catalogue of Ye's and Fuente's moral failings. The article relies on emotionalism to craft a specific view. They even capitalize CRAZY, which makes the explanation sound less plausible.
Trump may indeed be a "textbook fascist" whatever that means, but this article does not grant its audience the intelligence to work that out for themselves. Rather, to accept the article without skepticism requires one to believe that Trump is a white supremacist anti-Semite. That will be much easier to do if one has been primed by similar low-quality articles to believe it.
Ye has been a friend to Trump and is clearly disturbed. He brought people along with whom Trump was not familiar, yet the article makes it sound as if he deliberately invited them to attend some kind of sinister summit. The idea that a Latino and Black man would be welcome in white supremacist circles is absurd.
Trump has been the most pro-Israel President in history, and has a Jewish son-in-law - one of his closest advisors - and grandchildren. He is not an anti-Semite, so the article's attempt to tar him with that brush is silly.
Just walk through each article about Trump with the skeptical view that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you will see that most such articles - even from formerly well-respected journals like NYT and WaPo - rely on emotionalism to convey an impression about Trump. The only evidence that Trump is a dangerous fascist is of similar low quality. Like the evidence for alien visitation: lots of evidence, but all of it very low-quality rumors, innuendo and wishful thinking.
The question of whether Trump is a good President is a separate matter. He may be petty, vindictive, selfish. On the other hand, he invited a friend for counseling at great political risk to himself. He's also the only President in my lifetime who did not start a new war. So, a mixed bag, like all the others. The extreme hysteria around Trump actually prevents people like me from evaluating Trump on his actual merits. Every article only highlights the negative of anything Trump does, which is as unhelpful as highlighting only the positive.
But no, I don't think Trump is a fascist, textbook or otherwise. I think the unhinged reactions to Trump are far more dangerous to our country, to be honest. We allowed the FBI to suppress a news story last election that would have been bad for Biden. That's terrifying.
> He's also the only President in my lifetime who did not start a new war.
There is no coherent standard by which both Trump did not start a war and every other recent President has. This is just a “say something often enough and people begin to accept it as true” thing.
> The extreme hysteria around Trump actually prevents people like me from evaluating Trump on his actual merits.
You seem to have a very firm opinion of him on the merits, which is inconsistent with believing that you have been prevented from that.
> Every article only highlights the negative of anything Trump doe
Where'd you get the idea that he is the only President in your life not to start a war then? The truth is that there are plenty of outlets pushing neutral and positive Trump outlets, and even actively suppressing stories that might hurt Trump (less so now than immediately before the election, as a whole bunch stopped such suppression when it no longer served to influence the election), and “every article highlights only the negative” is a lie.
> But no, I don't think Trump is a fascist, textbook or otherwise
He openly has proposed personal-loyalty-based purges of the military officer corps and thr civilian civil service, deploying the military domestically in a deportation operation he explicitly modeled on the notoriously racisr, due process denying, legal injigrant and citizen expelling Operation Wetback of the 1950s (which itself, unlike Trumps overt olan, stopped short of using the military), massively scaled up, and has proposed solving urban homelessness by forcibly relocating the homeless to concentration camps.
And lets not get started on Musk, D.O.G.E., and fascist corporatism.
(But I, too, think Trump is not exactly a fascist, he’s a kleptocrat hiding behind fascism. But the functional difference between that and an actual fascist is likely to be minor.)
If you go back and read carefully, I suggested going directly to the source because we live in an age of unprecedented direct access, and it is no longer necessary to have same-side "explainers" about what the other side thinks and says.
To hear what Team Blue thinks, I'd recommend Team Red simply read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Time Magazine, et. al. Or watch CNN, MSNBC, BBC America, network news... Even Wikipedia.
You write a lot about the importance of primary sources. I agree with you w.r.t. their importance. I just disagree with that a primary source is automatically the best conveyor of its own message. The primary source has to be read with every bit of the skepticism and critical analysis you apply to secondary sources, if not more.
I would agree with you if we were discussing some academic topic. The topic under discussion is why would anyone vote for Donald Trump? A Berkley sociologist writing about how Trump voters are resentful because minorities jumped the line is about as tendentious and echo-chamber-y as one can get. It's almost begging the response "wait your turn, you hicks!"
