Why the hell did these people vote for Trump?

Relevant.

Yeah, human nature. The trouble is that, in general, people feel their self interest more in terms of their social standing than in terms of their absolute economic results. The battle to stay ahead of those one step below is especially intense. And incredibly more intense if people feel that staying off the bottom rung is at stake.

Republicans have, for my entire lifetime, been run by strategists who specialize in using this truth about human nature to distract voters from everything else, but particularly from their objective economic interests. For decades, the rhetoric wasn’t anti-black, it was resentment at government and taxes helping the people a rung or two below them to catch up to them. In so many voters’ minds, this was not racist, they would have felt the same way about helping anyone of any ethnicity catch up with them, it just so happened that so many of those people were black. Of course, the voters taken in by this message were welcome to be slightly racist, totally racist, or totally non-racist… but the official message could remain non-racist.

That’s the Trump-mainstream Republican split in a nutshell. The Rubios and Grahams and Bushes had no problem whatsoever with the fact that their rhetoric attracted and even encouraged racism and xenophobics. However, they had a high level of deniability, which protected them from backlash. Because middle America does not want to think of themselves as supporting racists. Most of my rural neighbors do not want to think of themselves as supporting racists.

Trump’s actual goals are not so different. Notice that his only accomplishments are typical Republican, tax benefits for those at the top, cutbacks the people below you. It’s just that by rhetoric and style he appeals more to angrier part of the spectrum, those who feel most threatened with being bottom runged. And between his rhetoric and objectively tougher economic times, vastly more people at least feel they are in danger of being bottom runged, and so prefer his way of putting it as opposed to the mainstream Republican shtick.

My biggest fear at the moment is not that the Trump wing is going to prevail. I’d be really, really surprised. Rather, I am very concerned that mainstream Republicans will emerge as the rational, adult option as compared to the Trump way and the liberal way. And that too many of my liberal allies are too consumed in righteous anger to see the mainstream Republican strategy that is emerging. That is why Republicans made such a deal out of striking at their idiot from Iowa, King. “Us? Racists? We hate racism. We Republicans just don’t believe that your hard earned taxes should help those beneath you surpass you.” That stuff is catnip in my red county.

I think you’re right in saying the trend is toward more explicitly racist rhetoric, but I can’t agree that it was anything like race-neutral 30 or 40 years ago. When Reagan talked about ‘Welfare Queens,’ literally nobody thought he meant white people. Willie Horton’s mugshot wasn’t picked out of a hat. And so much of the current party lines were drawn in light of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

GOP rhetoric has always been based in race. They’re just more open about it now.

I disagree. It was always anti-black. It was about being tough on urban crime, it was about welfare queens, it was about young bucks buying T-bones with food stamps. I mean, we have Atwater’s actual admission that this was all deliberate dog-whistling.

This, plus the observations from others about how people always manage to justify their own situation (e.g., their own reliance on welfare) accounts for 90% of this problem, in my book. Non-vitriolic racism is largely an extension of these two principles. People self-identify with their own tribe more and so, by extension, feel better about their own social status if their race is doing better, in relative terms. Similarly, they’re more willing to rationalize the dependence of their tribe on social safety nets than they are those of another tribe. It’s the spectrum of “me” to “we” to “they”.

To be clear, I don’t think whites are unique in this—they just happen to be the majority and in power. Personally, as an Asian-American, I can tell you racial tribalism is alive and well in minority communities, as well.

Yup, I think that this is exactly what it is that Republican strategists understand and capitalize on.

All kinds of situations: Someone who has no savings and now needs major medical care. Some seventeen-year-old who has committed a couple of crimes. A woman with children with different fathers using government support money. A guy who has been out of work for more than a year and, as far as you can tell, isn’t looking for work. Someone on disability who has nothing visibly wrong with them.

The more you perceive the person in question to be a whole lot like you, the more likely you are to assume the best and cut slack. The more the person in question feels really dissimilar, the more suspicious. Especially if you perceive this is as being on your dime. Color of skin, of course, plays a big part, but so do other things that overlap with race – manner of dressing and talking, religion, social class, really the list is long. It’s a bit different, but Obama’s name and his liking arugula and his comment about religion and guns and his preference for basketball, these all made him “other” just as much as his skin color.

Republican leaders have been very adept at portraying needy groups as packed with people different from you, and at portraying it as being on your dime. And pointing out the racist nature of this has probably gotten us as far as it is going to get us. Largely because, as much as it shames a large segment of people to be tied to racism, it runs even deeper in people to try to stay ahead of people below them, and so many voters currently feel downwardly mobile.

It’s galling because the falsity of the Republican claim is so central to their whole purpose. Some working class white is paying very few dollars a year in taxes for our social safety nets. It’s the extremely wealthy who have so much to gain by making these cuts.

However, it is so, so difficult to fight. The truth is that millions and millions of middle class whites and their families and their friends need these government programs, it’s a lie that it is all targeted at a whole different group of people. But what are you going to do, run political ads showing a long series of whites saying how government programs saved their asses? I mean, that would be crass and racist itself.

I’m amazed at the stories of Trump voters who had members of their family (e.g., a husband or a wife) who ended up getting deported. They somehow had this unshakeable belief that they didn’t fall in the camp of the other. Compared to that, a voter thinking that they (and their neighbors) are legitimately a recipient of government benefits while all the others aren’t isn’t that surprising. Heck, just look all the farmers with their subsidies. To be clear—I’m all in favor of those subsidies, I think it’s important to maintain national food self-sufficiency and to support certain economies. It’s the hypocrisy of taking a subsidy with one hand while looking down on any other social welfare that chaps my hide. To add to that, so many of the folks who fall for this hold themselves out as being morally more superior than the average. Yet, they’re more than happy to line up behind the most openly amorale president in recent memory.

What? The party that insists that tax cuts pay for themselves and will balance the federal budget? The party that denies co2 is a greenhouse gas and is beneficial? The party that insists voter fraud is rampant? The party that insists the US is a Christian nation? The rational, adult party you say? Are you like David Brooks in disguise or something?

It’s been exactly the opposite of that since Goldwater lost.

You are welcome to disagree, of course, but my whole point is that Republicans have a huge portion of the nation distracted from all the things that seem obvious to the group of us discussing here. For a whole lot of people out there, discussions on those topics sound like blah blah blah, at least compared to things like not paying taxes to help those below them on the social ladder catch up with them.

Just for example, I was reading how polling showed an increase in belief in the science of climate change, but when asked how much they would be willing to pay (not sure if this was monthly or annually), a solid number said yes to $1 but a very small percentage said yes to $10… I mean, how can you believe in the science of climate change and then respond like that? Answer: People who hear the whole topic mostly as blah blah blah.

And this did not happen by accident, it is the result of expert strategizing by Republican strategists.

They have a great record at beating us at the chess of politics over quite a period of time, so no, I do not need to be a David Brooks fan to fear that they are about to turn the Trump fiasco to their own advantage.

If I read your comment correctly, it can be summarized as “They are so wrong and we are so right that they cannot possibly win.” In my experience, wrong and right do not have all that great an impact on how things actually turn out.

No, he thought you were literally describing mainstream Republicans as rational adults. He seems to have completely missed that you were speaking perception rather than reality.

I think this is something where liberals miss out. I think a lot of people recognize that there is climate change (even if they don’t admit it). I just think a lot of people also don’t give a fuck what happens after they’re dead.

For a lot of people, climate change is something that’s going to fuck future generations. Much like social security and student loan debt, middle aged and older people don’t give a fuck, because it’s not going to hurt them.

Riding to McDonald’s in the air conditioned SUV today is more important than their grandchildren, regardless of what they say.

And this is why you need the Authoritarian Left to take their SUV, disassemble it, and rebuild it into an environmentally friendly, free-range organic Gay Laser to transform them and everyone they know into THE GAY.

I read your comment that liberals are too self-righteous to be the rational, adult party and Republicans will fill that void. If you’re saying what Zylon is saying, the (corporate mass) media already treat Republicans like that so in that case I agree.

In regards to climate change, yes the general public is unwilling to do what is necessary; that’s partially to blame on the Republicans but also a lack of any kind of leadership on the issue and the media (again) ignoring it in favor of conflict politics.

Edit:
As far as Republicans “understanding human nature” and using to leverage power, that’s true only to the extent that since Bush 1 it only works on a minority of the population. I’ve always thought Republicans appeal to the worse in us (essentially selfishness and bigotry) but the silver lining such as it is is that a majority have rejected it. The arc of the moral universe however is indeed long.

I haven’t read the entire thread, sorry. Here’s my take on this:

There can be made a distinction between Political left/right and Cultural left/right. People who want conservative social values such as the family in the OP often mistake their cultural conservatism for political conservatism. And of course the politicians and their marketeers jump on this fallacious conflation.

Political right is republicans. Cultural right is the church. Those are seperate in modern states. Political left is (imo) socialism. Cultural left is things like LGBTQ rights, emancipation of those who need emancipating, etc.

Wanting things to go back to how they were in some idealised past is conservative (right. Wanting things to change for the better, to progress is what (imo) the left is all about. Or should be all about.

That’s…weird. If political left is ‘socialism’ rather than ‘Democrats’, why is political right ‘Republicans’ rather than ‘fascism’?

Because socialism != state communism or Stalinism.

Think Sweden in the 90s instead of North Korea.

Yeah, @Zylon has cleared things up very well. I did not mean that Republican ARE or deserve to be treated as the rational adults. Rather, I think their strategists are working to position them to be perceived that way, when Trump and his more crude followers fall, which I think is very likely.

And one further clarification. I don’t think Republicans per se have special understanding of this area of human nature. Rather, I think their evil genius strategists – Nixon, Atwater, etc – do.

For time out of mind, there have been two primal political forces in any representative government. The one made up of elites and motivated by fear that the majority will use their voting power to “steal” what the elites think is rightfully theirs (which is pretty much everything). And the other made up of people motivated to prevent elites from hoarding it all for themselves. The former group never has any hope of winning straight up vote counts on the matter, so they always depend upon devious tactics to accomplish this purpose. Distractions, divisions, buyoffs, whatever. Totally amoral.

The former is the kernel of the Republican Party, and no matter how awful Trump is as a leader and a human being, that Republican core is our real long term enemy. The vast majority of the Republican voters are best seen as the prey of the Republican core – a viewpoint that the OP’s article takes me back to.

So when I look at people like this that voted for Trump but are inevitably suffering from Republican policy, I try to get past the anger at them and focus instead on figuring out why these natural allies of ours are in the other tent, and how to fix it, which means how to fight back against these Republican strategists. Yes, their moral failings have a lot to do with how Republican strategists won them over, but if universal moral perfection is necessary for our winning elections, then we are in a lot of trouble.

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deleted, misunderstood previous comment

Ok, fair enough, but why isn’t political left ‘Democrats’? Or why is political right ‘Republicans’?

I think what he’s saying is that tight now the following statements are true:

“Far, Ridiculous Right == Republicans”

“Far, Ridiculous Left != Democrats”.