View Single Post
Old 05-15-2017, 05:59 PM   #43
wittynickname
wittyusertitle
 
wittynickname's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Exp:
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_oi View Post
It's not inconceivable to get back to the 50's level of growth. It's not just about workers making more money, back in those days business tax rates were significantly higher and companies weren't outsourcing work at anywhere near the rates they are today. These concepts aren't about stopping businesses from making money or making a lot of money, they're about maintaining overall domestic economic growth.
Unless we have another massive economic depression, followed by another World War which decimates much of Europe's ability to produce goods--we're really unlikely to ever get back to 50s growth. The world has become much smaller, with far more big players on the stage.

The 50s were unique because much of the rest of the developed world had just been beaten down by a massive military conflict. The US fought that battle on foreign soil, which left America able to fulfill the needs of other countries. That isn't the case now.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Reaper View Post
Like how conservatives and Republicans moved on
once Obama was president?
Or like Southern (and honestly, far too many Northern also) whites have moved on from the Confederacy? Nothing I love more than being told to get over a questionable election less than a year ago by someone waving the flag of an uprising that was squashed 150 years ago.


Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_oi View Post
I think where Clinton also failed was that her campaign platforms were a little too status quo, where trump promised big changes. When people aren't happy with the status quo they will gravitate towards change. The poor and middle class workers are so desperate for change that they couldn't be bothered to fact check or see how they were being manipulated, they just took trump's word for it that he cared about them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mrkajz44 View Post
Iggy_oi nailed it. If I had to boil down the election to one sentence, it would be "Trump promised change, while Hillary did not".
Oh no, Hillary promised change--increased equality among the sexes, increased access to education, moving forward with clean energy, etc. The problem is that Trump voters did not want progressive change. They wanted change that would turn things back to the way they were 50-75 years ago. They want to go back to a bygone era where coal miners were 9th grade high school dropouts making 80K a year with a comfortable retirement plan. They want to go back to manufacturing jobs where their kids can get zero education and still make a living. They want to go back to time when women had dinner on the table for them by 6pm, when gay people stayed int the closet, when everyone they saw in their neighborhood or on their television was white.

These voters were largely afraid of cultural change, and a woman president is a great big sign of cultural change.

I posted a link to this in the politics thread, but it bears a repost:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...nxiety/525771/

Quote:
Evidence suggests financially troubled voters in the white working class were more likely to prefer Clinton over Trump. Besides partisan affiliation, it was cultural anxiety—feeling like a stranger in America, supporting the deportation of immigrants, and hesitating about educational investment—that best predicted support for Trump.
Quote:
Controlling for other demographic variables, three factors stood out as strong independent predictors of how white working-class people would vote. The first was anxiety about cultural change. Sixty-eight percent of white working-class voters said the American way of life needs to be protected from foreign influence. And nearly half agreed with the statement, “things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.”
Quote:
Nearly two-thirds of the white working class say American culture has gotten worse since the 1950s. Sixty-eight percent say the U.S. is in danger of losing its identity, and 62 percent say America’s growing number of immigrants threaten the country’s culture. More than half say discrimination against whites has become just as problematic as discrimination against minorities.

We can argue up and down and left and right about what Clinton did wrong, but the basic narrative is that a bunch of rural white people are freaking out that this country isn't as white and Christian and traditional as in the "good old days" and they freaked out, and Trump's rhetoric fed right into it.
wittynickname is offline   Reply With Quote
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to wittynickname For This Useful Post: