When Did Hillary Lose the Election? In 1964.
The half-century story of Democrats’ abdication and decline
By Steve Roth. Publisher, Evonomics
On January 1, 1964, John F. Kennedy posthumously initiated the half-century decline of the Democratic Party, beginning its descent into this moment’s dark and backward abysm of slime. His massive tax cuts for the rich, implemented in ’64 and ’65, were the turning point and beginning of Democrats’ five-decade abandonment of its longtime winning formula: full-throated, unabashed, progressive economic populism. It was the signal moment when Democrats began to abandon the working and middle class. The working and middle class, betrayed and feeling betrayed, have now returned the favor.
Unapologetic progressive economic populism — starting really with Teddy Roosevelt’s slash-and-burn trustbusting, and turned up full-throttle in his namesake’s New Deal — had given Democrats three decades of electoral success. FDR lost two states and eight electoral votes in 1936. He got 523 out of 531. Over four campaigns, he never got less that 432. Eisenhower got a couple of terms as a very moderate Republican, really a progressive, but Democrats’ dominance of Congress and state governments seemed eternal.
Because: that economic populism also delivered success for America. The New Deal, combined with the government deficit spending of World War II, resulted in the greatest burst of widespread growth, progress, prosperity, and individual economic freedom in American history — before or since.
James Carville was certainly right: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
Democrats’ remaining progressivism under Johnson — civil-rights legislation, Medicare and Medicaid, and the wholesale movement of liberated women into the workforce — eventually pushed a hot middle-out economy into the demand-driven inflation of the 70s. That torrid growth brought government debt down from 120% of GDP in 1947, to 35% in 1980. (You know what happened after that.)
But even amidst that burst of growth and sustainable government finance, Democrats were abandoning the very source of their economic and electoral success. Kennedy’s top-tier tax cuts were a preemptive, voluntary abdication to trickle-down theory, before “trickle-down” even existed. When Reagan turned that dial to eleven, he was only occupying ideological ground that Democrats had ceded and abandoned to the enemy, long before. It was an epochal own-goal of historic proportions.
Democrats have been kicking the economic ball into their own net ever since. The obvious solution to the 70s inflation was to raise taxes, reducing government deficit spending, to drain off excess demand from a too-hot economy. Instead they acceded to the banker-industrial complex and the diktats of childish monetarism, again conceding the win to an economic belief system that is egregiously self-serving for the rich, and anathema to Democratic progressive economic populism.
That’s when the enthusiastic, progressive Democratic base stopped turning out in force. (Exception: Obama. For other reasons.) Progressive baby boomers have spent their whole lives voting against Republicans and their swingeing, destructive economic policies, not for inspiring Democrats. Think about the Democratic presidential candidates since 1964. McGovern was a true social progressive, but really a one-issue anti-war candidate. Bill Clinton did okay, within the confines of the post-Reagan economic belief system, which he never seriously challenged as FDR did. Obama didn’t either, in rhetoric or practice. His administration’s failure to prosecute a single prominent bankster is arguably the best single explanation for Hillary’s electoral meltdown.
Can you name one full-throated economic progressive Democratic candidate in the past half century? I’m not even asking for fire-eating. Here’s some help: Humphrey. Carter. Mondale. Dukakis. Gore. Kerry. (Are you still awake?) Aside from Obama, no Democratic candidates had the Democratic base flocking to the polls. (Compare: Republicans and their rabid Tea-Party base.) Add Hillary to that rather stultifying list.
Starting in the 60s, Democratic candidates stopped delivering an inspiring economic message. But the real failure was substantive. In their sellout to the enrich-the-rich supply-siders, Democrats abandoned the working and middle class, and the party’s winning legacy of widespread prosperity. The Democratic party elite bought into and helped promulgate an economic belief system (the “Washington Consensus”) in which distribution and concentration of wealth and income not only don’t matter, they can’t matter. The quite predicable results are upon us — decades of working-class wage stagnation, and wealth concentrations that are as high or higher than any period in modern world history.
It’s no wonder the Democratic base feels betrayed. They were betrayed.
Still: despite those decades of weak-kneed collaborationism, Democrats have obviously remained more economically progressive than Republicans. Clinton and Obama managed to raise taxes some, and Obama gave us Obamacare. And the economy has shown the results. Democratic presidents have delivered growth, progress, widespread prosperity, individual economic security, and true personal economic “freedom” that Republicans — the self-proclaimed “party of growth” — can only imagine in their fever dreams.
