idk how long you've been following politics but my whole adult lifetime it's been a long story of Dems abandoning traditional liberalism and gradually shifting more and more to looking like a Republican-Lite party. If we've reached the point where we hang a "straight white men only" sign on the door of the clubhouse and focus our efforts on coddling the delicate feelings of Fox News viewers, I think it's just time to quit and say the ballgame is over.

**** these people

seriously **** them

Where that article is #resonating with me a little bit is in those last couple snippets - I think in this very forum you can see people arguing that we're (liberals) trying to give these people better security through things like paid leave/minimum wage, why are these idiots voting against their interests? I haven't seen a lot of consideration that for people making more than minimum wage, that isn't what they need or want.

Admittedly, living in a very expensive city and making well over the amounts discussed when talking about the working class, I don't know what is and isn't reasonable for middle America. Like, I think DVaut has talked about "all these guys making the median income, **** them, they're fine", and I guess I don't really know if a family of 4 living on $60k is comfortable or not in the heartland given that where I live it costs half a million to buy a small box to live in, it's kind of a different reality here.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm receptive to the argument that maybe we can do more for the middle class as opposed to just the poor class, but am open to more data potentially clarifying whether or not that's right.

goofy, that article reads to me like those people are upset they drive Audis instead of Ferraris and want to take things away from people who actually need help in order to make themselves "upper middle class" or whatever bull**** they think they want

There's lots that could be done to benefit the middle class. You could liberalize zoning in big cities so people can move from ****ty Appalachia to fun Brooklyn. You could speed up FDA approvals so people can get beneficial drugs faster and for less money. You can strengthen environmental protection or subsidize the development of self-driving cars or end the war on drugs so people can get high cheaply and safely. The big thing you cannot really do for the middle class is give them expensive handouts because there is no one to realistically pay for them. The poor can't do it because they have no money, and the rich have money but won't give it to the government. The best you can do is institute a VAT so that the middle class pays for their own "freebies" but then your GDP drops 10% which is no good. (Incidentally, my brother-in-law who lives in France is visiting me, and he loves nothing more than talking about how cheap his dental care is. "35 euros!" he'll exclaim, with minimal provocation. It's taking all of my diplomatic restraint to point out that he pays 20% VAT on almost everything he buys except food.) The other thing that you very obviously can't do is reorder the entire economy so that everyone has a good job. That's very complicated!

But people are dumb, so they want freebies or to have the entire global economy tweaked, and they find improving the functioning of things to be way too confusing to support.

Ya, I dunno. I know #HillbillyElegy is the hot new thing but if you're telling me that there are these middle-class voters who aren't comfy with professional women, gays, people with degrees, and think the poor have it too easy -- and that we need to focus on winning them over, then I'm gonna just say gl with that. Time to just give up and play Battlefield for a while, bc this ballgame is over.

I think it's pretty late to wait for more data. At the very least, you can signal that you care about the middle class.

60k is not a lot of money, even in the heartlands.

How about we invest in education and training so people's skillsets fit better into a global economy

A little growth would help. You posted a blog post from "the grumpy economist" (iirc) that made the case I found compelling.

Who in that article was (figuratively) driving an Audi? I'm willing to take the author at her word re: the anecdote about her sister-in-law that she genuinely works hard and could (should?) benefit more from the social safety net. At least in the context of this article, I don't think taking anything away from poor people was part of the equation. But to bobman's point, yeah, I guess it's hard to do otherwise:


Trump has stumbled upon a winning message Republicans can use to win elections now: "white working class, we haven't forgotten you and we'll make you great again". Sure, it's a straight up lie, but it won this election and it will probably win some more if liberals don't come up with economic appeals to these people*, and because it's not so much our style to just straight up lie to everyone about what we'll do for them, we should probably try to make them grounded in reality.


