A Particularly Poignant, and Revealing, Juxtaposition of Politico Articles Published a Day Apart
Terry Havener, 62, a retired union carpenter, pictured with Johnstown in the background. He was hoping for Bernie. He voted for Jill Stein. | Scott Goldsmith for Politico Magazine
— Photo caption in THE FRIDAY COVER: What Trump Voters Want Now The blue-collar workers who put Donald Trump in the White House are ready for him to deliver. How much time will they give him?, Politico, article by Michael Kruse, yesterday
Juxtapose that article with a Politico article by Ben White, from a day earlier, titled “Bankers celebrate dawn of Trump era: A populist candidate who railed against shady financial interests on the trail is putting together an administration that looks like an investment banker’s dream.”
Yesterday’s article is mostly about lifelong Democrats in Johnstown, Penn., who voted at least once for Obama (who won the town and its county both times) but who voted for Trump, who there decisively. So Mr. Havener is the exception in that he didn’t vote for Trump. But neither did he vote for Clinton.
These are not Trump’s “base” voters, and they make clear that Trump will not hold them for long by trying to lie his way through his administration. The Mad Hatter routine will not work with them. This will be the most virulently pro-corporate, pro-already-extremely-wealthy administration since Warren Harding’s, and they will know it.
Elizabeth Warren on Thursday gave a fairly detailed speech on the Senate floor listing Trump’s many statements and explicit promises to working-class voters, juxtaposed with the express positions of the people in charge of respective relevant parts of Trump’s transition team: an aggressive proponent of privatizing Social Security in charge of selecting top people at HHS, as just one of many specific examples Warren listed.
I would love to see ads run on Rust Belt media markets showing that part of Warren’s speech. And then warning that Trump will simply say that he’s doing exactly the opposite of what he’s actually doing. This is the way to fight this. It is the only way to fight this. These are not terribly expensive media markets.
These ads also should run through social media, on Facebook as ads and in news feeds, and in Twitter feeds. They should become a regular feature of American life. They would be funded in the same way that the Sanders campaign was. And they should say that.
Meanwhile, there is the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend. People should get this information to their relatives through Facebook ahead of the holiday, if possible, and at the Thanksgiving dinner if Trump is discussed.
____
ADDENDUM: Reader EMichael, who is originally from Pennsylvania, and I just had an exchange of several comments in the Comments thread that readers of this post will be interested in, I think.
Added 11/19 at 10:40 a.m.
I do not think you can overestimate the number of Thanksgiving dinners that will be ruined by any discussion of Trump.
It is going to be ugly.
And it is going to get uglier the next several years.
We have just had a racist placed in charge of protecting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, with a Supreme Court that, before there were only 8, believes racism does not exist.
Course, black turnout was mostly down for many reasons, not the least of which were the voting suppression efforts by Rep governors and legislatures.
Not in my lifetime has this country faced such an incredibly dangerous situation.
I read an article yesterday–I can’t remember where–that said that a good number of blacks left the top of the ticket blank on their ballots, including in Fla. and Mich. Probably PA also, but I don’t think it mentioned it.
I was just stunned by that.
Also, I was chatting a few days ago with someone who is a Republican and voted for McCain and Romney but told me that he didn’t vote this time because he didn’t like either of the candidates. Sanders came up in the conversation, and to my astonishment he told me, emphatically, that had Sanders been on the ballot he would have voted for him. In a swing state that went very narrowly for Trump.
He’s a 31-year-old disabled Purple Heart Marine vet, married with a couple of kids, and from a military family.
BTW,
One day we will have people write about Cambria Country and all of its lifelong Democrats that have an idea what they are talking about.
But not today.
Course, a responsible editor would question this kind of journalism by, I’ don’t know, maybe looking at past elections? Very quickly(30 seconds or so) they would find out that this area has put Reps in the house for decades and even voted for Romney in 2012.
But somehow it is full of Democrats.
I grew up in Philly; went to school in the suburbs and to college in PA. The best description of PA I ever heard was:
“Philadelphia in the east; Pittsburgh in the west; and Mississippi in between.”
Been true for decades. And getting more true every day.
Yes, I’ve heard that line about Mississippi in between many times. Every election cycle, in fact.
Doesn’t the article say that that county went for Obama? Or maybe it just said that Johnston did. I should check. So should you.
And please remember: Trump won PA by 1%. All that was necessary was a handful of Terry Haveners in old manufacturing towns. Sanders would have received more than a handful. A lot more.
