Remember how we were told that millions of Trump voters were driven to cast a ballot for a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue through sheer desperation? That they were fooled by Trump’s faux economic populism and only tolerated the racism, sexism and xenophobia reluctantly? That if only the Democrats would quit being neoliberal shills in the pocket of Big Bankster, these self-same Trump voters would flock to our banner? Yeah, not so much:
There’s no honeymoon for Donald Trump in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, but also no regrets: He approaches his 100th day in office with the lowest approval rating at this point of any president in polls since 1945 –- yet 96 percent of those who supported him in November say they’d do it again today.
Mind you, this was AFTER Trump filled his cabinet and adviser ranks with Goldman Sachs alums, predatory distressed asset swindlers and to-the-manor-born plutocratic loons bent on redirecting the flow of federal dollars to fellow billionaires. This was AFTER Trump appointed that unreconstructed Confederate shitbird Sessions to roll back civil rights, harass immigrants and restart the War on Drugs. This was AFTER Trump colluded with Paul “Granny Starver” Ryan to remove access to healthcare coverage for 24 million people.
Trump is historically unpopular with the American people. His administration has been a colossal failure in terms of legislative achievements, despite controlling congress. And even he knows it, which is why he is angrily tweeting about the “ridiculous standard” he himself set and desperately casting about for “accomplishments” to add to his pathetic list in a quest for the ultimate participation trophy.
But the rump that elected Trump is getting exactly what they wanted: an administration that gives force of law to their bigotry and cultural resentments. Look for Trump to double down on that as inklings that “presidenting is hard” continue to penetrate his combover and sink into his thick skull.
Like a rat in a Skinner box, Trump will continue to press the lever marked “DEMAGOGUERY.” That’s the only mechanism that delivers the adulation-pellets he craves.
As for those of us who are dedicated to opposing the demagogue and rescuing the country from his cabal of amoral, scheming, self-interested scumbags, let that poll be a wake-up call: We need to turn out Democrats and get the millions who will be harmed and further impoverished by this maladministration off the sidelines. Chasing Trump voters is folly — they’re getting exactly what they want.
Hungry Joe
I doubt he’ll sink a whole lot lower in the polls, no matter what happens or what he does (or doesn’t do). Those people who still support him are dug in deep, and not much of anything can coerce/blast them out.
oldster
From the ABC link:
“Among those who report having voted for him in November, 96 percent today say it was the right thing to do; a mere 2 percent regret it.”
So this only counts the people who are willing to say, today, that they voted for him. Of course those are the ones who are more likely to say that they would do it again.
What this leaves out are the people who voted for him but are already to embarrassed to admit it.
ETA: Remember that the die-hard Trump base, the Ted Nugent fans, is different from the population of people who voted for him in November. That larger group, which got him the electoral votes (though lost him the majority) contained a lot of nose-holders, a lot of loyal Republicans who hated him from the primaries, and a lot of low-info voters who just thought they’d roll the dice on something new.
This 96% of unrepentant idiots? We’ll never win them back to vote for America. But we don’t have to. A lot of people were on the fence when they voted, and can be brought down onto the side of doing what’s right for our country, the side where we live.
debit
Thanks for this, Betty. This is why it infuriates me when certain commenters here exclaim that we need to engage with the Trump voters to better understand and possibly sway them. No. I already understand them and with that understanding comes the certainty that they can never be swayed. Fuck them. I feel sorry for their kids, but seriously, I hope they die in a puddle of their own urine after choking on something from the McDonald’s Dollar Menu.
Starfish
@debit: I go around telling people “there, there, you don’t have to read Hillbilly Elegy to find a way to make excuses for this nonsense.”
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@debit:
Income inequality, Wall Street, big banks my ass. These people’s mega pastors told them wealth equals virtue and their whiteness was conferred by divinity. They hope to have enough money some day to stay at an all white Trump resort in an abortion free Christian country. That’s all this has ever been about.
donnah
The more terrible Trump and his cohorts are, the better they are liked by their rabid followers. I was sickened by the photos of Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, and Sarah Palin in the White House, furious about their disrespect of Hillary’s portrait. But the Trumpsters thought that was fantastic.
We can’t shame them because they cannot feel shame. They want to blow up the government and will support anything Trump does. I believe the polls that say the voters for Trump don’t regret it. They would die of starvation in absolute destitution if Trump makes a Liberal unhappy.
MattF
The linguistics blog Language Log has a resident curmugeon, Geoffrey Pullum. Here he’s complaining about how The Economist magazine adheres to a stupid rule about ‘splitting infinitives’, but the problem, and his reaction to it has broader relevance:
Vance Maverick
@oldster: That’s what I thought too, but from the PDF:
JPL
Betty, Do you really think their favorite talk show hosts, will fill them in on the ties to the investment companies?
They are clueless, and as long as the browns get punished, they don’t care.
Lyrebird
Thanks for continuing to speak the truth! And “maladministration” – YES. Sad!
A commenter here a few weeks ago had me confused by doing an informal poll of other commenters, concluding that Trump was somehow worse than we’d expected. Not so in my case, at any rate. I didn’t like his candidacy from the first, and when I saw that St Louis footage that Rachel Maddow highlighted (showing how he was encouraging violence), his fascist-friendly disgustingly dangerous tendencies were plenty clear to me.
Gotta keep resisting… I don’t look great in pink, so instead of one of those hats, I think I want an Ohm t-shirt!
m.j.
I just heard Rience Priebus, at the end of his interview on Press The Meat, say it was okay to go and look for youtube videos of Trump as his views on worldly matters have been unwavering and steadfast.
debbie
@Hungry Joe:
I disagree. 100 days isn’t long enough really to know what will happen, but if Trump continues to experience push-back, if he continues to shift his positions, even his supporters will begin to have doubts and his ratings will speed downhill.
alce_ e_ ardilla
@Hungry Joe: His polls will drop, not as a consequence of his attitude, but as a consequence of his incompetence. His racist followers will never mind his racism but will resent his failure
oldster
@Vance Maverick:
Huh, okay, I didn’t see that. And it makes my analysis much harder to sustain, since those are pretty much the percentages of actual voters in the election.
So 96% of 43% of America–41% or so– thinks that things are going just great.
Well, that’s my moment of despair for the day.
Maybe I’ll just go back to thinking about how much fun the DC science march was. (And how much fun it is to think about Chaffetz being driven out of office by us mean, mean protesters).
ruemara
@oldster: I don’t think we need that 4% of Trump supporters sitting on the fence. In fact, I’d say there’s no fence. Regretting Trump is not ready to vote democratic. Most regretful voters are fed up and washing their hands of voting because who knew voting for an unqualified bigot and madman was going to not pay off? So how about instead of this outreach nonsense, we focus on helping blacks and Latinos vote? There’s a crazy idea. We work to overcome voter suppression instead of doing stupid crap like worry about people who hate us viscerally and will never side with us. We fix voter suppression for the much larger.groups that would vote for us without extra effort and we then focus on getting those who’ve never voted to start. Wacky, but it could work.
WafflesTasteGood
Also the button marked “Bomb brown/yellow people”.
MomSense
The AP published a story about a County in Maine that sums up the irrational, toxicity of the trump world view. In every measurable way the African refugees who have settled in Lewiston Auburn have improved (saved!) the cities but the trumpets just cannot get past their racism and racial resentment.
I feel such fury and anguish about this.
How a community changed by refugees came to embrace trump
debbie
@debbie:
For every Trump supporter who still supports him, there are other Trump supporters who are beginning to have doubts:
Baud
@donnah:
Sadly, it would not.
WereBear
Mmm, adding this to the multi-media project in my head known as Trump Voters. Thanks!
The Simp in the Suit
I disagree. I think we SHOULD pursue Trump voters. We should pursue them to the Gates of Hell and then toss them in.
debbie
@MomSense:
And this has been repeated countless times throughout history. That’s what depresses me. Things never change.
WereBear
@Starfish: I did like reading Hillbilly Elegy, though. Even though, at the end, he just couldn’t bring himself to come over to the liberals.
But then, as a white man with his background, I’m surprised he got that far.
WafflesTasteGood
One thing I learned from this election is that a party should not nominate anyone who has been in politics, in a highly visible way, as long as Clinton. There is just too much history there to be use to put doubt in peoples minds. Doesn’t matter if almost none of it is true.
All this other wanking about specific reasons why he won, why she lost, is BS as far as I’m concerned. He won because he has no history as a politician and she has too much. I think that’s the bottom line.
Baud
@debbie:
Do Trump voters say arse?
msdc
@Hungry Joe: 40% is the new 27%.
MattF
@WafflesTasteGood: Except that the constant right-wing strategy is to demonize any liberal who has a chance to win. So… you’ve learned that anyone who might win can’t be nominated? There’s a problem there.
ByRookorbyCrook
It matches up with my anecdata. Trump voters are just glad the melanin count of the President is lower and he does not have a uterus. End of list. They attach all sorts of hope for what he will achieve with no basis in facts or evidence of even intentions. Old bullshitting white dude is enough, the rest is spin for them. They will vote though. It is up to us to get the non-trumpers out to the voting booth.