By almost any economic measure — GDP or income growth, job creation, stock-market runups, deficit reduction, people in poverty…choose your measure — Democrats’ economic performance has unfailingly beggared what Republicans have offered up. That is true for any multi-decade period you choose to look at since World War II, or over the last century for that matter. It’s true at the national, state, and local levels. Republicans constantly promise prosperity and growth. Democrats consistently deliver it (at least compared to Republicans). They’ve kicked Republicans’ economic asses, decade after decade.
Bigger pie? Raise all boats? Talk to the Democrats.
But nobody seems to know that. Did you? And Democrats never even say it — much less repeat it endlessly over decades, shouting it from the rooftops to stir up the base as Republicans would. The old saw is apparently right: “A liberal is someone who won’t take their own side in an argument.”
Perhaps that failure is a result of progressives’ fussy squeamishness about people getting rich. They don’t really like that word. But voters do. A third of Americans’ think they’ll be rich someday. Fifty percent of 18–29-year-olds do. (About 5% of Americans actually are rich, with more than couple of million dollars in net worth.) That squeamishness explains the persistent “anti-capitalist” strain of American liberalism, which is such an electoral disaster at the voting booth.
Democrats have much to atone for in their failure to hold the line on progressive economic principles, their failure to wholeheartedly champion and defend the working and middle classes, their sellout and abdication to the bankster class. But they also have much to crow about. Instead, though, they’ve stood by for decades while Republicans have falsely claimed the “party of growth” moniker, contrary to all historical evidence.
It is the economy, stupid. Voters, Democratic and Republican alike, will tell you in surveys about all the things they care about. But when they walk into the voting booth, they’re going to choose the person who they think will make them, their families, and those around them more prosperous, comfortable, and economically secure. They vote for candidates who they think will deliver better lives — starting with people having enough money to pay the bills. The Republicans realized that forty-plus years ago, and they’ve been winning based on that ever since. “I’ll cut your taxes and deliver economic growth.” Full stop, drop the mic.
Trump showed us that fire-breathing populism wins elections. While his brimstone reeked of many things, economic populism was at the core of his rhetorical fur ball. Even as he prepared to betray the working class at unheard-of levels, he channeled that betrayal straight onto his vote tally. “Audacity”? Obama should grab a stool and go to school.
And Bernie showed us the same thing. His campaign was unprecedented in American political history, funding a full-boat national campaign and outspending Hillary by 25 million dollars, almost completely with small donations. His message of economic populism brought in more than 200 million dollars in donations from 2.5 million people. And he turned out the enthusiastic base, in droves. Presumably he would have done so on election day, as well. Are Democratic political operatives finally beginning to take note?
There is a path out of the wilderness for Democrats. It’s the path they’ve trod before, with huge success. It involves (for once) coalescing around a core message that resonates with all Americans, repeated endlessly over years and decades. “Equality” and “opportunity,” important as they are, are weak beer on the campaign trail. Most Americans change the channel. Tell them what they want to hear:
“We make America rich.”
The double meaning is fully intended.
A winning core message was built into the Democratic Party platform. It didn’t need to be either more progressive or more centrist. All they had to do was build a campaign around it, with the anti-Trump character attacks as secondary instead of the only message in media advertising. They didn’t have a clue that Republicans have been playing the character-assault game for 30 years, and that concentrating the message on that form of attack on Trump invited the same focus on Hillary Clinton’s alleged (and false) character defects.
Once again, as with Gore and Kerry in particular, the Democrats let the Republicans (with a huge assist from the press) turn the campaign into a referendum on the character and personality of the Democratic candidate.
Roth
probably, possibly, true. but i get a little nervous about “full throated…economic populism.”
a little less full throated would ease the fears of both the ordinary worker who has learned to fear “socialism” and even the moderately rich who are afraid to lose what they have. even the poor don’t like to pay taxes. even tiny taxes to save their own Social Security.
and i think it is a mistake to ignore the non-economic fears or feelings of the people. even the bigoted people.
however this does not mean a vigorous and clear campaign to address the evils of unregulated “capitalism” and the economic misery of ordinary workers… a campaign that delivered results the people could feel… that such a campaign/policy would fail to deliver the votes you would need…. to deliver the policy.
the people get tired of empty rhetoric that never touches the ground. but if they feel despair they will vote for the “strong man” who promises all things including revenge on their imaginary enemies.
fwiw Kennedy went to Harvard where I think they teach “classical” economics, and I can even understand why Obama would trust the economy to the rich crooks before he would trust it to the wild eyed “progressives.” these people don’t have to be sold out for cash today. they sold their souls as college freshmen thinking they were being let in on the secrets of the masters of the universe.
