2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumVan Jones Blames 'Hurricane Trump' on Unexpected Culprit
Liberal Elitism.
I've witnessed it in this forum.
You can blame sexism/misogyny, racism, Comey's October surprise, Russian interference, faKe news, echoing twiterbots, the destructive legacy of NAFTA ( B. Clinton),Clinton scandal fatigue, a damaging primary that exposed a fissure in the party, an ad campaign that was messaged on how bad Trump was but not what was better about Clinton, campaign missteps/ taking for granted blue vote in the rust belt and paying closer attention to the EC, Identity politics, a convention that celebrated multiethnic, broad diversity of race, religion, sexual orientation etc at the unspoken exclusion of whites who seemingly were take for granted... lots of little things that i don't discount were a factor, but I think this: Clinton calling Trump supporters "deplorables" and dismissing anyone who considered voting for him an attitude of liberal elitism. Trump for all his faults traveled to see and court these people in person when she was at high priced fundraisers with celebrities and wealthy donors ( not to mention her previous elite high priced speeches to Goldman Saks). This.
I give Jones enormous credit for his courage in going to meet first hand with families in the rust belt who in many cases voted for Obama (a black man) twice, to try to find out why they would even consider voting for Trump. Don't you want to know??
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/van-jones-blames-hurricane-trump-unexpected-culprit
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2naSalit
(86,650 posts)Listening tour she took for how long (?) was nothing then? She wasn't really engaging with those folks while she was on the road. She started doing the rallies when that became the best mode of delivery for her message upon a major challenge.
I don't buy the petty arguments for "why she lost" at all... especially this one.
JHan
(10,173 posts)
dawg
(10,624 posts)Either we think we are right to stand up for liberal ideals, or we don't.
BREMPRO
(2,331 posts)which are worth fighting for and "liberal elitism" which loses votes. please read the interview.
dawg
(10,624 posts)It's as if these voters are "special snowflakes" who must be treated with kid gloves. They believe, and vote based on, things that are delusional. But we're supposed to take their delusional ideas seriously and treat them with respect.
The basic premise is that they are too stupid to know any better, so we'd better treat them extra nice and maybe then they'll listen to us.
Fuck that.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)these people. Clinton's team failed.
Many on the Left only want to lump them all into one group and insult them.
Note, I am referencing a small number of this category.
dawg
(10,624 posts)it sure isn't a deal-breaker for them. And that's just a fact. And we do ourselves no favors by mythologizing these people into something that they are not.
I'm a white man living in the South. These are *my* people. I know what they are.
NoGoodNamesLeft
(2,056 posts)/sarcasm off
You just called people delusional and insulted them. You need to watch Van Jones talking to the first family he spoke with for the Messy Truth special he did. The video is shown at the link below.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/12/07/van_jones_speaks_with_obama_voters_who_switched_to_trump.html
dawg
(10,624 posts)They're bigots, too.
But by all means, go on pretending that you're one of the "good" liberals. I'll be one of the nasty elitist ones who isn't willing to look at a pile of shit and call it shinola.
NoGoodNamesLeft
(2,056 posts)I'm a registered Independent swing voter who has been voting exclusively for Democrats since McCain chose Palin as his VP. I grew up in rural New England but have lived in several urban areas and suburban areas. I had to move away from rural New England due to there being NO JOBS. I understand those people who voted for Obama and then voted for Trump. The majority of those voters in the rust belt aren't bigots...they are a couple of hundred dollars away from being homeless and having no food to give their kids. Instead of giving a shit about their needs (and they have been loyal Dem voters for years) many liberals are more concerned about being able to legally get stoned for fun they they are about these voters' children having their most basic NEEDS met. And you feel entitled to their vote just because Trump is a dog whistle blowing asswipe who capitalized on his appeal to a very loud and ugly minority of Republican voters in order to get elected? What did Democrats do to EARN their votes? That's how it works, you know. No candidate is entitled to ANY votes. They have to EARN them.
You keep right on calling those usually Dem voters racists and bigots when they are just fed up and pissed off at you not caring about their children having a home and food and see how that works for you. Do you ever want to win again? Just having the West coast, New York and some surrounding New England states is NOT enough.
