I'm a Silicon Valley liberal, and I traveled across the country to interview 100 Trump supporters

The people in the article are anti immigrant, anti abortion, anti Hillary. We can thank the M$M with their "equally flawed candidate"....bullshit for the anti Hillary.

Maybe the real journalist can come out with a statement against the talking heads and their bullshit narratives about Clinton

I do blame Trump voters for electing him and I do think they were absurdly shortsighted. But more important to me than making them rue and suffer personally for their bad choices is ensuring that nothing like this ever happen again, and for that reason I also think that we should welcome and forgive those who are willing to make the admission that they made a mistake. In these days of identity politics it's a brave and hard thing to do.

They literally said in the article most of them voted for his anti abortion and anti immigrant policies.

Millions of people voted for a draft dodging scam artist who was being sued for running a fake university, mocked a disabled man, was caught on tape bragging about groping women (while married) with no government experience and trashed the parents of a fallen Muslim soldier because they felt he would screw women, minorities and immigrants

It's easy to forgive if the policies he made don't affect you, but to those of us who felt targeted by the rhetoric he spouted day in and day out for an entire year and is now implementing those measures, the fact that millions of people knowingly voted for such a disgrace of a man because he was the only one they felt would target a group of people makes it VERY personal. So "forgiveness" (which is codeword for appeasing and moderating policies to appeal to the right wingers) isn't exactly appealing. Screw them, and screw their ideology.

I am happy to see them suffer the pain they thought would only affect others.

and each side wants a totally different country than the other. We need to split into two countries. They can have the dream of their tiny government country run by a "strongman" and we can have a country run like California.

Even though most people cringe from the thought of our country breaking up I am starting to feel that it is inevitable - the differences are just becoming so polarizing.

Even half of California would want to be in Trumpland. Most cities are blue dots surrounded by red.

move to wherever Trumpistan would be and other people could move to the Unites States of Rationality.

...fulfill every idea I have about them and the state of their knowledge, critical thinking and xenophobia.

Clearly their problems have been ignored by the powerful but their analysis of the cause and the cure is the exact problem I have with them. And meantime, they've pretty much opened the door to a world-wide catastrophe.

Obama did a million things to help working class people, and would have done a million more but for the Republican Congress.

Hillary ran on the most progressive platform ever proposed by a major party in this country.

Quit buying into the lie that these people's needs have been "ignored". The only "need" of theirs that has been ignored is their *need* for a whiter, more Christian, country.

All this sympathy for Trump voters is bullshit.

It's time to stop pandering to those who crave authoritarian government or have *need* for a whiter, more Christian, country. We need to make it clear to them exactly why they are wrong.

The majority of Trump voters I've met are anti-intellectual evangelical Christians.

The rest find some perverse comfort in authoritarian government.

I figure they were all abused as children by parents who stifled their natural curiosity, beating them for questioning authority or the family religion.

The U.S.A. has always had a mean racist streak. At least 30% of U.S. Americans would have been good compliant Nazis. If not for our geographic isolation and our Anglophile upper classes, the U.S.A. would have folded to the Nazis quicker than France. Ah, they're burning the corpses of useless people today, no big deal, just as portrayed in Amazon's The Man in the High Castle.

If the top Dem leadership does not heed the lessons of this disastrous last election we risk becoming truly irrelevant.

Obama voters stayed home in droves. How does your theory account for that?
We lost in states that went for Obama last time.
90 Million Americans did not vote.
The Dems have lost at all levels---governorships, and locals across the country. This is beyond the big prize of the WH. There is a problem and it can't all be explained as white backlash.
Obama himself has said Dem messaging about the ACA was poor and unclear. Check. It was.
The Dems are seen as the party of NAFTA and the TOP.
Did not prosecute a single criminal who gave us the Bush Recession.
In fact, their messaging & connecting was so poor that O himself was blamed for the effects of the recession--that this happened comes from messaging and leadership myopia.

The Dems, regardless of some moderately helpful policies, are no longer seen as fighting for or in touch with ordinary people in the middle of the country. On the one hand they really do have Neo-liberal policies that do redistribute income upward, and on the other, when they do something decent, they don't know how to explain it. There is some kind of disconnect. It's time to admit it and pay attention to the exhaustion of the country with politics as usual.