Dem elites are nearly all on the corp take, they hate Bernie more than trump because he would destroy their temple that worships money.
Bill Clinton saw how much the reps raked in, he was first to compete whole hog for it, she’s no different. She campaigned on more of the same, that story simply couldn’t turn out the base in the Midwest, though coastal, doing much better, responded to the anybody but trump plea.
Progressives need a revolution, gonna be a long slog.
I beg to differ with the central premise of this entire piece. It was the working class who abandoned the Democratic Party and its candidates, going all the way back to 1968. One of the news programs was recently showing pictures from the 1968 campaign at some Nixon campaign rally which had a supporter carrying a sign most prominently displayed just in front of the candidate reading quite proudly “Labor for Nixon.” No, it was Democrats’ support of civil rights which hurt their standing with the white working-class, but some folks are just too scared and callous to admit it.
Washington Post op-ed yesterday:
“Democrats can’t win until they recognize how bad Obama’s financial policies were: He had opportunities to help the working class, and he passed them up.
“By Matt Stoller January 12 at 8:25 AM
“Matt Stoller is fellow at the Open Markets Program of New America.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/12/democrats-cant-win-until-they-recognize-how-bad-obamas-financial-policies-were/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.17a280fbcba2
All Clinton had to do to win the electoral college was campaign in the upper Midwest—IA, WI and MI—on Big AG antitrust issues, like Bernie did. Had she really tried to win in PA and FL, she would have campaigned on finance-industry antitrust issues, also like Bernie did–and the overlap of ownership and control of the big banks and investment banks.
Actually, all she had to do to win was campaign on the Democratic platform, as Urban Legend says above, instead of for votes of moderate Republicans (many who support parts of the Dem platform and aren’t enthralled with the political and economic uber-power of the finance industry).
A constant in her campaign, such as it was, was that elite establishment Republicans don’t like Trump and support her. SHE was the REAL establishment Republican, and therefore couldn’t even mention Trump’s mega-funding by far-right finance-industry titans, most prominently the Mercers and the Ricketts, but also top Goldman people, past and present. His finance chairman owned a bank that was a major vulture in the post-crash foreclosure juggernaut. But mum was the word for her on that.
Beyond bizarre.
Of course, in order to really campaign on, well, ANYTHING, she would have had to, y’know, CAMPAIGN.
Bernie’s campaign indeed was unprecedented in American political history. As for Democratic political operatives, I hope they retire en masse.
I am trying to figure out how it is possible that Dems appeal to the working class only failed with the white working class.
I keep thinking what I kept thinking throughout the general election campaign, except now the thought is past-tense. Trump’s slogan—Make America Great Again—was the PERFECT opening for the Dem presidential nominee to remind people WHAT HAD MADE AMERICA GREAT, BEYOND just the immigrant-melting-pot thing that Clinton talked about to the exclusion of everything else but Trump’s vileness and mental instability.
Strong labor unions and worker bargaining power. A VERY progressive tax code, including meaningful estate taxes. Tough financial-industry regulation, including Glass-Steagall. Major state government financing of state public universities, to keep tuition affordable, and major federal-government involvement in student loans. Major federal government funding of science and technology.
AND NO UNRESTRICTED BILLIONAIRE AND CORPORATE CAMPAIGN FUNDING, AND NO LOBBYISTS WRITING LEGISLATION.
I.e.: What Bernie Sanders was campaigning on. HIS appeal to the white working class succeeded. Bigly.
EVERY TIME one of those Clinton web ads saying “Tell Trump America’s ALREADY great” popped up on my screen, and when I heard Clinton herself—this was SOOOOOO Hillary Clinton, for whom it was still the ‘80s-‘90s—say that, I would literally cringe, and say to myself: “Thaaaat’s right. Keep telling people who AREN’T upscale that you’re unaware of what’s really happening with THEM.”
This was the most off-key Dem candidate and campaign imaginable.
It’s not hard to figure out at all EMichael. Anyone actually following the Sanders campaign closely, and who recalled the Super PAC ads against Romney in early 2012 re Bain Capital, figured it out, or could have.