Mike J
laura
How bloody consumed by fear do you have to be to seek an authoritarian to tell you how to live your miserable life? How does the few scraps of pleasure you can scrape up come only at the cost of brutalization of those you feel to be your inferior?
There is no big strong daddy that sets things right.
There’s only power seeking to concentrate power and the trappings of monetary wealth.
And that authoritarian doesn’t give one shit about you. You are merely a stepping stone to more power. You are expendable, and when authoriarianism comes for you, it’s too damn late.
Fuck that! I’m my own big strong daddy (and I’m no big strong daddy and my bravery comes with shaky knees), and I’ll decide how to set things right on my own damn life thank you very much.
And I’ll continue to believe that it takes all kinds, and to each his own, and no “one true anything.”
katinbuffalo
In my large extended family, those who voted for Trump are smart (in the sense they had higher education and did well in school), had nice, stable, well-paying careers, and are very comfortable financially (nice homes, vacation houses, and no worries whatsoever about retirement). According to the hand-wringers about Trump voters, I should have been the one who voted for him (economically insecure, shitty 403B after 30 years of working, unstable employment situation, declining income since 2008, terrified about my future retirement prospects, etc.). I’ll tell anyone who will listen that it’s almost ALL about race, race, and more race with people like my relatives who voted for Trump. There is no other logical reason, except Trump promised to punish those they hate and despise most in our society. And they are getting exactly that. I have no doubt my relatives who voted for him are somewhat embarrassed by some of the other outrageous excesses and almost daily scandals of Trumplanida, but as long as he keeps sticking it to POC (especially African Americans), Muslims, illegal immigrants (not the white ones, of course), refugees, etc., they will continue to support him and vote for his kind. Maybe some of his voters can be persuaded to see the light, but if my relatives enjoy every kind of advantage in life and still have their vote driven so much by hate and anger and fear, they are beyond reaching. And so are those millions of other white men and WHITE WOMEN (whom I will especially never forgive in a zillion years) in nice, safe, middle and upper-middle class suburbs outside of Philly, Buffalo, and other major cities who voted for him.
hovercraft
Unfortunately, this does not include the media, they are dedicated to normalizing any damn thing the GOP throws at us, while lamenting that democrats won’t help them in their destruction of the country. We are already woke, waking people with their heads buried in the sand, will be almost impossible, but that still leaves a huge swath of people who are just sleep walking through this nightmare, we do have a chance to get them.
MomSense
@debbie:
Life is literally too short, precarious, and precious for all of us to have to spend one minute on the ignorance and greed that is at the heart of this mess.
We should be doing life affirming things with our time in this world. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Jeffro
He started off obviously unfit for office, he got worse last March, he was horrendous at his own convention, he was unbelievably bad in the debates, he was a horror show when he thought he was going to lose the election, in between Nov 9 and the EC vote he demonstrated for the first time in American history why the EC was needed in principle (and then why it is useless in practice), and within a week of the inauguration the entire country could see that this clown is going to be not only historically unpopular, but likely to be a disaster of biblical proportions.
I want the GOP to pay for their enabling, pay very badly. And every day I wish things on his orange personage that, while he fully deserves, make me less of a good person for the wishing.
WereBear
@WafflesTasteGood: On the other hand, this is part of the Republican veneration of incompetence and I loathe that with the depth of a million peat bogs.
If we try to avoid “anything the Right Wing can make fun of” we will be unable to do anything.
Anya
This is a demographic death. Not going to help the GOP.
Seriously tho, when Obama’s poll numbers were bad, did we see articles talking about how Obama’s base is still strongly behind him?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@katinbuffalo:
This is my experience too. Well off, white, comfortable, like to think they’re not racist or sexist, completely unaffected and blind to the struggles of others.
Raoul
Trump won PA by 50,000 votes. Two percent of his total of 2,913,000 PA votes is 58,000. MI and WI were substantially tighter.
And in the total popular vote, eroding Trump by 2% woulda put him at less than 60M votes nationally. Even if that 2% went for Johnson, McMullen, etc or stayed home, Clinton would most likely be president.
I know we can’t re-litigate that election, but it was a squeaker. Even a two percent shift, in the rigidity tribal current politics, is impactful.
charluckles
Devils Advocate here, but there are some of these people who are reachable and haven’t worked through what they’ve done yet. Admitting to such a collossal mistake is not going to be easy. I have a lot of conservatives and fools in my social media circle from a past life and every discussion of Trumps malfeisance inevitably has mutliple folks sincerely agreeing that Hillary Clinton would have been much worse.
amk
Did we not learn anything about the ‘polls’ in the last few years?
katinbuffalo
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: They will say bullshit like their votes are about “taxes,” but that’s what it is: bullshit. Their economic circumstances remained constant no matter which party was in power.
geg6
This is more apropos to the previous dead thread, but I’m so proud that my friend Theresa’s talent at making our signs got us on BuzzFeed’s best Science March signs at #30. ?
WereBear
Though this is considerable overlap :)
john fremont
@katinbuffalo: I will amend your comment to include race and abortion.
debbie
@Baud:
I was surprised to hear that myself. Maybe she’s a fan of Masterpiece Theater reruns.
Baud
@Anya:
I’ll admit, the fact that 40% of those groups do not approve of Trump impresses me somewhat.
debbie
@MomSense:
Agreed, but how difficult it is to be mindful of that every minute!
WereBear
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: And firmly convinced they did not get a shred of special treatment… which is perhaps even true: when compared to other white people within their same parameters.
debit
@charluckles: No. Anyone with at least a second grade education could see he is completely unqualified to be president. I hold every single person who voted him personally responsible for the damage he’s already done and will continue to inflict on our democracy. I don’t care if they regret it now because it backfired on them. They knew what they exactly what they were voting for.
Steve in the ATL
@Jeffro:
Hell fucking yes
Jonny Scrum-half
We essentially elected a Presidential troll, whose only interests are to piss-off the liberals. As long as he does that, nothing else matters.
MomSense
@charluckles:
I honestly don’t know. Read the article I posted above and watch the video embedded in the article. I’ve done so much phone banking over the years into that community and it is really tough to break through. You can get someone to acknowledge that the city has grown economically as a result, that the schools have improved, sports teams have improved, etc. But none of it sways them. They want to resent immigrants. They want to bring back a mythical past that never even existed and can’t be recreated. I had a woman practically screaming at me about how the Somalis raise live chickens in their apartments that they get for free. I asked her where the apartments were and she basically gave me the all of them, Katie equivalent response. I asked her if she had ever seen these chickens herself and of course she hadn’t. I finally had to just let her go in peace because I didn’t want to lose my cool with her.
O. Felix Culpa
Speaking of chasing voters, I happen to be furious about Bernie’s endorsement of anti-abortion candidate Heath Mello. I am also furious that the DNC (looking at you Tom Perez!) has provided a platform for this shitshow.
Women’s rights (and rights of POC) had better not become a bargaining chip for the DNC to get the fragile, fickle white male voter. During the last election, at least 85% of our volunteer campaign workforce were women. We had only one – ONE – paid staffer for the entire frikkin’ state and we WON – because women. I’ve been emailing my displeasure to the DNC here: https://my.democrats.org/page/s/contact-the-democrats. Feel free to add your voice. Please.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@debbie:
Yes, that’s why it’s the honeymoon.
That poll is also odd because everyone I know who voted for him calls Trump a twat right now. ” the article debbie posted about the embarrassed Trump supporter is really typical in my experience,,..shrug
@ruemara: Speaking as an ex-Republican, there is no Road to Damascus moment, it’s a series of “how could I be so dumb, of course…” moments. In fact I would say a lot of the nonsense you hear out of conservatives is just bluster to hide their doubts from themselves. That’s why in my opinion it’s more effective to force a Conservative to explain the contradictions instead of telling them about it. They only will listen to a conservative voice, so make the conservative voice say the dumb thing so they have do deal with it.
@Anya: more like how Obama’s base was young, middle class and collage educated so therefor NOT REAL America(tm) so therefor didn’t matter
aimai
@WafflesTasteGood: He had an enormous history as a public figure who had been crafting his identity in the public eye on TV. And he represetenb himself as an anti-politics figure. But the Dems literally can’t run someone like that or they will be hammered for demagoguery and incompetence. You don’t seem to get it: we are judged by different standards than the Republicans are. His voters could have it both ways: imagine that he would be “outside and beyond” politics and also that he would be reined in or aided by some imaginary republican party of functioning political actors. If we were to run a Trump like figure from the left our own voters would reject us for incompetence and the press would too. Because such a figure can’t be both inside and outside of politics unless he’s Barack Obama.
Betty Cracker
@charluckles: When discussing politics with my Trump-voting relatives (I don’t have any Trump-voting “friends” worthy of the term), my goal is to subtly discourage them from voting ever again. Many of them are irregular voters anyway but dragged their sorry carcasses to the polls for Trump because they loved that he’s “politically incorrect,” i.e., a fellow bigot. So my object is to rub their noses in his corruption and incompetence, and boy is the material endless. I hope it works!
Anya
@WereBear: I was thinking the same thing.
@Baud: Me too. I expected 80%
katinbuffalo
@john fremont: I know abortion is a big deal for some of those voters (I had one anti-choice cousin agonizing over voting for him, in particular, so I saw this firsthand). But as I told my cousin, if you voted for Trump because of abortion, you are selling out millions of your fellow Americans, and in effect legitimizing and endorsing his racism. You can’t have it both ways. But in the end, she voted for him. She doesn’t get a cookie because she voted to primarily to prevent abortion and not to endorse his punitive racist policies.
Mike in NC
Trump promised not to touch Medicare and Social Security, and by implication, White Resentment.
O. Felix Culpa
@Betty Cracker:
Yes. From your keyboard to the FSM’s noodly appendages.
Major Major Major Major
@WereBear: Seems like a good time for that old chestnut.
–Ulysses S. Grant
MomSense
@aimai:
Yes we are judged on vastly different standards. Hillary released decades worth of tax and financial information. She was the model of transparency and all it did was cause the media to ask what she was hiding! You know those uppity women always have nefarious motives and secrets.
Her opponents were the least transparent in modern presidential campaign history.
I’m so fucking tired of this bullshit.
Major Major Major Major
@aimai:
And then he would be smeared by the media as being an empty-headed, empty-suited celebrity ultimate insider mastermind who wants to eat Jewish babies.
Brachiator
I don’t remember that at all. I remember that some Democrats insisted that the election be some kind of social or moral referendum, and that Trump supporters said that they did not care about Trump’s personal failings. They wanted him badly, and they hated the current political Establishment.
I remember that people were complacent about the supposed Democratic majority and believed that they just had to get out the vote to defeat Trump.
Everyone saw Trump the Narcissist. But some underestimated his hate, his rage, his vindictiveness (me included). And these same people underestimated the degree to which his supporters were absolutely plugged into his rage and his hate and his vindictiveness. They want revenge for all the fantasy wrongs that have been done to them. And Trump is and always will be their man.
This hatred is not new. It fueled BREXIT. It is part of the European and Australian political scene, eating away at democracies. The only surprise has been the degree to which it has taken hold in the United States.
The polls indicate that the Democrats are viewed as negatively as they ever have been when at their lowest. But the dissatisfaction with Trump is also real. The resistance, the pushback is real. So the only question is whether the Democrats will be able to capitalize on this and rebuild.
ArchTeryx
To continue from dead thread downstairs…
Yes, Chinese and East Indian *citizens* deserve the same educational opportunities as the rest of us. But don’t ascribe noble motivations to universities taking in large numbers of foreign nationals; it’s all about the Benjamins. They hire foreign nationals under H1Bs the same reason as corporations do: They don’t dare make trouble.
I worked for public universities and the NIH for 15 years. I’m unemployed because of the steady corporitization of the American 4-year university.
In the end, the dependence on scions of wealthy foreign nationals and H1B faculty is all of a piece. The admin of these universities, who are almost to a one reactionary shitbirds, are reaping what they have sown.
Major Major Major Major
@ArchTeryx: You forgot the conclusion, that any financial troubles they may have as a result of America being a laughingstock and international pariah are their own fault and they deserve to die, as “the only way to purge the corporate rot that has almost completely consumed them.”
Anya
Since this is an open thread, can I ask if anyone watches “The Last Kingdom”?
I am addicted to this show and it distresses me that it’s so overlooked. It is definitely the most underrated drama on TV. I hope the fact that it is underrated, will not mean that it won’t be renewed for a third season.
Peter
I can’t wait for all these fucking assholes to die. I will dance on their graves.
Kay
@katinbuffalo:
Great comment.
Tokyokie
@charluckles: I think that those who say they’d vote for Trump again refuse to admit error, and will double-down rather than entertain the possibility of having made a mistake. And that may be what they love most about the bastard, mistaking his pathological inability to admit error as strength of character rather than seeing it as a manifestation of extraordinary weakness.
Iowa Old Lady
I don’t believe Trump’s voters were driven by economic insecurity, but I do believe wealth is so unevenly distributed in this country that the middle class is disappearing. I also believe Trump and his vulture staff will make that worse. I’m not sure how truly democratic the country will be by the time he’s finished. Actually, given that the Rs dominate many legislatures way out of proportion to their votes, I’m not sure how truly democratic we are now.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
Really? It felt like writing articles like that was a fucking hobby for much of the establishment media for a while there.
katinbuffalo
@Jonny Scrum-half: Yes, the only thing my conservative family and family friends and those I interact with in the community hate SLIGHTLY less than POC (mostly Black people), are ACLU-loving liberals. They often say “liberals” with the same spittle-flecked, narrow-eyed disdain and hate when they say “Blacks” or “Illegals [Mexicans, particularly]” or “Faggots.”
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Peter: They’ve got kids and grand kids who are just as bad and are being propagandized 24x7x365.
ArchTeryx
@Major Major Major Major: Villago Delenda Est has the right idea. The universities have their own villages and burning them down is the only thing that will save them.
Peter
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: And I can’t wait for them to die, too.
The deaths of anyone who voted for Donald Trump is a cause for celebration.
Steve in the ATL
Anecdatally, I have many trump voting friends (some of whom have been downgraded to “acquaintance”) and they aren’t admitting they were wrong, but 2/3 are totally silent on politics now while 1/3 are doubling down. A handful, all of whom have downgraded to acquaintance and hidden on FB, are still bitching about the DNC stealing the nomination from Wilmer.
As you all know, it’s tough being smarter and more knowledgeable than almost everyone else.
And more attractive–can’t forget that.
liberal
@Hungry Joe: Yes he will. If there’s a nasty recession, even some of his dumbfuck supporters will abandon him. Not a ton, granted, but …
Kathleen
@WereBear: I’d also like to add a slight tweak: “begging on street corners while drowning in pee and choking on vomit”. Pretty much my wish for the mainstream media.
Taylor
@ArchTeryx:
What fucking noble motivations? Without those Benjamins, American universities. Go. Out. Of. Business.
And there’s some suspicion that that’s the fucking game plan. It was the universities that sought the injunction against the Muslim ban.
Nicole
“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”- LBJ
Kay
They are embarrassed by the incessant lying and the nepotism and (hugely) by how much he and his family and administration spend on shit like travel and hotels and security.
This is like “community leader” type conservatives- the people who are in Rotary and serve on local boards. They never, ever mention Trump to me and I can tell you they used to go out of their way to tell me Bush was a “good man”. The 2004 election was basically normal Republicans screaming at me that Bush was “strong”.
They pride themselves (rightly or wrongly- mostly wrongly) on competence and “thrift” is part of that. Don’t kid yourselves- they’re cringing. They won’t vote for Democrats but a demoralized GOP “base” is an asset in an election and they are as much the “base” as the most unhinged Trump supporter. Bases are big. They’re half the total.
Tokyokie
@WereBear: The one member of my family who’s a Trump supporter, my elder brother, is absolutely convinced that he’s made it entirely on his own. I like to point out that had a physically disabled great-uncle we never met not taken it upon himself to put his three younger siblings (including my grandmother) through college, we never would have existed. Or had our father not finished his undergraduate engineering degree in three years and thus enlist as an officer in the Corps of Engineers rather than wait to be drafted into the infantry as an enlisted man, we also never would have existed. Or had one of his medical school professors not gone to bat for him, he would have been booted out after his second year. Nope, he’s achieved everything entirely on his own. And I have never engaged him on the subject of white privilege, because his point of view is too narrow to understand the concept.
AxelFoley
@debit:
This. All this.
ArchTeryx
@Taylor: Let ’em use their endowments and fire some of their deans. Some big, pubic, land grant universities
– like my alma mater – are sitting on billion fucking dollar endowments.
Then get back to me about them going out of business.
AxelFoley
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
And this, too.
JPL
@katinbuffalo: Pro-life neighbor voted for Hillary, because she doesn’t agree with cutting health care funding for expectant females. She doesn’t think pro-life stops at conception.
Kathleen
@WereBear: He didn’t go too far. He’s working for investment fund founded by Peter Thiel:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/12/21/daily-202-why-the-author-of-hillbilly-elegy-is-moving-home-to-ohio/5859da6ee9b69b36fcfeaf48/?utm_term=.abe41ac2bf02
He also may be moving to Cincinnati (joy) and wants to run for office as Rethuglican. I eagerly await my new angsty WWC Rethuglican overlord.
liberal
@ArchTeryx: How much of it is the fault of the administration at U’s, and how much is it the fault of governments squeezing the U’s by giving them less money from the general revenue pool?
charluckles
But are all those Americans SO racist and horrible that they would vote so massively against their own interest to support Trump? I’m astounded at their ignorance and I am sure a disappointing percentage of them are unreachable, but I also don’t want to lose track of just how badly we were failed by our institutions. Most people don’t follow politics like I do and judging from the diet of mainstream media available in my little world the 2016 election consisted of two historically unpopular Presidential candidates in a horserace, with almost no mention of the fact that one of them had no business anywhere near power. I thought and still sometimes think that it would be unconscionable that someone would vote for a President with all of the care of choosing a side in a professional football game, but then my social media circles are filled with people still sincerely and defensively insisting that Hillary Clinton would have been worse. It was a horrible uninformed argument before the election and it’s an even worse arguement now, but some of these people are holding onto it because admitting to f*cking over the country is going to be incredibly painful.