These aren’t Trump’s base. They’re not Build the Wall folks, nor Register-Muslims-who-are-here-and-ban-those-who-are-not voters. So in this election they weren’t not Mississippians, and more than Mississippians were Rust Belters in this election. It was a marriage of convenience, and there will be a quick annulment, I’m guessing, now that the Sanders/Warren faction of the Democratic Party is about to take over and Trump is showing himself to be Paul Ryan’s and the Heritage Foundation’s Trojan Horse.
I did check.
It went for Obama in 08. Romney in 2012. And Bush before that.
And Rep in terms of Rep and Senate races and states races for most of the last several decades.
One thing people keep forgetting is to take another look at 2008. Yeah, Obama excited a lot of people, but remember what the eight years of Bush had done to the country. 2008 was a big time outlier for many reasons.
Maybe the article said Johnstown itself had gone for Obama both times; not sure. In any event, the county has a population of about 152,000, and Johnstown’s population is only 20,000. So I guess most of the country is rural, not old-manufacturing.
Either way, though, you say the county itself voted for Obama in 2008. So, not a deplorables-majority county. And–very important here–probably not a repeal-the-Volcker Rule-and-the-financial-consumer-protections-in-Dodd-Frank-and-the-new-fiduciary-rule-concerning-financial-advisers (including-retirement fund ones) type of county.
There’s truly a yuuge difference between challenge a presidential candidate’s promises and telling people what he’s actually doing and not doing once elected. And in the Rust Belt, whose population skews late-middle-age and elderly–and who still watch television–informing them of what he’s actually doing, using the very public positions of his transition team members and appointees to support it, would flip this support of Trump very quickly.
I wish I could find a link to Warren’s Senate speech, but I wasn’t able to. If you look for it and can find it, please provide it.
Guess you’re unaware of the oddity that Sanders won the Michigan primary on Mar. 5, the Wisconsin primary by 140,000 votes on April 5, and … the INDIANA primary on May 3.
So even if there was some actual reason why black and Hispanic turnout would have been lower in the general election–they just would have cared less about Trump becoming president, or something–SANDERS STILL WOULD HAVE BEATEN TRUMP. IN THOSE STATES. AND IN OHIO. AND IN PENNSYLVANIA. AND IN IOWA. AND PROBABLY EVEN IN INDIANA.
Wow. What the HELL are you TALKING ABOUT?
EM, that is true for every blue state as well as the whole country: “XXX in the east/north; YYY in the west/south ; and Mississippi in between.”
What you missed is the Mississippi portions of the states/country do not agree with the importance of your/Dem issues. One of the transformations folks voted against was the constant PC attacks. The country is less racist, misogynist, gender (place your PC claim here) concerned than the average liberal/Dem.
It has been true since 2008 and every election since. The constant arrogance and ridicule is tiresome, when those targeted know it is no where true.
If folks like you continue with these sorts of attacks, the same results will continue with short term Dem wins. Remember the basket of deplorables? If you think it had no affect just keep up the attacks.
Basket of Deporables is bad, I grant you; but, it pales in the light of Trumpisms. CoRev, go somewhere else. Your persistent noise is made up mostly. You are just here to annoy and not add anything worthwhile or constructive. Take your boy Sammy too.
And no they “HRC” should not be held captive in light of stating basket of deplorables. Never mind, just go away. Trump is a pronounced racist, xenophobe, and a misogynist. Show me where Hillary HRC said or did half of this CoRev:
– Trump once sent a copy of a piece New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote that criticized him back to her, with her face circled and, “The Face of a Dog” written on it.
– He told Esquire, “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”
– In his book How to Get Rich, he wrote, “All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me — consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.”
– He told a lawyer who requested a break from a deposition to pump breast milk, “You’re disgusting.”
– In appearances on The Howard Stern Show, he speculated that he could’ve had sex with Princess Diana if he’d wanted to before her death, called avoiding STDs from casual sex his “personal Vietnam,”
– assigned each actor on Desperate Housewives an attractiveness score from 1 to 10 (on Nicollette Sheridan: “A person who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a 10”)…
– said of his and Melania’s future children, “I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them,” called women who get breast reductions “insane,” said women who see him “will walk up, and they’ll flip their top, and they’ll flip their panties,” and declared that it would be hard for him to get an erection for Madonna. He really did say all those things on that show.
– Foer notes that he frequently brags about sleeping with married or otherwise attached women, telling Stern, “I’ve been successful with your girlfriend, I’ll tell you that,” and writing in The Art of the Comeback, “If I told the real stories of my experiences with women, often seemingly very happily married and important women, this book would be a guaranteed best-seller.”