Were it not for the huge set of Southern primaries following IA and NH so closely—had at least some of those primaries come after a few of the Rust Belt ones—Sanders would have won more non-super delegates than Clinton. He won WI, MI and IN. By the time of PA and then OH—and of course CA, on the same day as OH—it was all over, so his voters didn’t show up en masse.
And had a few of the Southern states’ primaries come later, after Southerners knew much more about him, he might even have won some substantial number of African American votes—at least from millennials, who eight months after South Carolina and Super Tuesday had so little enthusiasm for Clinton that even the prospect of Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress didn’t bring them to the polls in sufficiently high numbers to put Clinton over the top in the electoral college.
No mystery here at all about why what happened, happened–or about how it could have been prevented. We could be ushering in a genuine progressive era rather than what we’re ushering in–partly on the votes of the white working class in the Rust Belt and upper Midwest. And with FL added to our electoral college victory.
I guess people for whom we’ll always be in the Reagan era, politically—i.e., most baby boomers, most certainly including Hillary and Bill Clinton—simply will never recognize any of this.
Bev,
The Dem Party has not won the white vote in fifty years.
Bev,
Did you notice that in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio more votes were cast in the Rep Primary than in the Dem primary?
EM:
Little problem of voting issues again.
ANd that in 2008 that was not even remotely true in those states,(well, it would have been if Michigan DP did not screw up their primary).
Run,
You are correct.
But I am past tired of hearing about Bernie Sanders “energizing the DP” with his appeal to the working class. And I like the guy. But in looking at these reasons for the failure of the DP, we ignore the real reasons.
In those three key states(and if PA had been held before the nominations were locked in the same thing would have happened, the Democratic primaries drew less voters than in the last contested primary in 2008. How “energized were those voters?
Meanwhile, the Rep primaries show clearly that Trump brought new voters to the process. Personally, I think he dragged most of them out of the 50s.
EM:
I would not waste my breathe discussing BS. It is the same argument we are having on healthcare. We are not going to get either until states change and voting becomes more open. It is to the point where NC does not care if they have a bathroom law and do not mind being rated as a state/country way down on the spectrum of protecting voting rights. We will probably lose much of the PPACA and they want to talk single payer and they do not know what it is and yet they will “still” argue it.
I’m not sure what your point is, EMichael, but Kasich, not Trump, won the OH primary on the last day of the primary season, and Cruz won WI late in the primary season in an effort, with only Trump, Cruz and Kasich remaining, to consolidate the Never-Trump movement. Cruz and Kasich made a pact by which Kasich would cede WI to Cruz and Cruz would cede OH to Kasich. Trump lost bigly in both states, if I remember right.
I just checked the results in MI, which was on Mar. 8, right after Super Tuesday and on the same day as FL, and Trump won with 36.5%. Cruz was second with 24.9% and Kasich a close third with 24.3%. So, in MI, Cruz and Kasich together beat Trump by about 14%.
I’ll add that the likely reason that Bernie didn’t beat Clinton in OH is that by then the Dem primary season was effectively over and a lot of Bernie supporters probably voted for Kasich in the stop-Trump effort.
EMichael, the 2008 Dem primary season came down to the final primaries in June. Obama was ahead going into June, but there was no super delegate juggernaut for him like there was for Clinton. And the main reason there was such a large Dem primary vote in 2008 was because of mega turnout among African Americans, which did not happen this year.
Bev,
C’mon.
My point is fairly clear.
You, and other profess the incredible “excitement” that Sanders created in the primaries.
Actual facts show that voting in the primaries in those states show no evidence at all of that “excitement”.
You like his speeches. So do I. So do many.
They did not increase Dem turnout.
Run,
You are of course correct. Your fight for the ACA with progressives is a lost cause. Of course, your fight for the ACA with conservatives is a waste of time, because, as we all know, before the ACA the market driven US healthcare system was the greatest system in the world.
But fighting against the “real” progressives in this country is my lost cause. Listening to this populist bs is painful to anyone who has watched the elections for the last fifty years, or has actually interacted with any variety of our citizenship.
In their little enclaves they do not know anyone who is racist. They do not understand that the US white population consists of a large majority of racists. That is how they vote. Since the Civil Rights Act was passed, no Dem has won the white vote in the Presidential election.
Think about that. Think about who the majority of whites have voted for since 1964. Nixon? Reagan? Bush? Trump?
And somehow they think we need to become FDR Dems(or more accurately, what they think he was) to win elections? What world do they live in?