Lahke
So I overslept and missed the open thread, but still want to put in a hope that anyone in the Boston area who can get to Jordan Hall today to see the Boston Baroque Giulio Cesare performance do so. It’s ravishing, gloriously sung, and you have the added appeal of making book on whether Susanna Phillips is going to pop out of her extreme decolletage.
Kay
@Steve in the ATL:
Yup. The silence speaks volumes. The whole bragging bravado is gone. They avoid anything remotely political, not even the broad recitations on their favorite subjects.
Major Major Major Major
@ArchTeryx: I assume you would have been in favor of letting all the automakers go bankrupt because they stupidly decided to base their profit model on gas being cheap forever?
Skwerlhugger
Overthinking. Humans are social animals, and some of them are beta dogs wanting an alpha. Trump is the skilled alpha dog they’ve been waiting for. As long as they are safely behind him snarling along, they’re not particular about the details. It’s entirely visceral, noise and posturing. As will be the outcome if the alpha weakens. And yeah, I’m not an animal behaviorist.
debbie
@Kay:
I share a lot of anti-Trump posts on my FB page and I know my Trump-loving family members see them, and I know they haven’t blocked me because they’ll respond to other posts. I hope they grit their collective teeth every time they see one of my shares.
ArchTeryx
@liberal: It started out the former, but turned into the latter once ‘grow the endowment’ became the universities’ sole mission. It corrupted everything, and turned universities into just another for profit entity. Students were treated as captive cash cows, faculty orgs were crushed and replaced with adjuncts making less than minimum wage and treated like day laborers, and the number of sinecure deans exploded.
Sasha
I’m not prepared to dismiss Oldster’s point so quickly. The final vote totals were Hillary–48.2 and Trump–46.1. These are not the same numbers as in the poll which had Hillary at 46% and Trump at 43%. They differ by different percentages: 3 in the poll, in the actual vote. Collectively, for whatever reason, 5% of the respondents who voted for either candidate, did not admit to their votes.
I also think that people don’t like to admit they made a mistake. I’m willing to bet that a number of the 96% do, in fact, regret their votes but would not say so. In any case 4% or 5% is enough. He didn’t even win the popular vote; he cannot afford to lose any supporters.
Nicole
@Kay: And one of the things I’ve observed about the many GOP in my family and acquaintance circle is that for them, being Republican is part of their identity in the way that their religion, their sports team, their alma mater is part of their identity. My sister-in-law is pretty traumatized about the state of the GOP right now, but not enough to switch parties because for her, it would be like changing religions. Which, to me, is ridiculous, and I tried explaining to her that the difference between her and me was that I vote Democratic because the party currently aligns more closely with my world view (as, indeed, it does with hers, if she could just bring herself to admit it), but that if the parties flipped positions on those issues, I’d vote for the other party without thinking a moment about it. I don’t think she really could understand what I was saying, because for her, voting Republican is personal identity, not a way of attempting to effect change in the world. How do you fight that?
danielx
It’s not like we haven’t seen this before, more or less – I seem to recall that W’s voters didn’t really start to go south on him until 2006. This was well after it had become obvious that the Cheney Regency was filled with rascals and incompetents, but it didn’t really start to sink into the true believers until the bidness community decided that W was – horrors! – bad for bidness. At which point the Bush-Off Machine went into high gear…
But we are, sadly, still at the point where the Malignant Mango could indeed shoot somebody (as long as it was the right somebody to shoot) and his voters would not give a single solitary damn.
All that being said, fuck them. Their fears and prejudices caused this slow moving disaster, and I hope they rot.
WereBear
Gosh, yes THIS.
Major Major Major Major
@Skwerlhugger:
This is not actually how dogs work, and even if it were it would not necessarily have a lot to say about humans.
ETA: Must have missed the “not an animal behaviorist” disclaimer, sorry!
AxelFoley
@ruemara:
Again, this.
Nicole
@charluckles: See the quote from LBJ about emptying own pockets, above. The short answer is, yes. Our nation was founded on the idea of class, no matter what we try to tell ourselves, and people are frantic to have someone to look down on.
(Why yes, I did just finish reading Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash, why do you ask?)
Kay
@debbie:
Politics is all of a sudden “too divisive” because they don’t want to talk about the President. You’ll know he’s toxic when they switch from being Republicans to being “conservatives” or “libertarians”. Coming up to 2006 THE SIGNS changed. All of a sudden you couldn’t find the word “Republican”.
I cannot tell you how much shit they gave me over Obamacare. Trumpcare? Not a word. It’s like it didn’t happen.
Sasha
@Sasha: Apparently, I don’t have permission to edit my comment.
should read: 3 in the poll, 2 in the actual vote.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Here are a few links to refresh your memory:
Don’t know how you managed to miss that round of excuse-making, which continues (at lower volume as more data comes out to disprove it) to this day. Like @Major Major Major Major said, it was a persistent theme in MSM circles for months — See also: Vance, J.D.
Major Major Major Major
@Kay:
Dead-on, as usual, Kay. They’re the thinnest-skinned bunch of bullies I’ve ever seen.
Miss Bianca
@MomSense: I am so sorry. I love Maine (two of my sisters and several of my nieces and nephews live there, and my parents owned a house in Deer Isle for many years – almost moved there myself!), but it is…mighty white. And not in a good way
Kay
@Nicole:
I’m generally polite and I live and work among such an overwhelming majority of Republicans it’s obviously in my interest not to be screaming at them all the time, but I do resent the silence, how all of a sudden politics is divisive and off limits now that they’re embarrassed.
I feel like “oh, no. No sir. YOU WILL talk about this! You’re not getting away with pretending it didn’t happen”
ArchTeryx
@Miss Bianca: It goes even beyond race. My very white mother considered moving to Maine after my father died. She asked a friend up there how many years it would take before she was considered a part of the community. Her friend laughed, and said, ‘Dearie, try three generations.‘
She went back to her birthplace in Michigan instead.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: I have no direct experience with the hillbillies Vance speaks of, but even without that first hand knowledge Vance came across as a huge phony in his interviews.
chopper
wow, look at all that economic anxiety!
Kay
@Nicole:
We have this awful little town in the county- there’s no other way to describe it- it’s just a mean place. They were HUGE for Trump. They had elaborate “lock her up” displays. I drive thru there constantly and this one lady on the main drag put up this series of signs about how we all have to get along. She made the local paper.
So that’s convenient. The whole town spent 6 months attacking everyone in sight and now they want credit for being peacemakers.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Why do you conflate the media into “Establishment media” as though there was some kind of consensus in election reporting?
Of course, the other conventional wisdom here was that “the media” was soft on Trump, and that if only they went after them hard, the people would come to their senses. And then there were the complaints (somewhat realistic) that the media was not taking Trump seriously.
Trump promised early and often to kick out Mexicans and ban Muslims. And his supporters went nuts in favor of this. This wasn’t economic desperation. And it was right out in front for everyone to see.
Also, it’s just a plain fact that the “Establishment media” early on tried to dismiss Trump. They were loving them some Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio during primary season. Right wing publications like National Review hated Trump. The Wall Street Journal was negative. Even Fox News surrogates were doubtful This is why Trump fought back using his own personality, the National Enquirer, Breitbart and the alt hate media.
In the end, the vast majority of newspapers rejected Trump. From the Hill:
Trump voters didn’t give a shit about the media. They jumped into a Trump bubble early on and stayed there.
And then the right wing media turned and became rabidly pro-Trump. The GOP mainstream saw Trump as their best hope and jumped on board. And this is where we are now.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: I had a Somali student in my College Algebra class at UMaine, in the mid aughts. She was always a bit sullen with tons of tude, in other words a typical teen. She was however a good student and pretty good at math.
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: Maine is a beautiful place. Its seems to have gotten much meaner since I left, it seems.
ArchTeryx
Wow, it didn’t take long for folks to start calling me a Trumper because I gored their sacred cows. Anyone that actually knows me knows I hate that bastard with all my heart. He and Granny Starver tried to kill me and everyone like me.
That I got my health and future robbed from me by predatory university admin also apparently has no bearing.
EtA: Spittle flecked rage is not a symptom it’s a sign that you are fully woke. Trumpers direct it at the dead- wrong targets. They kick down. I kick up I have nothing more to lose.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I hate these wingtards, they always want to bring politics into everything, then act all high and mighty if you return the favor.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major: Crap. Got moderated. Let’s try this one
Why do you conflate the media into “Establishment media” as though there was some kind of consensus in election reporting?
Of course, the other conventional wisdom here was that “the media” was soft on Trump, and that if only they went after them hard, the people would come to their senses. And then there were the complaints (somewhat realistic) that the media was not taking Trump seriously.
Trump promised early and often to kick out Mexicans and ban Muslims. And his supporters went nuts in favor of this. This wasn’t economic desperation. And it was right out in front for everyone to see.
Also, it’s just a plain fact that the “Establishment media” early on tried to dismiss Trump. They were loving them some Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio during primary season. Right wing publications like National Review hated Trump. The Wall Street Journal was negative. Even Fox News surrogates were doubtful This is why Trump fought back using his own personality, Twitter, the National Enquirer, Breitbart and the alt hate media.
