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IT ISN’T ONLY Republicans, it seems, who traffic in alternative facts. Since Donald Trump’s shock election victory, leading Democrats have worked hard to convince themselves, and the rest of us, that his triumph had less to do with racism and much more to do with economic anxiety — despite almost all of the available evidence suggesting otherwise.
Consider Bernie Sanders, de facto leader of the #Resistance. “Some people think that the people who voted for Trump are racists and sexists and homophobes and deplorable folks,” he said at a rally in Boston on Friday, alongside fellow progressive senator Elizabeth Warren. “I don’t agree.” Writing in the New York Times three days after the election last November, the senator from Vermont claimed Trump voters were “expressing their fierce opposition to an economic and political system that puts wealthy and corporate interests over their own”.
Warren agrees with him. “There were millions of people across this country who voted for [Trump] not because of his bigotry, but in spite of that bigotry” because the system is “not working for them economically,” the Massachusetts senator told MSNBC last year.
Both Sanders and Warren seem much keener to lay the blame at the door of the dysfunctional Democratic Party and an ailing economy than at the feet of racist Republican voters. Their deflection isn’t surprising. Nor is their coddling of those who happily embraced an openly xenophobic candidate. Look, I get it. It’s difficult to accept that millions of your fellow citizens harbor what political scientists have identified as “racial resentment.” The reluctance to acknowledge that bigotry, and tolerance of bigotry, is still so widespread in society is understandable. From an electoral perspective too, why would senior members of the Democratic leadership want to alienate millions of voters by dismissing them as racist bigots?
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren speak at the Our Revolution Massachusetts Rally at the Orpheum Theatre on March 31, 2017 in Boston.
Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images
Facts, however, as a rather more illustrious predecessor of President Trump once remarked, “are stubborn things.” Interestingly, on the very same day that Sanders offered his evidence-free defense of Trump voters in Boston, the latest data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) was released.
Philip Klinkner, a political scientist at Hamilton College and an expert on race relations, has pored over this ANES data and tells me that “whether it’s good politics to say so or not, the evidence from the 2016 election is very clear that attitudes about blacks, immigrants, and Muslims were a key component of Trump’s appeal.” For example, he says, “in 2016 Trump did worse than Mitt Romney among voters with low and moderate levels of racial resentment, but much better among those with high levels of resentment.”
The new ANES data only confirms what a plethora of studies have told us since the start of the presidential campaign: the race was about race. Klinkner himself grabbed headlines last summer when he revealed that the best way to identify a Trump supporter in the U.S. was to ask “just one simple question: is Barack Obama a Muslim?” Because, he said, “if they are white and the answer is yes, 89 percent of the time that person will have a higher opinion of Trump than Clinton.” This is economic anxiety? Really?
Other surveys and polls of Trump voters found “a strong relationship between anti-black attitudes and support for Trump”; Trump supporters being “more likely to describe African Americans as ‘criminal,’ ‘unintelligent,’ ‘lazy’ and ‘violent’”; more likely to believe “people of color are taking white jobs”; and a “majority” of them rating blacks “as less evolved than whites.” Sorry, but how can any of these prejudices be blamed on free trade or low wages?
For Sanders, Warren and others on the left, the economy is what matters most and class is everything. Yet the empirical evidence just isn’t there to support them. Yes Trump won a (big) majority of non-college-educated whites, but he also won a majority of college-educated whites, too. He won more young white voters than Clinton did and also a majority of white women; he managed to win white votes regardless of age, gender, income or education. Class wasn’t everything in 2016. In a recent essay in The Nation, analysts Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel point out that “income predicted support for McCain and Romney, but not Trump.” Their conclusion? “Racial identity and attitudes have further displaced class as the central battleground of American politics.”
Trump supporters take part in a “Make America Great Again” rally in Salem, Ore., on March 25, 2017.
Photo: Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa USA/AP
Their view is backed by a detailed Gallup analysis of interviews with a whopping 125,000 Americans, which found that Trump supporters, far from being the “left behind” or the losers of globalization, “earn relatively high household incomes and are no less likely to be unemployed or exposed to competition through trade or immigration.” The “bottom line” for Gallup’s senior economist Jonathan Rothwell? “Trump’s popularity cannot be neatly linked to economic hardship.”
Look, if you still believe that Trump’s appeal was rooted in economic, and not racial, anxiety, ask yourself the following questions: Why did a majority of Americans earning less than $50,000 a year vote for Clinton, not Trump, according to the exit polls? Why, in the key Rust Belt swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, did most voters who cited the economy as “the most important issue facing the country” opt for Hillary over the Donald? And why didn’t black or Latino working class voters flock to Trump with the same fervor as white working class voters? Or does their economic insecurity not count?
To be clear, no one is saying there weren’t any legitimate economic grievances in Trumpland, nor is anyone claiming that the economy played no role whatsoever. The point, however, is that it wasn’t the major motivating factor for most Trump voters — or, at least, that’s what we learn when we bother to study those voters. Race trumped economics.
Defenders of the economy narrative have a “gotcha” question of their own: how can racial resentment have motivated Trump supporters when so many of them voted for Barack Obama, across the Rust Belt, in 2008 and 2012? “They’re not racists,” filmmaker Michael Moore passionately argued last November. “They twice voted for a man whose middle name is Hussein.”
Klinkner, though, gives short shrift to this argument. First, he tells me, “most of them didn’t vote for Obama. There weren’t many vote switchers between 2012 and 2016.” Second, “working class whites shifted to Trump less because they were working class than because they were white.” Klinkner points out that in 2016, Clinton, unlike Obama, faced a Republican candidate who “pushed the buttons of race and nativism in open and explicit ways that John McCain and Mitt Romney were unwilling or unable to do.”
People hold signs before a campaign rally for Donald Trump on Feb. 12, 2016 in Tampa, Fla.
Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
If Democrats are going to have any chance of winning back the White House in 2020, they have to understand why they lost in 2016, and that understanding has to be based on facts and figures, however inconvenient or awkward. The Sanders/Warren/Moore wing of the party is right to focus on fair trade and income equality; the calls for higher wages and better regulation are morally and economically correct. What they are not, however, is some sort of silver bullet to solve the issue of racism. As the University of California’s Michael Tesler, author of “Post-Racial or Most-Racial? Race and Politics in the Obama Era,” has pointed out, the “evidence suggests that racial resentment is driving economic anxiety, not the other way around.”
Always remember: You have to identify the disease before you can begin work on a cure. In the case of support for Donald Trump, the results are in: It isn’t the economy. It’s the racism, stupid.
Top photo: Donald Trump greets supporters after a rally on Aug. 21, 2015 in Mobile, Ala.
The “analysis” of ANES data is junk science. The author clearly has an agenda in deciding that the answer to this question shows whether you are racist or not – Are racial inequalities today a result of social bias or personal lack of effort and irresponsibility? So anyone who believes in personal effort and responsibility is a racist. Personal effort and responsibility is a bedrock belief of the Republican Party, whether talking about the problems of poor whites or blacks. This “logic” makes being a Republican racist by definition. It’s shameful garbage.
Also, you should have learned in 10th grade that saying ‘89% of those who believe Obama is a Muslim voted for Trump’ is not the same as saying ‘89% of those who voted for Trump believe Obama is a Muslim’. The ‘logic’ employed by the odious Phillip Klinkner and his lackey Mehdi Hasan is the same logic that says that ‘since most terrorists are Muslim most Muslims are terrorists’. America needs to wake up to the biased, agenda-driven garbage being spewed by academia and the dominant media.
Slate Does A Push-Poll And We Cite It – The Intercept
Having spent the months since the election trying to sort out what the hell Americans are thinking, I tend to agree that the emphasis on the economy in explaining the election results misses the mark. However, overt “racism” isn’t probably behind it either. It is more subtle than outright hate of “the other”, it is more of a fear that the dominance, influence, and other benefits that inured to whites is slowly fading and people grasped at Trump to save it. Many of these Trump supporters probably don’t even realize the extent of their white nationalist leanings. They don’t consider themselves racist but their desire for the “past greatness” promised by Trump is also devoid of any insight or understanding of what that favoritism was based on. The question becomes what alternative can the democrats or others offer that will address the fears of so many who do even understand the nature of their own insecurities.
This is shockingly untrue!
All the Obama Presidency was is George W Bush’s 3rd term.
This is incorrect falling back on false charges of racism is racism itself-and the Democrats are forcing many of us former supporters out just because we point out how bad Obamas RESULTS were.
All the Democrats do nowdays when you point out reality is FALSELY reflexively accuse people of racism and sexism and try to CENSOR them because they have to hide their corporate OWNERS revealed by wikilaeks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fat63bqvG8
The Democrat “Progessive” organizations and Obama himself turned out to be owned by Lockheed, Bank of America, the Koch Brothers all in secret who directed Obamas “policies”.
This revealed by wikileaks!
Its simple most Americans are poorer after 8 years of Obama with the standard of living DECLINING for the 1st time in American History THATS WHY TRUMP WON!
How do i know-I am very good at forecasting things like elections.
And by Jan 2016 said Clinton cant win and Trump will be elected.
OTHER Democrats forecast this like: “Donald Trump will beat Hillary Clinton like a Baby Seal.”
http://www.inquisitr.com/3043404/donald-trump-will-beat-hillary-clinton-like-a-baby-seal-and-steal-bernie-sanders-voters-democratic-strategist-says/
I never paid any attention to Trump until he ran.
Looked at the situation what Obama ACTUALLY did:
The murder of the middle class.
The horrific Obama Democrat Showcase Chicago-long before Trump mentioned it.
The economic extermination of the black communities across all class lines where unemployment has skyrocketed in some places to 50%.
Obamas dumbing down our school kids to give the corporations $ with international test scores declining for 2 years in a row-thats NEVER happened in America.
Obamas war on the 90% while bailing out the Banks, Billionaires and Wall Street with $27 Trillion.
The very fact after Obama left office 90% of Americans are WORSE off with the standard of living falling back to 1997 levels.
The WORST economic growth in recorded American History at 1.6%
The massive outsourcing of middle-class jobs by Obama and flooding America with middle class killing H1’s.
And Trump proved this point by bringing back 500,000 jobs outsourced by Obama in just a few MONTHS!
Thats why Trump won.
And the Demcrats continue to lie-if only they had passed single payer healthcare but according to wikileaks and Obamas OWN friends he NEVER intended to do that-his goal was always Obamacare!
The FAILURE of Obama when he had a TOTAL lock on congress and could have passed ANYTHING and Obama refused to raise the minimum wage, refused to help unions, refused to improve education and instead took education $ and gave it to his corporate friends dumbing down our school kids!
It’s simple with 1/2 Americans making less than $30,000 a year, 90+ million un/underemployed, LIFE EXPECTANCY DECLINING ANOTHER HISTORICAL 1st!
The country FLOODED with Obama HEROIN, 35 year olds living at home. with NO future in sight.
And the new, Obama created, poor ACTUALLY DYING ON OUR STREETS!
Homelessness passing historical levels!
People voted for Trump to have a CHANCE for a better life-something Obama took away from them nd gave to Wall Street.
And for many people like myself who participated in civil rights in the 60s-70’s are getting tired of being called racist and sexist just for pointing out the truth.
The Democratic Party is owned by Wall Street, the Billionaires and the Banks and look at the average American as a victim to be fleeced, robbed, financially raped and taken advantage of.
If Hillary Clinton had run on $15 min wage, Universaly Guaranteed Healthcare for ALL, better Social Security, ect she would be president-IT’S THAT SIMPLE!
If the Democratic Party had let Sanders run my analysis shows he would have beaten Trump-CRIMINALITY at the DNC rigging it for Clinton and Clintons pro-corporate ideas and anti-middle/working class people policies cost her the election.
It’s simple 90% of American are FAR WORSE of after 8 years of Obamas Wall Street Corporate worship they voted for a chance at a better life-something the Democrats have failed to do for the entire 21st century despite lies to the contrary.
All you have to do is read wikileaks!
And whats worse is these FALSE accusations of racism and sexism made many people abandon the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party uses FALSE charges of racism and sexism to cover their corporate ownership against Democrats who point out the obvious-that is racist and sexist by the Democrats.
The Intercept wonders why its not catching on and has been asking readers for advice.
Uninformed sometimes ignorant columns are becoming more common place and seem to be written by people who seem to get their info from what others write and have NO expertise in the subject matter-thats a reason why the Intercept is having problems.
After all if the Intercept understood the electorate they would have been forecasting a Trump win by Jan 16 when it became obvious.
Instead the Intercept blames “racism” when former Democratic OBAMA voters vote for Trump as their last chance for survival.
Racism didnt cost Clinton the presidency the corporate ownership of the Democrats and their war on their economic war on 90% of the American population did!
“Reaganomics” destroyed the middle class. Conservatives keep clinging to it. If you make under $100,000 a year, you are stupid to vote Republican.
Trump won merely by luck…having the right number of people in the right places. Most of us saw him for what he is and did not vote for him.
You either delusional or a conservative “media” watcher.
Acting like there’s this large swath of Trump voters who just want jobs and love everybody is a crock of fucking shit, as someone who grew up and currently lives in Trump country. Trump support came from white resentment of poor black people, immigrants, social liberals, and muslims. You can’t untangle race from Trump’s populism.
You are truly hopeless. You know nothing of your own country or of any other country. Do Singapore or Switzerland have an underclass that they have debased and brutalized for 400 years? Your pathetic apologia unmasks you as a thorough racist trying to justify the terror meted out to African Americans. You aren’t fooling anyone with your irrelevancies. You brand Dylann Roof a madman then try to shift blame off him to whom, Washington bureaucrats? What? You are a coward. You call Roof mad so you don’t have to deal with him. He made his motivation abundantly clear, so they can’t be explained away. So the next thing to do is just not deal with him and what he represents. He saw himself as representing white people. He sees himself as a martyr for whiteness. He’s not some crazy outlier but part of a long, sick American tradition, to which you clearly belong. You think that only white thuggery is justifiable and permissible. Your position is like shooting a man then berating him for bleeding. You are a paranoid and a liar, and from the tenor of your posts, probably a bedwetter. So go hug your bunny, close your eyes and block your ears and hope the big, bad black people to come to get you. And change your pants, for God’s sake!
Excuses excuses… still no answers to real questions. The ones terrorised you should be concerned about, are blacks terrorised by other blacks. The numbers are truly staggering. There are many great wonderful examples of blacks rising above (many many Ben Carsons) that is my point IT IS NOT RACE, IT IS CULTURE! Slavery and atrocities were rampant through Africa’s history. Do you think you would be better off there? Really? 60% of the continent to this day does not have electricity! African governments are models of transparency and high honor, I am sure you believe. Take the opportunities today, please! I suppose you would argue that headhunting and cannibalism cultures are on equality with the Korean or Jewish culture. Simply not true. There are many examples of persons that have adapted. You have to look at the world we live in today, learn from the past but not be set back by the past. Count your blessings. Unless you are in prison? I did not know inmates had internet access? But if you are not there you will be with your lawless philosophy. So much for believing in messiers Farrakhan and Sharpton
Forget this Morris the Moose guy. You spent a lot of time and patience trying to crack some sunlight into his thick head. Stupid is as stupid does, if he wants to maintain his primitive mindset after the economic and social ravages of Obama. He is unreachable to basic reason
Mehdi Hasan is a racist who projects his racism on to other people. This is the problem he needs to identify.
You are are the pretzel as you are clearly avoiding anything of substance and totally uninterested in meaningful help, or therapy for your pathology. All of your references to whiteness drip with latent hatred, you are so dishonest with yourself that you do not seem to realize this. BLM is a nihilistic terror organization, if they cared for Black lives for one second they would start revolution for good in the inner cities. If the police were removed from the inner city, what would conditions be? The rate in Haiti? Or South Africa? Or the Democratic Republic of Congo or Jamaica? The number of black live killed would triple. This is of no concern what so ever to you as you obviously prefer your cozy echo chamber to reinforce your prejudices. Dylan Roof is a madman, much of the blame for him lies at the feet of the race hustlers in the justice department that fed BLM. Is there one country of POC that has a crime rate anywhere in the same hemisphere as Switzerland? Or Singapore? Why is this? Why is this? Why is this? You are advocating thuggery then hating everyone else that disagrees with your pretzel logic LOL
The weakest article I’ve read in the Intercept so far. It’s a pity the author repeats the mainstream narrative of “race” as an absolute concept. Isn’t it obvious that racism is triggered by social inequality? To illustrate this: is Nazism the result of a racist Germany or is it the outcome of the economic crisis of Germany? The harmonious inclusion of Jews in German society before the 1930s gives the answer. Race by itself explains nothing, it only expresses other categories of social relations, such as colonial oppression or economic issues. So in one word, Sanders and Warren are absolutely right to insist on economic oppression and perception of economic oppression as causes of Trump’s victory; of which, racism is an expression. Yet if you artificially oppose race and economic issues, treating them as independent variables, and go around asking people which one was more important for them in there presidential choice, you will get artificial answers and a wrong diagnosis. Worse: politically you will be fulfilling the Democratic elite auto-justification narrative: they lost because the U.S. is racist, not because they are crooked and chose a crooked candidate. Which is false. Please write serious articles or leave it to real independent journalists…
Actually, many people voted for Trump simply because they were tired of being called racist, homophobe, misogynist, etc. when they don’t agree with a position. For example, calling someone a racist, xenophobe or anti-immigrant because they demand that ALL immigrants adhere to US immigration law is a fallacious argument. Unfortunately this ignorant mode of argument has become SOP for a large portion of the Dem party, and clearly the author as well. Sad.
Look it up yourself as you are obvouisly not used to unbiased research. What I said stands. Since you seem to think you own the franchise on slavery why don’t you go to Libya and put up.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/10/libya-public-slave-auctions-un-migration. Everybody was enslaving everyone then. Sadly people with your list of grievances and bitter resentments will never get ahead today.
Hahhaha! Thats the funniest and the most inaccurate thing I have heard. I am a white missionary who has lived in Kenya, in the Virgin islands, among Native Americans and now in Korea Town. I am the lest racist person I know. Quit publishing innacuracies and love the truth. And I voted from Trump!
meanwhile Europe is crumbling under the weight of political correctness. Sometimes racism is rooted in the legitimate urge to protect oneself
Unions members who voted democratic in 2012 were rewarding a president who saved 150000 union jobs in 2009 plus perhaps another million in related industries. Globalization continued. Unions deserted the democrats. But unions did not drive the election results, and by the way:
NEWSFLASH – republicans embraced racism in 1972. Across theboard, demographically. Bottom line – Trump’s victory, a 3 million voter loss, was a statistical ly gerrymandering result.
I think this article would have been helped by applying an Intersectionality lens to it. Race versus Class is a false separation. The economy is racialized (systematically better outcomes for white folk over POC). The economy is gendered (systematically better outcomes for men over women/trans women). The economy is sexualized (systematically better outcomes for heterosexual folk over Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual folks). The economy is nationalized (systematically better outcomes for U.S. born Americans over Foreign born Americans/first generation immigrants).
There are statistical exceptions, of course. There always are in any data set. For example, Oprah is a billionaire and a women of color. However, her example does not negate the overwhelming statistical evidence that women of color are paid less than white women and white men for the same work, the same performance, and the same qualifications.
It is disappointing to read the comments to this article. There does not seem to be much understanding that “Race” is socially constructed. It is not a biological reality. The idea of categorizing people by “race” was done so to justify giving jobs, education, property, voting rights to one group of people, and deny it to others. The idea of categorizing people by “race” was done so to justify enslaving people, committing genocide, reneging on treaty obligations, and stealing land. There is no such thing as the “white race.” There is no biological reality to it. It was a political, legal, and economic idea to justify the worst crimes in history. Crimes that created lasting legacies of historical trauma.
This country’s Constitution when originally created, was a model of freedom and democracy. That is true. But it only applied to a small and certain group of people. People of color, women, immigrants, working class people, and LGBTQ folk were not originally included. The freedoms and protections of the Constitution were extended to them, through much bloodshed (civil war), protesting (women’s right to vote, civil rights, LGBTQ liberation, etc.), strikes, policy making, organizing, and voting.
The inability of people in this country to engage in understanding the history of “Race” and how it works today is disappointing. Instead people devolve into a panic and twist themselves into illogical pretzels to say that “race has nothing to do with it!” That is like Germany saying that “Nazism has nothing to do with the modern German state.” Or that “Communism has nothing to do with Russia”. The current states of Germany and Russia were deeply impacted by Nazism and Communism. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union do not exist on paper anymore, but their legacies of trauma and cultural influence didn’t just go away because they failed. The same goes for white supremacism in the United States. It is part of our history. It was absolutely part of the creation of our Constitution and our laws for hundreds of years. Our history does not dictate our future. But it informs how we got to this point. Our history illuminates why we have the choices we have in front of us. How we choose to go forward is up to us. But, if we want to know why we have these particular options to choose from, we need only look to our history.
If Obama had been a truly successful President, the electorate would have bought Hillarys unsuccessfull argument of more of the same. If real wages were up, and the economy was not bumping along the bottom with a 1.5% growth rate. If health insurance premiums had not tripled while coverage evaporated and deductables rose. If Obama did not always taken every opportunity get ahead of the facts to inflame racial tensions, to the point where there were violent riots and all police have to where body armour 24/7. Because of the free world lacking a leader, evil, oppressive forces operated with impunity. This all affects the magic of confidence. Confidence was lost after four years of Carter getting everything wrong… and restored spectacularly with Reagan. Trump is no Reagan but voters, after giving Obama the benefit of the doubt were hopeful in any possibility and did not see that possibility with Clinton. America is still a place where you can come from nothing and if you improve yourself and work hard and make good choices you will suceed. False arguments cannot be abided. Asians earn more percapita then whites, are they not POC? As do LGBT, who are often unusually gifted creatively. Also many legal immigrants that come here, take full advantage of what is within range to succeed and their children go to the Ivy League. While many native born take for granted the possibilities available. Illegal imigrants are at a disadvantage, living in the shadows as in any cash ownly illegal activity, prostitution, the drug trade etc.. that is their choice just as anyone can choose not to pay a parking ticket and watch their vehicle get booted.
Oppression and slavery were constant facts of life for millennia . Europe was enslaved by Rome for 700 years. The positive effects of Roman culture were inestimable to future Europe, as well as Roman roads being a conduit to spread Christanity. No race has been more systematically abused over more time and up to very recently then the Jewish race. What is the percentage of college graduates of holocaust survivers? To often we get caught up in thinking there is some particular magic bullet to solve our problems. Tupac said it best in “Changes” strong families, persevering in education, making right choices and being personably responsible are the basic of success. There is a reason envy is a big part of the 10 commandments, The reality is when people are happy with their life and empowered by their choices and actions they dont envy others. It helps also to have leadership that does not promote class envy, bringing the top down to the lowest common denominator, but elevates all. People rally to that.
Dear Leo,
You wrote, ” Europe was enslaved by Rome for 700 years. The positive effects of Roman culture were inestimable to future Europe…” Do you realize that this means you are justifying slavery and consider it good? Was that your intention? Did you really intend to argue that there were “benefits” to Roman slavery? Is this a joke?
Coming from a family that escaped and survived a genocide, do you understand how post-traumatic stress disorder works? Do you understand how historical trauma works? You ask the rhetorical question,”‘what is the percentage of college graduates of holocaust survivors?” What are you trying to imply? That going to college somehow ameliorates the effects of a holocaust?
Slavery was the order of the day at that time as the spoils of war. If you really did not know this please do not take yourself so seriously. Although at the time it may not have been appreciated, what preceded Roman conquest of Europe was virtual barbarism. When viewed through the arc of history the benefit is inestimable. Much of the Roman influence originally derived from the Greeks, matched with Roman efficiency, elevated humanity. (Enslaved for a time or not) If you can’t beat them join them. Is return to barbarism what anybody wants? No I was definitely not trying to imply that going to college ameliorates the effects of the holocaust. It is worth noting that despite the most unspeakable dehumanizing horror, the vast majority of surviving Jews were not held back and the vast majority of their descendents were not held back. There is no government program that can replicate that example of how to succeed despite adversity.
Ok. So, yes, you are a slavery apologist who feels that Roman slavery was acceptable because you feel Roman civilization was better than anyone else at that time in history. So, no one can take you seriously. Also, virtual barbarism? What biased, scientifically inaccurate history textbooks are you reading?
Also, speaking of history, I would recommend you read your history about descendants of the holocaust more closely. The rosy picture you paint is not accurate.
“Clinton more or less ignored the economic decline and insecurities of ‘the deplorables’, while Trump played upon both. Doing so, he gave false causes of their grievances and suffering—emphasizing immigration and ignoring automation, for instance, and appealing to a sweet past that never was. He could do so because he was not really challenged on this score by his opponent. She never offered an alternative account of the real grievances and suffering of this class, or of why they tend to ignored by many liberals. At least Trump focused on the grievances. Clinton made the horrible wager of winning the three rust belt states by appealing to white Republican women, while (she hoped) the white working class would stay intact in its previous support. She thus allowed Trump to create a resonance machine. His approach: Focus on the grievances; link them to trade and immigration and internationalism; intensify elements of racism in the wwc already there; return again to the focus on grievances; and so on. Intensify the feelings and definition of scapegoats you need to win. You don’t have ‘factors’ here that can be neatly separated. You have a neofascist resonance machine based upon amplifying intensities to which the opposing candidate was tone deaf until too late in key rust belt states. She won the debates and lost the election. The best hope for the democratic Left is to create an alternative machine, one that dampens racism within the white working class in part by concurring that it, too, is a minority in need of cultural appreciation and significant economic relief. One that loosens the bind within which the wwc is caught between a neoliberal economy that extends inequality amazingly and a noble pluralizing Left that has too often convinced itself that the wwc grievances are not real enough to engage specifically and programmatically. We must not let the Clinton faction of the party take over again, all in the name of neatly separable ‘factors’ based upon a false grasp of how campaign machines are fomented, how movements and elections require intensity, and how the last election was lost” – W. Connolly (“Trump, Race and Resonance Machines”)
No one is claiming a large number of trump supporters are racist. a large number of americans are racist, this is no revelation. however, the same electorate twice elected a black man from Kenya. which means you can get more than enough votes from people who are not racist, empirically speaking. the problem was the democractic party was so corrupt it forced a weak candidate on the party because of its own corruption who failed to excite the population that is not racist, while the republicans were able to put out a candidate that excited the racists. thats the issue, which sanders and warren are addressing correctly. your analysis should not be part of their thinking if they want to win.
Excellent article. Articulated what I have been thinking since prior to and since Trump’s election.
The Intercept is such an important, intellectually charged outlet of investigative journalism, that this article simply stands out as sub-par. There are so many problems with the core of this analysis, it’s hard to take seriously.
There’s so little effort here to present an objective view of the numerous factors involved in Trump’s stunning victory, that even the supporting data and polling statistics used, come off as cherry picked in support of the authors predetermined belief. This is The Intercept, not CNN.
Your analysis seems spot on about the real motivations of Trump’s supporters but why attack politicians (Sanders & Warren) for tailoring their comments to the political situation? Maybe they don’t actually understand why folks voted for Trump but do you have any real reason for believing that? Seems more likely that they don’t see any advantage in making the political struggle about race. Folks like me who are repelled by Trump’s racism don’t need reminding.
Keep playing the race card, it will only ensure the Republicans future victories. Did it even occur to the democrats that people just didn’t like their candidate? Liberals call Trump racist and can’t provide any racist statement that he made, but give Clinton a free pass after she called black youths “predators” that need to be “brought to heel” like they are dogs. She and Bill Clinton are the ones that started the whole war on drugs and stop and frisk movement. Liberals call Trump big business but forget the fact that Clinton is a former corporate lawyer that sat on the board of directors for Walmart Corporation that liberals hate so much. The Republicans gained house and senate seats and also gained governor seats in places that had been liberal Trump won in more than 30 of the 50 states, some of which went for Obama in prior elections. Yet those same people that voted for Obama are not racist because they voted for Trump. Clinton did not even campaign in some of the swing states, relying on the polls thinking she had already won those states. Trump worked harder in those states and it paid off. As far as the DNC hacks, if the DNC had not been so corrupt, the hacks would have been useless. If liberals want to continue throwing temper tantrums, protesting, wearing silly hats shaped like female organs, worshiping celebrities that go on nasty women rants, that want to blow up the White House, make videos mocking assignation or threaten to move out of the country and then back out , please go ahead and do so. You are making a jackass out of yourself and causing future victories for the Republicans.
This article is full of sloppy references that conflate the support of republicans for Trump with explanations of Democrats voting for him. It also confuses the populist revolutionaries with “leadership.”
The Intercept is of value because it deals in tight analysis of issues. You’re better than this.
Much more urgent is further research into domestic election rigging.
A beautifully composed case that Trump was most likely installed as a direct result of rigging and voter fraud was just mysteriously deleted as I finalised the comment form submittal.
Thus, I repeat a simplier version: research domestic election rigging.
Did single, white women vote for Trump?
The none economic force here was sexism, not racism. Trump beat a white woman.
I think it should also be considered that Clinton’s racism is why a lot of voters did not vote for her and certainly were not going to vote for Trump.
Clinton’s racism? Got any examples of this non-existent thing?
As someone else already pointed out, she called black youths “super-predators” that need to be “brought to heel.” Her husband created the federal 3 strikes law that locked so many of them up for life…etc.
While your first line is a relevant point, the fact that her husband implemented racially charged policies is not. It is in fact possible for a female representative to both hold and implement different beliefs and policies from her spouse during her own time in office.
What about Clinton’s firewall? Bernie is the white male’s candidate? She literally drove a wedge between white people and Black people.
It’s true politicians know better than to repeat Clinton’s deplorables mistake, but narrowing the elections results to one cause is counterproductive.
Racial resentment played a role in the election — as it always does, since we’re human — but so did long-simmering dislike of Clinton, our quirky electoral system, Comey’s last-minute blooper, 45’s training as a reality TV star. And don’t forget the Citizen’s United decision, the gift that keeps on giving. Democrats are big spenders but this time were way behind billionaires on the right. Because much of that spending is hidden behind “social welfare” nonprofits, we’ll probably never know how much or by whom, but we do know it dragged the discussion about climate change to the right, ballooned fears about job loss from immigration and “urban” (code for minority) violence, and probably tipped those few votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Racial resentment is part of the picture, but a small part.
As a journalist, Mehdi is straight savage, but this article is boo boo. Say again, what is the occupation of the scholar who thinks it was more about race than economics? Oh yeah, a race relations scholar. Like anyone anywhere could just as easily interview a economic class scholar who gathered their own data, and make the opposite point. Come on man.
big·ot·ry “intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.”
Bigotry is why the left lost, your own words expose your hypocrisy over and over. At least Sanders and Warren are mature enough to not play that game of name calling. People see you playing a political correctness game, of numbers that have no truth. You are fighting racism? Really? If that makes you feel better you already lost. You are hypocrites. Yes there are bigots, and then there are lying bigots, the latter is certainly no better.
It wasn’t the liberals who coined the term “libtard”. It wasn’t the liberals who questioned Obama’s birthplace at every turn. It wasn’t the liberals who called liberalism a mental deficiency. It’s not liberals who call people of color or the LGBTQ community horrible names for laughs and votes. It wasn’t the liberals who coined the names “lyin’ Ted Cruz”, “Little Marco Rubio”, or “Crooked Hillary”. It wasn’t the liberals who made up Pizza Gate or suggested their political adversaries were involved in the Kennedy assassination.
Trump’s name-calling was pervasive and non-stop and the rest of the right picked it up and ran with it. That his supporters lapped it up and repeated it constantly is proof of the bigotry on the right, not a defense of it.
If anything, the left doesn’t call names enough. Find a liberal of any stature who has called religion what it is – a bunch of made up garbage used to control people, warp their minds, and keep them voting for people who have no interest in helping them. Find a liberal pundit who uses the terms “religiot” or “conservatard” like the right wingers use “libtard”, “libs”, or even just “liberal” as an insult.
Pundits like that exist in abundance on the right, simply appealing to stupidity and bigotry – mostly because it’s profitable. And their masses repeat it ad nauseam, apparently because they are unable to develop their own opinions.
Not every Trump supporter is a bigot. But find a bigot – and they’re probably a Trump supporter. I have no doubt that some Trump supporters and other conservatives will rant and say that the liberals are the true racists, all while providing no support or proof. Of course that will only prove the very indictment being leveled at them – that they act through anger and emotion rather than facts or evidence.
Your opinions are wildly biased. You should go look up the definition of bigot, and then you should re-read your last paragraph. Stop generalizing people and understand that there are many valid reasons to explain why other people don’t agree with your ideology. It’s also best not to become a bigot or racist yourself even if only through bias, ignorance, or plain stupidity.
It’s a combination of racism, economics, and stupidity. Racism, definitely. Pure and simple. Economics, yes…and stupidity to think that Dictator Trump could help in any way or would want to.
Uhhh., it might have been worth a word or two that many if not most of Trump’s supporters voted against the most disliked candidate in living memory if not ever. A candidate who was clearly corrupted with corporate money, a close friend of Wall Street, a war monger and no less racist or anti immigrant if you actually study her public record. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Hillary Rotten Clinton.
I just really, really want to know which president has not accepted “corporate money,” and why, precisely, it was so many thousand times worse when Clinton did it than when anyone else in recent history did it. If T supporters voted against Clinton because they didn’t “like” her then I guess we can add misogyny to the list.
It is possible to dislike Clinton for reasons other than her gender.
As if the choices were exclusively Clinton and Trump the entire election, give me a break, the general election is only the last phase of the election process, which lasted 5 months or so… you’re completely ignoring almost 2 years of primary campaigning. This argument that Hillary is the most disliked candidate, thus Trump won is as flawed as they can be, first, both were unpopular choices, Trump was even more unpopular. Second, it wasn’t Trump vs Clinton the entire time, how do explain his primaries triumphs? against some very popular choices? Clinton was not a factor as he was running against 17 other candidates…. the field was fractured and crowded, he gain the support of a very vocal minority (around 30-40 percent) while the majority tolerated the tone and rhetoric, this vocal minority are the racists that this article talks about, the rest are either indifferent to racism, or quietly agree and support the rhetoric.
And sire (the angry buddhist ) if you thought Hillary was bad or rotten how can you stand the trump? And by the by I have never ever heard any Buddhist as opinionated or angry or write what you have written.
While recognizing Trump’s racist and nativist demagoguery and the crass support of it by some, I do not buy that the central cause of Trump’s electoral victory was racism,let alone calling someone ‘stupid’ for thinking so. Had Obama not had such a bad track record around addressing growing inequality and poverty and had Hilary not been such the poster child of the neoliberal project many saw as key to their demise, Trump would not have been successful. Many flocked to Bernie for the same reason they flocked to Trump. They both clearly read the discontent of the marginalized and were willing to be bold, questioning the status quo and proposing to replace the old with the new. Hilary was too worried about pleasing her funding sources. So, no, we cannot conclude it was mainly racism all that quickly. And we haven’t even talked about myriad other reasons why some might’ve voted the way they did such as the black vote which may be just as much about the structure of politics e.g. Democratic Party’s entrenchment in the black community, its politics and its churches.
It’s Hate and Fear, Racism is a created concept from the Johnson Administration. The fear that these white people are unable to compete on a level playing field. They have not developed the skills or self-esteem that are a natural by product of the struggle and the insight that it beings. They are at a disadvantage and killing, guns and war make them believe that they are secure. Get them before they get us. When “them” is living and enjoying their lives.
The media created resentment of whites for the last 8 years. Whites were to blame for everything. Blacks, minorities were to be seen as constant victims. When MSM keeps blaming you for everything and when you point “make them accountable like you do me” then you’re called a racist, what do you think will happen? For instance MSM said Trayvon Martin was a victim of white oppression because of George Zimmerman. But George Zimmerman was a person of color. Nonetheless, Martin shared in some accountability of his actions. Whether he should have been shot or not, he played a role in escalating the incident. However no scrutiny ever was directed at Martin. The MSM keeps this narrative over and over and over. Resentment occurs then “its just racism from you”. No dialogue, no investigation of facts. Minorities get emboldened and feel that racism is the reason for every situation. Finally no dialogue to work things out.
Reading some of the comments, it’s disheartening to see how some people will twist themselves into knots to deny racism or erect false equivalences. I believe that this problem is utterly intractable. The myths and self-delusions that buttress white identity are remarkably resilient. What’s more, clearly violence in defence of whiteness has long been seen as legitimate. And, emboldened, Trump supporters have already acted, though the media sees no reason to dwell on these “isolated incidents.” Whites are feeling that their supremacy is seriously being challenged. Electing Trump is just the first salvo.
number one reason: sexism
number two reason: racism
number three reason: economic/class divide
that’s the way we roll in america. we hate uppity women of color the most, followed by white women, followed by black men and white men pretty much get a pass. it doesn’t matter if he’s rich or poor, as long as he’s white. wealthy or poor, a black woman running for president wouldn’t have a glimmer of a chance in today’s america.
Hello! Condi Rice??? Oh but because she applied herself and did it the hard way and made good choices ( like other successfull people) she is somehow a sellout to the ghetto apologists… So sad
“Exceptions prove the rule,” I believe, is the apt cliche here.
This analysis is poor and actually quite dangerous. You cannot consistently say that there were not many vote switchers and that Trump won because of racism. Turnout wasn’t greater among Republicans to any large degree; Republicans received the same votes in 2016 as in 2012. Turnout among Dems in rust belt states was low. Whatever racism drove those Republican voters was there in previous years. To pretend that 2016 was unique is to minimize the problem of racism. It didn’t go away and come back. It never went away at all.
That woman on the left looks like she took way too many meds on her way to the rally. Either that or she’s having an orgasm. How revolting.
But race is not the cause of the great division in the United States. It is class, and always was.
This racism argument is so intellectually dishonest. The reason the US is the leader of the free world is because of the the Judean Christian culture. Agree or blindly oppose, the facts remains. No one has done more for those in need or risen to the challenge to defeat oppression then US. So to vote twice for a African American President and then be labeled racist is particularly galling. Would a Jew or Christian be elected in any Islamic country? There is little difference between the views of Nazis regarding Germans or Islam regarding Muslims. (Speaking of racists) where is your backbone to call this out? where people are actually experiencing brutal suffering as opposed to having their feelings hurt. La Rasa is a mainstream intrinsically rasict organisation, no different then the marginalized KKK. And why do African Americans vote 94% Democratically? What other race is this manipulated by their emotions? Is that not racist? Maybe you hold up Pakistan as a shining beacon of culture that is 98% Muslim because they killed or chased out all of the Hindus, while there are still hundreds of millions of Muslims living in India. There is no more racist culture then Islam on the planet! And your feckless diversions only high lights this.
Like I said, twisting yourself into knots. Why would African Americans vote 94% for the Democrats? Hmmmm. Let’s see: Southern Strategy, War on Drugs, Willie Horton, etc, etc. Ring a bell? Now, if one political party spent fifty years strongly hinting that they mean you no good, would you vote for them?
BLM is the most unabashedly racist, untruthful and violent movement in the US today. Hands up don’t shoot? What a lie. Why are other races responsible for the 81% single mother rate among Blacks? Personal responsibility? and voting Democract has done nothing for this. Why are over 50% of homicides perpetuated by black males between the ages of 16 and 35… 4% of the population????? Why are people not afraid young Asians or young Indians? No amount of political correctness will reset the balance of reality. Why are people not honest about this? Who are they trying to fake help? If you are out for a walk and see a lion on one side and a rabbit on the other, who would not ease toward the rabbit? Is this racist against lions? When lions have a reputation against killing people and rabbits do not? Why don’t black cab drivers pick up black passengers? Are they racist? Or using better judgement based on experience? We can all do better but there should only be one standard for everyone . The worst bigotry, is the bigotry if low expectations.
And what are we to make of the penchant of white men to commit mass murder? Is BLM responsible for that, too? And BLM absolutely dwarfs the Klan in terms of racist violence. All the white-identity activists gunned down over the years, the perps living free, untroubled the faint threat of prosecution, decades of white men being lynched , prayer groups being gunned down in churches, white children having to have to run a gauntlet of rabid black people just because they to go to a decent school. Who could blame you for wanting to cross the street to find succor with the bunny. Clearly, white people in America live in abject fear of those mean ol’ lions. And if some Indo- or Pakistani Americans are murdered because some people can’t distinguish a Sikh from a Muslim, well, that’s the price you pay for looking like a lion.
The truth is America is a lie, a lie built on genocide and slavery; a lie supported by roiling, delusional fantasies of exceptionalism and destiny, a lie safeguarded by injustice and violence, where just trying to have a decent life for yourself and your children is an outrageous affront to whiteness. My hope is that Trump and his flying circus is the last pathetic gasp of white nationalism, and one day even white people won’t want to be white anymore.
Wow! I wondered by some of your earlier comments but by your last sentence you really are an out and out racist. Add up all recent examples of “white mass murders” and it is eclipsed by the murder rate in any medium sized American city… not to mention Chicago, and not to mention many more potentially promising lives snuffed out due to OD’s. Mostly all in cities where POC are in charge. Why is this and what will killing all of the whites really do to your quality of life? Whites are not your problem. Contrary to your boogy man construct most of the Klan members are rotting. BLM is very much in full swing. President Obama (and his beautiful family)presented a shining example to youth. America is still the last best hope as Lincoln said, otherwise you can go to Libya as another commenter pointed out the ongoing slave auctions there. You do not have be among the simple minded, kept on the Democratic plantation, manipulated by crass race hustlers Sharpton and Farrakhan.
Wow, indeed. Yet another example of pretzel logic and racism denial. And your concern for “potentially promising lives snuffed out” is a laughable ruse. You’re not fooling anyone. Do paranoid delusions affect your ability to read? I re-read my last post – can’t find that reference to killing “all of the whites “; perhaps you can point that out to me. You continue the fine American tradition of treating even the most innocuous efforts to organize and stand up for rights by African Americans as a dangerous threat to the nation. Police infiltration of BLM is sinister madness. Perhaps you support the nihilistic evil of Dylann Roof – your “logic” seems to track with his. If not, then look in the mirror and get straight with yourself. I won’t suggest that you go to Libya – there’s plenty to do right here. Tell you what: I’ll give you a chance – if you are a person of good will, which you apparently think you are, here’s what you do: go join your local chapter of Black Lives Matter and roll up your sleeves.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/04/the-racism-v-economics-debate-again
Mehdi Hasan is stating that Trump was elected by white racism. As a Asian-American who worked 30 years as a union carpenter, I know Americans can be racist. However as a progressive activist, I have also experienced the deliberate self-destructive division fomented by people who claim to be with us. This opinion piece based on polls seems to be intentionally designed to sabotage our efforts. As we know the left needs no other enemies than the ones that claim to be left. Most of the people who have commented on Mehdi Hasan’s editorial are people that want to bring us together. The left has always had among its pundits and leaders people who seem to work for their own narcissistic self-aggrandizement. People who seems to stir up shit so they can smugly show that they are unique and clever. They may be sincerely or not progressive but they serve their on vanity. As members of the left we need to embrace humility, that comes from recognizing that we are all of this earth and Earth. We can only succeed by coming together. We don’t have to think and believe the same things but we need to share a common purpose. When Bernie Sanders says it’s not me it’s us, he is coming from a place of humility. We need to quit being our own worse enemy.
I got chills reading your comment (in a good way). Well said.
I’m a huge fan of The Intercept but agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments of John Jung with regard to this article.
In an already systemically racist country, neoliberal upwardly redistributive policies like those implemented and championed by the Clintons are inherently racist because the people who benefit are disproportionately white and vice versa. Also this article points out that economically disadvantaged favored Clinton. They always favor Democrats! They are the base! Maybe more of the Democratic base would have voted if Bill and Obama hadn’t sold them out and if the Dems had addressed their concerns in 2016 instead of mocking them (“free stuff,” etc). Also even though,again as always, Republican voters skewed more wealthy, key electoral swing votes were in poor areas hit hardest by neoliberalism.
These are not mutually exclusive issues. We are at a level of economic inequality not seen since before the great depression. This “economic insecurity” is exactly the situation from which scapegoating arises and demagoguery works best- pointing fingers and punching down is the constant tactic of power in the face of growing instability. The argument that this is all inherent means nothing has changed and only Trump’s would have ever been elected at any point in America. Seeing these as separate issues is to completely ignore nuance and interconnectivity. Anti-globalism that Trump ran on (remember he campaigned with the brexit party) also combines these issues- demographic shifts, global corporatism/outsourcing become one thing that is sourced as causing the pain people feel.
Glad to one of the first few comments I scanned stated what I would have hoped people reading and writing here might have known implicitly: it is complicated.
One of the main thrusts here: people who are reasonably well off voted for him and not those below them. Easy to explain: they see what has happen to some of their neighbors or relatives and though, I’d better vote Trump to keep is from happening to me. I’m just some computer dork in NJ and that seem obvious to me. I would have hoped someone writing here might have seen that.
Next, we have seen, and just read American history, that race and class are intertwined, but when you improve class issues the race ones begin to almost move forward. It is really simple, if more people have a job, and are doing ok, they just don’t give a damn about much else. That is kind of the American way.
And so what if some of the people mentioned in this piece are avoiding the elephant in the room, Americans are racist. Yes we are. But a hell of a lot less so than most anywhere else, and will addressing PC nonsense get people jobs and keep them fed. Nope. But will taking the hands that tip the scales of markets in favor of everything-but-labor help, yes. How could it not.
I come from the Maslow view of the world: physiological is way below esteem and even safety
Surveys cited in the story leave out one of the biggest election deciding factors: Hillary was not a strong candidate. She’s got intellect, passion and compassion. An amazing woman. But she just didn’t connect with voters. A stronger, more appealing candidate could have easily pushed the votes in favor of the democratic party.
I believe we voted for Trump because we are tired of lawlessness. He started on the day he announced his candidacy by talking about criminals who we could actually do something about: Illegal Aliens who break our laws with impunity, ravage our tax paid gov’t services and wave their flags in hate for our country.
We hope that when laws are enforced on one level, there is a chance they will be enforced on other levels. The reverse of this has gone on too long and there is lawlessness at every level of our society. It produces a creeping lack of joy, pride and morality which wears the spirit down. If it seems racist, it is because many criminals are other-than WASPs, but what we really want is law and order for all members of our society.
It seems to us that Progressives have lost the traditional “moral compass”, unable to even tell their own gender, let alone what is right and what is wrong. They have chosen to accept that which has always been illegal or illicit in society to be perfectly acceptable and they call it “evolving”. Trump supporters have been pushed too far, too fast and we have chosen a traditional, morally defined, black and white worldview, but not, as Hasan says, a racist black vs. white worldview.
Amen! I agree 100%
If you asked most of these racists who voted for Trump if they are racist or not, they would say they are NOT racist. To get these people to vote for the Democrats, it wouldn’t be good politics to call them out as racist as it would only ramp up their resentment. I am sure (or at least hope) that Sanders & Warren to name but two are aware of this.
Mr Hasan,
I was a huge fan of your work until today. As your fan AND a Trump supporter who voted against a thirty-year entrenched oligarchy–I can say that you are wildly off-base in your attempts to smear Trump supporters as ‘racists.”
By perpetuating this vile, partisan smear campaign, you not only do an injustice to the millions of working men and women who voted for Trump.
And ultimately you have alienated me–an advocate for openess and dialogue.
You have now positioned yourself as the enemy, sir.
How unfortunate.
you’re an ‘advocate for openess & dialogue’ then the next line you throw him in a playground bracket and call him ‘the enemy’. perfectly sums up political discourse in 2017.
This is the dumbest article I’ve ever read on the Intercept.
Hahaha. Agreed, your comment is perfectly succinct and there is no need to expound.
Trump got a larger proportion of both the black and the latino vote than did Romney.
And don’t forget: 1 in 5 Trump voters on election day stated that they thought he was unfit for the office. So maybe it was just that 20% of Trump voters who were non-racist whites. Still, it was enough to tip the scales.
The real argument is not that we have millions of racists in America – that has always been true, and to think otherwise is to be naive. But we always had many, MANY more non-racists. But they stayed home this election. And so the election was swung by the switchers who voted for Trump, and many new voters, first-time voters, who finally found a racist platform they could get behind.
There is an old saying: “all it takes for Evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Well, 2016 was a case in point. Hillary Clinton could not motivate a non-racist voter base to come out to the polls, and so the race was lost. But it was lost because of the white middle class voters who were voting AGAINST Clinton, and not FOR Trump.
This article is so lopsided. Racism probably accounted for about 10% to 20% of the election if that. If one takes into account the fact that 4 states that have been blue for as long as I’ve been alive (over 50 yrs) went red, then this argument falls like a house of cards. Those 4 states were the rust belt states, not to mention blue collar West Virginia. All those states voted Obama in 2008 and 2012. Even Minnesota almost went red. MINNESOTA!!! I’m sorry but you don’t get to claim racism when blue collar turn red when the Democrats sold them out since the 1970’s. You don’t get to self righteously claim racism when you look at those states an how negligent the Democratic party (and Hillary’s campaign) has been toward them especially since the 1990’s when NAFTA was passed. And you don’t get to claim racism when classism was the major issue of this campaign. And you especially do not get to claim racism when in fact Hillary won the popular vote. I’m so sick and tired of this kind of divisive rhetoric. The writer clearly still does not get it!
I think your completely wrong about why people voted for Trump. Here’s the real reasons, take it or leave it, but it’s the truth.
1. Honesty and professionalism – Obama and Hillary were caught in too many lies, Benghazi, Stand Up Don’t Shoot, War on Cops, Hillary’s Emails, Uranium deals, Clinton Foundation corruption, etc.. I think most Trump voters are sick and tired of politics and politicians. In corporate America we have professionals for whatever their job is to a large degree. Placing people in jobs when they don’t know what they are doing, just because they are big donors or have been in your party for a long time or helped get you elected does not help the citizens of the US and they are likely not worth their pay. We need professionals that have experience that is needed to fit the job. That doesn’t mean they know the particular government forms, but that they have the job skills that will help them do a good job.
2. Assimilation – Hillary’s policies we’re to increase immigration of all types, illegal, refugees, etc. The general population could see what was happening to Europe from increased immigration, including horrible attacks from ISIS in Paris, Nice, etc. Also, the environment in Europe is changing with No-Go areas, Call To Pray Bells ringing, a completely different culture. All immigrants to the US except the Muslims have assimilated into our country. Many of these new Muslims immigrants don’t fit with our values, ie: Hate Gays, Women are second class citizens, berkas, etc. If you want to see what Hillary’s plan was, spend a few days in East Dearborn, MI. In the US we have what most people love about America, that we can be whatever we want and no one cares. Why would we want to bring millions of people here that don’t agree with those values?
3. Stop Sanctuary cities – Something like 70% of Americans don’t believe that we should allow illegals aliens to cross our borders and hurt or rob people and then be protected by local governments. We’re used to the migrant workers and are friends with many of them, but neither the migrant workers nor the America citizens want to have gangs like MS13 coming here and being protected. We want safe cities,
4. Bring Back the Factories – We want to help improve the lives of people in inner city communities. We went to school and worked with many African Americans and it’s not fair for their communities to turn into war zones. Some of it is drug gangs, but if there were more jobs for poor white, black and hispanics and we enforced the laws to stop the gun battles, it could go a long way to bringing it back to how it was in the 70s and 80s or even better. We lost too many manufacturing jobs which dramatically impacted the inner city communities. We need to stop buying everything from China and start buying Made in the USA again. Not because we’re horrible racist, xenophobes or whatever, but because when we were young inner cities had there black neighborhoods, hispanic neighborhoods, polish neighborhoods, etc. and many had good jobs, and it wasn’t a war zone filled with gangs, but instead families where mom worked for Ma Bell and Dad work for GM/Ford/Chrysler, or some other factory job. What has happened is horrible and all the Trump voters that I know have or had black friends, hispanic friends, etc. that they worked with or went to school with, where their families lives in those neighborhoods and we’ve seen what happened to their neighborhoods because of the loss of jobs.
5. Way too many people have died in Syria and throughout the Middle East. We need to either leave them alone or help. We don’t want to pick their government, they don’t have to be Democracies, we just want them to be safe. We need to help the people when their governments or terrorist attack the people living there, but we don’t want to pick and choose who gets to run the governments, like Hillary in Libya. We can’t change the Muslim people to like LGBTQ or promote women in their societies and we should not try to. Hillary was obnoxious about Libya’s president for no reason and made a horrible mess.
That’s much of what Trump was talking about by MAGA (Make America Great Again).. You may not be old enough to understand how the US was, but it wasn’t as bad as you apparently think it was. These are the reason’s people voted for Trump. All the news media attacks were not enough to change our minds because no one cares what Trump does in his personal life or how he was with women as a billionaire playboy. That’s not the point. Trump talked about fixing all these problems and Trump supporters agreed. It’s really that simple!
Agree!!!
This article really should have been labelled “Opinion.”
While I’m inclined to agree with the author’s opinion (I’ve long felt that racism aimed at the Scary Black President was behind the rise of the tea party movement, and that that movement, in turn, presaged the rise of Trump), nonetheless I found myself unable to draw any intellectual sustenance from this article. I was left feeling that I’d need to spend a month or two very carefully studying the sources the author cites in order to understand whether or not his opinions lead logically from that data. I don’t have that kind of time to devote. If the data are there, the author should have summarized them rather more and rather better. Presumably that’s the kind of thing he’s paid for, yes?
Mehdi you are trying mightily to sort out your insecurities but it comes down to culture. There is a reason everyone wants to come to the USA. This needs to be anylised and accepted. With the same advantages some adapt and some don’t. Why is this? Some come from countries where it is normal to kill Jews and Christians and let their women do all the work while the men drink coffee. Then blame everyone else for there problems. To those who embrace a superior culture and lose the chip on their shoulders, this sky is the limit
Not convinced. Certainly all fervent racists who bothered to vote, voted for Trump, but a significant portion of Trump voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, and Florida voted for Obama in 2008, yet voted Trump in 2016. Also: a large proportion of HRC primary voters also had racist responses to polling questions, perva Reuters poll taken after the primary: https://www.google.com/amp/amp.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/29/reuters_hillary_clinton_supporters_are_pretty_racist_too.html
Last I knew, Hillary Clinton was a member of the same race as Donald Trump. Kinda hard to make the election all about racism when both Clinton and Trump are white.
To get around this hurdle, the author discusses Obama as if he was the candidate running against Trump. But that was never true. In fact, the polls I saw all indicated that Obama would have soundly beaten Trump.
Oh, and concerning the claim that one could tell with high confidence that a white person would vote for Trump because they would say “yes” when asked if Obama was a Muslim, that’s because the only place to get that “Obama is a Muslim” shit was on right -wing media. When in a few years we discover that Democratic voters provide the same answer to the “Is Trump a Russian agent?” question, will that show they aren’t racists?
“Kinda hard to make the election all about racism when both Clinton and Trump are white.”
It’s hard for people who aren’t very bright and can’t read or understand the article. For others, it’s easy to understand that Trump appealed to racists and Clinton did not.
there’s not even a hint of a racial component to trump/russia fixation
This is nonsense. Your references are very weak and they have their own identity-politics-driven agenda. Class and economics remain the most crucial deciding factors in my view
There was never any doubt that Trump’s campaign was fundamentally racist and driven by white supremacy. The studies leave no doubt that racial attitudes, combined with turnout in key states, tipped the scale for Trump. Also, it is far from surprising to see this happen in a country where white supremacy was a central belief of the founders and subsequent generations of whites. But there is also little doubt from exit polls (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-mood-idUSKBN1332NC?il=0 ) that a belief in a rigged economy is the one thing that unites most voters, regardless of their racial attitudes or other political beliefs. I think, for better or worse, Sanders and Warren are focused on the one position — fighting an economy rigged for the rich and against the average person — that can produce victory at the polls for a progressive agenda.
Medhi’s conclusions are ridiculous. How can exit polling, and interview data be tallied as facts? People are mischievous. With your line of reasoning I could say that the Latinos, Africans, Indians, and Europeans I’ve interviewed at my job represent facts regarding the economy. Guess what? I did just that, and the results are in: Regardless of skin color, ethic background, or party affiliation my fellow oil field workers say it IS the economy, stupid. I also interviewed fellow workers years ago, when the immigration and the free trade boom in North America was just gaining momentum. Back then I found a correlation between the availability of cheap labor and the collapse of wages. I was once a finish carpenter, a job I loved, and one day I found I couldn’t afford to go to work so I was forced to switched careers. All the cohorts I interviewed agreed-wages sucked. My subjects had dark skin, light skin, and medium olive skin. Most concluded our careers had been ruined by a massive glut of workers. For example, I interviewed a Coasta Rican lead electrician working in Florida who made $14 an hour. This was in 2001. In the early 1990s that same job paid $27 to $30 an hour in my home state of Michigan. This electrician was happy to make $14 an hour. He sent his money home and lived on the cheap while in the states. Another Mexican worker I knew came to Florida, installed drywall for 15 years as a 1099 contractor and then went home and retired! Good for him, right? Sure, but what about the citizen worker and contractor who play by the rules? We’ve created an economy that rewards cheating. It wasn’t racism that elected President Trump, it was the economic corruption now masked as cultural diversity. Medhi’s conclusions are an example of blaming the victim. Maybe he should come out from behind his walnut desk and find out what’s really happened in the US.
The premise of this post seems wrong — completely wrong. “Top Democrats” don’t even recognize economic anxiety as an issue, much less attribute to it their failure in the election. After all, what failure? It was the “Trump Chumps”, the “Bernie Bros”, the Russians, Comey, the Electoral College, ad infinitum. Most of them spent the campaign ridiculing the notion that people might be motivated by economic anxieties. And it is important to note that in their campaign no mistakes were made (such as ignoring the economy). So, having noted this, what was your point?
Just go find a Trump voter and talk to them like Bernie did. You can make statistics say whatever you want.
So what were you expecting from Bernie and Warren? That in the name of scrupulous truth, they would tell voters: “We know you’re racists, so vote for Democrats because we are racists too, just politically correct ones”?
People aren’t born racist; racism has to be cultivated. It is part of the mandate of education to address it, but given the state of K-12 education in the US, it’s more likely unwittingly to allow that process of cultivation to continue.
Racism in America is a tradition. You cannot sell “exceptionalism,” “manifest destiny,” “indispensable nation,” “civilization’s last best hope” bullshit to the population and not expect a vast majority of citizens to internalize it.
I think Nathan pretty much sums up what I have to say…
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/04/the-racism-v-economics-debate-again
Really? This took some intellectual dissection to determine? I’m a little stunned, honestly, at how s-l-o-w people are being to come around to thesimple, blatant, ugly Truth about these people. THEY’RE RACISTS. They’ve been overt racist all the way through the campaign and feel all warm ‘n’ runny, now, about Trump’s “victory”, which they see as a validation of their terror and umbrage at immigrants and blacks and foreigners and “Mexicans” (their all-purpose term for ayone of Hispanic descent). They’re human vermin, simply put. Reading this headline, the only response I can muster is: DUH.
I am elderly and have seen both political parties completely change. Many voters my age vote for the same party they have always voted for, thinking they know what their party really stands for.
I never really liked Hillary. I voted twice for Obama and would do so again. I voted for Hillary because she was better than Trump.
The night Trump won I sat in shock for hours. I just couldn’t believe it.
After the initial shock and horror wore off I decided to figure out Trump voters. I waded into ultra-conservative websites, read about the position of constitutionalists, the Tea Party, Trumps website, the Republican website and immersed myself fully into their world for a month. At first I nearly broke my smart phone listening to podcasts from Mark Levin and others like him. I even went on The Blaze and Infowars.
I thought I would walk out of the fog after a month and walk back out as the progressive I had always been. But that didn’t happen.
There was so much I loved about Ron Paul and the libertarian party. I found myself reading the constitution and federalist papers as I became more enthralled with the constitutionalists. The Tea Party had me so riled up about illegal immigration that I joined Numbers.org.
That month was very eye-opening. I now completely understood the Trump voters. I even agreed with many of them. They taught me that we had lost our way as a country, as a people, who fought to create the United States of America- a place where citizens came first and government second.
I now understood why some fought to shrink and limit the federal governments control over the states. I realized we no longer had a People’s House in congress but it had been stolen by lobbyists, special interest and big money.
I wished as a kid I had paid more attention in civics and government class. I now realized how ignorant I had been about my own government.
Some days I agreed with the tea party and other days I was all in favor of socialized health care for our country.
It has been several months now since my social experiment and I see politics very differently. Ever since we agreed to unite our states under one government we have been arguing about how much power to give them. We have agreed to have some parts of our government be somewhat socialist and others not. And it is this tension that keeps us arguing.
How far do we stray from the original intent of the constitution? Is it written in stone or is it a living document? What exactly did the founders mean or intend to convey? Were the founders warnings merited? Did they know something about corruption and tyrannies that we don’t? Have we over-stepped the checks and balances built into our government?
Our country was founded on the principles of individualism, personal freedom and liberty for each person. Voters were intended to be the rider of the horse, not the horse riding the rider.
Our government is now a hybrid of government types. Some voters want to become more socialist, some want to have minimal federal government, and some like it how it is. I think the basic question for each American to answer is whether or not the Constitution still reflects our values and whether it is still relevant.
Racists voted the same as they always do.
They never were Obama voters.
They were not the ones who put Trump over the top.
Given the choice between two deplorable candidates, Trump was less deplorable, in key states.
Disappointing to read this neo-liberal propaganda in the Intercept – it’s something one would expect from MSNBC or Vox. It’s ridiculous to say that Clinton lost in 2016 because of racism – of course, if Hasan was correct, Obama never would have won in 2008 and 2012.
Hasan twists and turns to make the case that the economy is a minor issue, when the facts show the dramatic increase in economic inequality in the U.S. the past forty years. Perhaps if he did some basic research, reading “Who Stole the American Dream?” by Hedrick Smith, or “Winner-Take-All Politics” by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, he’d understand that there’s been a successful campaign to concentrate wealth among a small percentage of Americans.
The Democratic Party has been complicit in this shift, losing credibility because of it. But while people like Hasan are doing fine economically, the majority of Americans aren’t, and they want someone who’ll take their side against increasingly powerful corporations and the wealthy. Polls show that Sanders would have handily beat Trump, as Sanders has credibility where Clinton, a former Walmart Board Director, does not. Hasan ignores the polls, and pooh-poohs the economic pain of most Americans, because it doesn’t fit his neo-liberal narrative.
Not that simple. suggest you read the book by Hochshild STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND.
Saw an extensive study about this during the election demonstrating those in the far right in other countries were very much drawn to anti-immigration statements. It further said Trump was using their “playbook” in the election. Good to see another study bearing this out. Thanks.
It’s the crappy Clinton campaign, stupid. Bernie Sanders would have won against Trump. If you enjoy identity politics, and division of Americans by race, this article is for you! DENIAL is not a river in EGYPT.
Maybe it was the sexism
I like this article and appreciate that you were willing to rock the Democrat’s boat. Thank you.I agree with you; and looking at the history of our country I see racism has always been driven by economic forces, as much or more at any given time than by hate and bigotry. They go hand in hand and feed and fuel each other. You have made a researched, thoughtful and reasoned argument; but calling people “stupid” is not the way we will win the fight for understanding what really happened in the 2016 election, and how to make sure this country will change enough to not let it happen again. Respect is a good thing to practice when we need to change people’s mind.
While racism certainly played a large role in the election of Donald Trump, racism is often created or exacerbated by economic insecurity. Illegal immigrants for example drive down the price of labor since they don’t legally have to be payed minimum wage. While this does not give someone a valid reason to hate all immigrants, it does sheed some light how immigrants became a scapegoat for our trashed economy. The top 1% has been pouring large amounts of money into funding candidates that blame anyone but the real culprits; ginning up racism based on a seed of truth is the perfect strategy to discombobulate the American people and redirect their hate and frustration. The campaign of manipulation also monopolized on rural white people who may have met one or two black people in their lives and lumping them into a the scapegoats as “other”. Similarly, the American war machine has a vested interest in creating hate toward muslims for locking down support for expensive, needless war. As Jeremy Scahill said, “Trump is one of the greatest manipulators of our time.” While many people in this country have become racist, it’s not as though that racism hasn’t been exacerbated by boucoup dollars to keep the American people ignorant and fighting eachother, as apposes to the real thugs, the 1%.
First the Hillbullys blamed Jill Stein, when in fact, Gary Johnson took more votes from Trump. Then it was Bernie or Busters in swing states. Then it was Comey. Then it was Wikileaks. Then it was her campaign strategy ( not stumping in the rust belt.) And oh by the way, polling showed the more people know about her does not move the needle favorably. She was hog tied by her handlers reducing her speeches to hollow, aspirational word salad. Fake news that influenced impressionable, low info Berniecrats ( most insulting.) And then the big Red boogieman. I see what you did Mr Hasan. Laying the groundwork for Hillary2020. Her speeches will still be devoid of issues. Only this time, no one will notice. The Minority Majority will come out en masse to annoint their messianic leader.
Thanks Mehdi. Well said. I think Warren’s plan is to run for the next presidential election. So, she does not want to make Trump supporters upset by calling them racist even if they might enjoy being called racist. Its could be their badge of honor. That is how blatant they are. Warren and the Democratic party need to go away and give way to a 3rd party that is truly democratic and representative of true equality and true justice at home and abroad.
this doesn’t make sense. The article just made the case that Trump voters don’t care about true equality and true justice and yet you slam the dems to go and create true equality and true justice…..
“It isn’t the economy. It’s the racism, stupid.”
I disagree. One’s standard of living and therefore their exposure to other cultures is highly influenced by the culture they grow up in. If people are not exposed to other lifestyles, they believe their own to be the only valid one. Racism is a cultural and economic phenomenon, period, and only an excuse to blame others.
But if you insist, then perhaps you will admit that Obama won the 2012 election because racist African Americans voted him in, and then couldn’t quite get the same fervor up to elect pale-skinned Hillary in 2016?
Exactly. Racists voted the same way they always do. They did not put Trump over the top. Hasan’s reasoning is backwards. I’d also point out that those with Political Science degrees are not scientists.
Wow! If I were to judge this piece based on the number of comments it received, I can certainly say that Mehdi touched a nerve. While Trump claims to be “the least racist person you will ever meet” those of us who had the ability to comprehend his words during the campaign believe otherwise. The man has a long track record of being a bigot. It is difficult to dismiss racism as the reason his voters found him appealing.
When I asked a close friend of mine what he finds appealing about Trump during the campaign, he told me, “He says all the things I feel and want to say but cannot.” This came from a well to do businessman who is a die-hard Republican and was not hurting financially/economically and will openly admit that his businesses have done much better when Democrats are in the White House than when Republicans do.
I guess it is true when they say, “the truth hurts”
You might want to go deeper on this issue, Mehdi.
“In the immediate aftermath of 9 11, Americans behaved with extraordinary compassion and efficiency. Police and firefighters streamed in from around the country. Blood banks and food banks overflowed. Doing one’s part restored a sense of national pride; people responded to the existential threat with assertions of their own value as well as that of their homeland. But lingering death fears also intensified Americans’ zeal to derogate, dehumanize, demonize, assimilate, and destroy. Christian evangelist Franklin Graham denounced Islam as “a very evil and wicked religion.” Lieutenant General William Boykin, the U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, portrayed the conflict with Islamic radicals as a fight against the devil: “The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.” Former secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger said, “You have to kill some of these people; even if they were not directly involved, they need to be hit.
Solomon, Sheldon; Greenberg, Jeff; Pyszczynski, Tom. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life
As I understand it, if we, as humans, find ourselves in a dire existential threat, we inevitably dehumanize those who we believe are threatening us. But it does not have to be those of another race. Existential threats are also economic. Needless to say, we are in the midst of one right now and those afflicted by it is causing much angst even to the point of suicide. When you are in this state of mind, you become powerless and desperate. Unconsciously, you become vulnerable to credulity hence you believe the narrative that Muslims and other races are evil hence you project your wrath against them. But you also want a savior i.e. someone who has the power to change things. So the blind idolization of Trump becomes inevitable yet all the while the vast majority of the population fail to acknowledge the degree in which our dysfunctional economic system THAT BENEFITS THE FEW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEV4_CGxOTk
is affecting them emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually; we don’t live in a vacuum. The America Dream can only be realized by how much you earn and if the working and middle class is being hollowed out, this dream turns into a living nightmare. When we hurt economically, it brings out the worst in us. As spiritual teacher Gangagi said, we all have our inner fascist. Some people act it in while others act it out and it’s the latter that will only get worse if our economic dysfunction continues. A loner or a group of people are going to snap and we already see it taking place around the world and at home. Whether it’s white supremacist or radical Islam, our dysfunctional economy affects us far more than we realize. So to say that the sole cause of our problems is racism is, I believe, misguided. It runs much deeper than that; it’s existential.
