President Trump Optimism thread

Politics and religion
5027

I still don’t understand the rational for writing off people, who voted for Bill Clinton, Gore, Kerry, and Obama, and then tried Trump 2016 and conclude that they are irredeemable. I voted for Perot, because I was frustrated by Bush 41, standing by while the Kurds in the North and Shiite Iraqs in the south were slaughtered by Saddam. I was equally appalled “Slick Willies” Clinton’s character. By the time Perot ran 1996, I understand the dude was a nut case and while probably not as bad as Trump he would have been a disaster.
The Republican ran Dole in 1996, hardly a inspiring candidate but honorable decent man and good enough for me to return to the party in 1996. I don’t think if the Republican went around calling us Perot voters, idiots and fascist lovers, I would have come back.

Yes, turn out is super important especially in the case of young people. But if the Democrat plan calls for 75% black turn out in battleground states, unless Oprah is the nominee that isn’t happening. Old folks vote and reminding them of all awful things Trump does seems like a better strategy than calling them racists.

5028

What policy positions should Democrats adopt that will appeal to these people that didn’t appeal to them in 2016 (or the off year elections during Obama’s term) ? Republican right-to-work laws and conservative judges destroyed unions. Automation and globalization of capitol took their manufacturing jobs. Dismantling the New Deal or polluting their environment isn’t going to materially improve their lives, nor would balancing the budget or tax cuts for the donor class.

But if we assume they didn’t vote because of policy but rather as an emotional response, and if we stipulate your argument they’re not all irredeemable racists, what were they hoping for that they didn’t get with Obama specifically or Democrats generally? I assume it would have to be opposition to NAFTA and immigration?

But it was Republicans who negotiated NAFTA and it was approved with a bi-partisan vote:

image

Edit: The leaves immigration, but the data all show that immigration is not taking their jobs. I don’t know, maybe I’m just incapable of not thinking about this with facts and data I guess (and if that sounds like a humblebrag, that’s not my intention.)

5029

To be completely blunt, campaigning and politics is manipulation according to a plan. If one refuses to understand sizeable segments of their constituency, they’re shooting themselves in the foot.

Frankly, this is where Trump excels; he’s an extremely gleeful manipulator. He’s not overly good at it despite claims to the contrary, but he’s relentless in his efforts and therefore benefits from the broken-clock-is-right-twice-a-day axiom as much as anything else.

Where Clinton completely failed, imho, was outwardly refusing to acknowledge she aimed to be President of the whole spectrum of America, and this fed the culture war mentality which inevitably led to a stronger turnout for the entrenched who felt challenged vs. the challengers who have felt they had less to lose. The next candidate needs to embrace a broader message.

5030

What did trump stand for that embraced the whole country? I don’t understand this argument. How could anyone even trust what a life-long grifter has to say anyway? The equation doesn’t balance out here, everything said against HRC is true to the nth degree for trump. I’m not getting this.

5031

THAT’S the main point, right there. We need to understand how. We need to be intellectually curious and not just write off segments of society that frankly seem highly susceptible to certain styles of engagement.

5032

Policies, those were completely irrelevant in 2016 (and only marginally more important in previous years).
Better candidates and slogans
Yes we can, change we can believe in, we are the change we are looking for.
The shining city on the hill.

Was it the policy that got Barack Obama elected or speeches like this?

5033

Well, obviously he didn’t get the whole country, see 2016 popular vote count. But he did hit the right 46.1%.

I’ve talked to Trump voters, read articles like the one @Strollen posted above, read books about the subject, and listened to several podcasts with interviews with those voters. Everyone’s got their own take, obviously, but there’s one theme that stands out to me: Trump voters really believe in the “Make America Great Again” concept. They’re not happy with their current lives, and in order to fix that, they want to go back to the way things were in the mid-20th century. Trump promised that, which made the emotional connection they were looking for.