Clearly many T-voters are motivated by fear, hatred and racism. Though this is not more dangerous than the systemic white privilege that dominates everywhere. Let's hope Perez can reach those lost O-voters. And those voters who were so uninspired they stayed home. Because we need to start winning down ticket offices fast.

We'll never be able to convince swing voters to support our candidates while a third of our party is gleefully accusing them of being corporate sellouts.

I know people like this. I don't call them idiots. I even like some of them. But I woke up the morning after the election with the dismal realization that there are people in this country who hate me, even though I'm a small footprint person who gladly pays taxes, votes for schools even though I don't have kids (and they invariably do), so on down the line, I'm sure many of you get the picture. But anyone who could have watched those debates and come away with the notion that Hillary is the "most corrupt candidate ever" just operates in a different sphere. If you refer to Reagan as corrupt they deny it and I guess they forgot or ignore Nixon. If you bring up Harding, you're an elitist for being educated. I guess the best case is for them to be - quickly - utterly disillusioned by DT. I prefer it would be because of Russian collusion than to see my fellow citizens dragged into searing poverty.

We sit were we are today because of 30 plus years of high intensity demagogueing of the evil liberal.

They do in fact hate "us" or, what they have been brain washed to believe we are - every bad thing rush Limbaugh, 1,000s of profiteering right wing media and elected officials have screamed about in hateful, disconnected from reality, rages every waking moment for over a quarter century.

A day, it only gets worse each day, becauseven facts, reason, reality lose ground to their absurd "beliefs" each and every day.

bastards who voted for Trump DESERVE another Great Depression. Votes have consequences and they ALL. DESERVE to suffer for their stupidity. I will make an exception for their kids. But that's it!

Women's votes have vanished from the narrative, too.

"You all can defeat Trump next time, but not if you keep mocking us, refusing to listen to us, and cutting us out. It's Republicans, not Democrats, who will take Trump down."

They're so thin-skinned. I haven't cut my ties to friends and acquaintances who voted for Trump, because I want to learn WHY. What I hear (or read) a lot is this "you people are so mean" business. It's like some people are conservative because they feel "attacked" or criticized by the other side.

I just don't have any sympathy for them. We on the left get criticism from right-wing talk radio all of the time. It doesn't ruin my day. It doesn't hurt my feelings. This is childishness. You don't vote for someone because your feelings were hurt.

These people are so thin-skinned. The one thing I hope for is that this presidency will give them plenty of time and opportunity to realize how defensive they are, and some might get tired of feeling embattled and negative (it can't be fun being them) and have a change of heart.

and when did we become violent ? Whats that all about ? Or do they equate protest with violence ? Anarchists aren't liberals.When's the last time a liberal went on a shooting rampage ? I hear them of accusing the left of violence alot lately-I don't get it.(BLM ? , most are peaceful and those who aren't are either acting out of years of frustration or they're there for the wrong reason).
I didn't realize I was soooo threatening -and yeah, I'm white so I know it's not the color of my skin that scares them.

Because if it's Fox, Beck, Brietbart, Townhall, Red state, evangelical "talk" shows, etc., the Black Bloc dingleberries are the face of liberals and the left. Remember how breathless they were about the New Black Panther Party, even though it's a legit question if they have enough actual members to fill a school bus?

Axe-grinding is addictive and hallucinogenic, and those outlets are like crack-houses for it. And once there's enough of them, once it reaches a critical threshold, it's just a haze in the air like cigarette smoke used to be, back in the day. It gets into everything.

where ARE they getting their news from?? is it all right wing sites who do not present the facts and truth and years of being brainwashed?

the people that were interviewed are in for a great shock, but I there is definitely a division on how they view things and how we view things.

They seem they are envious of the East Coast/West Coast thing. Too bad.

in the article (don't know if you read entire article ) you might have missed it
"The amount of violent attacks and economic attacks perpetrated by the left are troublesome. My wife and I recently moved to the Bay Area. I was expecting a ...

In the comment section of various sites (from PBS Newshour to Mediate) Trump supporters accuse left of being violent. I don't engage because I know it would be pointless,but I am interested in what others think.
I don't visit alt-right sites (read an article in breitbart once & comments were so racist -Obama referred to as N in C in place of C in C) I have no desire to repeat the experience.

They have crafted this absurd, fantasy world totally disconnected from reality, and it is like we are bullies at the beach who run through and kick down the sand castle they have built their entire life by simply putting forward the truth.