– He infamously said of his own daughter, “I don’t think Ivanka would do that [pose for Playboy], although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
– He called Karen Attiah, a Washington Post editor, “beautiful” after she asked him serious policy questions at an editorial board meeting.
– He told biographer Timothy L. O’Brien that his favorite part of Pulp Fiction is the scene “when Sam has his gun out in the diner and he tells the guy to tell his girlfriend to shut up. Tell that bitch to be cool. Say: ‘Bitch, be cool.’ I love those lines.”
– Of Arianna Huffington, he declared, “I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man — he made a good decision.”
– You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her … wherever.” He retweeted someone calling her a bimbo:
– He launched his presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants to the US “rapists,” and doubled down when criticized
– Temple Taggart, a former Miss Utah, said that he kissed her on the lips at the Miss USA pageant, twice, against her will.
– Carrie Prejean, a former Miss California, recalled Trump ordering contestants to line up in revealing outfits so he could “divide the room between girls he personally found attractive and those he did not. … Some of the girls were sobbing backstage after he left.”
– Barbara Res, a former head of construction for Trump, says he would needle her for gaining weight, saying, “You like your candy.” Louise Sunshine, another veteran of the Trump Organization, recalls similar comments but interpreted them as loving.
– Res recalled Trump not allowing a woman he deemed unattractive to take lunch orders for outside visitors to the office.
– He forced former Miss Universe Alicia Machado to work out at a gym with media present when he judged her to have gained too much weight. “After that episode,” she told the Times, “I was sick, anorexia and bulimia for five years.”
– According to a 1992 New York magazine piece, he once said, “Women: you have to treat ’em like shit.”
– , “Rosie O’Donnell is disgusting — both inside and out. If you take a look at her, she’s a slob. How does she even get on television? If I were running The View, I’d fire Rosie. I’d look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers and say, ‘Rosie, you’re fired.’ We’re all a little chubby but Rosie’s just worse than most of us.”
Racism
– out of all administrations — sued the Trump Management Corporation for violating the Fair Housing Act. Federal officials found evidence that Trump had refused to rent to black tenants and lied to black applicants about whether apartments were available, among other accusations.
-When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Brown said. “It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.”
– In a controversial case that’s been characterized as a modern-day lynching, four black teenagers and one Latino teenager — the “Central Park Five” — were accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York City. Trump immediately took charge in the case, running an ad in local papers demanding, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” The teens’ convictions were later vacated after they spent seven to 13 years in prison, and the city paid $41 million in a settlement to the teens. But Trump in October said he still believes they’re guilty, despite the DNA evidence to the contrary.
– “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Trump at first denied the remarks, but later said in a 1997 Playboy interview that “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”
– Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because it transferred black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s prejudices.
– In opposition to a casino proposed by the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, which he saw as a financial threat to his casinos in Atlantic City, Trump secretly ran a series of ads suggesting the tribe had a “record of criminal activity [that] is well documented.”
– Trump fired Kevin Allen, a black contestant, for being overeducated. “You’re an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything,” Trump said on the show. “At some point you have to say, ‘That’s enough.’”
– Trump publicly pitched what was essentially The Apprentice: White People vs. Black People. He said he “wasn’t particularly happy” with the most recent season of his show, so he was considering “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”
– Just a few years ago, there was a huge national controversy over the “Ground Zero Mosque” — a proposal to build a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Trump opposed the project, calling it “insensitive,” and offered to buy out one of the investors in the project. On The Late Show With David Letterman, Trump argued, referring to Muslims, “Well, somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.”
– Trump played a big role in pushing false rumors that Obama — the country’s first black president — was not born in the US. He even sent investigators to Hawaii to look into Obama’s birth certificate. Obama later released his birth certificate, calling Trump a “carnival barker.”
– While Trump suggested that Obama wasn’t born in the US, he also argued that maybe Obama wasn’t a good enough student to have gotten into Columbia or Harvard Law School, and demanded Obama release his university transcripts. Trump claimed, “I heard he was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”
– Trump launched his campaign calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” who are “bringing crime” and “bringing drugs” to the US. His campaign is largely built on building a wall to keep these immigrants out of the US.
– He called for a ban on all Muslims coming into the US. He has since expanded this ban to include anyone from specific countries, including possibly France and Germany.
– When asked at a Republican debate whether all 1.6 billion Muslims hate the US, Trump said, “I mean a lot of them. I mean a lot of them.”