Compare that to the Democratic message, which is more about moving forward to the future, not going back. Even if you leave aside the candidate herself, the platform asked voters to continue change in a forward direction. Equality across genders/races/etc, cooperation on the world stage, focus on education, and so on…it all says “change more” rather than “go back.”

Logically, the progressive message should win. It did win, by the popular vote numbers. But that emotional appeal (combined with whatever shortcomings you’d like to assign to Hillary Clinton as a candidate) swayed just enough people in the right places to swing the electoral college.

I can agree with that, because you’re right that changing the emotional narrative isn’t easy. (Though one could argue that Trump is doing it himself by being such a train-wreck in terms of actually doing the job of President.) I still think it’s worthwhile to seek to understand rather than vilify, even if you’re not going to spend resources to sway those people. But maybe that’s just my soft liberal heart. :)

Having said that, I don’t see a real focus yet from Democrats on getting the vote out. Yes, there’s always some level of action on that front, but there certainly doesn’t seem to be any more action than previous years. Where’s the media blitz on the Sunday talk shows or whatever pushing the idea that all Americans need to get out to the polls in November? It sure seems to me that Democrats are just relying on all these “blue wave” predictions and thus doing the same things they’ve always done. They’re probably even going to win big in 2018 because people are so unhappy with the first two years of Trump, without doing the work of focusing on turnout. And it could very well bite them in 2020.

5034

It’s half a year away, man. To the attention span of a modern American, that’s an eternity. People just have too much day to day crap they have to handle to start getting out the vote six months from now.

I agree with you that we need a strong push, but I think it’s too early to start banging that drum. It’s a marathon right now, save the blitz as you put it for the finale.

5035

That’s fair, but there could be groundwork being laid now. Plus primaries are already happening or coming very soon and those count too, especially in places like California.

5036

It’s getting to where primaries are all that matter. If you’re in a crazy red or blue district (and you probably are), it’s the real vote.

5037

A GOTV campaign is pretty much invisible to folks not in competitive races. It is the ubiquitous ground game and involves people going door to door the week before to folks you identify as your voters and asking them to go vote on Tuesday. It also involves phone banks calling people on election day, and now days highly targeted social media ads.

I guess the PSA by actors, and actress, and other artist urging young people to vote are part of it also. By most accounts the Democrat GOTV was stronger in 2016 than Trumps disorganized effort which relied on the National GOP .

In order for GOTV to work there has to be something to you want to go out and vote for. The Democrat message of equality for all certainly has appeal to most people in the African-American, and LGBT communities, many women, Hispanics, and poor folks. But for 40 something white male with a decent job today, but facing the prospect of the job disappearing not so much. Especially with so many progressive screaming about white male privilege.

What Senator Obama offered White America was a chance to live in post-racial America. In truth, he may have been uniquely qualified to offer this with speeches like “a more perfect union”. Certainly, Hillary Clinton was incapable of offering this. We now know, sadly, that America is a long way from being a post-racial society.

The fear of more Trump should be enough to get lots of folks of to the voting booths. I think reminding folks who reluctant vote for Trump, why is he every bit as bad as they feared will also be helpful in keeping them home. Calling them racist, idiots is counterproductive.

5038

And yet completely accurate. They aren’t people to be courted, because their desires are out of line with what society must do to survive.

5039

I mean they were fine voting for a racist, which makes them racists even if only subconsciously, but I’m willing to give them a quarter of a pass for voting for him only because Clinton was the other choice. I get that angle… to a point.

If they supported him past the 3 month mark, though? Yeah, not so much unless they’re working 60 hours a week without television or internet or something. And even then they’d probably notice he was a fucking idiot if they heard him say words.

If they still support him right now? They’re part of the cult or white nationalists (and even the white nationalists aren’t all that happy with him lately).