BREMPRO
(2,331 posts)That is missing in understanding the swing to Trump and the problem with elitist blanket stereotyping and insulting dismissal of people just trying to make ends meet for their families. Van is trying to genuinely understand these swing voters that threw the election to Trump and discover the prescription for restoration of the Democratic party in my view. I wish he would consider running for DNC chair. He's a smart, respectful, knowledgeable, principled consensus builder and broad thinker who also happens to be media savvy.
dawg
(10,624 posts)You say that Trump voters are "just fed up and pissed off at you not caring about their children having a home and food ..."
Well, our party offered them:
1. an increased minimum wage
2. a free public college education for those children
3. expanded access to health care
4. re-training for workers hit by job losses in declining industries
5. guaranteed maternal leave
6. a vastly expanded tax credit for parents of young children
7. major expansion of green energy jobs
What did Trump offer them? A vague promise to "Make America great again"? A promise to bring back coal mining jobs that are never coming back?
In actuality, we offered them help and they gave us the finger.
Also, I think it's cute that you think the fact that you once lived in rural Maine makes you think you understand these people. I live in red rural Georgia. I didn't "used" to live there. I'm here now, and have been for most of my life. I literally talk to white working-class Trump voters every day of my life. I don't read about then in the NY Times. I don't watch Van Jones interview them on CNN. I hear the shit that comes out of their own damned mouths, live and in person.
I remember the good "Christian" woman who told me that Obamacare would be a disaster because if all "those" people had access to health care, doctor's offices would be too crowded and she would have to wait to get an appointment. (Fuck all those people who were previously shut out of the health care system, I don't want to have to wait.)
I heard all the "sensible" people who told me Obama was "persecuting" the churches. The ones who said he was coming for our guns. (And yes, I have guns. And a pickup truck, too. Am I still a coastal elitist?)
These people believe a vast array of delusional things. In my opinion, we do them no favors by playing nice with them and making believe that they, perhaps, have a point. They do not.
As for your comment about about liberals being more concerned about getting legally stoned than they are about children's needs, I can only conclude that you are talking about Johnson and Stein voters. Democrats certainly gave you nothing to gripe about there.
You want to know the sad, sad truth? It's this ...
White working-class voters didn't vote for Trump because they are hurting. They voted for him because they weren't hurting *enough*.
The economy is better than it was eight years ago. Back then, we were at risk of a systemic financial collapse. People knew something had to change, and they started at the top.
Now, things certainly aren't 100% rosy, but they are better. Voters who listed the economy as their main concern overwhelmingly voted for Secretary Clinton. But others felt *safe* enough to revert to their default setting - bigotry, intolerance, xenophobia, and scapegoating of the "other". Or, as they would put it, they just rejected all of this "political correctness" that has been "shoved down their throats" the last eight years.
We do ourselves no favors by imagining a world that is different from the one we really live in. We offered these people real, concrete policy proposals that would help them and their children. They told us to go fuck ourselves.
treestar
(82,383 posts)their votes in the EC count for more than the votes of people in the bigger states. Hardly fair, but that's the EC.
kcr
(15,317 posts)Van Jones is wrong. Those voters will always end up voting GOP, because voters who think equal justice is "liberal elitism" will be easily convinced every time that The Other is the problem, no matter what anyone else says. We don't lose because of them. Trying to cater to them, however, destroys our party.
BREMPRO
(2,331 posts)So no, they will not always vote GOP
JHan
(10,173 posts)I remember the good ole days when Obama got excoriated for being friends with Jeremiah Wight..but I digress
Indeed, what Breitbart understood, what his spiritual heir Donald Trump has banked on, what Hillary Clinton’s recent pillorying has clarified, is that white grievance, no matter how ill-founded, can never be humiliating nor disqualifying. On the contrary, it is a right to be respected at every level of American society from the beer-hall to the penthouse to the newsroom.