They just matter of fact spew complete falsehoods, call us libtards, socialists, tax and spenders, all the bullshit, then are like 5 year Olds when you simply state facts and don't back down from them.

Nothing hurts their feelings more than the plain truth.

I tell them that they are not thinking before they post. They actually think they are hurting someone's feelings. So I tell them that this is silly : they're just giving their opponents more ammunition to feel superior when they use clichés instead of real arguments. I think that arguing about politics is new to a lot of them, they just don't get it that they have to be logical.

His supporters are just as crazy as Trump. They are afraid of him but they like him and are willing to follow him.

That part of those narratives is important too, but it's absent.

How many of them get most of their news from outlets that bill themselves as "we tell you the TRUTH, not like the lying liberal media!" and then proceed to hand out complete or highly spun horseshit like it's chocolate? How many of the people he talked to eat that up, and then jeer at everyone else for being "low information voters"?

Without that, it isn't particularly enlightening. Nothing here that I didn't know already just from paying attention.

You can tell by their responses- Liberals are mean, violent, nasty, etc. etc. The same propaganda that RW hate radio and Fox uses to keep them under control. I am sure had the author gone a bit deeper in his discussions he would have found that all of them get their 'news' from the same places.

Ultimately, we as a nation are going to have to confront this and marginalize hate radio if we are ever going to bring back these people to reality.

Fact is, -I- didn't make that mistake.

But answer me this; did someone rubbing your nose in a mistake make you dig in deeper? That's kind of human nature. we tend to stubbornly stick to our guns when backed into a corner.

It is understandable that you are angry at what they have done to the rest of us. You need to channel that energy into something that will effect real change. What Sam Altman has done is to get a conversation going and allowed them to start thinking about the possible results of what their votes will do. By asking questions in a non-judgemental way Altman has let them express, yes, their reasons for voting for 'Rump but also the fact that they are concerned about what may happen now. This is good. It is very dangerous in any conflict when neither group will honestly parley.

This is a pretty serious mistake - tantamount to reckless driving. I will be civil, but to refrain from judgment would be to suppress my true feelings. No, I won't "rub it in", but if you voted for Trump, you're not someone I'm likely to respect. I can't help that - sorry. Respect must be earned.

Spite is a waste of energy regardless of the direction.

Some, maybe a lot, are racists. But there are those who honestly thought that the royal 'Rump was going to lift their lives out of the miasma of despair. While it seems plain to us that he was not going to help anyone but himself and his cronies it was not so for so grasping at straws while drowning in unemployment, debt and foreclosure.

True they should've seen the light at the end of that tunnel in a President Clinton but they had not seen much improvement during the terms of President Obama. I am not suggesting it was his fault as he inherited the horrible mess of the last puke buffoon and an increasingly puke congress that wish to make his presidency a failure. It seems we are always having to clean up the economic and military messes of the puke misadminstrations instead of being able to put our energy into real progress.

Anyone who found a message of hope for their lives had to connect it with the hate he was selling.

There is no other reasonable answer.

How are we supposed to respond. I don't necessarily want to do an "I told you so" dance, but for some folks, just mentioning Trump's gross incompetence seems to be triggering. I mean, geez, I'm sorry they feel bad, but they need to own the mistake and correct it.

The vast amount of racism, the complete lack of personal responsibility (allegedly the most important personal characteristic to conservatives) and the sheer ignorance of how this country and the economy operate were staggering.

How do you educate people with absolutely no self-awareness and with no interest in learning anything beyond their narrow and uninformed world view? F*** them, I say. They made this sh*t bed and now they can lie in it.

unemployment and massive, MASSIVE suffering unseen since the early 1930s. That's how you educate people, I think. Make 'em stand in long bread lines with blacks, Latinos, Muslims and Asians and they will eventually get it.

Look at the stock market.

Great Crash of 1929 too.

Look at the underlying fundamentals. Trump's new budget promises to cut various sources of consumption while not doing a damned thing to stimulate the economy. That's a recipe for a reprise of at least the Great Recession of 2006, if not the Great Depression.

Crash comes later.

When they can construct a reasonable argument why Donald Trump was the better choice than Hillary, I will stop calling them idiots.

ETA: When they can provide a valid reason why it is OK for Russia to interfere in with our election, I will stop calling them traitors.

Interesting article about the "Silicon Valley liberal" of the OP.