– He argued that Judge Gonzalo Curiel — who’s overseeing the Trump University lawsuit — should recuse himself from the case because of his Mexican heritage and membership in a Latino lawyers association. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who’s endorsed Trump, later called such comments “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”
– Trump has been repeatedly slow to condemn white supremacists who endorse him, and he regularly retweets messages from white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
– He tweeted and later deleted an image that showed Hillary Clinton in front of a pile of money and by a Jewish Star of David that said, “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” The tweet had some very obvious anti-Semitic imagery, but Trump insisted that the star was a sheriff’s badge, and said his campaign shouldn’t have deleted it.
– Trump has repeatedly referred to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has said she has Cherokee ancestors, as “Pocahontas”
– At the Republican convention, he officially seized the mantle of the “law and order” candidate — an obvious dog whistle playing to white fears of black crime, even though crime in the US is historically low.
– In a pitch to black voters, Trump said, “You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed. What the hell do you have to lose?”
– Did David Duke endorse Trump or did David Duke endorse Clinton?
– Trump attacked Muslim Gold Star Parents or people who are not white and could not possibly be true Americans?
Khizr Khan, the father of the late Army Captain Humayun Khan, spoke out against Trump’s bigoted rhetoric and disregard for civil liberties at the Democratic National Convention on July 28.
Trump seized on Ghazala Khan’s silence to insinuate that she was forbidden from speaking due to the couple’s Islamic faith. The following day that she could not speak because of grief over her son.
“Walking onto the convention stage, with a huge picture of my son behind me, I could hardly control myself. What mother could?” she wrote. “Donald Trump has children whom he loves. Does he really need to wonder why I did not speak?”
– Three times in a row on Feb. 28, Trump sidestepped opportunities to renounce white nationalist and former KKK leader David Duke, who told his radio audience last week that voting for any candidate other than Trump is “really treason to your heritage.”
– His white supremacist fan club includes the Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi news site; Richard Spencer, director of the National Policy Institute, which aims to promote the “heritage, identity, and future of European people”; Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a Virginia-based white nationalist magazine; Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist secessionist group; and Brad Griffin, a member of Hill’s League of the South and author of the popular white supremacist blog Hunter Wallace.
– A leader of the Virginia KKK who is backing Trump told a local TV reporter earlier this month, “The reason a lot of Klan members like Donald Trump is because a lot of what he believes, we believe in.”
– This is what you are advocating . . . by following the Southern Strategy, “You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*gger, n*gger, n*gger.” By 1968 you can’t say “n*gger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N*gger, n*gger.”
https://www.thenation.com/…/exclusive-lee-atwaters…/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/donald-trump-racist…
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/trump-hate-216539
https://thinkprogress.org/donald-trumps-history-of-saying…
Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy
The 42 minute recording, acquired by James Carter IV, confirms Atwater’s incendiary remarks and places them in context.
thenation.com
CoRev,
I intend to keep up the attacks, because I know it is true. History is very, very specific if you simply look at the facts. A trait you are unfamiliar with.
Bev, You gotta give this Sanders obsession up.
Seriously, it is as destructive now as it was during the campaign.
Sanders would have been annihilated in this election. He had absolutely no enthusiasm, or support, from the vast majority of minority voters. Without them, he would have had no chance.
Oh. Please. Like all those minority voters who voted for Clinton in order to vote against Trump would have decided that Trump would be fine after all.
Clinton’s black support was way down against Sanders in Michigan and Wisconsin, both states whose primaries came after the Southern states’, Wisconsin’s long after but before the very end when Clinton as assured the nomination courtesy of super delegations. Michigan’s primary was on Mar. 15, only a week after Super Tuesday and two weeks after South Carolina. Wisconsin’s was on April 5.
Also: Indiana, where Sanders won in a primary HELD ON MAY 3. A significant percentage of Democrats there black who live in Indianapolis and the Gary/Hammond area.
Oh. Please. Like all those minority voters who voted for Clinton in order to vote against Trump would have decided that Trump would be fine after all.
Clinton’s black support was way down against Sanders in Michigan and Wisconsin, both states whose primaries came after the Southern states’, Wisconsin’s long after but before the very end when Clinton as assured the nomination courtesy of super delegations.
And why, pray tell, would Hispanics who so hated Trump decide to vote for him or to not vote because the Dem candidate was Sanders–no matter what, but especially after a party convention and general election campaign that would have addressed issues they care most about. Ditto, for blacks.