The comment was “a self-inflicted wound” claimed the Washington Post reporter Dan Balz. “It was very close to the dictionary definition of bigoted,” asserted John Heilemann. My colleague Ron Fournier and the Post’s Aaron Blake were both taken aback by the implicit math of Clinton’s statement. “Clinton appeared to be slapping the ‘racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic’ label on about 20 percent of the country,” wrote Blake in a post whose headline echoed that of the Trump campaign manager’s website. “That's no small thing.” Whether or not it was a false thing remained uninvestigated.
The media’s criticism of Clinton’s claim has been matched in vehemence only by their allergy to exploring it. “Candidates should not be sociologists,” glibly asserted David Brooks on Meet The Press. I’m not sure why not, but certainly journalists who broadcast their opinions to the nation should have to evince something more than a superficial curiosity. It is easy enough to look into Clinton’s claim and verify it or falsify it. The numbers are all around us. And the story need not end there. A curious journalist might ask what those numbers mean, or even push further, and ask what it means that the ranks of the Democratic Party are not totally free of their own deplorables.
Instead what followed was not journalism but, as Jamelle Bouie accurately dubbed it, “theater criticism.” Fournier and Blake’s revulsion at the thought that some 20 percent of the country, in some fashion, fit into that basket is illustrative. Neither made any apparent attempt to investigate the claim. No polling data appears in either piece and no reasons are given for why the estimate is untrue. It simply can’t be true—even if the data says that it actually is.
To understand how truly bizarre this method of opining is, consider the following: Had polling showed that relatively few Trump supporters believe black people are lazy and criminally-inclined, if only a tiny minority of Trump supporters believed that Muslims should be banned from the country, if birtherism carried no real weight among them, would journalists decline to point this out as they excoriated her? Of course not. But the case against Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” is a triumph of style over substance, of clamorous white grievance over knowable facts.
This is what Andrew Breitbart, and his progeny, ultimately understood. What Shirley Sherrod did or did not do really didn’t matter. White racial grievance enjoys automatic credibility, and even when disproven, it is never disqualifying of its bearers. It is very difficult to imagine, for instance, a 9/11 truther, who happened to be black, becoming even a governor. And yet we live in an era in which the country’s leading birther might well be president. This fact certainly horrifies some of the same journalists who attacked Clinton this weekend. But what they have yet to come to grips with is that Donald Trump is a democratic phenomenon, and that there are actual people—not trolls under a bridge—whom he, and his prejudices against Latinos, Muslims, and blacks, represent."
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/they-are-all-breitbart-now/499511/
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)
Justice
(7,188 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)our party tremendously.
I think part of it is that white liberals feel they can give no quarter when it comes to being allies of people of color and thus push the sanctimony into overdrive (NOTE: I have been guilty of this myself) whereas people like Jones (and Barack Obama) can do more to facilitate the dialogue that's necessary.
BREMPRO
(2,331 posts)I think we underestimate how much Clinton was viewed as an out if touch elite by many, particularly in the rust belt, despite her campaign appeals and policy positions aimed to help the working class. It just appearrd disingenuous when she is unquestionably a part of an inside Washington global elite. Not trying to bash Clinton here, she may have won on another day under different circumstances, just trying to understand and learn from those voters that could and did vote for Obama but not Clinton.
Kathy M
(1,242 posts).
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)it may be a small part of the overall picture, but I can't see that this drove Trump's election win in any meaningful way.
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)it helped drive turnout - fellow deplorables supporting each other. They embraced the label and used it to their advantage.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)Also-- as I saw somewhere else (see post #3 here), there is kind of a white elitism at work here, where white people getting upset if you call them racist is intolerable and can't be questioned.
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)but, it seems likely that it drove people to vote that might not have turned out before that remark. I think it galvanized some of his support.
All those small counties in Wisconsin where Trump won 60-70% of the vote and maybe 5,000 to 10,000 votes each county.
Let's say that without the "deplorable" comment that rallied voters, maybe 1 in 20 of those voters do not vote that day. But, they did vote just to show those liberal elitists what for!
1 vote in 20 is 250 to 500 votes per county small county. If there are 50 of those small red counties in the state, that adds up to 12,500 to 25,000 votes.
(That said, if you look at the polling after the 3rd debate, Clinton was ahead by double digits and pulling away. I think the ABC tracking poll was 51-38? A few days later, after the Comey letter story broke, the same tracking poll had Trump up like 44-43. While Clinton pulled back ahead by a few points, it was never the same...)
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)
pscot
(21,024 posts)jack_krass
(1,009 posts)jack_krass
(1,009 posts)dsc
(52,164 posts)they only had both candidates (all four or actually 7 of 8) if you count all of the pres and vp on both major and minor parties. I seem to remember more than a few white people speaking at that convention.
Justice
(7,188 posts)But great for Van to have courage to meet them first hand and hear why they supported Trump in the election.
speaktruthtopower
(800 posts)the Midwest is heavily German-American and the Drumpf allusions could have moved the race a few points.
BREMPRO
(2,331 posts)Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)It's OK for liberals and leftists to excoriate whites in the strongest language, but any similar broadbrush stereotyping of POC is instantly labeled as racist. It's a double standard that rankles, and causes some white people to run away from the Democrats. The only place to land is the Republican Party.
If we want to win, we have to respect white people as much as we respect anyone else.
Statements like this from Democratic leaders, while well-intentioned, don't help white Americans feel welcome in the Democratic Party:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/304589-granholm-dnc-doesnt-need-57-year-old-white-woman-at-helm
Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Sunday the Democratic National Committee needs a leader who represents "rising America," suggesting the committee appoint a minority to the position.
"I think that the DNC needs to have leadership that reflects this rising America and you know, a 57-year-old white woman may not be the person," she told MSNBC's Hallie Jackson.
As a 55 year old white American woman, I hear this and wonder if there is any place at all for me in the Democratic Party's vision of America.
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)Is it reasonable to expect white people to be happy about this?
JHan
(10,173 posts)Oh wait.
so that one statement of hers got you rankled?
Man....
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
#America
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)You have noticed we're losing, right?
Here's another small example, from a small mag, that probably didn't actually help us lose just because not many people read it, but I see as an unhelpful attitude:
http://prospect.org/article/what%E2%80%99s-millennials%E2%80%99-support-jill-stein-and-gary-johnson-all-about
What’s Millennials’ Support for Jill Stein and Gary Johnson All About?
HAROLD MEYERSON OCTOBER 6, 2016
White skin privilege, that’s what.
"On the afternoon of the opening session of this summer’s Democratic Convention, I was walking into the convention arena while hundreds of young demonstrators, many carrying signs backing Green Party candidate Jill Stein, shouted and occasionally hurled invectives at those entering the hall—an odd tactic, I thought, since more than 40 percent of the delegates entering the building were Bernie Sanders’s. The friend I was walking in with—a Latino legislator from California—cast a cold eye on the demonstrators and noted, “They’re all white.”
A group of young, passionate Americans airing their grievances and anger and pain, and their opinions are immediately dismissed completely because of the color of their skin. By a legislator, no less.
We'd be appalled if any group was written off as unimportant with a cold "They're all black."
Criticize their ideas, call them stupid idiots, try to teach them history, whatever. But immediately concluding they are unimportant because of the white color of their skin is a path to Democrats losing for the next 40 years, imho.
...a single anecdotal experience is representative of some grand problem in the Democratic Party and the shafting of white people? Maybe consider what that Latino legislator was thinking- that this election, with all that was at stake, wasn't the election cycle to take risks on candidates with no shot at the presidency, because of the effect of a Trump administration on people who look like them. Maybe engage them further right? Like we all want to engage with and question Trump supporters who voted for a man with an obviously bigoted platform..
Granholm made a comment about the face of the party representing the future of the party - Considering that most of the Democratic leadership historically has been white, what is the harm in her making that observation?
Why would that even be threatening?
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)in part because he'd been called 'white privileged' and told to shut up so often he started to worry about the future for his white children. I don't think that some of our rhetoric is putting us on a winning path, and I want us to win. I want the US to raise the minimum wage and have universal health care and all that, and we can't do it if we don't win.
http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/05/why-one-bernie-sanders-supporter-is-tempted-to-vote-donald-trump/484841/
JHan
(10,173 posts)from people who resemble me , my hue and darker and lighter...
And people who resemble me have always, ALWAYS , had to hold our noses when voting for politicians.
taught_me_patience
(5,477 posts)wow... all I can say...
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)I can't be comfortable in a party who's activists openly scorn my people. But I want the goals of the Democratic party to be enacted, raising the minimum wage and all that, so here I am, trying to point out to people that what we're doing is not working for a large part of America.
BREMPRO
(2,331 posts)alienated rust belt whites who didn't feel a part of that diversity rainbow and were in turn seduced by Trumps lies and dog whistles about restoring their former quality of life and white cultural dominance. Hearing NAFTA and immigration bad over and over to blame for their ills, how could the feel embraced with Clinton who's husband was an architect, and who told them the (rightly) that those jobs were not likely coming back. There has to be a different approach that is more inclusive and sensitive to those people who are not deeply right wing or racist, that ended up voting for Trump thinking (wrongly) he was their best chance for their economic security.
red dog 1
(27,820 posts)Including pointing out this EXTREMELY important fact:
"You had a rebellion in the Democratic Party: 47 percent of Democrats voted against Hillary Clinton in favor of Bernie Sanders, a Socialist.
That's how upset people were."
What I'd like to know is why the hell HRC didn't choose the man who won 22 states to her 28 states as her running mate?
If she had done so, she would have had a UNITED Democratic Party behind her, including the millions of millenials who voted for Sanders.
Instead, she chose to just ignore all those Democrats who voted against her in the primaries, and, instead of choosing Sanders as her running mate, (or Elizabeth Warren), she chose a ConservaDem from VA.
Clinton's most important decision after winning the nomination was who to pick as her running mate...and, imo, she blew it....period!
(K&R, by the way)
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)He's my #1 choice, wish he'd run.
red dog 1
(27,820 posts)BREMPRO
(2,331 posts)and have a strategy that would be effective..
Kathy M
(1,242 posts)Kathy M
(1,242 posts)Just on the flip side .... I did like the idea of Sanders and Warren in the Senate ... so was torn before the announcement was made .....
mackdaddy
(1,527 posts)This is the kind of divisive crap that the swing White voters fell for. They hear nothing but RW propaganda from the radio, and pretty much this crap from Fox, Cnn and even Morning Joe on MSNbc.
It really does not matter if it is true or not if they believe it. I can tell you that they also really believe this.
Thanks to my friend Terry Wyatt for posting Scott Presley's post, I agree and say let the people accept the new President Elect.
Terry Wyatt
November 11 at 1:58pm ·
Was really trying to avoid the back and forth over the elections, but this sums up pretty much everything that took me to the polls, when I normally never vote..........
"Dear Democrats and Liberals.
I'm noticing that a lot of you aren't graciously accepting the fact that your candidate lost. In fact you seem to be posting even more hateful things about those of us who voted for Trump.
Some of you are apparently "triggered". Because you are posting how "sick" you feel about the results.
How did this happen you ask?
You created "us" when you attacked our freedom of speech.
You created "us" when you attacked our right to bear arms.
You created "us" when you attacked our Christian beliefs.
You created "us" when you constantly referred to us as racists.
You created "us" when you constantly called us xenophobic.
You created "us" when you told us to get on board or get out of the way.
You created "us" when you forced us to buy health care and then financially penalized us for not participating.
You created "us" when you allowed our jobs to continue to leave our country.
You created "us" when you attacked our flag.
You created "us" when you confused women's rights with feminism.
You created "us" when you began to emasculate men.
You created "us" when you decided to make our children soft.
You created "us" when you decided to vote for progressive ideals.
You created "us" when you attacked our way of life.
You created "us" when you decided to let our government get out of control.
"You" created "us" the silent majority.
And we became fed up and we pushed back and spoke up.
And we did it with ballots, not bullets.
By Scott Presley
red dog 1
(27,820 posts)What a bunch of Republican neo-conservative bullshit!