My reading directly from the voters is that they feel Democrats are out of touch, pandering only to a very limited set of elites with very specific, weird values who are dangerously authoritarian, dogmatic and powerful. They feel that Democrats have contempt for the poor, working and middle classes, but mask this contempt by dismissing any policy debate or disagreement as racist or transphobic. They feel that Democratic partisans have a firm grip on mainstream media, academic institutions, and much of government, and a demonstrated willingness to promote lies through those institutions, so Team Red views any pronouncements from those sources as deeply untrustworthy when not outright false. They see the rioting as madness, and believe that continuing down the path set by Democrats as bringing more of the same. Whenever they try to have Team Blue effectively address these concerns, their feedback is only "Wow! Racist much? Take your Russian asset ass out of here, dinosaur. Adults are talking." That's not really much of an exaggeration, by the way. Trump, again, according to them, is an underdog in that fight, but will at least try to restore order.
That's my take on what they're collectively saying and why Trump won. Yours might be different. Like I said, go to the sources. But, when I compare the way Team Red and Team Blue we're talking about issues, it did not surprise me that Team Red won this round. Team Blue needs to become less hysterical and bullying to win next round. My personal hope is that Team Blue will listen, reflect and reform, but I've been hoping for that for several cycles now. They'll probably just wait until Team Red overreaches, as each side always does.
> A Berkley sociologist writing about how Trump voters are resentful because minorities jumped the line
It is also a theory which (very wrongly) presumes that no member of minority groups voted for Trump.
Consider Starr County, Texas – at 97% Hispanic/Latino, it is the most Hispanic county in the 50 states. In 2016, Clinton won it 79.1% to Trump's 19%; in 2020, Clinton won it 52.1% to Trump's 47.1%; in 2024, Trump won 57.7%, ending a 132 year streak of Democrats winning it in Presidential elections.
I worked for Best Buy. They fired us and hired an Indian offshore team. They had H1B representatives in the U.S. that I had to spend three months training to do my job.
H1B is supposed to be to fill critical shortages. There wasn’t a critical shortage because I existed and my entire team existed.
Best Buy’s CEO preaches “inclusivity” and “the value of each employee” — while simultaneously firing Americans (and permanent residents) to lower costs — while making the vast majority of their profit selling products to Americans.
The other reason I voted Trump was the Covid lockdowns and the attempted vaccine mandates. Blue states such as California had schools closed for over a year, while red states such as Texas and Florida quickly reopened. The type of government that would arrest a person surfing off of Santa Cruz is a government that has lost their mind. And anyone Dr Sarah Cody of Santa Clara county would support, I’m going to support the opposite.
On a more subjective level — anyone that the establishment tries so hard to oppose-arrest-bankrupt-kill is worthy of my vote. When Dick Cheney endorsed Harris, the decision got really easy to support Trump. Also, see the Abraham Accords for why many support Trump on a foreign policy level.
I don’t care about engaging in a debate and plenty will downvote simply because I’m not in their tribe — but while you asked for a scientific study, there isn’t one yet, but there are tens of millions of anecdotes like mine which should give you a good start.
Not that it matters — my wife is an immigrant from Mexico and her entire family in the U.S. (who are all first generation citizens) — all voted Trump as well. Some make the mistake of assuming “immigrants” are all “undocumented.” There’s a huge difference in being anti-immigrant and anti-illegal-immigrant. The left-wing media fails to make the distinction. Also have a look at the so-called “Black” vote — they have a lot more nuance than the media would have you believe.
I agree fully with your points. Covid restrictions were insane and will change my voting habits forever. What happened to "personal responsibility" in that time??
> The other reason I voted Trump was the Covid lockdowns and the attempted vaccine mandates. Blue states such as California had schools closed for over a year, while red states such as Texas and Florida quickly reopened. The type of government that would arrest a person surfing off of Santa Cruz is a government that has lost their mind. And anyone Dr Sarah Cody of Santa Clara county would support, I’m going to support the opposite.
Bingo. All of the “my body my choice” rhetoric rings very hollow when you need to show proof of vaccination to sit down at a Starbucks to drink your $4.69 Americano (and still be required to wear a mask, despite being vaccinated twice in a state with something like a 90% vaccination rate).
And calling republicans facist and anti-democracy after closing small businesses, schools, playgrounds, etc. setting up phone numbers to dime out your neighbors?
Saying you are anti-1% when your covid policies directly enrich the 1%? Saying you are anti-racism when your covid policies directly hurt those without?
And then the massive economic fall out after when surprise surprise, doing all that will fuck shit up?
I was a loyal democrat my entire life before 2020. Never again.
This is a great example, and you’re downvoted because liberals don’t like to hear the criticisms of their tribe. They ask why people would vote for Trump, you explain your anecdote, and they downvote you. Classic blue tribe behavior.
Get out of your bubble and listen to people. Hacker News is part of your bubble.
The majority of people have picked a side long ago and are sticking to it. You want to talk to independents or people that have changed sides recently.
The interesting thing for me was seeing the blowback from the woke movement. People I know that were raised Democrats and supported gay rights could no longer identify with the party supporting a movement that appeared to be telling them that they are racist (and BTW be careful or you might get cancelled) and that it would be great if their kids changed genders. This led them away from legacy media and towards opposite points of view.
I am not claiming this was the decisive reason- just pointing out something that I don’t see talked about much. Listen to people and you will find other reasons.
Why not ask some of the distinguished conservative academics who support the likely (as I write) next President? By the way, how about turning the question round? I hope you do not think that's unthinkable.
Biden is wildly unpopular, Harris is his right hand, she didn't get put up by any competitive process, and she never promised change to a country that very much wants it. The nyt always considered her the worst possible option from day 1, aside from Biden. This shouldn't be a surprise.
This kind of commentary just boggles my mind. I voted for both Republicans and Democrats in my lifetime and I have never had any problems identifying the reasons why anyone would vote either way. And I consider myself a very casual political observer. The fact that people believe that Trump won because people are retarded bigoted rednecks just tells me you live in a fucking bubble under a rock in a deep forest. How do you go through life living so isolated from anyone who doesn't think like you?
- The economy is what ultimately matters to many people, and the impression is that the economy has been bad for the last 4 years under Biden but was better under Trump. The actual data is more unclear and confusing, but the average person has this impression.
- Harris wasn't likable/charismatic enough to many people, and was largely supported for her policies first and her personality second. Trump, on the other hand, went on a lot of longform podcasts, worked at McDonalds for a few hours, and generally seems more "human" to the average person.
- A general sense of rage/dislike/push-back at "elites" in Washington DC, the coasts, the mainstream media organizations, etc. If you google "trust in government" or "trust in media", they will elaborate on this issue. Trump, although a billionaire from NYC, is generally disliked there and is perceived as being an outsider and rebel vs. the elite group mentioned.
- Some protectionist policies Trump claims to support will benefit people in key battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc
Ultimately it comes down to two things, IMO: personal charisma and the economy. Everything else is only relevant in close elections.
Harris wasn’t just unlikeable. She came across as downright incompetent, a mediocrity elevated to the highest positions by the exact sort of identify focused criteria voters don’t want.
> Harris wasn't likable/charismatic enough to many people, and was largely supported for her policies first and her personality second. Trump, on the other hand, went on a lot of longform podcasts, worked at McDonalds for a few hours, and generally seems more "human" to the average person.
I would argue it was the other way round. They both went on podcasts etc and I'm debate and in rallies Trump was verging on incoherent and boring his own supporters. But on policy he was far stronger. I'm not American and I'm left wing but the trade and tax policies he's proposing do speak to traditional left wing, trade union workers: put up barriers to lower cost countries undercutting American workers. I don't know what Harris vision is, it seems she has trouble articulating it clearly.
Trump went on quite a few very popular podcasts like Joe Rogan and Theo Von, but Harris didn't.
IMO the average voter is quite in-line with Rogan and Theo Von culturally (more than they are with Trump or Harris, for that matter) and so for Harris to skip those was a major misstep that just further made her seem like an aloof member of the DC/Coastal elite.
Biden didn't have this problem because he was more of a blue collar/middle class guy from Scranton and despite his gaffes, was more likable by the average person.
Rogan alone has more daily listeners than left leaning news shows have people watching in a week. I think it was something like 11 million per day. Big mistake to not show up there.
Absolutely - if you look on YouTube alone, the view counts on interviews/podcasts between Trump/Vance and Harris/Walz are dramatically different. For better or worse, people increasingly get their information and news from videos, and to skip that was a major misunderstanding of the cultural landscape.
From what I have read/watched, Rogan didn't refuse to interview Harris and offered to do the same multi-hour interview he does with every guest.
Harris just wanted him to fly to another city and do a 1-hour interview in their studio. To make an exception for a single guest seems unfair and I don't blame Rogan for not agreeing.
My theory is that a good portion of people didn't vote for "Trump", they voted for their party. That's the end of their thought process.
Party affiliation is a huge part of people's culture and personality in the US, "We are a Republican family" is something people outside of the US wouldn't say out loud. They have always voted Republican and will always vote Republican even if it's against their interests.