Name a policy of the Reps the last fifty years that helped the working class. Name a policy of the Reps that was directed to increase the safety net the last fifty years. Name a policy of the Reps the last fifty years that have helped unions. Geez, the majority of white union workers have voted Rep for more than thirty years.
When people fail to understand what we actually face, and come up with “solutions” to a problem that does not exist, they are wasting their time and resources.
We are fighting racists. While doing that, we can also fight for the things that Sanders talked about. But Sanders was politically stupid (for decades). His real base existed with minorities and white progressives that are not racists. He chose to ignore minorities and the DP for decades, and his supporters were shocked that those minorities did not vote for him.
Every time I hear about the “good old days” of the Dem Party I shudder. Particularly when I am assaulted by the memories of FDR. Look, he is right at the top of my favorite Presidents. His efforts and accomplishments were monumental. But people look at this as being possible today. And criticize those fighting the battle for not being FDR.
Here is a simple fact for people who have a working knowledge of this country.
If FDR had managed to pass the Civil Rights Bill in his first term(something I believe would have been beyond impossible), he would have had no second term.
What history do these people look at? As I said, I revere FDR, but the New Deal excluded blacks in many ways. I mean, he could not even take the step to try to make lynching a Federal crime.
He knew the country he lived in.
I just wish these current progressives 80 years down the road could figure it out and move forward.
EM:
Watched Maggie do the same thing repeatedly on the PPACA.
EN
but FDR did move forward
So did Truman
So did Ike
and Johnson
moving forward is not accomplished by throwing your troops at entrenched machine gun nests shouting brave slogans.
nor, i am afraid, was it accomplished by bussing.
Even Lincoln had to be careful, even sound like a racist, but in the end he accomplished more than the radicals.
Nd
Cob,
I agree.
My problem lies with people who think FDR was able to accomplish the impossible, while Obama did not even try hard.
Neither is true.
EMichael, I don’t know why you think those of us who believe Sanders would have beaten Trump thing the Dem presidential nominee needs to win most, or at least a majority, of the white vote. We don’t.
Most of us believe Sanders WOULD have won a majority of the white vote outside the South, not least because he would have won a large majority of white millennials, and their turnout would have been massive. And also not least because in the upper Midwest, white working class voters DID support Obama over McCain and Romney. Same in New England. It wasn’t African American voters who put Obama over the top in IA, WI, MN, NH, MA, RI, VT, NY, CA. Or, for that matter, in, say, the Toledo, OH area.
Racist or not, those voters voted for an African American Democrat. This time, enough of them in IA, WI, MI and PA switched parties and voted for Trump. Clinton barely held on to MN. Obama and Kerry skated to victories there. Kerry also won IA, WI, MI and PA. These states have a lot of white racists who vote Republican because of race issues. But several of them have more whites who vote Democratic than who vote Republican because of race.
Republicans win huge majorities of whites in the deep South and in Texas. That’s why Republicans always win a majority of the white vote. But the white working class voters in normally-Democratic stronghold eastern IA, for example, and in the Toledo, OH, area (a UAW stronghold), and swing-voter white working class (UAW stronghold) suburban Detroit, were not so racist that they didn’t voter for Obama or Kerry.
It’s ridiculous to claim that the white working class outside the old Confederacy states won’t vote in large numbers for Democratic presidential nominees cuz of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But you’ve been watching American politics for the last 50 years, and ain’t nothin’ gonna convince you that progressive Democrats can’t win a majority of white voters outside the South.
Trump needed BOTH parts of his coalition—the racist part and the declining-Rust-Belt/Midwestern-state-small-cities-and-towns part—to win. And, yes, there WERE two groups, not one, that won him the electoral vote.
Bev,
You are trying to tell me that Sanders would have brought out a group of voters that did not turn out to vote for Clinton. Then you are telling me that the people that did vote for Clinton would have turned out to vote for Sanders.
What does that say about those people that did not turn out for Clinton?
Meanwhile, I suggest you take a look at state elections for the last couple of decades in those swing states and try to convince me, or anyone, that those states are really blue states.
Sorry, but when a national election is turned to a large extent by state government repressing the votes of Dems, I have a hard time believing those states are solid blue.
What I’m trying to tell you, EMichael, and what I think you’re just not going to understand, is that a slew of Rust Belt/upper Midwest blue-collar voters will vote for what they think is an economic-populist candidate (Sanders (genuine); Obama (2008); Trump (faux); or will vote against a candidate they think is anti-economic-populist (Romney; G.W.Bush).
Not sure why you don’t get that, but it’s clearly true. These states were blue states for president in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012. They were not–some were extremely close (MI, WI, PA), others not (IA; OH)–in 2016.
But what mattered was the perceived level of economic population (or lack of it) of the respective candidates. That’s what determined the outcome in these states, each time.
You will likely get your chance at full throated economic populism again in 2020. Good luck replicating the “success” you claim was enjoyed under FDR. The world situation is entirely different. Demographics are different. Debt is different. The pregression of history was different. Were you to try that now, I would personally place the probability of success at less than 10%. You would probably disagree. I think it likely we will find out.
Welcome to AB.
Ooops. Screwed-up copy-and-paste. That comment should say:
Hmmm. A lot of folks in Warren, MI and the rest of Macomb County beg to differ, Tom:
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2017/01/democrats_declare_michigan_gro.html
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/01/15/bernie-sanders-draws-thousands-warren-health-care-rally/96617018/
The success of the coordinated “Save Our Healthcare” rallies around the country received a lot of publicity, but what received less publicity is that the idea for this was Bernie Sanders’ and that Sanders really publicized it, though emails and such.
Two key things struck me. Warren, MI (Ford, Ford, Ford) and the rest of Macomb County are Ground Zero for UAW members and retirees—who don’t get their healthcare coverage through Obamacare. Yet this was a mega-rally, and looking through the pics what you see is lots and lots of whites, most but by no means all middle-aged, some elderly (and therefore themselves on Medicare, not Obamacare), some millennials. Some African Americans, but mostly whites. Many middle-aged white men who are supposed to be all “Trump!” “Republicans!”
Anyone who thinks Sanders wouldn’t have won in a landslide and brought with him a Dem Senate majority is willfully clueless.
And this is just the start.
Washington Post today: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/hill-republicans-move-full-speed-ahead-with-push-to-slash-obama-era-rules/2017/01/16/5bd50c16-d35f-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_regulation-930a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.b39d749209bd
“Regulations have grown into a massive, job-killing industry, and the regulation industry is one business I will put an end to,” Trump said in a September policy address [written by Heritage Foundation]. …
“For too long, unelected bureaucrats have been simply telling people how things are going to be,” he said. “This needs to change, and not just by peeling away this rule or that particular regulation.”
Other highlights of the Post article:
“Not a single House GOP member opposed a trio of major regulatoryreform bills that have already passed this year; two other recent Housebills to restrict financial-industry regulation were opposed by only one Republican — Rep. Walter B. Jones of North Carolina.
“ ‘It brings everybody together,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, whose members have often bucked party leaders on major votes.
“Among the regulations on the Republican chopping block are new Interior Department rules aimed at protecting waterways near coal mines and preventing the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells, as well as a Labor Department rule that expands overtime eligibility.
“Democrats, along with major labor, consumer and environmental groups, are warning of significant and lasting harm to the public from the GOP push. A list of targets from the hard-line House Freedom Caucus includes school-lunch nutrition guidelines, renewable fuel standards and anti-tobacco programs.”
Other good stuff in that article, too.
Gosh, EMichael. I don’t remember Clinton mentioning that September speech of Trump’s, much less that it was a rightwing think tank funded by finance-industry and fossil fuel industry billionaires that wrote this stuff for him. Not even in the debates.
Nor did her ads mention this.
But you think Sanders, who would have CAMPAIGNED INTENSELY ON THIS, woulda lost—to Putin-connected Donald Trump—cuz of the Ayatolla Khomeini?
GOD.
Some might think that most of the 31 percent who voted for Trump with incomes under $50,000 came from whites who lost their manufacturing jobs and had trouble finding comparable employment. But they would be wrong. Clinton bested Trump among voters in households with incomes below $50,000 by 12 percentage points. This lead could only have occurred if the number of non-college-educated whites in this income range – who voted overwhelmingly for Trump – is relatively small. Since the raw exit polling data aren’t public, estimates of the distribution of these 31 percent can be made on the basis of demographic data and voting patterns of the different populations. A likely division is something like this: 7 percentage points of the 31 percent were elderly whites; 8 percentage points were college-educated whites; 12 percentage points were non-elderly, non-college-educated whites; and 4 percentage points were non-whites. This division is consistent with the voting patterns and the income levels of each of the populations and results in Trump winning whites with incomes under $50,000 by 20 percentage points. Clinton got more votes among those with incomes below $50,000 because 37 percent of this group was non-white and she won them by 67 percentage points.