Why do you persist in this nonsense?
EM claims: “History is very, very specific if you simply look at the facts.” Please, please show us what you consider history. The constant arrogance and ridicule is tiresome, when those targeted know it is no where true.
You epitomize the problem.
The solid south.
Now, go away you worthless troll.
Bev,
What are you talking about? I have no problem with Sanders or Warren leading the party at all. The obsession I am talking about is with the past election and Sanders role.
Of course I do not believe that minorities would have voted for Trump, they would have stayed home in numbers far higher than happened.
You are taking all of the votes Clinton did not get and adding them to the total that she did get and concluding Sanders would have received all of them.
It doesn’t work that way.
EM
seems to be saying that black voters were not worried about Trumps racism enough to vote against him. If that’s true it tells you something about the intelligence of the electorate.
i hate to say this, but in this matter CoRev is right. You spew hate, you get hate.
BEv,
Your math, once again, concludes that Bernie would have received all of the votes Clinton received and added others.
That is silly beyond belief. Sanders lost 90% of the primaries where blacks were 10% or more of the population. Yet, somehow you think that all of the blacks that voted for Clinton would have voted for Sanders.
Now, you could make a point if you could show that Sanders would not have united the Reps to vote like Clinton did. But I don’t think that is true. The attacks by Trump would have been different, but just as effective in rallying the racists. What was lost on the emails could have been gained in Sanders’ religion(you didn’t miss the anti-semitic part of Trump’s campaign, did you?) . And if that wasn’t enough, Trump would have attacked Sanders like no one has ever done.
Think of the effect on white voters when Trump, truthfully, could have said that Sanders had urged solidarity with the Iranian Revolution when Iran held US citizens captive.
Instead of “Crooked Hillary” he would have just called Sanders “Ayatollah” at every opportunity.
And the Terry Heffernans of the world would have done the same exact thing.
Terry Havener voted for Sanders in the primary. That was the point.
And I’m still waiting, breathlessly, for an explanation of why all those blacks who voted for Clinton in the primaries last spring would have found Sanders unworthy of their vote. Millennials–who weren’t enthralled with Clinton? Elderly people who had always voted? The people who heard their ministers on Sunday implore everyone to vote?
Really?
Clinton ran an almost contentless general election campaign, mentioning the Dem platform only when she was trying to energize millennials and blacks when the polls consistently showed she needed to energize them, because she feared that running as a true progressive would turn off moderate suburban Republicans. Which shows how deeply out-of-touch she was. They supported most of what was in the Dem platform. And they decided in the end that they wanted change.
You can’t shake this frozen mindset. To myself I called Clinton the cardboard candidate or the frozen-food candidate. You’re right there in the freezer with her. You really DO think it’s 1988 or 1992 except with much more racial diversity.
Cob,
What you fail to realize is that my hatred is a response to an attack of hate. Been going on for a long, long time.
Cob,
It is depressing how low the turnout was with minorities.
BTW, you didn’t vote, did you?
EM when challenged to show a historical reference ” Please, please show us what you consider history”. gave us: “The solid south.”
I’m sorry, but the solid south is sooo different from the solid West or the nearly solid East, but way different from the SOLID MAJOR URBAN CENTERS. EM seems to feel his ox being gored is different from from those rural oxen.
EMichael
it’s hard to have a meaningful discussion with someone who knows everything.
in case it matters to you, I voted for Hillary in the general, Sanders in the primary. Just as I voted for Gore in the general, though I never blamed Nader for Gore’s loss.
As for your hatred being a response to hatred…. that’s the way it works. Now, how do you suppose it gets stopped. And anyway, I don’t object to your hatred of real racists. I object to your calling everybody you don’t know anything about racists.
I have given up any hope I might have had that you would recognize your own over generalized name calling is itself racist thinking.
Election is over folks and it is time to move on. It is also time for Angry Bear to go back to economics and similar topics like Dan asked us to do instead of investing in Election Day scatology.
Run, the election scatology is what leads us all to determine the most effective way to contain this.
The economics experts here–Robert Waldmann, New Deal Dem, Sandwichman, and one or two others–have posted on economics since the election. But trying to return to normalcy is as pointless as attempts to return to normalcy in Germany after the 1933 election or in Italy after the 1922 election. And talking about economics–or for that matter legal issues–as though things were normal is like talking about climate science as though things were normal.