You're asking as if the other candidate is a no-brainer choice. If the other candidate were Kennedy, then sure—but they were not. In this case, many would be undecided and would vote not the best candidate, but the least bad one.
I don't think there's a great mystery - what could possibly be the secret for why people voted for Trump you say? Probably the same reason why people vote for any other political candidate, right? Surely the simplest explanation is the most likely; they preferred him to the other candidate in some combination of what he brings vs. the other candidate? Some people are lifelong affiliates of a political party, sure, and that's less interesting and fruitful TBH, but for the "undecided" or "open-minded" voters I don't see how it's more complex Than they decided it based on the information at hand. Question is whether they were misinformed and how much the positive messages ("This is what we'll do") draws vs. "The other person will end the world" rhetoric. Thoughts?
I mean, I grew up in a conservative state and a small/medium sized city that has always been red. Not every one is a "redneck retarded bigot". I don't think most of them aren't as openly racist as made out to be. Outside of politics you wouldn't even think anything was too out of the ordinary.
That said, I'm not sure stuff like "He's annointed by God", "He tells it like it is/Isn't afraid to speak his mind", "Liberals are evil/devil/<insert literally any reason to hate them> " is stuff you want to hear, but it does represent a somewhat overall sentiment (generalized of course).
More centered around ignorance and perceived old "conservative values". I find very few people actually able to articulate their points.
"The thing that baffles me is that good and serious people have seen versions of what happened tonight in the US for eight years and are still surprised that people don’t see the world as they do.
1) Voters think “the economy” is “can I afford to live” NOT “we are doing better nationally than others”. Inflation is politically more important than GDP
2) Immigration matters, both the sense of control/uncontrolled and the raw numbers, particularly when money is tight. See 1
3) Don’t take voters for fools: in this case don’t insist a clearly gaga leader is up to the job
4) Don’t try to fight a charismatic opponent with someone who can’t answer basic questions about why they want to be in charge. The ability to communicate is not an optional extra for politicians, it is a core part of the job description
5) Go woke, go politically broke
6) What the metro elites regard as an illogical vote is not necessarily illogical for people who are struggling and angry - see 1,2,3,4,5
Personally I think democracy matters very much and some/much of what Trump says is appalling but until his opponents learn the lessons above, voters will keep voting for someone who manages to encapsulate what they feel"
'm trying to look beyond the propaganda, any idea if there has been scientific studies or anything remotely credible ?
I'm afraid this is the problem - your implication is that Trump voters need explaining using scientific analysis as some sort of aberration.
One day, there will hopefully be an analysis - but it will be of how among huge parts of the media and establishment this ideological view became the null hypothesis to the extent that people - in good faith - thought they were looking beyond the propoganda while asking questions like yours.
They discuss a paper "The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth About Political Illegitimacy.”
Which asks the Q:
"H]ow can a constituency of voters find a candidate ‘authentically appealing’ (i.e., view him positively as authentic) even though he is a ‘lying demagogue’ (someone who deliberately tells lies and appeals to non-normative private prejudices)?”
one A is:
"Trump’s boldly false proclamations—about himself, about his rivals and critics, about the world—are not a bug. They’re a feature. They demonstrate he is sticking it to the other side. To the elites, the media, the establishment, the government, academia, Hollywood, the libs, the woke crowd, the minorities, the…whoever it is his supporters resent, despise, or disregard."
That's also why in 2016, a year's worth of "Trump is terrible" articles only helped him - because the actual received message was "we, the people you despise, really would hate if Trump was elected". It's a sign of authenticity. Trump couldn't betray them, because he very evidently had nowhere else to go.
Aka polarisation. When Trump first won I conceptualised it as him arbitraging humanity/democracy's lack of preparedness for social media and the internet upending established flows of information.
The solution at its heart is to reduce conflict and bridge the gap. I have enjoyed Zachary Elwoods most recent podcast episode showing how Trump is misquoted by traditional media outlets which has the negative effect of furthering the perception of bias.
Honestly, Americans don’t like modern feminism and anything related to trans ideologies. High inflation played a role too. It was pretty effectively curtailed but not fast enough to directly affect people’s lives before the election.
> Honestly, Americans don’t like modern feminism and anything related to trans ideologies.
I doubt most people like those two things. The difference is, they get insulted, shamed and targeted for social ostracisation if they let on what they don't like.
Which results in the election results that you see - just because you've successfully silenced someone from expressing their opinion, that doesn't mean that you changed their vote.
Is not only americans. Is most people, but they are afraid to tell and being labeled as biggots.
Is a lot a things, economy for sure, but the demiocrafts passed 4 years calling half the country nazis and facists, and denying things that everyone could see like Biden health issues. This comes with a price.
> Is there some statistical analysis on the reason people vote trump ?
You could try to ask HN'ers who voted Trump why they did ... statistically speaking, folks on HN do not exactly strike me as fitting the "bunch of redneck retarded bigots" profile.
Oh but wait, that would only be possible if admitting on HN that you supported Trump was not guaranteed to have the following effect:
- starting flamewars, which might get you banned
- being ostracized and attacked
And turns out HN is IMO a reflection of what happens in US society at large: in the non-"bunch of redneck retarded bigots" social circles, telling people that you support Trump is career/social suicide.
Except that more than half of the country supports him, so if you pick 100 people, even in the non-"bunch of redneck retarded bigots" circles, chances are, you know ...
There is something deeply dysfunctional about a society where you have to hide your democratic choice for fear of being socially destroyed.
> I refuse to believe the narrative that Americans are just a bunch of redneck retarded bigots.
They aren't, really. That's just what a vocal minority calls them, said minority actually deluding themselves into thinking that they are the majority.
Your refusal to believe that is apt. People are not nearly as dumb as this narrative puts them out to be. This mindset is at best elitism, and ignores human agency.
In reality every Trump voter has their own reason to behave this way. And their behavior is perfectly rational according to their own beliefs. My personal theory is that we have been grossly underestimating the potency of misinformation and disinformation propaganda on social media. Especially those which weaponizes peoples actual grievances with authority, and directs them in this way. Anybody can be a victim of misinformation (we see this in action with people that fall victims to scam), the misinformation you personally don’t fall victim to was probably not directed at you (see e.g. the Nigerian Prince filter for wire fraud scams).
I think that even though humans are smart, and we have our own agency, there are also number of ways which our intelligence can be exploited. This is the case for scams, but also for misinformation propaganda. I think the real lesson here is in the failures of our democratic institutions to protect us from this exploitation.
You start off by saying these people arent stupid, then go on to suggest they are easily manipulated by (what you think is) misinformation. Just not smart, like you I guess?
Honestly, I think the kind of people you are sneering at are actually smarter than you as they would never make the kind of stupid, ignorant comment you've made here.
Being susceptible to propaganda (or a scam for that matter) isn’t stupidity. We are all susceptible to it. It just varies which propaganda and to what degree.
I never called Trump voters stupid. I think there may be a misunderstanding here because traditional discourse has people believe that only stupid people fall for misinformation propaganda (or a scam). I was explicitly rejecting that.
Is it possible that you are the one that has been manipulated by misinformation?
Is it possible that people can disagree with you without "misinformation" being involved?
Oh, there is no doubt in my mind that I’m susceptible to propaganda, including misinformation campaigns.
However misinformation campaigns are a fact of social media. There are several documented cases of misinformation spreading. It is possible that I have just been lied to about that the media et.all lied about the scale and severity of misinformation and I believed it (although, wouldn’t that be a misinformation campaign which proofs their existence?)
You have to understand American politics behind the rise of Trump. Since the 1980s and Reagan, Democrats had broken with their New Deal era coalition composed of union workers. Instead, Democrats have aligned with middle class knowledge workers, and pushed for neoliberal policy that have offshored many manufacturing jobs. This was seen as a betrayal to the working class. That has left many working class whites with high school degrees with low-paying service jobs, that gave them a lower standard of living compared to the union jobs their parents worked.
This continued from Clinton to the Obama era. While Obamacare was a step in the right direction, it was seen as too little too late. It also had unintended consequences. For example, some of my part-time service job colleagues reported that pre-Obamacare, the employer could have them work 40 hours a week, because they weren't forced to provide them health insurance that met some minimum standard. However post-Obamacare, their hours were limited at 29 hours, which made it much harder to make a living.
By 2016, there was an opioid addiction crisis composing largely of working whites with only a high school degree, and the economy was still suffering from the slower-than-possible recovery from the Great Recession. (Economists say it would've been faster with more stimulus, but Obama was cowed by his neoliberal econ advisors). Due to gridlock in the political system, immigration system reform was impossible, and Presidents could only use Executive Orders to try to mitigate (but not solve) the problem of an increasing number of illegal immigrants from the Southern border.