Racism exists everywhere. I must agree that this article contains “lazy argumentation ” that is disturbing, its conclusions are mostly superficial. Not up to the usual standards we expect from the otherwise great editorial staff at The Intercept. As a white male, 60 + resident of the rustbelt in Pennsylvania, to borrow a line from Bill Clinton’s first campaign, “It’s the economy, Stupid!” Based upon my observations and experience, I’d have to say that the racism in my neck of the woods is more “Democratic,” subtle and oppressive and asserted mostly by the entrenched” political class (the Democratic “caree technocrats” and the Republican sociopaths who ALL need to be removed. I however, won’t live to see it change in my lifetime. The status quo is very much alive and functioning ever more oppressively– just fine. Not whips and chains, but lots of debt and 19th Century “class oppression.” A “new and improved” antebellum culture. And THIS kind of approach is too narrow to move all but the most “niche” of voters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26-VzfBZg1w&feature=youtu.be
Well said. It’s amazing to watch all of this finger pointing, “no stupid”-ing, and general lack of awareness of the machine. Since the beginning of US history, elites have separated and inflamed racism in the poor, whites against blacks, blacks against Asians, etc, to keep them screaming at each other rather than attacking the power structure that set it up. And of course, to keep the liberals feeling superior about their inherently racist system. The “subtle democrat’s” racism that awards white people loans to move into better areas is far, far more powerful and destructive than the poor Trump supporter. In a country where the per capita income is $29,000/person, how can anything NOT be an economic issue? But no, it’s all about me and my issue, stupid.
Further, the racist republicans were there in 2008 and 2012. It was the rust belt white counties that flipped from Obama to Trump in 2016 that changed this election. All those people who voted for Obama suddenly became rabid racists? If that’s your take, this isn’t going to go anywhere.
This seems like a guy with only a hammer looking high and low for nails
Well said. The whole article is framed somewhat dishonestly. Quoting nonsensical research into “the best way to identify a Trump voter” is pointless – yes, idiots who thought that Obama is a Muslim will have overwhelmingly voted for Trump – that does *not* mean that Trump voters overwhelmingly think that Obama is a Muslim. I refuse to accept that someone who writes for the Intercept isn’t capable of distinguishing between implication and equivalence.
Likewise, no one ever said that an economically motivated voter is a voter living in poverty. Yes, Trump voters “earn relatively high household incomes” – most of Americans still do. And yes, the majority of those earning less than 50k per year voted for Clinton – a whopping majority of 52%. That’s actually shockingly low – almost half of the lowest bracket believed in Trump’s Tremendous Fairy Tales.
Also, the conclusion is a) obnoxiously formulated and b) unsupported by any of the statistics quoted. It’s supported only by the opinions of Philip Klinkner, who happens to be “an expert on race relations”.
In the last twenty years I have run across more racist bigotry against white men than any other group. Thanks to the liberal teachers and professors this trend is unlikely to change. I voted for Trump because he was attacked by everyone and all the corporate owned media. White people have been blamed for everything. Is it any wonder that a group of people, a group blamed for everything, would fight back by voting for a candidate that supports them? Turning into a racist because racist attack you? Why don’t you research Cause and Effect on this issue? Oh, that’s right, it wouldn’t further your group of racist, would it?
Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren don’t run the Democratic Party, the Party is busy blaming it on race, Russia, anything but their failed economic message.
Duh a lot of Trump voters are racist, but at least a certain segment of them are reachable and have voted for Black Democrats not so long ago. Also what none of these dumb articles never talk about are all the working class people that stayed home because of the Democrats failed economic message. 30% of the population voted for Trump, remember that when reading this garbage.
http://mein-krampf.org/2017/04/08/black-obama-white-trumpet-show-must-go-on-capitalism-vs-democracy-and-dictatorship-plus-mass-psychology/
#mass #manipulation #psychology
Nice article, Mr Hasan. Apparently touched a nerve, given the comments. I would remind that one should always ask…who visits the site? who reads the article? who comments? Within the latter, I find it amusing that the responses support points made in the article that the commenters disagree with. By the way, I don’t see in your article much about obverse motivations: dislike of Hillary Clinton and all that goes with it.
There is no new information here just aggregation.
Democrats/liberals mirror Republicans/conservatives when their belief structure is threatened.by views and facts they can’t explain. They both go off the rails and as vile hate and insults fly off their key board and out of their mouths.
Liberals only believe their party propaganda and the conservatives clowns only believe the propaganda from the insane clown party.
And it’s no wonder why the two party system has a death grip on the minds of Americans. They are happy drunks at the football game blindly cheering for their teams to the death not realizing that both teams the cheerleaders, the announcers and the stadium is all owned by the same small group and have no love of football but loves the profit and power it provides.
We see drunk fans blindly cheer in reality in liberals blind faith in DNC and deep state propaganda and constructed fantasy of Putin hacking of the election.
Which perfectly parallels the blind faith the wacko right wing had for the GOP and deep states constructed fantasy of WMDs in Iraq.
It’s all absolute BS.
Time to sober up and put down the giant foam fingers and leave the propaganda stadium of insanity and control and look at the world outside the corporate cave shadows that you all think is reality.
Well said, Joel.
Why did a majority of those earning under $50,000 a year vote for Hillary? Because they realized they had more to lose than to gain from Trump’s proposed flat income tax rate of 15%.
I agree with the many who say this is the worst article ever in the Intercept. It is just lazy argumentation that is so disturbing, let alone the conclusions reached. Trump won because a large percentage of people who voted for Obama (the BLACK guy) did not vote for Hillary in the swing states. The reason they did so was because they voted for the Obama who promised Hope and Change and then watched as he did nothing of the sort – and Hillary paid the price. No racism there.
Where were you when Obama was destroying one country after another in the Middle East in the name of regime change with drones and CIA operations? Now that Obama created a mass refugee crisis it’s so easy to reduce all problems to one word racism. Give me s friggin break. So sick of hearing this…
Is it not true that he decreased the presence in the middle east in comparison to the previous president who started it all? Similarly to Guantanamo Bay, he promised to closed it and the number of people held in there is now much smaller (although he did not achieve the closure).
If you have a specific example of how he was the aggressor, as was the case with Bush, I’ll be happy to hear about it. I think that if anyone should be blamed for middle east, it is Bush.
I completely agree with being against the drone operations.
Mateusz Bieniek — Hi, I just wanted to reply… Jackie Marcus is right that Obama and Hillary’s (as his secretary of state) penchant for regime change has created a refugee crisis. Trump wants to ban these people (which is not right at all) but, in contrast, Obama has been destroying the homelands of the same people as well as maiming and killing them.
Obama was supposed to be a peace president, yet he expanded George Bush’s drone program and it was reported that it kills civilians 90% of the time rather than the intended terrorist target (so there’s no such thing really as a “targeted” airstrike). So our presence—like boots on the ground—may have decreased, but that has not decreased the amount of carnage and destruction. Not by a long shot.
Obama also expanded Bush’s wars from 2 countries to 7, so now we’re bombing Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. It was reported that in 2015 or early 2016 we actually ran out of bombs because we were dropping so many—70-some per day.
It has been reported—by more liberal, reputable news outlets—that Obama has destabilized the middle east so that it is now worse than when he first became president.
Here’s an article that you may want to read, thanks:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy
Melissa, note that is an opinion piece you cited.
I’d like the Intercept to explain “Editor’s Pick.” Who are the editors? How did each get chosen to become an editor and by whom? And what is Peter Maass background and connection to The Intercept?
These are some of the most bigoted comments I have seen onthe intercept, which says a LOT about how important it is to talk about race and Trumpism.
Medhi wrote a much needed and interesting critique – which as the left we should be embracing to discuss on its merits and also where we may want to reply- and you all sound like the alt-right in here. You’re representing Bernie poorly, if that is the goal. (I am and remain a devoted Bernie voter & fan). I am disturbed by how much a certain flavor of ” leftist” only wants to contribute by shitposting just like you’re Pepe or something. Go back to 4chan.
Wow, sum up the motivations of 40 million people in 500 words based on the research of an academiciam at Hampshire and – wait for the drumroll – it was racism after all. Keep this up Medhi and you could end up at the NYT or CNN. I know they use simplistic shit like this a lot. Question is, why am I reading it here. Maybe The author should go back to TV work.
Agree with Kopeck. Hope this isn’t the beginning to the demise of the Intercept into light weight, sellout journalism. I’m shocked to see this poorly researched and reasoned piece in the Intercept.
If polls and surveys were accurate they might have accurately predicted the outcome of the election.
They say that distance can give one perspective. From here in Australia, Mehdi’s article seems like such plain common sense obvious truth one wonders why it needed to be written.
Judging by the comments below, however, it would appear the fog is thick on the ground.
Bernie and Elizabeth are “top democrats”? Both Sanders and Warren have been more popular with regular citizens, but within the party they are like outsiders as the party has often sought to marginalize them both because of their messages against corporations running government (which now happens on both sides of the aisle).
“Both Sanders and Warren seem much keener to lay the blame at the door of the dysfunctional Democratic Party and an ailing economy than at the feet of racist Republican voters.”
Yes, that IS the problem; they’re exactly right. That is why Trump was able to win—Democratic support in key states was low, lower than when Obama ran. If those Republican m’effers do anything right, it’s consistently getting their base out to vote. When Democratic voters are uninspired, they don’t show up… I think that it was reported that almost half the country did not even vote in the 2016 election. Clinton’s unfavorable ratings were close to what Trump’s were the entire election season, so she was not inspiring the Democratic base to come out and vote where she needed them to in order to win the electoral college. Hillary took for granted the “Democratic firewall” in places like Michigan and Wisconsin and didn’t even campaign in those places until a mad dash at the very end—just a day or two before the vote. Actually, I don’t think she went to Wisconsin at all….
“… Trump won a majority of non-educated whites, college-educated whites… more young white voters than Clinton… and a majority of white women…”
Mr. Hasan, you can’t seriously be arguing that all of these people are racists? Through polling we know that most people in America actually agree with a Bernie Sanders agenda of fairness and using our resources to benefit everyone, which is about as far from racism as it gets. Even though racism is indeed a problem in parts of this country, I think that your article fear mongers in that it paints with too broad a brush. A lot of Republican voters are racist, but they do not at all represent any kind of majority. The Republicans won because their base of support is generally more solid, and Hillary did not get enough support from her own base. When voter turnout is low, Democrats often lose.
Less about economic hardship per se, the last election was about people being disillusioned with the political status quo—THAT was the most important factor, not racism. So Clinton was at a disadvantage from the start due to her political insider status. When studies show that corporate powers have a much greater influence in the political sphere and the voice of the people has been greatly diminished by big money in politics (it is LEGAL to bribe politicians now, the Citizens United legislation made it possible for our government to essentially be bought off by multinational corporations, the military industrial complex, and the big banks), people can see that there is something deeply wrong. So change is DESPERATELY needed in this country, and Trump pretended to be an agent of change who was against the political establishment; THIS is what people were responding to most.
Also, Trump often pretended to be against trade deals that have cost jobs to U.S. workers. Meanwhile, most people were aware that Hillary Clinton had pushed for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) 40-some times (as reported by CNN) and during the election Obama was trying to push the TPP through as well; this was a big tactical error that turned off a lot of working people from the Democratic party altogether and Trump was there to capitalize on it.
Also, given the economic problems we have and that our political system has been bought by corporate interests and largely does not work for regular citizens, it was a HUGE mistake for Hillary to answer Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan with “America already IS great”; it showed voters that she was fully entrenched in the establishment status quo and was not aware of—or didn’t care about—the issues that they were concerned about so they probably figured she wouldn’t do anything to help them.