In the end, the vast majority of newspapers rejected Trump. From the Hill:
Trump voters didn’t give a rat’s ass about the media. They jumped into a Trump bubble early on and stayed there.
And then the right wing media turned and became rabidly pro-Trump. The GOP mainstream saw Trump as their best hope and jumped on board. And this is where we are now.
Ruviana
@katinbuffalo: l teach at a SLAC and had devout Catholic colleagues vote for him even as they expressed disgust for his behavior and comments. One was even a science professor. Im the end ot was all about the baybeez and they were willing to essentially give everything else away for that.
Kay
I don’t have any opinion on JD Vance and whether he’s full of shit or not – I haven’t and won’t read the book, but his essay about moving home and how he’s afraid he won’t be able to adjust to hillbilly life is hysterical:
Columbus is booming. It’s really not some backwards rust belt hell-hole. In fact. THE REST of Ohio believes that Columbus benefits from being the center of state government and get an unfair portion of gubmint funding. We think they suck up all the socialism leaving NONE for anyone else :)
– as if a city that happens to be located in Ohio is somehow more “real” than a city located somewhere else. God, I hope they have running water!
Miss Bianca
@ArchTeryx: then there’s the story that dates from the turn of the last century, about a guy on Deer Isle who moved there, as a baby, from the mainland, lived there his whole life (some 80+ years), and then when he died, the pastor began his eulogy with, “this beloved stranger to our shores…”
Apocryphal? Oh, probably. But true in essence? Most definitely!
schrodingers_cat
@ArchTeryx: BTW WTF is an East Indian? An Indian who works for the East India company? I agree with some of your analysis of what ails higher education but your stereotyping based on the country of origin leaves a bitter after taste.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: Wow, that’s a very hostile response to something for which Betty just gave you several links.
Ruviana
@Major Major Major Major: I think Jewish babies are okay. It’s the Christian babies we must protect.
Linda
@oldster: that would be my reservation with this poll, too.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
QFT.
Unfortunately I think that is part of the value of this for conservatives. Make us tired of the bullshit they like. Or at least will put up with to get at the real reason, as many have stated, bigotry. All nations are nations of bigots. Not all of their inhabitants are bigots of course but bigotry is a deeply held and reinforced part of the human experience. We have over the last few decades been able to add to the people who do not see their bigotry as normal and overcome that or at least pushed it into the deep, deep back parts of their minds. But a lot of people live in a very small bubble and anything outside that bubble is seen as a risk to the way of their life. And that vision of risk has been played to in this country by conservatives. Which makes sense from their point of view, they are after all trying to conserve a way of life that they think will serve them better. Those reasonably well off drumpf voters are the prime example of this. They are doing relatively well but if it wasn’t for some reason they would be doing even better. They have of course chosen that reason to be that other people have been holding them back. I know of a couple, mid to late 50s, both have jobs in the public sector and make about $150K a year together, have secure retirements that will be around $80K a year, a paid for house, vacation home, etc. And they are scared that their lives will be horrible because reasons. Their bubble is small and restricted. A great number of people on this rock live in small and restricted bubbles. Anything outside that bubble is bad because reasons.
Nicole
@Kay: Ugh. On my FB an ex of mine, who brags all the time about his right-wing credentials and posted all kinds of ridiculous anti-Hillary screeds and insisted that his vote for Trump had nothing to do with the fact that he doesn’t like women (he just doesn’t think we deserve bodily autonomy) now limits his posts to his and his second wife’s trips to food festivals. (Note: I was not Wife #1. When we got back in touch socially it was right after they split, and while, as he was my friend, I was initially on his side, after having seen his posts on FB, I’m now quite interested in what Wife #1’s side of the story was. ;) ).
I still cling to hope where my sister-in-law is concerned as she is generally a nice person and not bubbling over with resentments like my ex is, but I suspect she won’t actually shed the Republican part of her identity until after her father passes away. I know a number of GOP’ers who are also caught up in Daddy issues.
themann1086
@oldster: Actually, I think your point remains valid. Usually people misreport who they voted for by abandoning the loser (sometimes they’ll abandon a winner years later if they become a complete sustained disaster a la bush). That this hasn’t happened is pretty remarkable. The longer this goes on, the more support he’ll shed. I hope.
LurkerNoLonger
You nailed it Betty.
GregB
We finally have found out what it is like when the Confederacy of Dunces takes over.
Patricia Kayden
@debit:
Somebody needs to tell this to Senator Sanders since most of his speeches are “The Democratic party is a failure because it cannot reach those poor White Working Class, salt of the earth folks and keeps appealing to those identity groups”. We cannot reach stupid bigots. They’re already gone.
Major Major Major Major
@GregB: A copy of that book would make a much better president, though.
ArchTeryx
@schrodingers_cat: Holdover to disguish folks from India vs. Native Americans. Even Priya, my grad student partner and all around decent person, used the term when speaking English. (Hindi wasn’t nearly so ambiguous).
It never stuck me as an offensive term, just a very common one in academia. Is it offensive? Honest question.
Mary G
@geg6: Congratulations! They called you “wonderfully nerdy,” and I love the colors she used.
Patricia Kayden
@Skwerlhugger:
The irony is that they are not safely behind him snarling along if they’re part of the working class or his beloved “poorly educated”. They will be hurt just as bad or worse than many of us who didn’t vote for him given that his policies will hit the 99% hard. Who do you think is going to pay for the $30 billion wall? Mostly the White Working Class and White “poorly educated”. The alpha dog(s) like Trump will get their precious tax cuts and skip out on paying for the wall.
Mnemosyne
@katinbuffalo:
If you really want to be a jerk, send her some of the stories out of Texas, where the maternal and infant mortality rates shot up dramatically after they defunded Planned Parenthood.
Your cousin (and, sadly, one of mine) voted to kill mothers and newborn babies in the name of “saving babies from abortion.”
Major Major Major Major
@Patricia Kayden: The double irony is that Trump, being striver outer-borough slumlord trash, isn’t even a real alpha dog.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
The Warren quote supports my point.
Voters didn’t care about Trump’s bigotry. They did not care. And there were plenty of stories out there that covered this. And it is not simplistically binary. It’s not bigotry or economic anxiety. You even wrote often here about friends and family members who were not simply stereotyped bigots.
And to lead of with a Bernie quote is laughable.
StringOnAStick
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I wrote on Friday about the one hard core R that I am friends with telling me he has cut back a lot on consuming news because “both sides do it” and it was causing him too much anger. This from a guy who was firmly in the “only one side does it” camp for all the years I’ve known him, so I consider that progress. What I didn’t add was my asking him “if you need brain surgery, who do you hire, the best brain surgeon you can find or just some guy who has a casual interest in the subject?” I saw a light flicker on for a moment because that contradiction made sense to him and he connected it to Drumpf. We’ll see how he progresses.
GregB
@schrodingers_cat:
One thing that I am sure helps is that much of the terrestrial radio market was gobbled up by conglomerates that run rightwing religious horseshit 24/7.
I went to visit my brother a few years ago and the bile being spewed by the Radio Pharisee was repulsive.
Taylor
@ArchTeryx: Try (try) to understand that not every university is Enormous State University or Harvard. I have heard Harvard described as a hedge fund with a college on the side.
Most universities are small private universities, often with little or no endowment (their successful graduates prefer to give their money to Harvard!). These universities are struggling to survive as the American middle class disappears.
Trump’s actions, which your views support, are potentially going to push hundreds if not thousands of these colleges into extinction. I suspect that for Bannon, this is a feature, not a bug.
Dean’s salaries are so much noise in the financial realities that these places struggle with.
Patricia Kayden
@geg6: **applause** How cool.
@Nicole: Yep. Republicans have perfected this. Hatred of non-Whites among their voters is now an artform to be exploited more and more as the country becomes browner.
katinbuffalo
@JPL: I know they exist, too. I wasn’t talking about them. But there are many others who did the opposite. The anti-choicers who demonstrate outside our women’s clinic up the street were fully in Trump’s camp. I had to actually had to interfere with their “1st Amendment Rights” (which they only screech about when it affects them) because they were verbally harassing our refugee clients having to cross their path. Would it make you feel better for me to hashtag #notallantichoicewomen?
randy khan
@WafflesTasteGood:
Trump is pretty much a one-off for either party in that regard – to get nominated, you generally have to have a lot of experience because those qualifications allow you to get staff, contributions, etc. And, in any event, Trump had a lot of history, too (in fact, had been on the national scene longer than Clinton, hard though that is to believe) – it’s just that many of his voters ignored it or actually thought it was good.
Miss Bianca
@ArchTeryx: Well, also to differentiate actual Indians from “West Indians”, which is a term I heard used in the UK to describe folks who hailed from the West Indies. Seems like India just got to stand in for hundreds of years for “the exotic East” in the white western mind – possibly dating all the way back to Columbus, who started out for India and found “Indians” in the Americas. Which I’m sure is part of s-c’s point.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Wilmer’s supporters are just like Trump supporters. It’s like there’s a brain disease in white people. I’m finding it beyond belief how off the rails white America has run in such a short time. Thanks Obama!
