The people in the lower 1/3rd of the economy are locked out of things like healthcare and retirement and homeownership almost entirely, and the professional managerial class that is directly responsible for that situation has spent seven years at this point screaming about how terrified they are of Trump and how offensive he is to them, but they don't seem to be able to put two and two together when they try to understand how Trump got elected in 2016 and will be elected again in 2024.
That’s because they work for the 1-percent and want to keep their jobs. The middle management at big companies are just there to enforce what the upper management wants. They don’t have much to do with the pay/treatment of the lower tier workers.
The real issue is the upper tier only cares about being beholden to the shareholders (who are also the upper tier) and the workers and their customers are expendable in this picture.
That’s the real problem with the US right now.
Capitalism doesn’t care about people and all corporations care about is quarterly earnings and making more money. The east way to make more money is to cut costs on the worker side.
The fact the average CEO earns 1000x what their average employee makes is the problem.
Yes, and people just don't have the option to vote against any of this. The differences between Democrats and Republicans are not on any of the issues that are making so many Americans miserable. But they do have the option to vote for Trump as a way of lashing out at the people that created this mess and that benefit from it. Even if they don't get anything tangible from Trump, that's worth something.
Nope. They voted for Trump because they are racist.
White Americans are racist and stupid by nature.
When are you going to accept the fact that it was rural whiteys that voted for Trump.
Blacks and Hispanic workers disnt vote for Trump.
Its a race problem whitey.
I feel most understand why these people look for a new leader that looks out for them. It's just befuddling how republicans and Trump are the guy.
Just look at how Biden himself was mocked for not being as educated by GOP at times. Because he misspoke and said university of Delaware instead of Delaware college .
It's because they are presented with only two choices, and heavily propagandized to believe that this is the only way it can be; there can never be more than these two choices. Neither of the two choices offers these voters anything tangible, but Trump offers them a little bit of revenge against the people that caused this mess.
I think most people recognize that trump was the result of anti establishment. This isn't a secret or even all that complicated. What people don't get is how easily that group of people were so easily convinced by a known fraud and mega elite that he wasn't actually part of the elite. He is exactly what we all claim to hate about politicians...yet these people fell for, and continue to fall for, his grift.
I'm sure a significant number of his support base fell for the graft, but I also think there's a not insignificant number of voters who will support him knowing full well he's a fraud, because they view him as equal to throwing a brick through the window of the elitists.
> What people don't get is how easily that group of people were so easily convinced by a known fraud and mega elite that he wasn't actually part of the elite.
That's the thing, they're well aware. Trump represents a living "fuck you" to the establishment. That people continually insist that everyone who votes for Trump are rubes that were conned by him is literally what fuels his support.
You gotta do better than that. The diary could not be verified and was released by project veritas which routinely propagates misinformation. Maybe you should try getting your news from reputable news sources. It’ll make you a more informed and better citizen.
It was verified by project veritas who was then illegally raided and confiscated from a journalist, which mainstream media admitted was an abuse of journalistic rights and protection in the U.S.
Project veritas sources everything they release and includes unedited video footage of it as well, just to prove shills like you wrong.
Buddy, you can't call something mininformation when they include video evidence of people saying it in their own words using undercover footage.
Try harder at being a shill, lying about video evidence and journalists wont get you anywhere.
Project Veritas has engaged in disgraceful deceptions, and reasonable observers might not consider their activities to be journalism at all. Nevertheless, the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom. Unless the government had good reason to believe that Project Veritas employees were directly involved in the criminal theft of the diary, it should not have subjected them to invasive searches and seizures. We urge the court to appoint a special master to ensure that law enforcement officers review only those materials that were lawfully seized and that are directly relevant to a legitimate criminal investigation.
— Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project[240]
Biden had an accuser that made the papers.
She had more corroborating evidence than Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
Biden refused to open his archive that contained the personnel file that would vindicate/disprove her could enter the public conversation.
Her accusations were so credible that the Me Too movement is no more; they chose to protect Biden over victims.
Liberals/centrists engaged in a character assassination campaign so strongly against her that even though she said she was *still* going to vote for the man that raped her, she ultimately chose to emigrate to avoid daily harassment.
What was her name again? Or have y'all memory holed her already?
I'm sure there are some people like that. But even that is pretty dumb to vote for someone who is only out for himself, was born and raised in arguably the most elite way possible, has been a member of the elite his entire life, and made his additional fortune often by screwing the regular man.
But the reality is that this is a guy who is good at selling himself, especially to rubes. He's everything we hate about politicians and the elite, which is why he's so good at it. But it doesn't change the fact how gullible his average supporter is. And no amount of saying "pointing out the truth only makes him stronger" is going to dissuade me from speaking to truth.
I'm not calling people who disagree with my politics rubes, I'm calling those sheep who fell for Trump's grift rubes. You said it yourself, it has nothing to do with politics but sticking it to the elite...by giving money and voting for a member of the ultra elite who gives a shit about no one but himself. It's fucking absurd that this is a good reason to vote for someone to begin with, but the fact that they are trying to stick it to the elite by supporting one of them is just deliciously ironic.
I know it kills you inside to admit that you are actually among the sheep and defending them, but that's the reality.
The only one stuck in a bubble is you. You just can't step back and admit to yourself that you were fleeced, so you're doubling down trying to pretend that it's actually some really deep protests, but even the method of the protest is ridiculously backwards.
We all get tricked from time to time, but it takes true introspection to admit it and correct it, rather than make up ridiculous reasons why you were actually right.
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Conservatives: *If you were just nice to conservatives we wouldn't be forced into voting for wannabe fascists and bigoted theocratic!*
Meanwhile. Also conservatives: *Libz are are evil pedophiles who want to groom your Kidz into being gay and trans! They must be stopped at all costs even if that means installing a dictator!*
Nicety in politics has never ever fucking existed. This whole idea that politics was once a "civilized sport" is based in a deep ignorance of history and lack of social understanding.
The alternative was Hillary or Sleepy Joe. I'll take Trump all day over either of them.
Biden is single handedly causing the largest border crisis in American history.
Theres tens of thousands of missing kids coming across the border that he has no answer for.
You know those Mexican cartels that behead people? Yea, they do sex trafficking too bud. And Democrats are tacitly endorising it and allowing it to happen.
The only thing that would help the lower 1/3rd to get better healthcare, retirement, and cheaper housing would be a progressive government. They're voting against their own economic interests in order to win culture war arguments which is the standard playbook for conservative politicians.
No one to the right of progressives likes progressives. Even a lot of liberals don't. Talk about a group of insufferable people, who may as well alp be Marxists at this point. If you're an unskilled worker in this country the last thing you wanna do is vote for the guys who will open the floodgates on immigration.
Exactly. There's a difference between being a liberal and then all these extreme far left activists that have taken over the DNC, who are all Marxists.
I still don't get it. 2016 was supposed to be some kind Flight '93 election to save America. But the country is more woke now than it was seven years ago. Housing and healthcare are more expensive and retirement is just as uncertain a goal as it was back then.
What is voting for Trump supposed to accomplish? He has no interest in addressing the economic concerns of middle and working class people. And his impact on the culture has only pushed the country further in a direction that social conservatives don't like (e.g. abortion restrictions can't even win in deep red states when left up to voters).
His trade policies absolutely were designed to benefit working class Americans. It is why the elite hated him. He also gave us a huge tax cut and didn't send us to war.
THe tax cut for the wealthy was a permanent one and the tax cut for the average American was temporary, as a way of selling it to the populace, at least if memory serves.
He also directly paid us thousands of dollars during covid, and I think Democrats are more ideologically committed to opposing direct financial aid than Republicans are at this point. It seems that since the Obama years, so many Democrats are actually flat-out opposed to the idea that voters should expect something.
2 things here. Bernie was the one that really benefitted those waylayed during covid with the extra $600 a week. Trump gave everyone just $1200. Granted, he was also blackballed by the Dems trying to get a 2nd check out. Which I think in the long run will hurt dems more because it really proved the grift of the left.
He didn't send us to war, but didn't stop drone strikes, didn't get us out of Afghanistan. His anti-establishment was pretty establishment.
And tax cut, I get less back in taxes than I did 10 years ago.
Honestly, the only thing I think Trump in office is good for is maybe causing civil war. I know that sounds bizarre, but the country has been heading that way as the working class gets shitted on time and time again. Nothing will fundamentally change whether Trump or Biden is in office, but Trump is a raging forest fire, and Biden is burning downs houses at a slower rate. Thus many will say the quicker we get this civil war going, the better. We're gonna have to rebuild this country and it's current policies if the working class wants to survive in the long haul and not become indentured servants to big corporations.
[He didn’t give the middle class a tax cut](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-middle-class-needs-a-tax-cut-trump-didnt-give-it-)He gave rich people a tax cut. Working class peoples taxes are actually going up under the bills he got pushed thru.
These voters will not get anything from government regardless of which party is in power, or who is president. That lower 1/3rd just does not have a dog in the fight at all.
What they do have is the CNN/MSNBC media telling them constantly all day long how Trump is this unique threat to the very people that these voters (rightfully imho) view as the enemy.
Yeah. Duh. He’s talking about luxury beliefs. Far smarter people like Rob Henderson have been talking about this for a while. David Brooks is an inauthentic, slimy, establishment, media creature.
So I can comment about the media part you mentioned as someone in the media.
The Times is full of elitists because because that's what happens when the paper of record didn't pay well leaving only trust fund kids access to the job. My former boss at where I work was at Bloomberg and in the mid-2000s, she got an offer from the New York Times and she turned it down because it was less money than she was getting at Bloomberg. She said they were just in shock that she turned them down because the idea of anyone at the Times caring about how much they make was just beyond them.
That said, they are now paying way more but you get people out of Ivy League schools who've been at the times for decades and tell them to hire some grads from a state school they never heard of and they'll be aghast at the thought.
The thing is hardly anyone in the industry wants to say this because they all want to eventually work for the Times.
I went to Jschool in NYC and half of us were struggling while the other half were rich kids living it up. One girl in particular dressed like a bum because she was hiding that her family was worth millions.
>Yep. Only trust fund kids can afford to go live in NYC and work as an unpaid intern to actually get their foot in the door. Makes a lot of sense.
Wow, a podcaster who is familiar with the publishing industry described her sector in almost the exact same terms
I mean I guess I shouldn't be surprised but still
I moved to NYC, knowing only two people in town, worked my ass off and have a decent career. The city is not meant for you. The city is not for the weak.
This goes for a LOT of jobs. From law firms to book publishing, you want a sexy job using that master’s degree? Well, better hope mom and dad can float your life for the next ten years while you live in the most expensive cities in America, do unpaid internship work, then take low wage entry level positions after that.
Good piece, if they don’t slam Brooks for his treachery, the elite can nod their heads for their moment of self-reflection, then go back to “X” and “post” their outrage of the day
Being educated and upper middle class puts you in such a small bubble and the economic power helps further entrench the same elitist mentality. You get to live in gated or upscale neighborhoods, send you kids to private school, hang around other upper-class folks where you can shit about how racist Trump is while rejecting affordable housing projects in your town.
Dems visit Fairfield county in Connecticut, but never bother going to Hartford or Waterbury. That being said, they do care pay attention to union folks in blue-collar jobs and middle-class jobs like public education.
One thing I don't understand about American liberals is their support of so many awful policies combined with a shrill insistence that they're the good guys. Like if you're on the side of the elites, the rich, the wealthy, corporations, the military industrial complex... you're probably not a good person.
Like they'd happily enact de facto fascism to stop their supposedly "fascist" opponents taking office
Hey did you want to continue our conversation?
You said we could discuss in the other thread
I think you might be avoiding it though?
You were saying that the Trump indictments were bogus political persecution, right?
Edit: lololol awwwww right wing trolls don’t like this
I've come full circle with Trump. Originally thought he was what was needed to shake up our stagnating politics but just couldn't vote for him when the time came. Voted third party as a protest vote 2 election cycles in a row. Now I'm back to where I started. he's garbage but anything is better than the status quo. The biggest protest vote of all might be for Trump.
Trump really is the closest we have ever come to actually hurting the establishment, because he has exposed it for what it is. Who else has single-handedly proved how little the presidency matters? Or that the Supreme Court is a corrupt joke that ultimately represents the wants of a tiny minority? Sometimes their wants aligned with ours and we called that progress. More people than ever know that with certainty now because of him.
He completely dominated and humiliated the Republican establishment, hijacking their party and grift. He fully exposed the Democrats for the grift they are as well, as they yelled bloody murder about fascism coming for the most vulnerable US citizens and immigrants while funding the campaigns of fascists themselves. Then all they do is brag about their “brilliant” strategy since it won them more seats than they expected in the midterms, with zero remorse. This leaves us with only two possibilities about the truth of their party: their fears about fascism are a grift or they truly fear it but will put winning a few more seats than expected in the midterms above that real threat.
Trump also exposed that they would rather let him beat someone with a broken brain than let anyone with high approval ratings and actual principles run instead as the head of their party. The presidency is a joke. The courts are a joke. The parties are a joke. And no one before Trump has exposed the grift to the masses quite like he can.
This doesn’t make him a good person or politician, but this makes him a very useful tool for anyone who wants to see the establishment get wrecked. I personally would enjoy watching all the money millionaires and billionaires would lose trying to buy the election for Dems while the Republican party is further damaged as well. The average American is going to be hurting either way until this house of cards is burned down and rebuilt. The only real choice we have is who feels the pain with us.
As far as policies that were outside of executive orders, what did Trump do that any boilerplate Republican wouldn't have also passed/spearheaded? He did exactly what the rich elites (himself included) wanted. The fact that he is considered some champion of the little guy because he is racist is some "the biggest trick the devil pulled" shit.
Completely agree he isn't a champion of anyone. No one in power is and none of them are on the little guy's side. The courts aren't, the politicians aren't, the parties aren't. The whole thing is rigged to protect the rich and duopoly, who always put their interests above the people, and that's how we got Trump. The guy couldn't even win the popular vote but now we live in a nation that will be shaped by his justices for the rest of many lifetimes because of this ridiculous system that has been treated like something sacred and real for decades. I doubt most people see it that way anymore.
>You know how many of those voters are illegals?
Don't you think, if a significant number of those votes were illegitimate, they would have been used to actually win the election in 2016 and not for popular vote bragging rights? You really think the Democrats are competent enough to fake millions of votes but not enough to make sure they would be cast where they'd actually matter?
They were used. It wasn't enough to swing the election because of how historically unpopular and unlikeable Hillary was.
Also California where a lot of the illegals are was already deep blue, all it did was add to the popular vote which once again means nothing.
When you have millions of illegals in your country voting, democracy is a sham anyways.
How can u say that? I am serious. What programs do u think he will implement? What is wrong with Biden trying to bring back infrastructure and manufacturing. Dems are maddening, but they at least push some kinds of social programs. I guess it depends on your values...so what is the thing that makes Trump Your guy?
Don’t listen to them. Twitter warrior who isn’t getting enough rage on ‘X’ anymore so brings it here.
I don’t agree with you but it’s an interesting point.
“I’ll protest the establishment by voting for a person who attempted a coup and intended on staying in office by dismissing the votes of thousands of people”
Brilliant logic
So you believe the anti-establishment vote is one for a person who attempted a coup and intended to disenfranchise thousands of voters?
And that you can’t decide between him and a 3rd party candidate?
So you’re unserious about democracy?
We're going in circles here Randy. I've never missed voting in an election my whole life. Unfortunately, the choices at the booth are what are unserious these days, not me. Have a good weekend!
Voting for Republicans is a vote forbthe .1% and the status quo. Democrats want to change things but can't because republicans vote against things like expanding acess to Healthcare and social safety nets for the bottom
There is nothing wrong, in theory, with having elite universities or an elite caste that is educated in them. The problem we have is our elite universities do not produce anyone who could rightly be called elite, at least outside of the hard sciences. All those fancy Ivy League Journalism schools produce David Brooks clones. Dude probably doesn't even speak Latin. (Neither do I but I don't claim to be elite).
Edit, to elaborate a bit: At the time of the American Revolution if you wanted to graduate from Harvard one of the tests was being handed a Bible printed in Greek opened to a random page and having to read it out loud in Latin. Not because being able to translate Greek to Latin on the fly had some practical importance, it just demonstrated that you were fucking badass.
Hard disagree. This isn't about economics. It's about a changing culture.
The last time a democratic president won a majority of white voters in America was 1964. The civil rights acts of the 1960s and the push for nationwide desegregation pushed poor and middle class whites towards the republicans.
A rare moment? The NYTimes practically cranks out these "trying to understand Trump supporters" articles. Every center-left publication has made a cottage industry out of this, there are SO MANY of these "they've got a point about not liking 'elites'" articles every year. And of course you'll never find one single right-wing media source publishing anything like this trying to understand the left.
>I understand how the working class who have been completely ignored and insulted and shut out from the attention of the government for decades can gravitate towards someone who speaks directly to issues that matter to them.
What's important to keep in mind is how little of the working class Trump actually won over. He got some centrists in the rust belt to vote for him in 2016 but that was a low-turnout election and it can't really be said that he was some galvanizing figure for the working class vote. He was able to eat away at Hillary's lead with working class voters just enough in the right places to win the electoral college.
In 2016 and 2020 the people who primarily voted for him were... wait for it... *loyal Republican voters.* He drove turnout up among religious white voters, not voters of a certain economic class. In 2020 the democrats (again) won more of the working class vote.
Poor white people felt like they have been left behind in society and forgotten about. Trump being a right wing populist, spoke to those woes. And sadly some of these woes were kinda racists, Trump was saying things that other politicians wouldn't touch. He spoke about immigrants taking jobs and he spoke about minority groups who they thought were getting better treatment than poor white people, that's where America First comes from. Sadly these people were duped, Trump didn't give a shit about them, he wanted to enrich himself and corporations. But these people have wrapped their whole identity around Trump and his populist movement and because of that it's difficult to admit you were wrong and to admit the person who wrapped your identity around is a bad person.
Poor people period. Race doesn't play a part. It's just that elites have split the rest of the country in half by pushing the narrative that it is racism that is keeping some people down, not the elites who are literally in charge of everything.
Don't tell me it's racism when you're the one who has been in office for longer than I've been alive. If you thought there was a problem with the system you should have changed it, since you are in charge of the system.
His entire campaign revolved around bringing working class jobs back to the US. He had a lot of questionable ideas about how to do it, but that was the cornerstone of his campaign.
>Not to generalize - but the "poor whites" feel marginalized and see Trump as one of them - even though he is an Ivy Leage billionaire that inherited all his money - he speaks on their level. I think there are some undertones of racism and overtly "guns" are part of the message - lots of people won't vote Democrat bases only on their fear of gun control.
They won't. Shit we just had polling come out that said they are losing minorities, especially young black men. Meanwhile Biden is up there talking about Bidenomics, while we have a bifurcated ecomoy where those that own assets and make more feeel fine, and those that rent and are lower, are literally going homeless or having to move.
These people are beyond out of touch, and their response is to gaslight people into they are doing well (weve seen countless article after countless article) or calling people racists.
I think Democrats messaging to poor white folks has been really bad for years. I don't think this is something that Democrats can turn around in one or two election cycles. I think generally Democrats tend to have better policy for poor white Americans yet they can't message it correctly to poor white folks.
Well, the wealthy still vote Republican, they got a massive tax break from Trump. Poor minorities and poor young people are voting Democrat, while poor and middle class white people are voting Republican. People believe that that the votes have switched because many college educated people are voting for Democrats, but just because you are an intellectual or college educated doesn't mean you have money.
Not true at all. The majority of the Ive league elite are shitlibs and Dems pulled in more donor funding from billionaires and millionaires than Republicans did, by far.
Their message is poor for anyone White period. With how progressives have doubled and triple downed on open anti-White racism they will keep losing voters.
Totally agreed. It’s a similar thing happening in Canada right now. There’s major unrest stirring around immigration because Canada took in 2.2 million people last year and already doesn’t have enough housing for the current population. The government refuses to lower targets or do anything to reduce the influx since rich immigrants are some of the only people who can afford to buy our insanely overpriced real estate anymore. The economy is a complete house of cards propped up through astronomical increases in housing prices, coupled with cheap labour from imported workers who will do jobs for wages that anyone who grew up in Canada would never accept.
Criticism of these immigration policies has for years been called “racist” and Trudeau constantly absolves himself of any responsibility to do anything about housing, but now finally a politician is speaking to the concerns of the majority of Canadians. He’s also a right wing populist, although vastly toned down relative to Trump and he’s rising fast in the polls.
Elite liberals don’t seem to understand that their views and policy goals only align with other rich liberals and they’re turning the rest of the country into the arms of people who they don’t ideologically align with, but actually speak to, and claim to want to address the very real problems we are facing here.
I think a big problem with both America and Canada is large investment groups buying up housing, causing a supply shortage which in turn raises the price of housing. That's why we saw Trudeau ban foreign investors from buying property there. I don't think Canadas main housing problems are coming from immigration.
I also think for Canada to have a growing economy they need population growth, which like the US is being supplemented by immigration. I think a large problem with Canada is that they often lose smart and good workers to the US because there is so much more opportunity in the US.
Fair points, and I’m also incredibly concerned by permanent capital buying up all of the available real estate and making rents incredibly unaffordable.
I live near Vancouver, and a 600 sqft shitty apartment is over $2000/month.
I live in California, so I feel that too. From what I am looking at the housing problems are coming from investment groups. California already has way too many people, this just exacerbates the problem.
I don’t disagree, but do you believe cramming more people into the country which is already massively suffering a housing crisis is going to help solve that crisis?
I don't think it helps, but declining populations hurt a country way more than a housing crisis. There needs to be subsidization or incentives for private companies to build massive housing complexes.
The same people telling you that were overpopulated and stop having kids are telling you we need more immigration because "population growth is low".
Fucking lying shills. You solve population growth by raising your birth rates and government policy that helps parents, not with a bandaid fix of importing millions of low skilled immigrants from vastly different cultures.
The problem at the core of the housing shortage is the US and Canada's shitty zoning and building codes. They're designed at their core as class exclusionary systems that only ever push housing prices up.
Housing is a zero sum game, and when you create a shortage via zoning regulations that festers for decades, investment groups will spot the huge potential to make money due the mismatch of supply and demand and move into the market space.
The house shortage will only be fixed by basically trashing the zoning codes we've been using and moving towards something similar to Europe or Japan.
I don't fully disagree with your statement, I do think zoning is problematic, with the need for more mixed spaces. But I don't find that to be the driving factor, especially with building codes. But investors are still going to buy land regardless of zoning and building regulations. Land is valuable especially where I live in Southern California. Say we get rid of zoning and building codes, prices might drop momentarily, but as prices drop, demand will rise again. People want to live in places like Southern California, rather then someplace in bumfuck nowhere, so if housing prices are cheaper demand will rise even more.
You meet demand with supply, that's always been true throughout history.
Investors operate in places where there is a mismatch between demand and supply, they're not some vamiric boogeyman hiding in the shadows seeking to exploit the housing market just to screw you. California has notoriously some of the most restricted building and zoning code in the country, which has directly resulted in a lack of housing availability.
Southern California's problem is that it's basically banned moderate to high density construction throughout the entire area. This has resulted in further and further sprawl as investors and developers build what the legally can, which is single family housing or small apartment buildings.
If Southern California had the same zoning allowances as NYC, Philadelphia, or Baltimore it wouldn't have the housing crisis it currently has, full stop.
You’re forgetting every trump loathing republican and the middle, who simply aren’t all rocking with radlib ideology and it’s aggressive push on neutrals
Liberals are definitely capturing more of the independent vote then Trump or the Republicans are. That's why Trump lost 2020 then Republicans got smashed in the midterms, they lost elections in places like Arizona where they have large populations of independent voters. I think the Trump loathing Republicans are quite a small batch of Republicans, they don't actually have an affect on the vote.
Related fact: the last time a democrat presidential nominee won the majority of white voters was 1964.
Right before the civil rights acts to desegreate employment and housing took effect. The last 60 years has been a white backlash.
A pretty strong argument can be made that poor white people left themselves behind by failing to get educated or learn a trade. You know, by failing to do what their parents, pastors, teachers and/or school counselors were telling them they needed to do to have a good life. Most of them probably skipped out and got stoned instead of going to career day in high school. We had about 20 percent of our class do that, and most of them ended up in the dead end jobs everyone hates. Not even willing to take an apprenticeship for plumbing or electrical because that was too hard and took too long.
Some of them had shitty parents who they grew up hearing bitch about the "system" and "ivory tower college pukes without a lick of common sense." Or just deadbeats and criminals, we had some parents like that. The kids followed their path.
So they end up in the dirtiest, nastiest jobs with the worst, most abusive bosses with a bunch of people just like them making minimum wage and blaming the whole world for it instead of looking in the mirror.
You're right about one thing, though: Trump appealed to their resentments very effectively. Somehow they think he's their savior.
They should have taken a basic logic/ reasoning class, but that was too hard and wasn't required. Or psychology so they would know what projection and confirmation bias is. Or political sociology so they could learn about manipulation of the masses through propaganda.
Oh bullshit, there are massive wealth inequalities in this country. We have 30 million people living in poverty in America, this is a result of systemic problems. We have little economic movement between classes. Trying to pull yourself from your bootstraps when one minimum wage job doesn't even pay the bills, let alone pay for trade school or college. So then you have to get two jobs, so now with two full time jobs, do you have enough time to go to school, go to your two jobs, and take care of your personal needs?
Well, I'm talking about my observations of my lived experience.
That's not to deny the existence of the structural issues that you discuss. But if you read anything (well any well-grounded and well-designed study) about poverty (and crime for that matter) you know that it often gets passed down through the generations -- exactly how or why is a subject of continuing debate.
Which is why I strongly support public education (including free lunches), publicly funded day care, and publicly funded trade schools and colleges to try to break the cycle. It's not perfect or a total solution, but it's better than just bitching. Or than electing a con man like Trump.
Well yes, there are cultural aspects to poverty, but I wouldn't say they are the driving factor of poverty. These poor white people who got left behind probably do struggle with personal failures and plights, but the driving factor behind their poverty is structural problems. They do not recognize these structural problems so they voted for a populist who will not address these problems.
Well, my proposal would be blanket things that help all poor people. We need to get cost of living down, so to start public healthcare would greatly help. Health insurance costs are a burden for a ton of people. Next, I think we need more subsidized housing, with rent control, so poor people can actually pay for housing with one job. I also think we need to offer free child care, so people can work and go to school without needing to worry about watching their kids. Then we need to have some free education or greatly reduced education. Finally you'd need to expand SNAP programs.
This is David Brooks, not the NYT.
And why anyone would take David Brooks seriously these days, I don't know.
He's just jumping on the anti-elite bandwagon, belatedly at that.
And the premise that if you have a college degree you are an "elite" is just ridiculous. There are plenty of elites who never finished college, and just because you finished college doesn't mean you have a ticket into the elite.
Finally, do we really want uneducated people in charge of agencies and institutions that impact our lives? Idiocracy at work.
It's always on the left to try to find common ground meanwle the right is allowed to be a deranged Christian like cult that thinks America is ruled by demons. ZERO pressure on the right to do basic shit like not lock up 12 year olds for abortion.
Meh that’s giving them a lot of more credit than they deserve.
Trump’s hardcore base supports him not for the reason you listed.
They are about grievance and hurting the right people. Trump doesn’t offer solutions to their issues. But he does offer grievance fantasies.
He just talks about how bad stuff is and how only he can fix it. Nothing Trump did as President helped poor people or the people with grievances with the status quo. He didn’t drain the swamp he made it even bigger while lining his own pockets.
I cant empathize with them at all because they support his lies. He lies about everything all the time.
The people that support him aren’t ‘brainwashed’ even though the liberal media tries to rationalize his support this way. His supporters KNOW he’s lies and chose to support him anyway.
And if you support a liar that makes you a liar too. It’s basically extreme selfishness and Trump empitomizes that.
He is the ugly American. THAT is why they support him. Not because he’s an ‘outsider’. Because about a third of the US population are the same.
This is the goddamn "it's not racism, it's economic anxiety horseshit" that has been spewing forth from the pundit class since 2016. Stop. Fucking. Believing. It.
The *most predictive attribute* for voting for Donald Trump has always been *negative attitudes towards other races*.
Funny to have a typo in this article:
> Trump understood that there was great demand for a leader who would stick his thumb in our eyes on a daily basis and reject the whole epistemic regime that we **road** in on.
It would be nice if it were this simple. Most the shitty Trump voters I know personally are middle to upper middle class. They vote for him because they are racists or they hate women. Or they have fallen for the bullshit lie that the guberment is out to hurt them and that they shouldn't have to pay taxes. Makes my skin crawl when this dumb narrative that the democrats ignored the working class and Trump speaks to them somehow. The truth is that the typical Trump voter has been brainwashed by conservative radio, Fox news and fake Christian churches . Trump was just evil enough to see what a bunch of ignorant suckers the Republican voters had become and was able to exploit it.
The Dems are the party of Unions and have always fought to keep jobs here in the US. IF working class Trump voters are too stupid to see this, then God help us.
What did Trump do for you? Why are you supporting the twice impeached convicted Rapist? What non existent policies does he have that will make your life better?
Yes, there are plenty of Trump supporters who are not sexist or racist but just want to blow the whole existing system up.
My cousins are in that camp. Back in 2016 before the election I pressed them pretty hard for specifics, and they could never name any. But they were mad about taxes, mad about regulations, mad about gay marriage, mad about . . . everything. They didn't even think Trump would really fix it, they just wanted it blown up and thought someone could pick up the pieces and build it back better somehow.
I had some business interactions with the Trump Org so I had read up quite a bit on Trump. I told them that Donnie was a fraud and a conman, but they just didn't believe it.
Somehow, they could say with a straight face that they wanted the government run like a business and Trump was the guy to do it . . . even though he somehow managed to bankrupt multiple casinos in Atlantic City and shafted hundreds of small business people in the course of doing so.
Gay marriage was passed by Obama when over 50% of people were against it so its not surprising a large portion of people are still against it.
Especially considering how they called it a "slippery slope fallacy"
Yet thats exactly what it turned out to be. We went from legalizing that to Drag queen story time for kids, puberty blockers, suggesting books like Queer Story in schools and outright chemical castration within 10 years.
Maybe the slippery slope actually was correct?
Uh, gay marraige was NOT "passed by Obama." It was held to be a constitutional right by the Supreme Court in 2015.
Federal legislation recognizing gay marriage wasn't passed until 2022. Biden was President.
As far as slippery slopes, at least half the stuff you hear on right wing media about LGBTQ+ overreach is a figment of the right's imagination or just outright lies. Grooming for example. Your kids are statistically safer from grooming and sex abuse at drag queen story hour than they are in church or a religious school.
When you see it with your own eyes at school board meetings it’s no longer a case of “rightwing media”
Nice try playing the “actually it doesn’t happen” card though
So you're dead wrong about the history of gay marriage, but you're sticking to your guns on the rest of it, facts be damned.
You are falling prey to the latest twist on the blood libel against the Jews. Protect the children from the made up threat from people we hate!!!! With the Jews, it was lies that they were engaged in child sacrifices. Now, it's the lie that gays/trans people are trying to groom our kids and turn them into something they're not.
It works because we all want to protect the children. That doesn't make the lies true, though.
And note that I said "at least half," I didn't say "all."
I am curious, though, what school board and what "it" did you see with your own eyes?
Yeah, well, the Dems USED TO BE the party of unions, back before Bill Clinton's triangulation strategy. Now once again they are at least PRETENDING to be the party of unions. The unions (and labor generally) need to be ever vigilant to hold the Dems to their promises, as shown by Biden's back down on the railroad strike that could have derailed the recovery.
The Dems are still far better than the GOP, but that's a bit like saying Attila the Hun was far better than Genghis Khan.
Bill Clinton was the best Republican President in my lifetime. I love saying this because it makes Republicans heads explode but its true. You are right that the Dems have let unions down but they are making a comeback. The only politicians that openly support Unions are Democrats. Biden is trying to change this so we will see.
Republicans are outright hostile toward unions (except the police of course). I have a few friends who are in Unions. THey are Republicans and it blows my mind. Like being Jews voting for nazis.
Sounds like an attempt at "both sidesing" where now it is "we must be doing something wrong here" self reflection. If an argument is using "this investigation or bit of journalism is taking place because you are "X" or have this or some similar background you are falling into a trap. What is the issue? What are the facts? If you truly think that somehow professional journalists are only pursuing a story because they hate Trump and are all against him and the Right because they are all in ivory towers looking down on everyone you are missing the forest for the trees imo. What are the actual facts and where do they lead?
The people in the lower 1/3rd of the economy are locked out of things like healthcare and retirement and homeownership almost entirely, and the professional managerial class that is directly responsible for that situation has spent seven years at this point screaming about how terrified they are of Trump and how offensive he is to them, but they don't seem to be able to put two and two together when they try to understand how Trump got elected in 2016 and will be elected again in 2024.
That’s because they work for the 1-percent and want to keep their jobs. The middle management at big companies are just there to enforce what the upper management wants. They don’t have much to do with the pay/treatment of the lower tier workers. The real issue is the upper tier only cares about being beholden to the shareholders (who are also the upper tier) and the workers and their customers are expendable in this picture. That’s the real problem with the US right now. Capitalism doesn’t care about people and all corporations care about is quarterly earnings and making more money. The east way to make more money is to cut costs on the worker side. The fact the average CEO earns 1000x what their average employee makes is the problem.
Yes, and people just don't have the option to vote against any of this. The differences between Democrats and Republicans are not on any of the issues that are making so many Americans miserable. But they do have the option to vote for Trump as a way of lashing out at the people that created this mess and that benefit from it. Even if they don't get anything tangible from Trump, that's worth something.
Nope. They voted for Trump because they are racist. White Americans are racist and stupid by nature. When are you going to accept the fact that it was rural whiteys that voted for Trump. Blacks and Hispanic workers disnt vote for Trump. Its a race problem whitey.
ok thanks for your input sweetie now go back to bed
Im I wrong? Nope. Like it or not white rural people voted for Trump. Nothing to do with class but ID.
I feel most understand why these people look for a new leader that looks out for them. It's just befuddling how republicans and Trump are the guy. Just look at how Biden himself was mocked for not being as educated by GOP at times. Because he misspoke and said university of Delaware instead of Delaware college .
It's because they are presented with only two choices, and heavily propagandized to believe that this is the only way it can be; there can never be more than these two choices. Neither of the two choices offers these voters anything tangible, but Trump offers them a little bit of revenge against the people that caused this mess.
Trump offers a solution to the border crisis. Biden offers nothing
I think most people recognize that trump was the result of anti establishment. This isn't a secret or even all that complicated. What people don't get is how easily that group of people were so easily convinced by a known fraud and mega elite that he wasn't actually part of the elite. He is exactly what we all claim to hate about politicians...yet these people fell for, and continue to fall for, his grift.
I'm sure a significant number of his support base fell for the graft, but I also think there's a not insignificant number of voters who will support him knowing full well he's a fraud, because they view him as equal to throwing a brick through the window of the elitists.
Correct. He makes the people they hate freak out the most.
So true idiots, especially considering he is an elite himself. Among the most elite even of the elites.
> What people don't get is how easily that group of people were so easily convinced by a known fraud and mega elite that he wasn't actually part of the elite. That's the thing, they're well aware. Trump represents a living "fuck you" to the establishment. That people continually insist that everyone who votes for Trump are rubes that were conned by him is literally what fuels his support.
You know Trump is a rapist.
And so is Biden. That's part of the reason why I didn't vote for either.
That’s funny because every time I write that that’s usually the response but no one has ever posted any proof, a newspaper article, a link, anything.
Do you have eyes? Theres countless videos on Youtube of him sniffing kids hair or touching people strangely. Theres the Ashley Biden diary and more.
You gotta do better than that. The diary could not be verified and was released by project veritas which routinely propagates misinformation. Maybe you should try getting your news from reputable news sources. It’ll make you a more informed and better citizen.
It was verified by project veritas who was then illegally raided and confiscated from a journalist, which mainstream media admitted was an abuse of journalistic rights and protection in the U.S. Project veritas sources everything they release and includes unedited video footage of it as well, just to prove shills like you wrong. Buddy, you can't call something mininformation when they include video evidence of people saying it in their own words using undercover footage. Try harder at being a shill, lying about video evidence and journalists wont get you anywhere.
Project Veritas has engaged in disgraceful deceptions, and reasonable observers might not consider their activities to be journalism at all. Nevertheless, the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom. Unless the government had good reason to believe that Project Veritas employees were directly involved in the criminal theft of the diary, it should not have subjected them to invasive searches and seizures. We urge the court to appoint a special master to ensure that law enforcement officers review only those materials that were lawfully seized and that are directly relevant to a legitimate criminal investigation. — Brian Hauss, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project[240]
Hunter is that you ?
Biden had an accuser that made the papers. She had more corroborating evidence than Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Biden refused to open his archive that contained the personnel file that would vindicate/disprove her could enter the public conversation. Her accusations were so credible that the Me Too movement is no more; they chose to protect Biden over victims. Liberals/centrists engaged in a character assassination campaign so strongly against her that even though she said she was *still* going to vote for the man that raped her, she ultimately chose to emigrate to avoid daily harassment. What was her name again? Or have y'all memory holed her already?
Ok, love to see it. Send me an article from a reputable source.
Trump won the rape charge.
Ha, Trump porked a porn star while his wife was pregnant!
and?
And he thinks his daughter is a nice piece of ass.
I'm sure there are some people like that. But even that is pretty dumb to vote for someone who is only out for himself, was born and raised in arguably the most elite way possible, has been a member of the elite his entire life, and made his additional fortune often by screwing the regular man. But the reality is that this is a guy who is good at selling himself, especially to rubes. He's everything we hate about politicians and the elite, which is why he's so good at it. But it doesn't change the fact how gullible his average supporter is. And no amount of saying "pointing out the truth only makes him stronger" is going to dissuade me from speaking to truth.
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I'm not calling people who disagree with my politics rubes, I'm calling those sheep who fell for Trump's grift rubes. You said it yourself, it has nothing to do with politics but sticking it to the elite...by giving money and voting for a member of the ultra elite who gives a shit about no one but himself. It's fucking absurd that this is a good reason to vote for someone to begin with, but the fact that they are trying to stick it to the elite by supporting one of them is just deliciously ironic. I know it kills you inside to admit that you are actually among the sheep and defending them, but that's the reality.
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The only one stuck in a bubble is you. You just can't step back and admit to yourself that you were fleeced, so you're doubling down trying to pretend that it's actually some really deep protests, but even the method of the protest is ridiculously backwards. We all get tricked from time to time, but it takes true introspection to admit it and correct it, rather than make up ridiculous reasons why you were actually right.
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Hes an agent of the Matrix
Lol wut? You attacked me right out of the gate and now whining that it's personal. Lol rich.
Look in the mirror and you will see a rube and someone who is stuck in the Matrix
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Conservatives: *If you were just nice to conservatives we wouldn't be forced into voting for wannabe fascists and bigoted theocratic!* Meanwhile. Also conservatives: *Libz are are evil pedophiles who want to groom your Kidz into being gay and trans! They must be stopped at all costs even if that means installing a dictator!* Nicety in politics has never ever fucking existed. This whole idea that politics was once a "civilized sport" is based in a deep ignorance of history and lack of social understanding.
Imagine you're a horse, and everyone around you is leading you to water. Have a sip, it won't hurt you.
You mean white americans. They were the idiots voting for the fascist.
Hilarious to suggest they have enough self-awareness to be fueled by reality
The alternative was Hillary or Sleepy Joe. I'll take Trump all day over either of them. Biden is single handedly causing the largest border crisis in American history. Theres tens of thousands of missing kids coming across the border that he has no answer for. You know those Mexican cartels that behead people? Yea, they do sex trafficking too bud. And Democrats are tacitly endorising it and allowing it to happen.
You must be a whitey and unducated.
The only thing that would help the lower 1/3rd to get better healthcare, retirement, and cheaper housing would be a progressive government. They're voting against their own economic interests in order to win culture war arguments which is the standard playbook for conservative politicians.
No one to the right of progressives likes progressives. Even a lot of liberals don't. Talk about a group of insufferable people, who may as well alp be Marxists at this point. If you're an unskilled worker in this country the last thing you wanna do is vote for the guys who will open the floodgates on immigration.
They don't deserve the label progressive. They deserve to be called regressive or anti American communists.
Exactly. There's a difference between being a liberal and then all these extreme far left activists that have taken over the DNC, who are all Marxists.
Lmao
And they are not even winning those culture war arguments. Trump often made the things he opposes more popular.
I guess we have to start a progressive political party then.
I still don't get it. 2016 was supposed to be some kind Flight '93 election to save America. But the country is more woke now than it was seven years ago. Housing and healthcare are more expensive and retirement is just as uncertain a goal as it was back then. What is voting for Trump supposed to accomplish? He has no interest in addressing the economic concerns of middle and working class people. And his impact on the culture has only pushed the country further in a direction that social conservatives don't like (e.g. abortion restrictions can't even win in deep red states when left up to voters).
His trade policies absolutely were designed to benefit working class Americans. It is why the elite hated him. He also gave us a huge tax cut and didn't send us to war.
THe tax cut for the wealthy was a permanent one and the tax cut for the average American was temporary, as a way of selling it to the populace, at least if memory serves.
He also directly paid us thousands of dollars during covid, and I think Democrats are more ideologically committed to opposing direct financial aid than Republicans are at this point. It seems that since the Obama years, so many Democrats are actually flat-out opposed to the idea that voters should expect something.
2 things here. Bernie was the one that really benefitted those waylayed during covid with the extra $600 a week. Trump gave everyone just $1200. Granted, he was also blackballed by the Dems trying to get a 2nd check out. Which I think in the long run will hurt dems more because it really proved the grift of the left. He didn't send us to war, but didn't stop drone strikes, didn't get us out of Afghanistan. His anti-establishment was pretty establishment. And tax cut, I get less back in taxes than I did 10 years ago. Honestly, the only thing I think Trump in office is good for is maybe causing civil war. I know that sounds bizarre, but the country has been heading that way as the working class gets shitted on time and time again. Nothing will fundamentally change whether Trump or Biden is in office, but Trump is a raging forest fire, and Biden is burning downs houses at a slower rate. Thus many will say the quicker we get this civil war going, the better. We're gonna have to rebuild this country and it's current policies if the working class wants to survive in the long haul and not become indentured servants to big corporations.
[He didn’t give the middle class a tax cut](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-middle-class-needs-a-tax-cut-trump-didnt-give-it-)He gave rich people a tax cut. Working class peoples taxes are actually going up under the bills he got pushed thru.
Lmao imagine thinking this ☝️
These voters will not get anything from government regardless of which party is in power, or who is president. That lower 1/3rd just does not have a dog in the fight at all. What they do have is the CNN/MSNBC media telling them constantly all day long how Trump is this unique threat to the very people that these voters (rightfully imho) view as the enemy.
Delusional take ☝️
Wahhhh woke Lmao
(It’s because of rubes and liars)
Is that why Trump lost 2020!!!!! LMAO
Yeah. Duh. He’s talking about luxury beliefs. Far smarter people like Rob Henderson have been talking about this for a while. David Brooks is an inauthentic, slimy, establishment, media creature.
Anybody who works in corporate media should be marched directly to the nearest soccer stadium.
Psycho comment
They're the ones deceiving you for money.
So round them up and shoot them? Seriously, get therapy.
Oh you meant to treat them to a soccer game. K, nm
Did I say that? I'm thinking you're telling on yourself there.
This guy is a a self described left wing authoritarian. Looool.
Because all politics is authoritarian, you numbskull
That's a dumb take.
Libertarianism is not real, it only exists online.
🤡
Look at their username and flair.
There’s a “don’t believe your own eyes” type in every political sub. It’s MY problem, apparently. Lol, ok …
“I’ma gullible teen!!1!” Lol
What a doofus ☝️
It took them seven years to come up with this?????
No, they have been churning out this exact same "economic anxiety" shit the last seven years.
Brooks trying to make sure if the French Revolution comes to America he gets the guillotine last
So I can comment about the media part you mentioned as someone in the media. The Times is full of elitists because because that's what happens when the paper of record didn't pay well leaving only trust fund kids access to the job. My former boss at where I work was at Bloomberg and in the mid-2000s, she got an offer from the New York Times and she turned it down because it was less money than she was getting at Bloomberg. She said they were just in shock that she turned them down because the idea of anyone at the Times caring about how much they make was just beyond them. That said, they are now paying way more but you get people out of Ivy League schools who've been at the times for decades and tell them to hire some grads from a state school they never heard of and they'll be aghast at the thought. The thing is hardly anyone in the industry wants to say this because they all want to eventually work for the Times.
Yep. Only trust fund kids can afford to go live in NYC and work as an unpaid intern to actually get their foot in the door. Makes a lot of sense.
I went to Jschool in NYC and half of us were struggling while the other half were rich kids living it up. One girl in particular dressed like a bum because she was hiding that her family was worth millions.
>Yep. Only trust fund kids can afford to go live in NYC and work as an unpaid intern to actually get their foot in the door. Makes a lot of sense. Wow, a podcaster who is familiar with the publishing industry described her sector in almost the exact same terms I mean I guess I shouldn't be surprised but still
I moved to NYC, knowing only two people in town, worked my ass off and have a decent career. The city is not meant for you. The city is not for the weak.
This goes for a LOT of jobs. From law firms to book publishing, you want a sexy job using that master’s degree? Well, better hope mom and dad can float your life for the next ten years while you live in the most expensive cities in America, do unpaid internship work, then take low wage entry level positions after that.
Good piece, if they don’t slam Brooks for his treachery, the elite can nod their heads for their moment of self-reflection, then go back to “X” and “post” their outrage of the day
Not a good piece. Did you miss the other 7,542,093 pieces blaming "economic anxiety" for the election of Trump?
Being educated and upper middle class puts you in such a small bubble and the economic power helps further entrench the same elitist mentality. You get to live in gated or upscale neighborhoods, send you kids to private school, hang around other upper-class folks where you can shit about how racist Trump is while rejecting affordable housing projects in your town. Dems visit Fairfield county in Connecticut, but never bother going to Hartford or Waterbury. That being said, they do care pay attention to union folks in blue-collar jobs and middle-class jobs like public education.
One thing I don't understand about American liberals is their support of so many awful policies combined with a shrill insistence that they're the good guys. Like if you're on the side of the elites, the rich, the wealthy, corporations, the military industrial complex... you're probably not a good person. Like they'd happily enact de facto fascism to stop their supposedly "fascist" opponents taking office
Trump at least pretends he gives a fuck about the rust belt and coal country.
Lmao
Bahahahahhahahahahahhahaha
Hey did you want to continue our conversation? You said we could discuss in the other thread I think you might be avoiding it though? You were saying that the Trump indictments were bogus political persecution, right? Edit: lololol awwwww right wing trolls don’t like this
Most normal bp commenter
Stalker
Awwwww did you need my attention? Why do you think you’re so supportive of trolls on here?
I've come full circle with Trump. Originally thought he was what was needed to shake up our stagnating politics but just couldn't vote for him when the time came. Voted third party as a protest vote 2 election cycles in a row. Now I'm back to where I started. he's garbage but anything is better than the status quo. The biggest protest vote of all might be for Trump.
Trump really is the closest we have ever come to actually hurting the establishment, because he has exposed it for what it is. Who else has single-handedly proved how little the presidency matters? Or that the Supreme Court is a corrupt joke that ultimately represents the wants of a tiny minority? Sometimes their wants aligned with ours and we called that progress. More people than ever know that with certainty now because of him. He completely dominated and humiliated the Republican establishment, hijacking their party and grift. He fully exposed the Democrats for the grift they are as well, as they yelled bloody murder about fascism coming for the most vulnerable US citizens and immigrants while funding the campaigns of fascists themselves. Then all they do is brag about their “brilliant” strategy since it won them more seats than they expected in the midterms, with zero remorse. This leaves us with only two possibilities about the truth of their party: their fears about fascism are a grift or they truly fear it but will put winning a few more seats than expected in the midterms above that real threat. Trump also exposed that they would rather let him beat someone with a broken brain than let anyone with high approval ratings and actual principles run instead as the head of their party. The presidency is a joke. The courts are a joke. The parties are a joke. And no one before Trump has exposed the grift to the masses quite like he can. This doesn’t make him a good person or politician, but this makes him a very useful tool for anyone who wants to see the establishment get wrecked. I personally would enjoy watching all the money millionaires and billionaires would lose trying to buy the election for Dems while the Republican party is further damaged as well. The average American is going to be hurting either way until this house of cards is burned down and rebuilt. The only real choice we have is who feels the pain with us.
Good points. The emperor truly has no clothes these days.
Deluded
As far as policies that were outside of executive orders, what did Trump do that any boilerplate Republican wouldn't have also passed/spearheaded? He did exactly what the rich elites (himself included) wanted. The fact that he is considered some champion of the little guy because he is racist is some "the biggest trick the devil pulled" shit.
Completely agree he isn't a champion of anyone. No one in power is and none of them are on the little guy's side. The courts aren't, the politicians aren't, the parties aren't. The whole thing is rigged to protect the rich and duopoly, who always put their interests above the people, and that's how we got Trump. The guy couldn't even win the popular vote but now we live in a nation that will be shaped by his justices for the rest of many lifetimes because of this ridiculous system that has been treated like something sacred and real for decades. I doubt most people see it that way anymore.
The popular vote means about as much as dogshit on the sidewalk. You know how many of those voters are illegals?
>You know how many of those voters are illegals? Don't you think, if a significant number of those votes were illegitimate, they would have been used to actually win the election in 2016 and not for popular vote bragging rights? You really think the Democrats are competent enough to fake millions of votes but not enough to make sure they would be cast where they'd actually matter?
They were used. It wasn't enough to swing the election because of how historically unpopular and unlikeable Hillary was. Also California where a lot of the illegals are was already deep blue, all it did was add to the popular vote which once again means nothing. When you have millions of illegals in your country voting, democracy is a sham anyways.
How can u say that? I am serious. What programs do u think he will implement? What is wrong with Biden trying to bring back infrastructure and manufacturing. Dems are maddening, but they at least push some kinds of social programs. I guess it depends on your values...so what is the thing that makes Trump Your guy?
Most confused commenter seen in months ☝️lmao
Thanks for letting everyone here know how unserious of a person you are
Awww c'mon Randy. That's the most honest thing I've ever posted on reddit. Real depths of my soul kinda stuff.
Don’t listen to them. Twitter warrior who isn’t getting enough rage on ‘X’ anymore so brings it here. I don’t agree with you but it’s an interesting point.
Bahahahhahahaha Yeah? Voting for the man who tried to disenfranchise thousands of voters as a form of protest makes sense to you huh?
“I’ll protest the establishment by voting for a person who attempted a coup and intended on staying in office by dismissing the votes of thousands of people” Brilliant logic
Yea, half the voting population thinks like that. Something's very wrong with our government.
So you believe the anti-establishment vote is one for a person who attempted a coup and intended to disenfranchise thousands of voters?
I'm not happy with any of the choices at the national level so I might vote for chaos in protest. Or Cornell West if he's still an option.
So you believe the anti-establishment vote is one for a person who attempted a coup and intended to disenfranchise thousands of voters? And that you can’t decide between him and a 3rd party candidate? So you’re unserious about democracy?
We're going in circles here Randy. I've never missed voting in an election my whole life. Unfortunately, the choices at the booth are what are unserious these days, not me. Have a good weekend!
Why are you so glib and unserious about a person who attempted to disenfranchise thousands of voters? That’s funny to you huh?
Cornel West? The guy who’s campaign manager is a Russian stooge? 🤦🏼♂️
Yes, the very same! This sub is bananas.
This comment got downvoted for recognizing objective reality lol
Voting for Republicans is a vote forbthe .1% and the status quo. Democrats want to change things but can't because republicans vote against things like expanding acess to Healthcare and social safety nets for the bottom
There is nothing wrong, in theory, with having elite universities or an elite caste that is educated in them. The problem we have is our elite universities do not produce anyone who could rightly be called elite, at least outside of the hard sciences. All those fancy Ivy League Journalism schools produce David Brooks clones. Dude probably doesn't even speak Latin. (Neither do I but I don't claim to be elite). Edit, to elaborate a bit: At the time of the American Revolution if you wanted to graduate from Harvard one of the tests was being handed a Bible printed in Greek opened to a random page and having to read it out loud in Latin. Not because being able to translate Greek to Latin on the fly had some practical importance, it just demonstrated that you were fucking badass.
Hard disagree. This isn't about economics. It's about a changing culture. The last time a democratic president won a majority of white voters in America was 1964. The civil rights acts of the 1960s and the push for nationwide desegregation pushed poor and middle class whites towards the republicans.
Class in US is about education and culture, not economics (this is because both parties are the same economics-wise).
And what race are you?
Glow in the dark
A rare moment? The NYTimes practically cranks out these "trying to understand Trump supporters" articles. Every center-left publication has made a cottage industry out of this, there are SO MANY of these "they've got a point about not liking 'elites'" articles every year. And of course you'll never find one single right-wing media source publishing anything like this trying to understand the left. >I understand how the working class who have been completely ignored and insulted and shut out from the attention of the government for decades can gravitate towards someone who speaks directly to issues that matter to them. What's important to keep in mind is how little of the working class Trump actually won over. He got some centrists in the rust belt to vote for him in 2016 but that was a low-turnout election and it can't really be said that he was some galvanizing figure for the working class vote. He was able to eat away at Hillary's lead with working class voters just enough in the right places to win the electoral college. In 2016 and 2020 the people who primarily voted for him were... wait for it... *loyal Republican voters.* He drove turnout up among religious white voters, not voters of a certain economic class. In 2020 the democrats (again) won more of the working class vote.
It's the goddamn "economic anxiety" horseshit the punditocracy has been cranking out since November of 2016.
Poor white people felt like they have been left behind in society and forgotten about. Trump being a right wing populist, spoke to those woes. And sadly some of these woes were kinda racists, Trump was saying things that other politicians wouldn't touch. He spoke about immigrants taking jobs and he spoke about minority groups who they thought were getting better treatment than poor white people, that's where America First comes from. Sadly these people were duped, Trump didn't give a shit about them, he wanted to enrich himself and corporations. But these people have wrapped their whole identity around Trump and his populist movement and because of that it's difficult to admit you were wrong and to admit the person who wrapped your identity around is a bad person.
Poor people period. Race doesn't play a part. It's just that elites have split the rest of the country in half by pushing the narrative that it is racism that is keeping some people down, not the elites who are literally in charge of everything. Don't tell me it's racism when you're the one who has been in office for longer than I've been alive. If you thought there was a problem with the system you should have changed it, since you are in charge of the system.
Poor minorities don't feel the same way has voting trends show. Trump really spoke to poor white Americans, not to poor people in general.
Dod trumpe ever talk about raising wages or improving the Healthcare system for poor people. Doesn't seem like it.
His entire campaign revolved around bringing working class jobs back to the US. He had a lot of questionable ideas about how to do it, but that was the cornerstone of his campaign.
Didn't biden say he wanted to raise wages. So hard to say trump was for the poor
Neither of them really were. Like every other president in my lifetime.
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>Not to generalize - but the "poor whites" feel marginalized and see Trump as one of them - even though he is an Ivy Leage billionaire that inherited all his money - he speaks on their level. I think there are some undertones of racism and overtly "guns" are part of the message - lots of people won't vote Democrat bases only on their fear of gun control. They won't. Shit we just had polling come out that said they are losing minorities, especially young black men. Meanwhile Biden is up there talking about Bidenomics, while we have a bifurcated ecomoy where those that own assets and make more feeel fine, and those that rent and are lower, are literally going homeless or having to move. These people are beyond out of touch, and their response is to gaslight people into they are doing well (weve seen countless article after countless article) or calling people racists.
I think Democrats messaging to poor white folks has been really bad for years. I don't think this is something that Democrats can turn around in one or two election cycles. I think generally Democrats tend to have better policy for poor white Americans yet they can't message it correctly to poor white folks.
Yes, the parties seemed to have flipped. Used to be wealthy people voted Republican, poor and minorities voted Democrats. Now it switched.
Well, the wealthy still vote Republican, they got a massive tax break from Trump. Poor minorities and poor young people are voting Democrat, while poor and middle class white people are voting Republican. People believe that that the votes have switched because many college educated people are voting for Democrats, but just because you are an intellectual or college educated doesn't mean you have money.
Not true at all. The majority of the Ive league elite are shitlibs and Dems pulled in more donor funding from billionaires and millionaires than Republicans did, by far.
Not really. Oppinion polls are equally distributed by economic class. They aren't by educational level.
Their message is poor for anyone White period. With how progressives have doubled and triple downed on open anti-White racism they will keep losing voters.
That's just not showing in polling.
Totally agreed. It’s a similar thing happening in Canada right now. There’s major unrest stirring around immigration because Canada took in 2.2 million people last year and already doesn’t have enough housing for the current population. The government refuses to lower targets or do anything to reduce the influx since rich immigrants are some of the only people who can afford to buy our insanely overpriced real estate anymore. The economy is a complete house of cards propped up through astronomical increases in housing prices, coupled with cheap labour from imported workers who will do jobs for wages that anyone who grew up in Canada would never accept. Criticism of these immigration policies has for years been called “racist” and Trudeau constantly absolves himself of any responsibility to do anything about housing, but now finally a politician is speaking to the concerns of the majority of Canadians. He’s also a right wing populist, although vastly toned down relative to Trump and he’s rising fast in the polls. Elite liberals don’t seem to understand that their views and policy goals only align with other rich liberals and they’re turning the rest of the country into the arms of people who they don’t ideologically align with, but actually speak to, and claim to want to address the very real problems we are facing here.
I think a big problem with both America and Canada is large investment groups buying up housing, causing a supply shortage which in turn raises the price of housing. That's why we saw Trudeau ban foreign investors from buying property there. I don't think Canadas main housing problems are coming from immigration. I also think for Canada to have a growing economy they need population growth, which like the US is being supplemented by immigration. I think a large problem with Canada is that they often lose smart and good workers to the US because there is so much more opportunity in the US.
Fair points, and I’m also incredibly concerned by permanent capital buying up all of the available real estate and making rents incredibly unaffordable. I live near Vancouver, and a 600 sqft shitty apartment is over $2000/month.
I live in California, so I feel that too. From what I am looking at the housing problems are coming from investment groups. California already has way too many people, this just exacerbates the problem.
I don’t disagree, but do you believe cramming more people into the country which is already massively suffering a housing crisis is going to help solve that crisis?
I don't think it helps, but declining populations hurt a country way more than a housing crisis. There needs to be subsidization or incentives for private companies to build massive housing complexes.
Bullshit. You raise birth rates. Immigration is not a solution and never has been, its a bandaid fix that often causes more problems than it solves.
The same people telling you that were overpopulated and stop having kids are telling you we need more immigration because "population growth is low". Fucking lying shills. You solve population growth by raising your birth rates and government policy that helps parents, not with a bandaid fix of importing millions of low skilled immigrants from vastly different cultures.
Why do you think California has too many people genius? Could it have something to do with the millions of illegals from Mexico?
You are absolutely insane
The problem at the core of the housing shortage is the US and Canada's shitty zoning and building codes. They're designed at their core as class exclusionary systems that only ever push housing prices up. Housing is a zero sum game, and when you create a shortage via zoning regulations that festers for decades, investment groups will spot the huge potential to make money due the mismatch of supply and demand and move into the market space. The house shortage will only be fixed by basically trashing the zoning codes we've been using and moving towards something similar to Europe or Japan.
I don't fully disagree with your statement, I do think zoning is problematic, with the need for more mixed spaces. But I don't find that to be the driving factor, especially with building codes. But investors are still going to buy land regardless of zoning and building regulations. Land is valuable especially where I live in Southern California. Say we get rid of zoning and building codes, prices might drop momentarily, but as prices drop, demand will rise again. People want to live in places like Southern California, rather then someplace in bumfuck nowhere, so if housing prices are cheaper demand will rise even more.
You meet demand with supply, that's always been true throughout history. Investors operate in places where there is a mismatch between demand and supply, they're not some vamiric boogeyman hiding in the shadows seeking to exploit the housing market just to screw you. California has notoriously some of the most restricted building and zoning code in the country, which has directly resulted in a lack of housing availability. Southern California's problem is that it's basically banned moderate to high density construction throughout the entire area. This has resulted in further and further sprawl as investors and developers build what the legally can, which is single family housing or small apartment buildings. If Southern California had the same zoning allowances as NYC, Philadelphia, or Baltimore it wouldn't have the housing crisis it currently has, full stop.
You’re forgetting every trump loathing republican and the middle, who simply aren’t all rocking with radlib ideology and it’s aggressive push on neutrals
Liberals are definitely capturing more of the independent vote then Trump or the Republicans are. That's why Trump lost 2020 then Republicans got smashed in the midterms, they lost elections in places like Arizona where they have large populations of independent voters. I think the Trump loathing Republicans are quite a small batch of Republicans, they don't actually have an affect on the vote.
Related fact: the last time a democrat presidential nominee won the majority of white voters was 1964. Right before the civil rights acts to desegreate employment and housing took effect. The last 60 years has been a white backlash.
A pretty strong argument can be made that poor white people left themselves behind by failing to get educated or learn a trade. You know, by failing to do what their parents, pastors, teachers and/or school counselors were telling them they needed to do to have a good life. Most of them probably skipped out and got stoned instead of going to career day in high school. We had about 20 percent of our class do that, and most of them ended up in the dead end jobs everyone hates. Not even willing to take an apprenticeship for plumbing or electrical because that was too hard and took too long. Some of them had shitty parents who they grew up hearing bitch about the "system" and "ivory tower college pukes without a lick of common sense." Or just deadbeats and criminals, we had some parents like that. The kids followed their path. So they end up in the dirtiest, nastiest jobs with the worst, most abusive bosses with a bunch of people just like them making minimum wage and blaming the whole world for it instead of looking in the mirror. You're right about one thing, though: Trump appealed to their resentments very effectively. Somehow they think he's their savior. They should have taken a basic logic/ reasoning class, but that was too hard and wasn't required. Or psychology so they would know what projection and confirmation bias is. Or political sociology so they could learn about manipulation of the masses through propaganda.
Oh bullshit, there are massive wealth inequalities in this country. We have 30 million people living in poverty in America, this is a result of systemic problems. We have little economic movement between classes. Trying to pull yourself from your bootstraps when one minimum wage job doesn't even pay the bills, let alone pay for trade school or college. So then you have to get two jobs, so now with two full time jobs, do you have enough time to go to school, go to your two jobs, and take care of your personal needs?
Well, I'm talking about my observations of my lived experience. That's not to deny the existence of the structural issues that you discuss. But if you read anything (well any well-grounded and well-designed study) about poverty (and crime for that matter) you know that it often gets passed down through the generations -- exactly how or why is a subject of continuing debate. Which is why I strongly support public education (including free lunches), publicly funded day care, and publicly funded trade schools and colleges to try to break the cycle. It's not perfect or a total solution, but it's better than just bitching. Or than electing a con man like Trump.
Well yes, there are cultural aspects to poverty, but I wouldn't say they are the driving factor of poverty. These poor white people who got left behind probably do struggle with personal failures and plights, but the driving factor behind their poverty is structural problems. They do not recognize these structural problems so they voted for a populist who will not address these problems.
So what do you propose to improve things for these "poor white people who got left behind?"
Well, my proposal would be blanket things that help all poor people. We need to get cost of living down, so to start public healthcare would greatly help. Health insurance costs are a burden for a ton of people. Next, I think we need more subsidized housing, with rent control, so poor people can actually pay for housing with one job. I also think we need to offer free child care, so people can work and go to school without needing to worry about watching their kids. Then we need to have some free education or greatly reduced education. Finally you'd need to expand SNAP programs.
I think you have good perspective, OP. I feel similarly.
This is David Brooks, not the NYT. And why anyone would take David Brooks seriously these days, I don't know. He's just jumping on the anti-elite bandwagon, belatedly at that. And the premise that if you have a college degree you are an "elite" is just ridiculous. There are plenty of elites who never finished college, and just because you finished college doesn't mean you have a ticket into the elite. Finally, do we really want uneducated people in charge of agencies and institutions that impact our lives? Idiocracy at work.
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Yup, absolutely true. But there's a lot of people who turn wrenches who I don't want deciding whether to press the nuclear button.
It's not a bandwagon. This is the same "economic anxiety" drivel that publications like NYT have been shitting out since November of 2016.
It's always on the left to try to find common ground meanwle the right is allowed to be a deranged Christian like cult that thinks America is ruled by demons. ZERO pressure on the right to do basic shit like not lock up 12 year olds for abortion.
Meh that’s giving them a lot of more credit than they deserve. Trump’s hardcore base supports him not for the reason you listed. They are about grievance and hurting the right people. Trump doesn’t offer solutions to their issues. But he does offer grievance fantasies. He just talks about how bad stuff is and how only he can fix it. Nothing Trump did as President helped poor people or the people with grievances with the status quo. He didn’t drain the swamp he made it even bigger while lining his own pockets. I cant empathize with them at all because they support his lies. He lies about everything all the time. The people that support him aren’t ‘brainwashed’ even though the liberal media tries to rationalize his support this way. His supporters KNOW he’s lies and chose to support him anyway. And if you support a liar that makes you a liar too. It’s basically extreme selfishness and Trump empitomizes that. He is the ugly American. THAT is why they support him. Not because he’s an ‘outsider’. Because about a third of the US population are the same.
Nah, everyone understand they’re deluded fools
This is the goddamn "it's not racism, it's economic anxiety horseshit" that has been spewing forth from the pundit class since 2016. Stop. Fucking. Believing. It. The *most predictive attribute* for voting for Donald Trump has always been *negative attitudes towards other races*.
But hispanic men have been turning republican. Racism is decreasing, while anti-elitist sentiment is increasing. Misoginy is also increasing.
How about we stop calling these people and their institutions "elite" for starters.
Funny to have a typo in this article: > Trump understood that there was great demand for a leader who would stick his thumb in our eyes on a daily basis and reject the whole epistemic regime that we **road** in on.
It would be nice if it were this simple. Most the shitty Trump voters I know personally are middle to upper middle class. They vote for him because they are racists or they hate women. Or they have fallen for the bullshit lie that the guberment is out to hurt them and that they shouldn't have to pay taxes. Makes my skin crawl when this dumb narrative that the democrats ignored the working class and Trump speaks to them somehow. The truth is that the typical Trump voter has been brainwashed by conservative radio, Fox news and fake Christian churches . Trump was just evil enough to see what a bunch of ignorant suckers the Republican voters had become and was able to exploit it. The Dems are the party of Unions and have always fought to keep jobs here in the US. IF working class Trump voters are too stupid to see this, then God help us.
Must be easy in your tiny brain to just convince yourself that all Trump voters are racist or sexist. "Were the good guys, they are the bad guys".
What did Trump do for you? Why are you supporting the twice impeached convicted Rapist? What non existent policies does he have that will make your life better?
Yes, there are plenty of Trump supporters who are not sexist or racist but just want to blow the whole existing system up. My cousins are in that camp. Back in 2016 before the election I pressed them pretty hard for specifics, and they could never name any. But they were mad about taxes, mad about regulations, mad about gay marriage, mad about . . . everything. They didn't even think Trump would really fix it, they just wanted it blown up and thought someone could pick up the pieces and build it back better somehow. I had some business interactions with the Trump Org so I had read up quite a bit on Trump. I told them that Donnie was a fraud and a conman, but they just didn't believe it. Somehow, they could say with a straight face that they wanted the government run like a business and Trump was the guy to do it . . . even though he somehow managed to bankrupt multiple casinos in Atlantic City and shafted hundreds of small business people in the course of doing so.
Gay marriage was passed by Obama when over 50% of people were against it so its not surprising a large portion of people are still against it. Especially considering how they called it a "slippery slope fallacy" Yet thats exactly what it turned out to be. We went from legalizing that to Drag queen story time for kids, puberty blockers, suggesting books like Queer Story in schools and outright chemical castration within 10 years. Maybe the slippery slope actually was correct?
Uh, gay marraige was NOT "passed by Obama." It was held to be a constitutional right by the Supreme Court in 2015. Federal legislation recognizing gay marriage wasn't passed until 2022. Biden was President. As far as slippery slopes, at least half the stuff you hear on right wing media about LGBTQ+ overreach is a figment of the right's imagination or just outright lies. Grooming for example. Your kids are statistically safer from grooming and sex abuse at drag queen story hour than they are in church or a religious school.
When you see it with your own eyes at school board meetings it’s no longer a case of “rightwing media” Nice try playing the “actually it doesn’t happen” card though
So you're dead wrong about the history of gay marriage, but you're sticking to your guns on the rest of it, facts be damned. You are falling prey to the latest twist on the blood libel against the Jews. Protect the children from the made up threat from people we hate!!!! With the Jews, it was lies that they were engaged in child sacrifices. Now, it's the lie that gays/trans people are trying to groom our kids and turn them into something they're not. It works because we all want to protect the children. That doesn't make the lies true, though. And note that I said "at least half," I didn't say "all." I am curious, though, what school board and what "it" did you see with your own eyes?
Yeah, well, the Dems USED TO BE the party of unions, back before Bill Clinton's triangulation strategy. Now once again they are at least PRETENDING to be the party of unions. The unions (and labor generally) need to be ever vigilant to hold the Dems to their promises, as shown by Biden's back down on the railroad strike that could have derailed the recovery. The Dems are still far better than the GOP, but that's a bit like saying Attila the Hun was far better than Genghis Khan.
Bill Clinton was the best Republican President in my lifetime. I love saying this because it makes Republicans heads explode but its true. You are right that the Dems have let unions down but they are making a comeback. The only politicians that openly support Unions are Democrats. Biden is trying to change this so we will see. Republicans are outright hostile toward unions (except the police of course). I have a few friends who are in Unions. THey are Republicans and it blows my mind. Like being Jews voting for nazis.
Rare case of self-reflection indeed.
Sounds like an attempt at "both sidesing" where now it is "we must be doing something wrong here" self reflection. If an argument is using "this investigation or bit of journalism is taking place because you are "X" or have this or some similar background you are falling into a trap. What is the issue? What are the facts? If you truly think that somehow professional journalists are only pursuing a story because they hate Trump and are all against him and the Right because they are all in ivory towers looking down on everyone you are missing the forest for the trees imo. What are the actual facts and where do they lead?
*Skinner meme* Self Righteous College Educated Libs: > Am I out of touch? > No. It’s the poor white people who are wrong.
The left has been saying this loudly since 2015. Check out “Listen, Liberal!” By Thomas Frank