And the issue of whether or not the Rust Belt blue-collar voters who’d voted for Obama and now Trump switched because of racism and xenophobia or instead despite Trump’s racism and xenophobia, and why someone like Terry Havener would vote for Sanders in the primary and not vote for Clinton in the general, instead lodging a protest vote for Stein, is a profoundly economics-related issue.
It’s a new world, run.
“all those blacks”
Bev, I didn’t say that. And it would not have taken all of those blacks.
I said it three times now. That is enough for now.
Cob, I apologize for saying you did not vote. I looked back and saw you were talking about 2012.
You’re right, EMichael. It wouldn’t have taken all those blacks. In fact, given Sanders’ popularity among Rust Belt blue-collar voters–I’d forgotten, but someone reminded me that he beat Clinton in a landslide in West Virginia, even though he was saying that climate change is the most important issue we have to deal with, and even though Trump was on the Republican ballot that same day–he wouldn’t have taken as many blacks as it would have taken Clinton to win.
But your claim, repeated again and again, that blacks who voted for Clinton against Sanders in the primaries–some of them because they (like most people who aren’t from upper New England) didn’t know much about Sanders, some of them because they were told by the Dem power base in their states and communities (including ministers and aging civil rights heroes) that Clinton could win the general and Sanders could not–would the time voting began still not know about Sanders and still be urged by the Dem power base to not to vote for him and to instead stay home. And even though Sanders was campaigning aggressively on criminal justice reform AND on the importance of Supreme Court appointments beyond just abortion.
That’s just really demeaning of blacks as a group. It’s also pretty obviously wrong. Yet over and over and over again, you say this.
CoRev,
The South was rural(to play into your bs) before the Civil Rights Act.
All this hysteria and fanning of the flames from certain individuals is doing no good. They continue to use fear and false thinking to promote disruption and disorder. I do not believe that any minorities have anything to worry about with the Trump administration if they are not illegal or criminal or too extreme or radical in any way. These folks know they had nothing to loose and decided in their own way to give Trump a chance. Get over it. Stop crying and lets move forward to doing the business of the nation to making our country and government respectful and great again. This is all going to be very hard work that needs the support of every citizen to get our country back to making, working and doing again. There is really no time or money to waste on cry baby protesters who have hidden political agendas of disruption ,vengeance and hate with no real intent, meaning, vision ,plan, focus or purpose Stop It!.
“They continue to use fear and false thinking to promote disruption and disorder.”
Best description of the Trump campaign I have seen.
“I do not believe that any minorities have anything to worry about with the Trump administration if they are not illegal or criminal or too extreme or radical in any way.”
You should not be allowed to talk. The Civil and Voting Rights Acts are in control of a lifelong racist. And we have a VP who believes that Gays should receive conversion therapy.
Bev
i agree that eschatology is relevant to politics and therefore to economics.
If this is an “economics only” blog, then”politics” needs to be taken off the masthead.
however, there is really no point in arguing with certain people past a certain point. they cannot learn. same as some of those on the other side.
there is a way to reach them, sooner or later, with facts on the ground. we really do need to focus on creating facts on the ground.
EM
i don’t remember talking about the 2012 election.
and in general i don’t need apologies. if you are going to apologize for something, apologize for calling me a racist… something you couldn’t possibly know about, nor reasonably deduce from what i have said here. the apology would not do me any good, just as the accusation did not do me any harm. but it might do you some good if you could shake the death grip “racism” has on your mind.
there is racism. too much of it. and it needs to be fought. screaming “racist” at everyone is not a good way to fight it. in fact it is exactly counterproductive. Martin Luther King understood that.
oh, wait. i did mention the 2012 election where i did not vote for Obama after having voted for him in 2008. by 2012 i had decided he was just Bush Lite. I did vote for Hillary this year because I thought trump is the return of Ghengis Khan, and even Wells Fargo is better for the country than Ghengis Khan. It would be still better for the country if we could elect people who would put Wells Fargo in jail.
i don’t see what this has to do with the argument you and I have been having, or how “i didn’t realize you were talking about 2012” changes anything.
And you still have not answered the logic of why would all of those racist stay home and not vote against Obama. and why would all those blacks stay home and not vote against Trump?
I should be the last to claim “my logic can beat up your logic,” but in rational discourse, which we have not got, people try to check each others logic according to “rules” they each agree on. i can’t find anything in your argument that looks to me like reasonable logic.
that’s not unusual, but still, we are not getting anywhere this way.
I have no idea why blacks did not turn out in good numbers. I just said they didn’t, which is really clear to be true. And the racists did turn out and vote against Obama.
