Those people in the upper midwest

[Eric the Green]

(11-15-2016, 04:32 PM)Odin Wrote: Scared, desperate people are easy prey for demagogues promising easy solutions, scapegoats, and a return to the "good old days". The blame falls on the Dems for not putting forward a populist message to counter Trump's BS.

They DID put forward a populist message. But for some reason it did not communicate. Hillary wasn't a strong enough advocate, and her surrogates could not compensate for the weakness of the candidate. Also Trump made trade a big issue, and Hillary having supported some of the past trade deals was not a strong enough advocate for fair trade, even though she opposed the TPP. Also, the heartland folks were not that interested in feminism, apparently. It's true that the message did not come through strongly enough. And at the end, Hillary's advertising concentrated on how bad Trump was, not what she offered them. That happened when Comeygate threw them off message.

Quote:Indeed, the Dems did the exact WRONG things, putting up a candidate who is the embodiment of the establishment in an election year when the electorate was out for the establishment's blood. Praising years of economic growth that folks in Middle America are not seeing because all that new wealth is concentrated among the wealthy and middle class on the coasts, sounding completely tone-deaf in the process and reinforcing sentiments that the Dems have become the party of the "coastal elites", representing Wall Street and Silicon Valley rather than the average American. Not restraining over-the-top activist types who imply that working class whites have no right to complain about their problems because of "white privilege". Telling older blue collar workers that they just need "retraining", ignoring that older workers would still struggle to find work because of effectively ageist hiring practices, and also ignoring that many of these new jobs mean moving across the country, destroying the bonds of community these people and their families have built up over the years.

Hillary was a member of the political establishment, but the pundits kept putting forward the idea that this really makes her a member of the "establishment," when it doesn't at all. So, poorly educated folk are easy prey to such nonsense as calling Hillary part of "the establishment." Out for the Establishment's blood? That rings hollow when they voted for the worst sort of Establishment greed. And when things were getting better in spite of what the same Republicans had done to them by blocking the recovery and making it tepid. There's no excuse for the "uneducated" not to know that. And when you say "the Dems put up a candidate," that's more of the same loose talk. The "Dems" were millions of voters who elected Hillary as their nominee in primary elections and caucuses.

The Dems did none of the things you accuse them of, but the Republicans and the media were able to tag them with all this nonsense. Hillary had to mention that recovery had happened under Obama; there was no choice about that. She mentioned over and over, and so did Obama, that there was more to do, that America needed to be made whole, and often specifically mentioned the areas that voted for Trump such as the upper midwest and appalachian states. Her appeals fell on deaf ears, just because the pundits and Republicans made her out to be some kind of crook or establishment elitist, which she wasn't at all. Just because she made some money because of what she had done? By concentrating on the fact that she gave a speech on Wall Street, instead of seeing through Trump's lousy proposals, the less-educated whites proved their status by not being able to follow the facts and make the right decision. In some ways, it might be interesting that Hillary did as well as she did.

And I'm sorry if she had to tell coal miners that retraining is necessary, but there is no alternative if we are to have a liveable planet. Their jobs are probably not coming back, even under Trump, and again if they can't see that it's their own damn fault. Maybe Silicon Valley can be faulted for all their innovation that is putting old blue collar workers out of work, but it's a stretch to blame "Democrats" or "Hillary Clinton" for this.

And I don't think you answered my questions about these people at all. I honestly don't know how these white people survive out there in those small towns and continue to exist in such numbers. If their farms and factories are gone, why don't they move to the cities? Why do they support cutting off any benefits to themselves? What do they do out there? I'm not putting them down for all that, I just find it hard to imagine.

You call the people on the coasts elites, but that's bull. We outvoted you, so what is "average American" then? We just were not allowed to get the president that we and all Americans voted for by majority vote. It's nothing but a power play by you folks, this electoral college.

Quote:In the long term some form of guaranteed minimum income is the only answer, but that requires overcoming centuries, millennia even, of cultural conditioning involving the belief that the only valid source of income is from one's own labor. In the mean time, folks here in the heartland need jobs. and folks in the big cities on the coasts need to quit treating folks out here as objects of contempt and scorn. You might not agree with their religious convictions and what you perceive as "backward" social attitudes, but they are still human beings who deserve respect.

Admittedly your first sentence is true IMO. But you keep repeating that nonsense in your second and third sentences above. Get over it. There are no Democratic politicians who scorn the folks out there. That's not what Democrats do, or even Republicans. Politicians don't scorn people to get their vote. They don't even come out to the coasts anyway, since there are no swing states there. So no, they don't come out here and scorn people out there. NO, that's just not what politicians do; certainly not Obama or Hillary; they did the opposite. It's just a complete non-issue, but you like so many on internet forums just plain repeat the same nonsense after you are corrected and corrected over and over again. It is insane, to be polite about it. And no we don't agree with their religious convictions, and if they want respect, then they need to stop imposing them on the rest of us, and yes we're going to tell them to stop doing it.

If the folks out there need jobs, which of course they do, then they need to stop voting for the folks that take them away. It's up to them to see through the nonsense. They failed. The failure is largely their own. And no, the politicians don't say that. I say that.

You can't blame the elites for what the people did. The heartland people voted for the elites--- again! It's on them.