Nesrie
3462
I understand the different you are pointing out, but aren’t we getting close to this. The leading candidates for the GOP are fueled by poor whites. The rest of the people in that party seem to be quietly crossing their fingers that something else will happen. If Trump wins, wouldn’t he lead the party right to a party that appeals only to poor, scared whites?
I’m not a Sanders supporter, but that is about as intellectually dishonest distillation of Sanders as I’ve seen.
And if your claim is true, explain to me why the highest per capita dependency of social aid programs can be found in deeply red states.
They also (genuinely) dislike government, and would prefer to be left to their own devices.
Well, until someone threatens their Medicare/Medicaid or SS, then they loves them some big govt.
This is the first time it’s happened in quite a while.
The rest of the people in that party seem to be quietly crossing their fingers that something else will happen.
Which explains this, I think.
How do reach out to a people you don’t understand, and who you generally look down on?
If Trump wins, wouldn’t he lead the party right to a party that appeals only to poor, scared whites?
Generally, yes.
I think he’d pull in lower class white Democrats, such as they exist, and he’d do surprisingly well with black voters.
Because the law is written to help the poorest Americans? And the poorest Americans often live in these red states?
Think back to ACA and the Medicaid expansion - Republican governors opposed it almost unanimously. If government aid was so popular, then why did they reject it? How could they afford to reject it?
I’m not a Sanders supporter, but that is about as intellectually dishonest distillation of Sanders as I’ve seen.
Poor whites, or at least southern ones, would call government aid a handout. And Sanders generally supports government aid.
I realize that’s awfully simplistic, but that’s how it works in practice.
Because of the right-wing bubble of engineered ignorance so many live in. Plain and simple. ACA is bad bad bad, so bad it’s unconstitutional, so rejecting it and its Medicaid expansion, which was going to bankrupt the state, didntya know!, was good policy.
Poor whites, or at least southern ones, would call government aid a handout. And Sanders generally supports government aid.
I realize that’s awfully simplistic, but that’s how it works in practice.
Sanders supports many govt policies that would directly benefit the lower brackets, yes. But as Bruce Bartlett talks about, the Right has been absorbed by voodoo economics where increased regressive taxes on workers is somehow necessary and continued tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations are good and magically pay for themselves. And Sanders is a socialist, so let’s get that epistemic closure going full steam.
Is it possible that opponents could understand the proposals intent, and still disagree with it?
And Sanders is a socialist, so let’s get that epistemic closure going full steam.
And that’s the issue. Socialism is antithetical to the Scotch-Irish tradition that pervades Appalachia and much of the south.
Sure, some. But we are talking about people who when polled over the Obama years show 20-25% believe he’s the anti-Christ, so how well in touch they are with details of health care overhaul is, while hard to quantify, probably safe to assume to some degree. Polling has consistently shown a pretty stark difference, even among Republicans, when you frame questions on Obamacare in general and when you dig into specifics on some of its improvements. Not that I’m taking a position on it myself, just that there’s so much intentional misinformation thrown out that it wouldn’t surprise me if these people blamed Obama for their own governors refusing to take the Medicaid expansion.
And that’s the issue. Socialism is antithetical to the Scotch-Irish tradition that pervades Appalachia and much of the south.
Except the point being that they mislabel Sanders as a far left socialist when his brand of national socialism is based far more closely on the Nordic model, for which free market capitalism is the basis. But, again, that bubble of engineered ignorance.
Republican media is an echo chamber, and Fox is a bubble unto itself, but I think the opposition is driven by genuine principles. These communities just don’t like the idea of socialism, nordic or otherwise. Thus they’re not very interested in digging into the details.
Sure, some. But we are talking about people who when polled over the Obama years show 20-25% believe he’s the anti-Christ, so how well in touch they are with details of health care overhaul is, while hard to quantify, probably safe to assume to some degree.
I suspect they unpack it as “money for nothing” which rankles their sense of fairness.
Timex
3470
But to answer your question, If I understand it, I think the fault lies with the mainstream candidates. These are people who’ve never left their nice suburbs and have a dim understanding of what poverty is like. Many of them also look down on the poor whites that makeup the party base. That condescension doesn’t pass unnoticed.
Ok, so the mainstream candidates like Kasich, Rubio, Graham… All of whom grew up in the lower middle class, are somehow less in touch with the poor than Donald Trump who grew up as a millionaire and has had his rich father buy his way out of trouble multiple times.