The story was that Reps turned out in high numbers, Dems did not.
BEv,
So now your Sanders obsession leads you to state I am demeaning of blacks?
After a paragraph of you being demeaning of blacks?
In order, your condensed version of the primary:
Black voters knew nothing of Sanders, white voters did
Black voters voted for Clinton cause party leaders told them not to vote for Sanders, yet white voters who received the same instruction voted for Sanders.
Yeah, I’m disrespectful of black voters.
I said, black voters knew nothing of Sanders, white voters did? And that black voters voted for Clinton cause party leaders told them not to vote for Sanders, yet white voters who received the same instruction voted for Sanders?
Hmm. I don’t remember saying either of those things, since the question about white Sanders voters weren’t being discussed. Nor thinking them.
But now that they’re being discussed: Sanders spent nearly 10 months campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire before the Iowa caucuses and the NH primary, but spent a lot more time campaigning in Iowa than in NH precisely because no one in Iowa had ever heard of him until he started campaigning there, and no one in NH had NOT ever heard of him. a couple of NH media markets, including Manchester’s, the state’s largest also serve nearby parts of VT, and VT pols advertise there and give interviews to journalists there, and get endorsements from newspapers there.
Add to that that Iowa and NH are small states, and that Sanders famously gave a high-publicity speech at the Iowa state fair in the summer of 2015, and that he, also famously, held yuge rallies at the state’s universities, most prominently U-IA but also at Iowa State, Grinnell and Drake. He also held yuge rallies in Des Moines and was interviewed on the state’s major news programs and by the Des Moines Register and smaller local papers. He spent ooodles more time there than Clinton did.
It ain’t rocket science. By the time of the caucuses, everyone in the state not only had heard of him but also knew the main points of his standard stump speech. They were like Trump’s; people would shout the key lines along with him.
The NH primary was the week after the Iowa caucuses. The SC primary was shortly afterward, two or three weeks later. Sanders frantically campaigned there, but SC is a much larger state than the earlier two, and you don’t start from scratch and have a real chance to win, or even to get most people o knwo anything about you, in three weeks. No one told blacks to not vote for Sanders. But the state party establishment and congressional Dems, and virtually the entire cadre of black ministers, were pushing for Clinton, making appearances with her and the like. And there wasn’t a single eligible voter in SC who didn’t know as much as you do about Hillary Clinton.
Super Tuesday followed one week later. One week to campaign in–what?-five Deep South states and introduce himself from scratch and ask people to vote for him and against Clinton.
Yet you think those voters would not have known enough about Sanders by Nov. 8 to decide whether he was worth coming out to vote for against Donald Trump?
And you’re saying MY comments are racist?
Also: The Michigan primary and the Florida primary were held on the same day, Mar. 15, two (I think) weeks after Super Tuesday. Sanders couldn’t adequately campaign in both, so he campaigned almost entirely in MI, where he knew that his pro-union and anti-trade messages would resonate. And he campaigned A LOT in the western part of the state–including the Traverse Bay area, where no major-party presidential candidate had campaigned since, like, 1792. Even Romney didn’t.
And he campaigned heavily on college campuses. One of his biggest rallies was a few days before the primary, at the basketball stadium at Eastern Mich. U. in Ypsilanti, which borders on Ann Arbor. And guess what? The crowd wasn’t JUST college students. Ypsilanti is largely black, and there were A LOT of black non-students at the rally, according to news reports and Twitter and Instagram posts by people in line. The lines to get inside were VERY long, and the overflow crow listening outside was large.
Your deep-seated presumptions are ridiculous.
That rally was one of his biggest in the entire campaign, not just his in Michigan.
Bev:
The population ratio for Ypsilanti can easily be Googled. https://suburbanstats.org/population/michigan/how-many-people-live-in-ypsilanti The city is 61% White and 29% Black. Furthermore, I do not know what “A LOT” equates to these days. So if you are going to argue this, it would help if you checked the numeric before quoting “Largely, and A LOT” as a numeric for who showed up to what.
The crowd was estimated to be 10,000 to 10,000+ first time voters or mostly students. http://www.inquisitr.com/2789813/bernie-sanders-draws-major-crowd-at-emu-after-the-mile-long-line-in-frigid-weather-shocked-even-supporters/ Inside the Stadium and since the stadium can only hold 9500 people, the fire marshal closed off access to the stadium at that number.
Okay, well, I was wrong about the population ratio for Ypsi. It does have a significant black population, though, and I remember seeing tweets and instagram pics people were taking while they were in line that night. There was substantial overflow once the stadium filled up and the doors were closed. People watched on their phones.