All the pieces were in place:
- Scapegoat: illegal immigrants
- Weak economy: check
- Disgruntled populace: check
Feeling abandoned by both parties, the electorate went with an anti-establishment strongman demagogue who preyed on their hopes and fears. It's almost identical to the political environment that gave rise to Hitler and Mussolini.
The saving grace for the US during Trump's first term has been her strong democratic institutions. Pray they hold up during his second and hopefully final term.
See this interaction, I would encourage you to try again. I think its more closed to reality than based.
People complained about google not showing election sites for trump on google, then goggle came out and acknowledged this. I don’t see this type of interactions anywhere.
This is my conclusion as well. In many other western countries Donald Trump is a badly written movie charagter. In the US he is their best option for a president. "What about those that didnt vote for him" people may ask, but the fact that the democrats isnt able to provide an alternative better than Trump, and haven't been able to provide better politics than Trump says everything.
50% of the voting mass look at Trump and say "that is my president!", and millions cant even be bothered to show up to vote for someone else. This is America.
I honestly think that Elon Musk is just on a personal vendetta against anyone who bruised his ego. He can't stand that he was called out for his Thai diver "pedophile" comment or that his trans daughter openly disavows him. He specifically blames the "woke mindset" for the latter. So for him, it's probably just a "stick it to the libs" kind of thing.
I don't think it was any of those, Elon and his mother have regularly referenced Tesla being snubbed at an EV Summit, and GM being praised as leading the EV transition in a quarter they (GM) delivered 42 electric cars to Tesla's 300,000.
It is still a matter of bruised ego though, I think Elon Musk takes things like this very seriously.
You have two options. If you listen to the American left and most media outlets, it's because Trump voters hate women, gays, foreigners, blacks, trans people, and progress - and to be fair, some do. If you listen to the people actually voting for Trump, it's because they fundamentally disagree with the basis for Harris' policies (and Clinton's before her) or the outcomes thereof.
Not from the US, but I really wonder:
Do you guys got not feel shame if a person with that character and that track record runs your country?
I mean sure: depending on your media diet you might find all his flaws acceptable, but ask yourself if Obama (or any other candidate) displayed the very same flaws if that would cause you outrage. If yes, you might need some introspection.
> Do you guys got not feel shame if a person with that character and that track record runs your country?
The Donald Trump that your media reports on isn't the real Donald Trump, or at the very least the one his supporters see.
Example: Trump talks to a group of people who normally don't vote, and asks them to make an exception and vote this time, noting that this will be the last time he runs, and so they won't need to vote for him again. The media then takes "you won't need to vote for me again" out of context and uses it to claim that Trump will end elections in the US. People who only listen to the media see one thing, and his supporters (who are aware of the context) see another.
The man said enough on the record to disqualify him (e.g. demanding his political enemies shot in tribunals), if people still vote for him that means they value democratic principles and the Rule of Law so low that these didn't matter — because the excuse that he didn't mean it that way is not flying after Jan 6th — at least you can't risk that he is not daring enough.
> Do you guys got not feel shame if a person with that character and that track record runs your country?
You don't get to be president without being a pathological liar who only cares about themselves and not the people. I'm not saying this to excuse Trump, far from it. I am ashamed to have him as a president (to the extent I'm ashamed of anything outside my control anyways). But I've been just as ashamed to have Biden, Obama, and Bush as the president too.
Many have a very shallow understanding of policy and have also had their perspectives heavily influenced by propaganda from Fox News, etc. Ask the average Trump supporter how tarrifs work for a good example of what I’m describing.
The only reason people vote for conservatives is because they're selfish or ignorant. This is obvious because there are 2 things in the economy: labour and capital. It is no coindence then that democracies invariably develop 2 parties. One of those parties ostensibly represents the intrests of labour. As such the other must represent the interests of capital. But how could a party that benefits so few, ever win a majority? Well, a combination of selfish people (those who benefit directly from the policies) and ignorant people (those who have been convinced by any number of falsehoods to vote against their own economic interests).
> I'm trying to look beyond the propaganda, any idea if there has been scientific studies or anything remotely credible ?
Exactly, they "propaganded" so hard that they created a narrative that they are the definitive winners. So you bought into their propaganda and now you are surprised. The reality is that the democrats are not that good and the people voted.
Tried to Google it but all I find is a bunch of American news website like CNN and website like https://www.voterstudygroup.org/publication/the-five-types-t...
I'm trying to look beyond the propaganda, any idea if there has been scientific studies or anything remotely credible ?