Fuck 'em

"Stop voting for racist idiots. That'd be a start."

really about before they voted for him. Millions understood what he was about and did not want him to be president, now, everyone has to suffer for their lack of research and insight.

a reality TV celebrity anyway? Someone with no political experience, that is like going to a baker to have surgery.

They will realize their big mistake.

Buncha snowflakes.

They spout an awful lot of the fox, right wing breitbart bullshit and when we question it, oh no! The mean liberal left is being "intolerant" so I am going to vote for a guy that is a monster instead just to defy them.

They ignore facts. One person said that it would be a deal breaker if the corruption was true. Before he was even elected, Trump was a proven crook! But they refuse to accept the facts because it didn't fit into THEIR narrative. They were looking for some saviour...facts be damned. They created false ideas of what trump is and expected the liberal left to disregard reality and go along with them. And if we pointed out that the emperor has no clothes on, we were bullying them. Well, FUCK YOU, snowflake!! Dig in your heels then. But it won't change reality. I am not your enemy. The guy you voted for, the one you ignored all the incriminating evidence is your enemy. And now you made him MY enemy too. Don't expect me to tip toe around your sensitivities when he is out to destroy education, human rights, civil rights, womens health, healthcare in general, environment, democracy...everything!

If you don't want to be called a racist, quit acting like one. Quit supporting people who are openly racist. Quit sympathizing with racist assholes. Ignorance is just not gonna cut it.

As for the anti abortion, if they are against it, I don't suggest they get it. But they sure as hell don't get to dictate to others what to do. You don't get to come at me with your dogma and EXPECT me to cowtow. The religious dogma in this country is out of control. Here is a dialogue I had with a woman I worked with in the past and is a trump supporter:
Her: have you ever accepted Jesus christ into your heart?
Me: yes
Her: how long ago was that?
Me: 35 yrs ago
Her: it is only good for 6mo. You need to renew.

I. Shit. You. Not.

I get wanting to dialogue and try understanding the other person's pov. But these people are not interested in dialogue. They are not interested in facts or reality. They are into their own dogma.

I am so over that. We need to just stoke the fire that has already been lit and move forward. 2018 or bust my friends.

the facts, truth and just being sane. And there is nothing wrong being intellectual either.

no retreat on my disdain and disgust with the people who voted for boy-potus puppet to make ameriKKKa white again. This is the main reason 99.5% voted for prezidents bannon and miller. I will give a sliver of acceptance to the .5% who had no clue as to who they were voting for or just voted for the clown as a protest vote to the D.C political beauracracy. But just a sliver because the ones who voted for racism, sexism, xenophobia, to have a racist anti-semite walking the hall of 1600 are laughing at your ignorance, LOUD, so may the pox that is overtaking ameriKKKa strike you first and make you fucking miserable.

Loss of health care coverage created by an administration that tried to look out for the uninsured, your fault. Loss of Social Security and Medicare, which I, a retired man of 69, can possible lose under this administration, your fault. The pain and misery caused to thousands of people deported already many who worked and 'slaved' at minimum wage jobs that not many americans/ameriKKKans would do, your fault. The upsurge in anti-jewish incidents, graveyards and jewish centers, your fault. The upsurge in the quiet, but not for long, summer is coming, uptick of white nationalist and racist groups gaining members and getting bold about their crossburnings and hate demonstrations against ALL PoC and others not white, male and female, KKKristian, your fault.

So all who want to understand a trump voter, try if you must. I don't need to understand them, I've been dealing with them in varying degrees since I was a child, so did my parents, their parents....... TO HELL WITH all TRUMP VOTERS. This now the 2nd American/AmeriKKKan Civil War.....blue and red this time.

is such a whiny, hyper-sensitive snowflake and why we've always got to give them special status and fucking bend over backwards to "understand" them... And every time some pundit from a coastal metropolis goes on a navel-gazing "anthropological study" through middle/southern America it only feeds their bass-ackwards egos...

Thinking we can win them over to our side, or that they *really* were only concerned with economics and jobs rather than ethnic cleansing and ideological purges is a fool's errand. Did we learn nothing from that fake-assed Tea Party?

AND FUCKING UNDERSTAND US.

I've said this over and over since the election - we don't need to win over every Trump supporter out there - it's not going to happen. However, there are several things in that article that are going to turn *some* Trump voters off - Russia, jobs, corruption, etc. If you can flip 1, 2 or 3 out of every 100 Trump voters it will make a huge difference. Convince another 1, 2 or 3 out of 100 to not vote Republican or stay home and it's a huge difference as well.