*disclaimer: since I probably can't say this without it seeming like I'm endorsing the notion that this election was 100% about economic anxiety and not at all about the racism and xenophobia, I'm not saying that, but it does kinda seem like a winning economic message can bring some of middle America back

I mean, the author doesn't disagree:

But like, winning elections is better than losing them, no? We have to figure something out, and it doesn't have to compromise our core values, but it does have to a.) explain why we lost without resorting to glib "**** these idiots" conclusions b.) find policies that will make them vote for us.

I was raised (along with my sister) by a single mother making half of this and we had a perfectly fine life.

Trump voters are endorsing a system of reducing welfare, deporting immigrants, disenfranchising blacks, etc. just by voting for him. They want to take things away from other people just so they can HOPE that Trump MIGHT help them.

Interesting you single out white people when trump and Romney both won whites by 20%, while Romney lost Latinos by 44%, trump just 36%

And after this latest election, don't you think the democrats should be more worried about running someone who doesn't have corruption follow them everywhere they go, and who wants to genuinely make a positive change in the world and isn't just doing it for their own personal gain, and has more to offer than just vote for me because I'm X? Regardless of whatever their X is(woman,Muslim,black)?

So, again with a disclaimer: voting for Trump is terrible, he's a horrible person/candidate and is going to do real harm to this country that we can only hope isn't irreparable.

But, a lot of people who voted for him probably did so without owning up to all of that and based their vote on a couple things that were important to them. If some of that vote was, as the author described, based on:

then that's a message we have to provide an alternative to, and that alternative doesn't necessarily have to involve taking welfare away from everyone because for a lot of voters, that was simply a side effect of voting for Trump that they didn't necessarily gaf about. (and again with the disclaimers, since this is sensitive territory: yes, they should gaf, it's terrible that they didn't, these are not the best people)

Also, gotta make sure they don't do the ben gassy with the you've got mail.

It's the racism, we just refuse to admit it:

http://electionado.com/canvas/1479173071893

So was i (not the single mother part) but how many years ago was this?

A family of 4 on 60k in 2016 has to run a very tight budget. If there isn't employer healthcare, it's almost impossible to manage the budget.

Goofy, the thing we can offer is a massive infrastructure spend. Everyone agrees it is needed. Everyone agrees it creates good jobs. Its a slam dunk. This is what Obama proposed. This is what Bannon is now proposing.

This is also what Hillary proposed, however, here is where Hillary failed on this issue and many other issues. Her heart wasn't in it. Alot of that is just her personality and "elitist" tendencies. But I honestly think part of the reason her heart wasn't in it is because she knew she couldn't deliver with a R House being a near lock. She could pay lip service to it but she couldn't bring the PASSION that Trump did, day after day, knowing she was selling a lie.

Trumps infrastructure plan, as far as any has seen the rough drafts, isn't actually building anything. It's all tax breaks for construction companies and give aways of public land for private use.

That guy is not rigorous in his research. Just an initial look at his first chart on white working class support for GOP is all I need to know about this guy picking and choosing data to fit his narrative.

Sorry, but that guy is a fraud.

This should have been done 20 years ago.

That was hillarys message. People called it coding for hillbillies or whatever. No one wants to hear that they need to change. They wanted to hear what trump was pitching: white people are perfect and we'll do our best to rig the system for you!

For some people, it's simply too late.

White working class people 50 and over aren't going to benefit from job training or education unless it offers a fast track program to employment in their field. My mother had over 30 years of experience as a legal secretary, took on job training courses and when she moved out of the middle of nowhere to a city, it took her a solid year or so to even get a job offer and that was during a good economy. It was straight up age discrimination.

I'm not signing up for amoeba's take on this, but regarding things like this:



Seems like people are looking for This One Big Reason Everyone Voted Trump. And sure, that might be the racism or whatever, we already knew a lot of this country is made up of deplorables and/or people who would just vote straight GOP because they hate liberals.

But like, it only takes 5% (or less) of Trump voters to swing this election, and maybe that 5% doesn't show up in the chart above because they're just a small part of the whole?

Turning the Trump voter into a monolith is obviously a mistake and is exactly the approach that liberals hate when applied to ethnic/social/gender groups.