Hillbilly Elegy - Explaining the rural vote

So… Not to pick on @Alstein (sorry, man) but this did not work out the way most of us wanted.

I’m really trying to understand what happened here, and I feel that David Wong’s piece was a lot more of a warning than we believed. Obviously, there were a number of factors contributing to HRC’s loss, like her poor performance with minorities, but here we are with a bunch of “safe” union states that flipped for Trump. The rural and rust belt vote absolutely mattered and the DNC’s hubris in thinking those votes were locked up was a massive screw-up.

“Hubris” is the operative word. Leaving aside for now the ultimate culpability of the right in their Big Lie campaign over the past decades, demonizing Congress (often GOP controlled, but w/e), Washington, liberals, science, education, etc., the Dems had this one in the bag. They fucked it up big time by being arrogant assholes mostly.

One of my siblings called me from central PA this morning to say that all of my brothers and sisters voted Trump, (except for this sib). She said even my younger brother (who rarely votes) voted. She said his position was, “Why vote for Hillary, she will just be impeached for all that e-mail shit.”

Heh, I voted HRC, but I had the same expectation as my younger brother for the next four years. I’m just astonished at how blindsided I was by this election. I occasionally thought this of Trump: He has somehow defied all expectations getting through the primary, but then those thoughts were quieted by the polls. Wow. Just wow.

Yeah, it was pretty arrogant of HRC to think that people would vote for the candidate who is trying to actually help them up over the one promising to push others down below them.

Not referring to this campaign per se; your observation is generally correct, but over the past several decades the Dems have arrogantly ignored those who aren’t college educated, technically skilled, well adapted to the global economy, mobile, and not rooted in time and place. In fact, the Dems have generally denigrated the very people that were the heart and soul of the FDR coalition. The party has increasingly become the bastion of a coastal elite (and I’m one of 'em, by national standards, for sure). It wasn’t that Clinton wasn’t going to be the best shot for actual change for most folks–I think she was. It’s that any improvement in the lot of middle America would have been a political chit cashed in, not something the current Democratic party actually gives a flip about.

Today’s Democrats–and I’ve voted Democrat since 1982 mid-terms–have totally forgotten that anyone outside of the east and west coasts or big urban centers even exists. It’s a party built for college-educated, mobile, professionals who have few ties to hearth and home and who are perfectly content with moving around the country chasing high paying jobs. Oh, there’s a strong African-American contingent too, largely because the GOP has been so unrelentingly hostile, and various other groups for whom the Dems are the least bad option, but really, the mainstream Democrats have become an elitist technocracy, far removed from the blue collar and progressive coalition of yore.

It was arrogant to decide HRC was the candidate even though literally over half the nation didn’t like her.
They completely fucked the dog. It was “Clinton’s time.” According to who? According to the Democratic Party, who knows better than you - nevermind the LAST time it was her time and you all said “fuck that noise” this time is really her time for realz.

They know better than everyone else. See how that fucking worked out for the nation.

Trump is a vile fuck and the Dems should never have lost to him, only HRC could have. And that’s who they ran. Because arrogance.

Very much this. They aren’t the Union Party anymore really. They don’t give a shit about them. Let me tell you about a lot of union guys: they’re basically Tea Party, only they know where their bread is buttered. They like guns, hunting, NASCAR, aren’t fans of queers or black people in general, but they vote their interests. This time… this time they got fed up with the Party and bullshit and voted a different way for someone who said he’d do what the Democrats used to: look out for them.

They really only have themselves to blame at the end of the day.

Yes that and http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

It is true that Clinton lacked charisma and in the end, I think this lost it for her. I kept telling my wife that it was odd to see so many “I will now approach you, like a regular human being” jokes at her expense on Saturday Night Live.

In some ways, it came down to heart vs. head. Clinton had the intellect in spades, but had until the very end nearly zero ability to rouse the heart. Trump, for all of his ignorance and bluster, was immediately effective in connecting in a visceral way with people who were attracted to his message.

Yep as documented here http://www.paulgraham.com/charisma.html

Say what you will about Trump, he’s a very good con man.

I dunno if I buy this. When they were side by side in the debates and you could directly compare I thought Clinton had way more charisma. Trump was angry.

I’m not saying Donald Trump won because people are dumb. But I am leaving this here:

Hillbilly elegy, indeed.

-Tom

Well they were dumb enough to vote for Obama over Romney and McCain so you may have a point.

“In the end, the bastions of industrial-era Democratic strength among white working-class voters fell to Mr. Trump. So did many of the areas where Mr. Obama fared best in 2008 and 2012. In the end, the linchpin of Mr. Obama’s winning coalition broke hard to the Republicans.”

Fair enough. I was thinking, though, that by the debates, the damage was done. Trump had already mobilized his base and Clinton was still working on some of the folks on the fence. Besides, I fear that what I might find appealing–and maybe you or others too–might not be appealing to many. That is, I appreciate calm, competent, and intelligent, and find that can be charismatic. But most folks are a lot more fond of the sort of from the gut stuff Trump pulled off at the rallies.

Four States. 75 Electoral Votes. 120,000 (1.2%), 30,000 (0.3%), 70,000 (1.2%), and 27,000 (1.3%).

That’s all the effect the FBI or Wikileaks would have to have had to swing the election wildly.

Well if its any consolation the Republican party under Trump has been actively hostile to us elitist technocracy. Do I really have to apologize for going to college at Berkeley? I know it’s filled with commie hippies, but engineering is engineering and I got a good education there. Don’t I get some credit for being in ROTC at the school?

I am really a cuckster just because I’d like to give Hillary a fair trial before we lock her up? I support free trade because one of the biggest beneficiaries of the lower prices is folks who shop at Walmart and that’s not me, how does that make me a RINO?

Looky 'ere boys, we got ourselves a reader.

The anti-intellectualism (hell, anti-anything remotely related to reason, science, or rationality) of much of the GOP approach the past decades is a huge part of what puts many of us off. But then, not since Ike has the GOP had any policies really that the intelligentsia would eagerly embrace.

It hasn’t. Only your bubble has moved on. The real world, the one with President Trump, Brexit and Tory soft-fascim and ignorance as a virtue is barely moving at all.