Patricia Kayden
@Anya: I recall a few articles about how Blacks were still supporting President Obama when he hit his lower points but you’re correct that the MSM seems to be working overtime to normalize Trump.
randy khan
@Raoul:
I haven’t done the math, but if you take 2% away from Trump, Clinton probably wins Florida, too, and maybe North Carolina.
Kay
@Nicole:
I’m taking a family trip in May with my wingnut sister in law so I’ll see how she handles Trumpism. She was unhinged about Obama. She drinks too much and she followed me around a vacation house all drunk and disorderly trying to get me to admit that Sotomayor was unqualified, for an entire evening. She’s smart enough to know she has to somehow make these objections she had to Obama somehow “policy based” but she always starts with a wingnut premise- the premise there was Sotomayor was an “affirmative action” hire.
I refuse to take defense on “Sotomayor is NOT an affirmative action hire” which is the only way she would allow this conversation to go – I refuse to start with their premise and assumptions. I’m not giving her that.
StringOnAStick
@danielx: Bush’s voters went south on him when the economy went to hell, and that’s where Drumpf’s will as well. He’s coasting on the good things for the economy that POTUS Obama did, and the economy has taken some unforced hits because of Drumpf’s stupid actions. My husband works in the international travel industry, and while booked tours by North Americans within North America are up quite a bit, the numbers for Europeans signing up to come here are down significantly. I don’t think the former will outweigh the latter, plus when you toss on the hit higher ed is taking as the international students can’t or won’t come here, that is also significant. I also suspect that even though corporate America tends heavily Rethug, they can’t be looking at the level of careening crazy and not losing a bit of their taste for risk or expansion. This stuff adds up, but ti does so slowly.
WereBear
@Kathleen: Thanks for update. So the jerkbird returns to the nest…
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: This all reminds me of the scene in Gatsby where San Francisco is described as (IIRC) “the American middle west”.
ETA: Which is… technically accurate.
Miss Bianca
@StringOnAStick: I did the same thing to a right-wing hunting buddy of mine whom I love to needle on FB. He told me, right after the election, that he was for Trump – or at least, ready to reserve judgement – because he didn’t like the direction the country was going in, and thought that a “non-politician” would shake things up properly. I said, “you know, you’re right. I think the next time my doctor tells me that I need surgery, I’m going to get my plumber to do it. Or my hairdresser, she’s used to pointy objects. Because I think expertise and experience are so overrated, don’t you?”
I don’t recall that he actually responded directly to that one…
ArchTeryx
@Miss Bianca: It probably is. Which actually makes me rather sad. Priya, Sujatha, Biswarup, Gireesha and others were joys to work for and with and they introduced me to many new things. (Trading recipes and international potlucks were lots of fun in my lab).
I thought of them as colleagues, nothing more and nothing less. My rage was against the very white people that ran the universities and thought of us all as nothing more then chattel.
Maybe I got some of a Trump supporter in me after all, no matter how utterly repugnant I find him and his out-and-proud Vandal supporters. And that’s the saddest part of all.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major: I was responding to you and had not yet seen Betty’s comment, which had not even appeared as I was looking for replies to my comment.
But I don’t deny that there were stories about economic anxiety and Trump voters. But this was not the whole story, not in the media, nor from Trump voters themselves.
And the bottom line is that we have an Angry Baby as president, and his core of supporters are happy with that. How do we survive this mess and change it?
schrodingers_cat
@ArchTeryx: What I found offensive was that the graduate students and faculty and post-docs from India and China are there because they are docile and subservient not because they know their stuff and they are smart. They get admitted to graduate programs because they pay their way and get hired because they don’t make waves.
BTW most international grad students in PhD programs get a full ride ( assistantship, tuition waiver)
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator: Nobody said that this was the whole story. This is all a reaction to:
And, as you just noted, yes, you do remember when you were told that. BC didn’t say “blanketed with unified, single-minded opinionators operating as a borg collective hive-mind.” She said ‘told’. Nor did I mean to imply the establishment media works like that, but I bet that each masthead within said media ran at least one prominent story to that effect.
debit
@Kay: Kay, I think you’re a saint. If my sister did that I would have had to punch her right in the face.
And let me add that I love my sister, but can not tolerate that sort of drunken aggressiveness. Also, too, would never go on vacation with her again.
NR
Hmm….
So much for the “Berniebros” meme.
Another Scott
@aimai: Trump’s rich. That’s the main reason why he was treated differently. The national press is always timid in going after rich people.
He, and Forbes, and Perot were taken seriously by the press because they had huge amounts of money (by some measures). Forbes didn’t catch fire, so it was easy for the press to eventually mock and ignore him. Perot was mocked until he did much better than expected and (by some accounts) swayed the election – then his “OMG the deficit!” stuff got attention from Clinton and his administration (and actually lead to balanced budgets for the first time since Johnson or so).
Yes, Trump had a record, but his money (and perceived wealth) gave him a Teflon coating that St. Ronnie would have envied…
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
Well, bye, have fun with the troll. I’m going to bed. Sorry for my part in things getting a little testy, Brach.
ArchTeryx
@schrodingers_cat: I did NOT mean to imply that it was a racial or ethnic thing. More that H1B folks HAVE to be docile and subservient. They lose their job, they are promptly deported, and along with eliminating tenure track positions, that threat is always present. Another nasty little corporate trick the deans learned from bidness. I saw that in action at the NIH, too: Faculty that took ONLY foreign postdocs because they dared not assert their rights or make too much trouble, so they were pitilessly abused.
The foreign national undergrads are there because their families pay full freight. That’s the dirty little secret you rarely hear. Since many land grants are bound to take a certain # of instate students, they take foreign nationals to boost their bottom line.
Ruckus
@Patricia Kayden:
Actually some can be reached. It takes time and effort and usually it takes some outside precipitating event. Take Cole for example. We have people on here who state without reservation that they used to vote republican. In my lifetime (and I was born in the first half of the last century) most conservatives have always been about going back to some time where order or whiteness or whatever was the way of life. Mostly it was the same bullshit we hear now, just not as widely disseminated. And then repeated ad nauseum. The trick is that there has to be some precipitating event and they have to be able to see it for that. Dumpf may be that event for some, although I’m not holding my breath. It’s just that along with him we are seeing quite a few conservatives being much more widely exposed for the assholes they have always been. That may be enough for some to open their eyes and minds. It was Terri Schivo for Cole, what will it be for someone else? And that doesn’t say it doesn’t go both directions. Look at the number of people on here that resented that Hillary Clinton dared to ask for our votes, that she should have slunk off and gone out of sight and we could have had a much better candidate. I’d ask who that might have been but that seems like such a waste of time.
Kay
Would you have predicted Sessions would the worst of all of Trump’s low quality hires?
He’s the most experienced, so maybe people thought he would he “better than the average in that administration” but he’s unusually horrible even for them.
Maybe Trump is right and experience doesn’t matter. Horrible people are horrible no matter how long they’ve worked in government.
I see the moral objections to the wall but I also object it to it on corruption grounds. It’ll be a money sink and all the contracts will go to gross, sleazy Trump associates. I don’t want to pay them!
gene108
@schrodingers_cat:
Someone from Assam, Nagaland, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and Mizoram obviously.
I am “sure” that is what he meant.
Kay
Is anyone asking Trump why Mexico isn’t paying for the wall? I seem to recall that was a big part of the appeal- free stuff.
He said they could have a free wall. “FREE” was central to that bullshit.
MomSense
@StringOnAStick:
W’s voters went south on him when the economy collapsed but they seemed to think it was just him and not the entire party and the fraudulent economics that they destroyed the economy with.
Sometime back in 2010 or so a longtime Reoubkican operative/staffer wrote an anonymous piece about how Republicans intentionally sabotage the government, drive down opinion about government, and then exploit that negative sentiment to get elected. Rinse. Repeat.
So voters say we hate Washington. They are so out of touch. We want someone to go in there and shake things up. Then they vote for a Republican who gets elected and makes things worse.
I really don’t know how to break that cycle. We’ve only been able to do it by electing a Dem President for 20 out of the last 48 years. Assuming we have a GOP pres until 2021 that will be 20 out of 52 years.
ArchTeryx
@gene108: Indian subcontinent, not including Sri Lanka or Tibet. The Indians I knew actually were mostly from the south, though Sujatha’s family originally lived in the northwest before emigrating here.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Most of T’s horrible ideas about law enforcement and immigration come from Sessions. Miller was Sessions’ aide and Bannon a groupie of Sessions.
Feathers
@ArchTeryx: Truth. The H1B visa program is horrible and corrupt, with huge amounts of fraud. Somewhat defensible to begin with, but has only become worse and worse over time. It allows the tech industry to maintain its misogyny, agism and racism against blacks and hispanics by importing men from overseas. That said, the people I’ve met and worked with who are here on H1B are the sort of hardworking and delightful people who we should be trying to attract to America as immigrants. Unfortunately, the program that brought them here is specifically designed (now, if not at first) to drive down the wages and job security of native-born Americans. The anger at that program is real and justified. Unfortunately, that fury ends up directed at immigrants, not the white males who are driving the policy.