In what dimension does this make sense?
Nesrie
3471
I have to agree on the ACA front. For some reason, the Democrats are just incompetent in defending their stance well in this area. The bulk of Americans opposed to ACA don’t seem to understand they already pay for the uninsured in the most inefficient and difficult way possible. If you have commercial insurance, you’re footing most of the bill for the uninsured who don’t pay and the financial aid for those who can’t pay. If you pay taxes, you’re paying for Medicare and Medicaid. The only real issue I had and still have with Obama’s plan is it was completely demand driven, no real attention to supply. So yeah I think the opposition to ACA is ignorance. And for those who claim to understand, their plan B was basically to do nothing.
Without a doubt.
He has (enough) empathy to understand how they think, and so he can talk about problems in ways they understand. He also uses the simplest language possible to expand his audience.
Unlike John Kerry, he makes no claim to be an average man. He’s not, and he could never fool anyone with that tripe. He understands, unlike Kerry, that voters don’t even want that. They just want someone who understands them.
Timex
3473
He has (enough) empathy to understand how they think, and so he can talk about problems in ways they understand. He also uses the simplest language possible to expand his audience.
But it’s not because he is some great communicator.
He simply has a nonsensically simplistic and bigoted message.
Again, the suggestion here seems to be to adopt an empty, bigoted message to appease to appease them. But that’s wrong.
The idea that such people must be appeased out of fear of losing their vote is exactly what has led the Republican party to where it is today. Where they are abandoning the middle to cater to the extreme fringe, simply because the middle is not obnoxiously loud and absurd.
But the middle will become loud, if trump is the nominee. The Republicans will lose in a truly epic fashion.
The answer here is not to appease those people who are attracted by Trump’s idiocy.
Nesrie
3474
Well he at least says he has empathy; I don’t buy that he actually does. He’ s not really offered any solutions for anyone except to take care of all the perceived bad guys because he’s Trump.
Alstein
3475
My concern is if the Republians become unviable, the Dems are going to get worse and worse because they won’t be held accountable. It would mean more Hillaries- or people actually worse than Hillary.
Hal9000
3476
I kind of agree with this and IL. Reminds me of the SNL sketch about the Dem debate. The Terminator approaches the White House… ;)
Nesrie
3477
It seems more likely if they lose another election, they’ll stop letting the fringe groups take over their party and clean house.
Please, let Trump be the nominee. The SNL and Daily Show episodes will be epic.
JD
3479
Yes, and no. He’s definitely not doing the “Aw shucks, look how folksy/normal I am - GIMME A BEER!” thing. He’s rich, and he’s not afraid of pointing that out. He, however, seems to push the narrative that he became a self-made billionaire out of average circumstances rather than privileged ones and that–of course!–he does understand the problems average people have. Which becomes funny at that point when he tries to prove how tough life was way back because he had to borrow a million bucks from his old man to get his own business started or so. Poor guy. I’d guess that at least a considerable amount of Trump supporters likes to believe that he’s the person that made something out of nothing rather than having been raised with a silver spoon.
Alstein
3480
That said, I think for the Republicans to really have a chance, they’re going to have to ditch either the nativism, or the objectivism.
I actually think ditching the objectivism, and going “Share Our Wealth” Huey Long-style would be the easiest path- they just need to do some economic approaches Bernie would agree with, and keep bashing the Muslims/Mexicans/whoever. I think at least white progressives would switch over, and maybe even some black voters.
I don’t agree with the bashing of Muslims or Mexicans, but I could that being an easier sell than getting an increasingly angry about their economic situation electorate to vote against their economic interests. Also, Trump is proving you don’t need a lot of money to be viable- he really isn’t spending much of his own money on this.
Wall Street would probably be happier with Hillary than most Republicans anyways right now- Hillary’s just as corrupt as most of them, and most of them don’t drink the nativism kool-aid, they just use it to get economic policies they want.
I think it’s mostly tribalism rather than some some oddly-articulated Bushido code. Their parents were Republicans, Republicans (they’ve been told) share their values, and thus anything that the other side puts out is anathema.
As Nesrie and others point out above, when you ask these people whether or not all the individual provisions of the ACA are good or not, they overwhelmingly say “yes, bring it!”. It’s only when you put a Democrat imprimatur on the thing that they oppose it as “socialism!” or “hand outs!” Now I don’t doubt that these people TELL themselves that they are opposing it due to it being “big government” or whatever, but that’s self-delusion at best.