If just 1 voter in 100 had flipped last November, Clinton would have won Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Florida. The story would have been that Republicans can't win at the presidential level anymore instead of Democrats in disarray/disheartened/divided.

I don't build bridges with people who blame the powerless for the destruction of the powerful.

I don't build bridges with people who espouse tired excuses like "YOU MADE ME DO IT!!1!!!", which essentially are the words of an abuser.

I don't build bridges with people who are morally in the Bronze Age, economically in the Gilded Age, culturally in the Antebellum South and technologically in the mid-1990s.

I don't build bridges with people who regard themselves as victims when their party controls all parts of government, has an entire religion co-opting their policies, has a media which bends over backwards to broadcast their narrative, utilizes a self-destructive near-pure Capitalism subscribed to by much of the political spectrum and is funded by the same evil sociopaths that pollute our earth, bankrupt our kids, criminalize sick people and reinstituted slavery with the modern prison labor system.

I don't build bridges with people who hate women so much that they'll put an unqualified serial sexual assaulter in office over a qualified moderate who would preserve Obama's path.

And most importantly, I'm not building bridges with someone who thought "President Donald Trump" was a great idea in the first place; it'd be like trying to reanimate squished roadkill.

And in spite of these serious reservations, they voted for him anyway.

What these idiots subjected the rest of us to by chosen this pussy grabbing probable rapist / grifter of low morals and no character.
A 70 year old spoiled brat.
As he rampages over our democracy and environment and rides over the bodies of the poor and needy.
He and they can FUCK themselves with a garden weasel.

I already knew about the single issue anti-choice and anti-immigranvoters.

I still won't give bigotry a chance. No matter where it comes from or what their background is.

To support Trump, one has to be 1) a bigot of some kind--the caveat being the bigotry is always justified in the bigots mind, whether from personal events in ones life or cultural influence 2) politically ignorant to the degree that one is unable to see past ones personal filter. At all. 3) suffer from a personality disorder or other mental illness that makes one prone to believe conspiracy theories 4) a toxic sexist aka asshole.

These people voted for a man who said it was fine to sexually assault women, and thought nothin about leering at 15 year olds as though they were cattle.

..like a quest.

so tiresome

They could avoid this by, um, not being ignorant racists.

I'm not going to kiss their ass because of the clause in the Constitution put there by slave holders creating an electoral college.

The majority of Americans voted against their bigot.

History will not forgive those racist idiots who voted for their bigot.

And history will sweep them aside and record who and what they were. They were people whose hatred for Hillary Clinton, a fine intelligent and caring woman, and whose hatred of Mexicans and non-white Americans exceeded their love for the country.

Live by the sword, die by it. Hatred has never created peace.

One of the few times that I agreed with William Safire was when he stated that we are a nation of nitwits.

I don't even consider Trump to be a real Republican, he's just an opportunist who used that party to acquire power. I don't understand how someone could vote for an individual who started his campaign by calling Mexicans killers and rapists. A person who said that AA live in poverty and have no education. A man who made fun of the disabled, who insulted a POW (McCain) by saying that he preferred his heroes to not have been captured. A person who said that he could grab women by their private parts because he was a "star". The list goes on......

How can someone who considers themselves to be a good "God fearing" person vote for such a hateful man?

It's the effect of years of right-wing propaganda against her.

Their propaganda works, unfortunately.

Look at the percentage of Americans who believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks before the invasion. It was a MAJORITY back then despite no such evidence!! NOW, when that false premise is no longer necessary to support their Republican leader, a large majority of Americans don't believe that Saddam was involved.

Look up a Pew Research poll from a few years ago about conspiracy theories. Very few Americans believe there was a vast conspiracy to fake the Moon landings, for example, yet a majority of Republicans (and too many Democrats) believe there's a vast conspiracy among climate scientists to promote global warming! Why? Because that's what they hear from the propagandists!

Look up a recent Gallup poll of how Americans feel about immigration as an "important issue" compared to years past. Now that Trump, and thus his right-wing propagandists, are talking about it as a major problem... many Americans think it's a major problem!

Don't bother, it may be infectious...like herpes.

and say it never comes from government are the same people who get overtime, do not eat toxic meat, and have highways.