And yes, Sanders had crowds of nearly 30,000 during his campaign, but they were outdoors. So this wasn’t one of his largest crowds–most of the outdoor ones were in warm weather or warmer climates–but it was one of his largest indoor ones. The indoor venues limit the crowd size, of course.
It is still greater then the 1/2 of 1% in Livingston County, the richest county in Michigan. There are so many good topics you could write about and really expound upon. I wish you would pick a different topic.
Run, why is censorship one of the first responses we see from liberals? You said: “CoRev, go somewhere else. Your persistent noise is made up mostly. You are just here to annoy and not add anything worthwhile or constructive. Take your boy Sammy too.” Persistent noise — go somewhere else –here to annoy — etc?
I didn’t insult, just pointed out differences in view point and because you are annoyed by that DIFFERENT VIEW POINT you do not wish to continue discussing. If so why did you just provide all of the ?fake news? as if it was sincere reporting. Reliance on this kind of BS is why Dems lost.
CoRev:
I have read the way you have talked to others. I have given you the latitude you needed and you persist in your approach. You would do better to post elsewhere. You have picked “deplorables” as a comment made by HRC and I have offered up multiples of Trumpisms in reply. Your remark is silly as a major reason HRC lost. My suggestion still stands. You can always petition Dan; but, I believe he will agree with me. AB is not a place for everyone.
Run, we have differing opinions of what was important during the election. The “deplorables” comment was made to explain what/why some of the vote went the way it did. I suspect you did not feel you were part of that basket of “deplorables”, but I assure you millions of others did.
If that level of discussion falls into your: “I have read the way you have talked to others… approach…”, then pointing out differing views will continue to be my approach.
CoRev:
You have an option then. Your comment is idiotic compared to Trumpisms. More than millions witnessed Trumps lies. I have witnessed your comments to others. I have urged you to seek sanctuary elsewhere. Persist and you will suddenly disappear. Many would not engage you in a similar manner and would, would just eliminate you. Your choice.
Bev,
I am thinking that black voters in other states had the opportunity to see any and all of these rallies They were in the news all over the country. But let’s end this on these facts.
If you are right and Sanders would have won the election it means two things are certainly true.
Sanders supporters did not vote for Clinton. Clinton supporters would have voted for Sanders.
Somehow, that doesn’t make me feel much better.
EM
i don’t see how you arrive at “certainly true.”
but i did hear on the radio the other day from people who had no reason to lie that two thirds of the protesters arrested in Portland had not voted.
at this point i don’t think woulda coulda shoulda is a very useful way to spend out time.. unless someone whose business it is to turn out votes can see how to do better next time. meanwhile i think we need to work on getting the voters smarter,
you can’t cure “racism” all at once. you can’t even cure ignorance all at once, but it appears that running a campaign on “what ignorant racists those people are” doesn’t win elections.
and i guess as long as i am going to say that, i should say that i don’t see that CoRev has been saying anything very different here.
this does not mean that i do not violently disagree with CoRev on subjects that i regard as more important than the “feelings” of voters… although, if I were smarter I would probably understand that first you have to touch their feelings before you can get them to think.
Cob,
It is easy math.
Clinton needed votes from Sanders supporters that she didn’t get. Bev is saying that Sanders would have received the votes Clinton didn’t get, plus the votes Clinton got.
Meaning, Clinton supporters would have had to vote for Sanders.
You can do the SS math, you can do this.
EM
math isn’t the same as arithmetic. to “do the math” you have to understand the problem. i worked with people for years who thought they were doing the math and got answers… to ten decimal places that were off by an order of magnitude. it was my job to get the right answers.
i quite agree that Clinton did not get the Sanders supporters. that is not the same as saying the sanders supporters were all racists… which seems to be close to what you have been arguing here. but maybe i’ve lost track.
Sorry, my thoughts are mine.
I believe that if you condone, allow or approve the election of a stone cold racist to be POTUS, you are a racist..
Sorry, not big on enablers.
EM
and i believe that the people who didn’t have sense enough to go out and vote against Trump are not very smart and not sufficiently worried about the evil that man said he would do.
but that doesn’t mean the best way to try to educate them is to call them racists.
i know people who are not racists by any reasonable use of the word who are sick of being called racists and would vote against you… because they are not smart enough to see the danger of a Trump.
so you might think you are fighting the good fight against racism. but you are helping to lose the fight against stupidity.