Note: my H1B visa reform would be simple. Companies are not supposed to hire jobs which could be filled with American workers. Right now that is handled by posting bullshit ads in the newspapers which no one answers. What to change: all companies who request H1B visas would have to post the job requirements with their state employment commissions, where they would be publicly posted for people to be allowed to apply. The companies would also have to submit a report of the current gender, race and ages of their workforce. All H1B workers would be registered with the state employment commission, and the company would have to agree to random wage and labor audits to make sure they were fully complying with all applicable laws.
Not so hard, is it?
MomSense
@Kay:
Don’t most “illegals” come into the country via airplane? Shouldn’t we really be building a dome?
gene108
@ArchTeryx:
Out-of-state Americans also pay “full freight”. Universities do let in a certain number of out-of-state students, and it is a pretty poorly guarded secret that they do this for financial reasons.
I do not think it is limited to only foreign nationals.
Gex
The new “leadership” of the Dems are convinced that these people agree with them on economic policies and only need to deemphasize (or drop) social issues to win them over.
They also seem not to understand that they aren’t actually trying to win people over on economic policies and are actually winning them over by centering and elevating white Christian patriarchy.
I paid taxes on Kate’s health insurance when my coworkers didn’t have to pay taxes for their spouses’ health insurance.
Kate’s dad inherited her estate.
I am barred from receiving survivorship benefits.
And I am likely earning less than my male peers.
But my equality has been deemed to not be an “economic justice” issue.
I am a Dem, because there are no other choices. But listening to leadership has me wondering if there is a path they can go down that I won’t follow. They have spent the last several months telling me to go fuck myself and calling me about a dozen times a week asking for money.
jonas
@Anya:
Demography =/= destiny. Getting the hell out and voting = destiny. The Dems’ problem is that the people who hate Trump the most are also the least likely to vote.
StringOnAStick
Every month I send to the Democratic party a list of Kay’s suggestions about getting local paid organizers on the ground NOW to get people the help they need to register to vote, and then help make sure they are able to do so. This should be the main thing they are focused on, but now I’m paranoid enough to think they might be worried that it will play as “helping those people get to vote” and they are afraid of the racist reaction that will create in the sainted WWC. That’s another reason why I am extremely nervous about the push to recapture the WWC; not only are they never coming back, but the risk is changing our core policies and tossing the non-WWC under the bus in order to do so. Considering that racism was what won the last election, they might be afraid to be upfront about this; I sure hope not.
I think we’ve all kicked this around a zillion times by now and the general conclusion is countering the existing (and no doubt more are coming from Sessions) voter suppression efforts as our highest leverage action. Who do people think are doing the best work in this area? Should we keep pressuring the D party to get involved in this and get paid locals on the ground to do it, or are other groups doing a better job and deserve our support?
schrodingers_cat
@ArchTeryx: You did conflate grads and undergrads in the last thread. Sadly its not just T and his posse that does not know much about immigration. Most Americans have no fucking clue about immigration except for the sound bites they hear.
katinbuffalo
@Brachiator: If you voted for him, you can’t claim you truly didn’t care about the bigotry. To claim you didn’t care means that you were and are okay voting FOR bigotry, as long as other issues you claimed to “care” about were addressed, which means you are cool with that bigotry. And if you are cool with something, it means it doesn’t bother you, or – much, much more likely – you even agree with it in some way, shape or form, even if you are quiet about your opinions and feelings. So how can you claim you are not a bigot, or some of us defend you on this point? To say a vote for Trump doesn’t necessarily make you a bigot…How can we split hairs like that? Why is it so hard for some of us to make this logical conclusion about the vast majority of his voters (not talking about the mainshitstream media or diehard Bernie Bros)? Is it because we want to avoid our own complicity in all of this? I seriously want to know why. I would love to see Betty or some front pager do an in-depth post on this.
Brachiator
@StringOnAStick:
Trump mumbles about releasing a tax plan this weak and forcing a vote on Obamacare repeal. He is desperate for an attention-grabbing victory. And he will claim to be doing wonderful things for citizens even as he robs them blind.
What you write about here about the real-world impact of Trumpism is very interesting, and better than a lot of news reporting that downplays or misunderstands the emptiness of Trump’s economic policies.
ArchTeryx
@Feathers: Its even worse then that. Some of those Purple Squirrel listings get thousands of applicants from the US. HR just blithely ignores them all and hires from the H1B pool anyway. That system is rotten to the core, but it sure aint getting any better with the Trumpers running things top to bottom.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
Politicians also promote a lot of the misinformation and create false choices for cynical reasons.
bemused
@Nicole:
I think you are right on. Being a Republican is as much their identity as religion and family. What they can’t admit to themselves is that racism, sexism, biogtry toward anyone not like them, resentment of government “moochers” and self-centeredness is their personal identity or at least a large part of it. That’s why they are so incensed and insulted when they get called on it when they reveal who they really are.
ArchTeryx
@gene108: Oh absolutely it is not. They are allowed to take out of staters too. But many land-grant universities are limited by law from filling too many of their slots with out of staters…but not foreign nationals. It’s a loophole you can drive a mining truck through and that’s exactly what they did.
StringOnAStick
@MomSense: You’ve got some great points. Combine that with a pre-election story I heard of a mid-western poor intercity area where a few people had been enthusiastic Obama voters but weren’t going to bother to vote this time since things never got any better for them under Obama (or so they thought). I suspect things are going to get much worse for them with Drumpf’s policies, but how do you get people motivated to vote based on the idea of “Democrats – we’ll make sure your life doesn’t get any worse”? Not a real strong slogan.
debbie
@Miss Bianca:
Ha! Talk about white, you should have seen New Hampshire back in the 1970s. I moved there from Boston and was shocked not only that there were no delis or bagels, but that in New Hampshire, a Reubens was made with coleslaw instead of kraut and was served cold. Horrifying.
Another Scott
@ArchTeryx:
There are probably tens of thousands of stories from American post-docs about how horrible their advisers were (J has dozens). Every grad student and post-doc is at the mercy of their adviser – when they get to graduate, will their adviser speak up for them in ranking qualifiers and putting them in for awards and scholarships, will they get a good recommendation letter, when will they get paid and for how long, how much extra work they have to do, etc., etc. Every grad student and PD runs the risk of being an indentured servant for 5+ years.
No doubt it’s hard for foreign PDs as well, but don’t use too broad a brush.
Cheers,
Scott.
ArchTeryx
@debbie: The coleslaw Reuben isn’t so bad but serving it COLD is an offense against nature. What, did they serve on white bread because rye is too Jewish?
debbie
@Kay:
Condescending much is he? After reading that piece, I won’t be reading his book either.
MomSense
@StringOnAStick:
Yes! My older kids would take an organizing job with benefits and work their hearts out for Democrats. Right now they earn crap money when not in school and still volunteer. I know so many of their friends who would do the same joyfully. Instead of campaigning being a triage type of voter contact, we could take the time to develop leaders and organizers in communities.
ArchTeryx
@Another Scott: That’s a good point and I will try not to be quite so snarly in the future.
I have my own horror story as a postdoc. I worked for a genuine clinical sociopath that was such a horror his entire department was ready to quit en masse rather then end up with that monster as their chair. He saved them that choice by dying first. Greatest service he did for humanity.
Nicole
@Kay: Sigh. It’s like trying to argue with a very religious person. They want you to start accepting their premise as true, because if they have to accept that they might be arguing from an incorrect premise they don’t have anything to stand on. Affirmative action hire? Oh good grief.
debbie
@ArchTeryx:
No, they got the rye bread right.
gene108
@Feathers:
That would be ridiculously hard to comply with. You interview three people for a job. The reason you interviewed them is because, based on their resumes you believe all three are capable of being a good fit. You have to pick one.
If you pick the non-American expect a lawsuit.
Secondly, thanks to decades of discriminatory immigration policies, the H1-b visa program is the only main artery for Indians to immigrate to the USA. Cut off the H1-b visa program and you cut off Indian immigration.
Thirdly, I want to see actual evidence the H1-b visa program drives down wages. The people, I have known on H1-b visas made good money. I think the idea of undercut wages maybe overblown.
Fourth, the real problem with the H1-b program is the backlog in the employer sponsored Green Card categories for people from India. It takes 10-15 years, from the date of filing for a person from India to get their Green Card. In contrast, someone from Norway, on an H1-b visa, who opted for a GC could probably get a GC in a year or less.
There’s a set number of GC’s issued each year by country of origin. Countries like Norway, never come close to reaching their quota, wheareas India (and China, to a lesser extent), have years long waits.
Use the unused GC’s from other countries to clear the backlog and the whole issue of being on an H1-b would be reduced, as the visa would be very temporary until a person got their GC, in short order.
StringOnAStick
@Brachiator: It is the risks to the economy from Trumpism that pick at my brain a lot, I guess because twice I graduated into the teeth of a harsh recession and job prospects were grim; it goes against the American myth of hard work = success, but timing counts a lot as far as starting your working life goes.
While the media loves to talk about the nimble techy new paradigm, most business decisions involve allocation of capital by assessing risk, and deciding on a business expansion or a new building or other major capital outlay isn’t just pushing pixels around, it is looking at long term risk. This is where I think even the retrograde Chamber of Commerce is growing nervous with Trumpism. I suspect there was a bit of relief when he didn’t fire Yellen, but everything else they’ve done is tossing sand in the economic gears and the multiplier effect will become obvious at some point.
Ruckus
@Miss Bianca:
I used that non expert/expert in a discussion I had at the VA on Friday. Would you allow someone, like me to do surgery on you? I’ve seen cadavers and I sort of understand the insides, I work with my hands and have done precision work with them for decades but switching specialties, the surgeon does my job and I do theirs? NFW.
I get that people dislike/hate politicians and think they all lie and cheat, because quite a few of them have and do, some quite spectacularly. But not all of them do, any more than all people are spectacular at their jobs.
Brachiator
@katinbuffalo:
I did not vote for Trump. There is no universe in which I would vote for Trump.
Don’t confuse me or my own views with what I say about Trump voters.
OK. Trump voters are OK with bigotry. They care about themselves. They don’t know many nonwhite people and don’t care about them. Now what? Anyone who expected otherwise was foolish. The moralistic aspects of the Clinton campaign that called out Trump supporters for their bigotry fell on deaf ears.
And I am not saying that Clinton was wrong. I’m saying that this turned out to be ineffective with the diehard Trump supporters.
And the point of this recent polling suggests that Trump supporters are extremely happy with their decision to back Trump. They are getting exactly what they want in Trump. What is troubling is that these people even ignore it when Trump demonstrates that he doesn’t care about them. Cold reality has not hit them. Maybe it never will.
Life is complicated.
I would also like to see this.
StringOnAStick
@MomSense: Your kids should consider getting involved with OFA since they seem to be a lot more into organizing than I am seeing to local Democratic party do, at least here in CO. There are trainings going on all the time it seems, and maybe with more members OFA could get some paid positions going.
Gelfling 545
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: My experience also. People who “worked hard” and “deserved” what they had completely oblivious to the fact of others working much harder and getting much less.
MomSense
@StringOnAStick:
We are all OFA vols! I think they are only hiring interns now but maybe one of the special elections could be an option.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Gelfling 545:
It always always always comes down to the sense that “those people” are getting free stuff they don’t deserve, but don’t call them racist.
Davis X. Machina
@Ruckus:
Get the parties out of politics.
Get the politicians out of politics.
Get the politics out of politics.
This will Fix Everything. Everyone Knows That.
That should fix everything.
Gelfling 545
@Peter: And here I am heading towards 70 and the most libersl person among my family and acquaintances. Only a couple of Trump voters, mind you, but too many people who could easily go GOP for the likes of McMullin, etc.
Ruckus
@Gex:
I think this is accurate for a lot of underlying reasons. I get 6-12 emails a day asking for money from several Dem sources. At this point I feel that a good portion of the Dem leadership is lacking any concept of what the party seems to be about, what I’ve been told it’s about, what most people that I hear who are Dems seem to feel the party is about. And that’s not one single issue btw. But the damage control they seem to be trying is like having sand in South Carolina, sand bags in California and a flood in Iowa, while no one is looking for the keys to the trucks.
Brachiator
@StringOnAStick:
Fortunately, I don’t think that Trump can fire Yellen. From some WSJ article.
But I think that you are absolutely right about Chamber of Commerce nervousness with Trump. Conservatives can love Trump’s promise of getting rid of regulations and lowering taxes, but otherwise his ignorance threatens economic stability. And his “America First” rants might actually have the opposite effect. Some of his recent tirade against Canada, for example, could end up hurting American businesses.
Ruckus
@Davis X. Machina:
Well…….
It seems that enough of our fine fellow citizens decided to skip a couple of those and just get some of the politicians out of politics. So they elected someone who is not fit to be anything. Seems to be going swimmingly, as long as you don’t mind being like one of the Titanic survivors who didn’t get in a lifeboat.
Oh wait…….
AxelFoley
@Nicole:
I’m on repeat today, but THIS.
JPL
@katinbuffalo: True. They should be be shamed to admit that they are pro fetus, and not pro life. It’s an impossible task though.
Goku
@Brachiator:
Maybe they should just “disappear”
/need to sometimes get these things out of my system every once in a while
bmaccnm
@Miss Bianca: I’m late to the party, but I grew up Down East, went to college there, and left to find a bigger world. For years, I held a fantasy that I would return to the coast someday. I’ve gone back twice in the past few months because of sick family members, and I was appalled at my family’s small, bigoted vision. I no longer think about retiring to Maine. Phnom Penh, maybe, but not Ellsworth.
prob50
@Brachiator:
I have a hard time understanding how the person who posted this towards you distilled this out of anything you wrote here today. Yup, sure had you sized up, you grumpy, old white bigot.
But hey, if you didn’t know where your big boy pants were earlier today I’m sure you’ve found them by now.
The Lodger
@Another Scott: Indentured servitude is the thing that kept me out of grad school. I had a part-time job in college and saw the amazing amount of work my boss demanded from his graduate assistant. I never wanted that.
David Spikes
Starting in the Clinton admin. I would have dinner table conversations with my mother and aunties. all of whom would have voted Trump if still alive. In the conversations I would slowly talk them around to admitting that most of their political ideas were not grounded in reality and that they were voting for people who would fuck them over. After a couple of hours of reasonable talk they would sound convinced-because you know, rationality, facts. Success!!!!!
And the next day we would start all over. Eventually I knew that they would not change because they wanted to believe those bogus right wing stories.
And that’s how it is with Trump voters, they want to believe, it’s become faith with them-the evidence of things not seen. We will never convince them otherwise.
MomSense
@Miss Bianca: @bmaccnm:
It’s so sad. I can go out my door and hike some amazing places but the politics and the poverty are getting worse. I read an op ed last week about infant mortality rates in the outer countries. We are now on par with Botswana.
Governing a country based on privilege, inequality, scarcity for all but a few, resentment, racism, and rejection of knowledge and science is a recipe for sadness. Hoocoodanode
Ohio Mom
@Kathleen: I thought Mr Hillbilly Elegy was moving to Columbus, which was bad enough — now you tell me he’s moving to my end of Ohio?! Phooey.
Wonder what he plans on running for, and against whom. All of our Congressmen around here (and I do mean en”) are already R’s.
I feel like when someone in my family makes a mess that only I can clean up, Vance has just made more work for me because I’ll have to join the campaign for whomever he’s running against.
J R in WV
@Kay:
I have some wing-nut relatives. I no longer do things with them. The last time I visited my brother, as the evening came to a close they ushered me to a blow-up mattress in the dining room. I would much rather have preferred a Motel 6 to that, seriously.
If you can’t manage a bed, say so and I’ll go rent one.
My dad used to invite the immediate family to college bowl games. SIL once took a portable TV to our bowl game to watch her school play in a different bowl game – wasting her ticket to our game, the hotel, the food. Could have stayed home and watched TV for FREE. Or even in the hotel, leaving a seat for an actual fan! Not doing that again, either.
We have friends we would like to travel with, not so much family.
Ruckus
@David Spikes:
Not seen nor realized. Like flat earthers, they are afraid or something about anything over their horizons. And those horizons are not all that far away with their minds closed. I haven’t figured out if their understanding, or even the possibility of understanding, is too difficult, too scary, too inward pointing, too limiting, too disturbing, but it’s too something.
TenguPhule
@Hungry Joe:
I understand we’ve developed deep earth penetration devices capable of getting even the deepest dug terrorists.
/set your snarkometer to on, please.
TenguPhule
@debbie:
Honestly, that’s going to be the least of her worries.
AxelFoley
@Brachiator:
Muthafucka, you still wanna cape for Trump voters?
Smitty
@katinbuffalo: Hope you see this as I am so late to the thread. Your comment struck a chord with me. You are correct that Trump voters see only POC. This is the only explanation why they constantly vote against their own best interests. They fear the other to such a degree that reason is ignored in favor of clannishness.
I find it ironic however that the debunked concept of race is the topic of discussion on a day devoted to the celebration of science. I know what you are saying but using the word race only perpetuates the idea that races exist. A new vocabulary is needed.
neighborhood voice of morality and reason
From the very same article:
Believe it or not, it’s the Democrats’ job to convince those hateful bastards in that 96% figure to change their minds. Turns out that RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA 24/7 isn’t doing the trick, so we have too options. We can do more of it, louder harder and faster, expecting a different result and hating and blaming the people in that demo when it doesn’t work and the Dems’ poll numbers continue to tank with their own base as the objective evidence that the American public doesn’t give a flying fuck about Russia continues to mount. Or they could try some different approaches, like placing an emphasis on talking about some of the everyday pocketbook issues (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security expansion, Fight for 15) that have made that hated charlatan Bernie Sanders the most popular politician in America.
Bernie Sanders: Talks about pocketbook issues nonstop; is most popular politician in America
Dems: Talk about Russia nonstop; Are less trusted to be in touch with most people’s problems than Trump or the GOP
Do we recognize a pattern here yet? Yes? No? Anyone still want to try to defend the Democrats’ current approach, even though it’s killing them with liberals, left-leaning indies, POC, and pretty much everyone else?
Definition of insanity, anyone?