5040

My wife has expressed frustration recently, much like myself, that it feels like all the progress we had made is just gone. But I think @Nesrie would probably say that the progress we thought we had made was just an illusion, or at best, fleeting/mercurial. Are we guilty of finding things to feel good about while the truth raged all around us? Maybe we are. I honestly don’t know, nor do I know what to do next.

5041

My short answer is to some extent yes. Prior to 2016, I thought that the hard-core racist element of the Republican party was 2-3%. Turns out I was off by an order of magnitude, they just kept their racism hidden.

But 20-30% is still a minority of the party. Some of Trump voters, also voted for Obama some even twice. Voting for a black men for President doesn’t give you a permanent, “I’m not a prejudiced pass”, but it is also makes it pretty damned unlikely you are life time member of the Nazi party or KKK.

5042

My quick take on this is that we have made progress, but part of that progress has been to strip away the denial and minimization of racism/sexism etc, revealing just how far we had to go as a society. At first, we thought we needed to progress 100 feet but after moving up 50 feet we realized the starting point was actually 200 feet from the end, which means we have further to go now than we thought we did to start. The fact that distance we had to go was masked is part of the problem to begin with.
At least now we have more of a clue just how far we have to go.

5043

Not all of it was an illusion. The fact is when my biological parents met, they were just a few years away from not being able to legally marry. We’re not going back to that. Despite the fact that there are hardcore individuals out there that will say they don’t want races to mix, but at the same time claim they’re not racist, well that’s not a small group. I don’t think it’s even as low as 30%, but as a law we’re not going back to that. In the 1960s, I wouldn’t have the job I have today. Not just because I am a woman in IT but because I’m biracial, and while they don’t make it easy, and I don’t think enough places encourage it, I don’t think we’re going back to that either. That last one is a easy slip though if you have Trump supporters as most the hiring managers.

I hate that we’re in a position now where a number of people are surprised by what is caught on camera because it feels like for that to actually be a thing, to actually be surprised-by this stuff, millions of white people had to choose to ignore what people who experienced it were saying for years, decades. To me, that was a choice, and it needs to be owned. The race card became a slogan because for some reason some people thought hearing about racism as often as it literally happens was somehow worse than experiencing the actual racism.

People shouldn’t have to have their experiences validated by white people for it to be real. You shouldn’t have to have a white person post videos in white circles and suddenly it’s a fact not an opinion. That’s not good place to be, and no that’s not going to improve in a world where fake news is just any news someone doesn’t like to hear or feels threatening in someway. We also live in a world where a black person is required to be perfect all the the time or they weren’t good enough. You didn’t wave and weren’t friendly, oh well then… You lost your temper, oh well then. You didn’t obey the minute someone told you do to something oh well there you go. Your kid was mouthy and was slammed to the floor, oh well then. Some Nazi spit in your face, threatened your life and damaged your property and you didn’t reach out to befriend them… well then you’re not good enough.

5044

Lot of wisdom in this thread.

5045

Trump’s business prowess is paying off for America:

Both parties said in a joint statement on Saturday that China has agreed to “significantly increase” purchases of US goods and services, in order to reduce the trade imbalance between the two countries. This was a top demand of the Trump administration during two days of trade talks in Washington with Chinese officials.

Amazing deal-making. I wonder how much they’ve signed up for.

It remains to be seen how big a step the agreement represents. The announcement did not put a dollar amount on the commitment from China.

Well thanks for nothing, fake-news CNN. What the hell am I supposed to do with that information?

Oh wait, Fox News has a better answer:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/05/19/us-china-tentatively-agree-on-ending-american-trade-deficit-white-house.amp.html

Wow, what a headline! Now that’s results! America, FUCK YEA!

United States and China officials have agreed this weekend to take steps to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, the White House said Saturday.

Oh my god, stop reading, the details don’t matter, yeesh. Headlines are enough.

5046

Well, so much for the talks thing.

The prisoner release was a win, but it sure does seem like a tiny thing now. Especially since all the drama could very well mean Kim is more likely to do something nuts in order to keep the world’s attention.