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Liberals, Populists, Conservatives, and Libertarians... and the Presidential Election
#3
Of course, we may have a problem with the definition.  People can be "left" or "right" on economics or social values. Those to the Left on political and social values are liberals; those to the right on both economic and social values are conservatives; those to the left on economic issues and right on social values are populists; those on the right  in economics and the left on economics are libertarians.  This may be an oversimplification. It could be that many of the single-issue voters on traditional values vote  only on guns, abortions, or 'traditional (heterosexual-only)  marriage'. With voters on the Right side on those issues, all that matters is who is most resolutely in favor of guns, an abortion ban, or opposition to homosexuality -- and economic issues do not matter.

This may be an oversimplification.

I lost what I was writing last night. I was going to comment on this material. I'm going to try to reconstruct what I had written. With "left" on scales of economic and social values as negative numbers and "right" on those scales appearing as negative numbers,  I can also show where they clump.



1. Liberals are the largest part of the vote (44.39%).  That is huge -- the largest segment of the electorate. They seem to clump heavily around -0.7 economic, -0.8 social.

2. Conservatives  are 22.94% of the vote. They form the third-largest part of the vote. I will discuss their distribution with  populists.

3. Populists are the second-largest part of the vote (29.34%). I eyeball their distribution, and I notice that those 'populists' who are more left-wing on economics than right-wing on social values tended to vote for Hillary Clinton more than to Donald Trump. Thus draw a line from  -1 economic and 1 social to 0 on each, and those populists largely voted for Clinton. Those on the other side of that line voted even more heavily for Trump than those below and to the left of that line voted for Clinton -- and there are far fewer populists to the left and below that line than above and to the right.

You will probably note that conservatives and populists together seem to clump very closely to the "0" line on the economic spectrum. There is a clear continuity between conservatives and populists. Between the two I would guess that conservatives and populists together  seem centered around +0.1 on economics, but about +0.6 on social values.

4. Libertarians comprise only 3.31% of the electorate, and they split almost evenly between Clinton, Trump, and "other" (I would presume Gary Johnson).  Catering to libertarians  will likely get no mainstream politician any significant swing vote.  This is a small and capricious part of the electorate likely to be more trouble after the election than it is worth seeking for marginal votes.

How did Trump win? Assuming no cheating (which may be a big assumption), Donald Trump ran as a populist and not as a conservative. I would guess that since 1980, Ronald Reagan and the elder Bush ran as unabashed conservatives and won big in the 1980s with an electorate much more conservative on economics and social values than that of the Double-Zero decade and the 2010s. In the 1990s the elder Bush lost because he left an opening for a populist third-party challenge in Ross Perot. America may have been more conservative in the 1990s than it is today (think of Bill Clinton's "Don't ask/don't tell" position on homosexuality which today is downright reactionary), but Bill Clinton won twice. America was nearly split evenly between liberals and the populists in the lower-left sector of the populist quadrant on one side and conservatives in the first half of the Double-Zero decade. But America was drifting Left on economic and social values.  Obama was able to address the failures of Dubya as President and make promises of national health care while offering promises of rescuing the capitalist system from its worst tendencies. At least partly successful in getting his agenda, President Obama was re-elected. Now we get to recognize that Donald Trump ran as a conservative-populist fusion. Conservatives and populists together comprise 52.26% of the vote. 

By winning the right votes despite getting fewer raw votes, President Trump got the 45.93%  of the vote. As President he has since governed almost as a pure exponent of plutocracy -- something like William McKinley.  To be sure he has not pushed Christianity over any religions except Islam, and he has done nothing to overturn Obergfell vs. Hedges, restore Jim Crow practice, undo women's rights, or destroy unions. He might wish to exempt the super-rich from taxes and eviscerate what power workers have through unions, but he is clearly anti-environment. He would like Americans to rely less upon education as a means of getting ahead. (Take note: authoritarian and totalitarian causes prosper best with a populace barely literate. Thus Stalin, Franco, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Trujillo, Castro, Duvalier, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Assad pere and fils, Khomeini, and many African leaders. Hitler, Mussolini, and Pinochet had oppressive regimes, but all three were clearly hostile to any elevation of the masses through education. Education deteriorated in Nazi Germany. Note that Donald Trump said that he 'loves low-information voters'. People barely able to read can obey orders but not contemplate the consequences of those orders, which is about what Hitler needed for staffing the 'guard' personnel of the murderous concentration camps. People who can think beyond the words on a page or words spoken in a rabble-rousing speech are trouble for a tyrant). Trump's dream is the antithesis of the people clumped where the liberals are concentrated. It is crony capitalism with all the economic power that it can exercise -- Scandinavian efficiency in industry, but Third-World living standards for those who do the work. The ideal American does a miserable job and goes to his dreary apartment or trailer to watch mindless TV or play video games.

OK, I loathe this President, and the more that I see of his rhetoric degrading everything except elite power, indulgence, and gain, the more I hold him in contempt. I started to write this analysis before the indictments of Manafort, Page, and Papadopoulos, and those are irrelevant to this analysis. I will avoid discussing any consequences of such upon this Presidency in this analysis.

I will conclude that Hillary Clinton did a poor job campaigning, seeking votes that could not bend for her or would not have helped her. Trump dared make promises to blue-collar workers enduring economic distress even if he had no intent to realize his promises. But even before the indictments of October 30, and there will be more, Donald Trump was a disaster for the American people as shown in existing polling -- Gallup polling yesterday having an approval rating of 33% and disapproval at 62% even with the economy humming along and no obvious international disaster in progress. This President won an election despite being a poor match for American culture and political values.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist  but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.


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RE: Liberals, Populists, Conservatives, and Libertarians... and the Presidential Election - by pbrower2a - 10-31-2017, 02:02 AM

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