Economic anxiety is being driven by the fact that our technology can now allow us to be MUCH more productive than ever before, with less and less human involvement in the production process. And economic anxiety is not just felt by those who are truly poor… even people who could be considered to be doing pretty well can fall prey to worrying about their future. With 70% of the country living paycheck-to-paycheck and 50% making just $30,000 a year or less, this is not a problem that should be ignored so easily. Economic anxiety in a competitive system makes it so people cannot be empathetic towards others because they are too worried about their own status. This is a big point because technological unemployment disrupting labor-for-income is already happening and it is an issue of SURVIVAL. People die in this country because they can’t afford food or healthcare or shelter. Anytime someone’s purchasing power is adversely affected, it makes people more vulnerable to placing blame where it doesn’t necessarily belong (like on immigrants) and it makes them more vulnerable to con artists like Trump.
Yes, in order to find a cure for the disease, we have to identify what is wrong first. Your article left out a lot of context and a great deal of pertinent information so that your analysis ends up being wholly inadequate and offers no real solutions.
The Democratic party needs to give people something to vote FOR, they need to stop taking money from the pharmaceutical industry, the healthcare insurance industry, the military industrial complex, Wall Street and multinational corporations. Obama pretended to be left-wing, but because he took money from such big donors, he ended up more center-right. Obama filled his cabinet with CItigroup banking executives, he expanded George Bush’s disastrous drone program (which reportedly kills civilians 90% of the time rather than the intended terrorist target), expanded Bush’s wars from 2 countries to 7 (so now we bomb people in Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan), he ignored the opportunity to enact a single-payer (Medicare-for-all) healthcare system when he had the Democratic majority and instead went with what was more beneficial to the industry (The Affordable Care Act was a more pro-business plan; it was originally a REPUBLICAN piece of legislation that was largely written by The Heritage Foundation (a right-wing think tank) and was championed by Richard Nixon, Bob Dole and implemented by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts), and Obama did not jail the bankers who crashed our economy which left so many in poverty… instead he bailed them out with trillions in tax payer money. The Democrats under Obama have lost seats in every level of government throughout the U.S.; that is not because of Trump and it is not due to racism.
When the Democratic party can stop being a corporate party and actually serve the people instead of corporations, THEN they will get the support they need to win.
Mehdi Hasan had a nice video on this on Al Jazeerah with numerous factoids. That should be embedded in this article.
I must admit I am most heartened by the sensible debate that this issue has raised – and that many commentators are pushing back against a rather shallow emotive diatribe that is undermined by the authors own ‘sciencey’ studies and ‘confirmation biased’ op pieces …
“The Trump supporters’ views on affirmative action and neighborhood diversity do not necessarily reflect racial bias alone, said Michael Traugott, a polling expert and professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, who is not publicly supporting either Trump or Clinton. Rather, the results could also suggest anxieties about economic insecurity and social standing. “
Wow. Is this real? Even the first paragraph is nonsense. Democrats want to convince themselves it was not racism? Really? They have been screaming racism since November. Its all they know how to do.
This article should be removed. I’m baffled. Who is this clown?
Totally agree! An avid Hillary supporter friend sent this to me (a Bernie-supporter populist), in an attempt, I guess, to show me how much he and his like-minded friends had it right all along. I read the article and was stunned. I have never seen such shameful mental gymnastics. Total manipulation. Embarrassing really. What is HAPPENING at the Intercept? I gave Glenn Greenwald so much more credit than this!
This should be retracted and an apology issued by the editorial staff at the Intercept.
Oh, well, there are racists in America. They will not go away anytime soon. I am not alarmed by that. It is a human nature. However, what we do not know is how much of the racism is caused by Cambridge Analytica (Bannon-Mercer) who claim that they can influence the voting behaviors of people by data mining.
This unbearably smug article seems to operate from a premise that racism is less present in locales that voted for Clinton, based on poll results. I would ask whether White people in Madison actually have “lower levels of racial resentment,” or whether they have simply learned what they are not supposed to say out loud. This article also does not take an “intersectional approach,” ignoring the ways consistent economic degradation can stoke racial division. In short, this is intended to make urban white people feel good for how “enlightened” they are because they voted the “right” way, while stoking their own resentment of an America they have been taught (for tens of thousands of dollars a year) to view as both “other” and “backward.” It does nothing to call out their own culpability in the massive racial inequality and exclusionary practices of their “liberal” metropolises. Meanwhile, the connective fibers of the country get torn further and further apart.
My own take (https://medium.com/@ericaetelson/democratic-centrism-is-dead-long-live-democratic-centrism-4c3930b9ac11) is that it’s a bit more complicated than this article suggests. There was definitely a lot of racism motivating white voters to vote Trump, no question about it. But in addition, there’s the fact that Clinton lost an awful lot of white blue collar voters to disaffection (i.e. they stayed home). For example, in the Rust Belt (which Trump won by 554,000), 750,000 people who voted for Obama stayed home in 2016. I believe this is b/c these voters are disgusted by decades of Clintonite and Obama-lite neo-liberal austerity and endless war.
Also–and this is important–I do believe that racism and xenophobia incubate more potently under conditions of economic hardship and pessimism. If Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren were the candidate and gave racists positive reasons to vote Democrat, at least some of the racists would be willing to set aside their racism in the interest of personal economic betterment. Not all–there are those who are too far gone to ever understand that their enemy is capitalism, not people of color–but some could shift.
Calls it racism, posts a photo of a black trump supporter.
Why do people who hate Trump insist they know the reasons why people voted for him better than the people who actually voted for him!? Keep insulting Trump supporters and calling them ignorant racists. That will really help you win in 2020. Good strategy.
Based on what I heard as I listened to *45’s supporters, that’s what I concluded. Our history is filled with lies about race and misogyny, which explains why we fail to be able to come to terms with them and move on. Thanks for the article, the Democrats have a lot of work to do to overcome this problem, the GOP is not even interested, never have been, at least not in the last hundred years.
I won’t argue there are major issues between all human ethnicities and races, it is in our genes. You tend to feel more at ease amongst those who look or act like you do. You accept the ones you perceive as different under societally imposed rules. You interact with those you perceive as different to some extent, but not in the way you act with those who resemble your kind, ethnically speaking. As a child, I grew up in an upper middle class community, there was one black boy in my school from elementary to Highschool, I still remember his name. I frankly say that I felt bewildered around him, the way he talked, acted, walked…I studied him…he and other blacks made me wary, scared me. My family, all highly educated professionals didn’t necessarily act hateful towards blacks, but there was a say that stuck in my mind….”never getting married to a black”…because of the “color of the future offspring”
We understood that early on. I never had a black friend and my only interaction with any was a fight with two black brothers that moved to our cul-de-sac, whom I overheard making offensive sexual remarks about my oldest sister…I fought both of them…got beaten by them. That may have furthered my distrust and resentment towards blacks in general. I don’t trust blacks as a general rule…and other people in general, but blacks without question. Does that makes me a racist? Yes, it does…and I am aware and cautious to not cross the vile racist divide.
By the way, I didn’t vote for Trump or the Republican Party and I am from Italian/Northern Spain ancestry
Lazily written article. For example:
…the best way to identify a Trump supporter in the U.S. was to ask “just one simple question: is Barack Obama a Muslim?” Because […] “if they are white and the answer is yes, 89 percent of the time that person will have a higher opinion of Trump than Clinton.”
Anyone who has passed 8th grade math knows what is wrong with that statement.
No they don’t, otherwise we’d see A LOT more attention on alpha and beta errors in every article that deals in statistics.
It would certainly be difficult to figure out who voted for Trump for various reasons but we do need to change our economy. Our system is currently neoliberal and it cheats the middle class and poor while enriching the already rich. That is the biggest reason we have such inequality. It has been going on for many years now and no one mentions it. I have never heard Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren even mention it. It’s very big and has ruined hundreds of millions of lives world wide. I can only think our elite benefit from this (including Bernie and Elizabeth) because it is just too good for them and so they don’t call attention to this. Start asking questions to public officials. Some may not even be aware they are being manipulated by this false ideology. Read about it yourselves. It is destroying us and yet no one talks about it.
Most of the same WHITE PEOPLE who voted for Obama,
Voted for Trump.
Almost everyone I know.
If Obama didn’t have all the racists you claim exist voting for him,
he would’ve never become president.
This is an insane article and couldn’t be father from the truth.
my first comment was’nt posted, that’s a first for me. I suppose it’s not politically correct for a white victim of black on white violence to have an opinion. OK just don’t go into the wrong neighborhoods, or you might have your delusions smack you in the face.
Oh boo hoo, I bet the thousands of blacks who were lynched by whites following the civil war would beg to differ about your bullshit Nazi attempt to make black people the “oppressors of white people.” Goddamn, you white supremacists are utterly worthless. Leonard, go back to marrying your sister and watching nascar.
off-topic and non-productive…
when young blacks are hating white people, and attacking white’s whenever and where ever they are the majority, what do you expect?
What a garbage article. Continue wondering why and move the divide further and further.
There were a few million people who voted for Obama, then Trump. Whether racism entered into their Trump vote or not, it can’t have been the only factor.
Firstly, regarding the meta-topic:
Racism, health & economic woes are not zero-sum, nor mutually exclusive, explanations. Why are we acting like it’s a competition – the two feed into each other. Unscrupulous operators with a will to personal wealth over communal well-being have been exploiting and exacerbating and racial antipathies to masquerade and feed their ravenous greed for eons, now.
“No, no — your terrible living situation isn’t because of lack of regulations or protections; it’s because of [insert some variant of _those_ people which represents the outsized majority of one or more dark-skinned ethnicities, regardless of whether surrounding adjectives match reality].”
“This is just a plot by [again, with the _those_ people] to take money from your wallets without doing anything to earn it!”
Etc.
It certainly doesn’t help that our brains-on-autopilot pretty much operate on heuristics (which are verified ‘internally/anecdotally’ as opposed to externally).
Of course, decisions come at the intersection of these internal heuristics (+ any conscientious research we may attempt) — meaning that people’s decisions have multi-faceted bases.
The energy that drives this cycle, imo, comes from subcultures that (forgive the metaphor) are operating in a maliciously compromised PKI trust environment. (ie: They put their trust in what is True in a CA which downplays or outright blocks valid certs and bla bla bla.)
Anyway, to the contextual ‘shift of democratic leadership’s rhetoric’ –> You can’t really shame adults into being good. The more you try, the more they’ll turn from you. Especially if they have a support network with which to further bury their head to defend themselves from guilt.
Reason being, humans aren’t really rational. If we were, instead of being insulted by being called racist, we might consider the analysis of our actions and respond, ‘Huh, I can see how there does seem to be a trend of bias across my proactive thinking and/or blindspots – I’m so sorry! Since that’s obviously shitty, I’ll try to adjust; any tips?” (Proof that racism = bad is well-settled in the American cultural-superego-overmeme is self-evident given that people don’t just say, “Yeah, I my dislike of [_those_ people] was either at the root of or at least DID influence my decision.” Call them a racist, and they get defensive.)
Wow. A whole of butthurt white folks here, obfuscating and #notallwhite -ing.
take it easy on them….they’re fragile snowflakes easily triggered….
This is a low for The Intercept – by far the worst article the site has published. I read The Intercept for intelligent, balanced insight into what’s going on in the World. This article states we need to use facts, then takes a few data points and makes wild conjectures from them.
If you mean calling Islamic terrorist, Islam Terrorist you got that one part right. We know it’s something Islam worshipers ignore and protect
Thank you for calling half my family racist just because they are Republicans. This kind of rhetoric is despicable.
This analysis is about the aggregate, not your family.
I’d like to say that the Republicans in my family are free from racism, but there are some that primarily hold conservative ideals and some that are definitely fueled by racial resentment.
You’re welcome.
Trump hid nothing. His incompetence, his corruption, his stupidity, his delusional dishonesty. It was all right there, on plain display, on the TV every day.
Every single complaint leveled at Hillary was a thousand times worse in Trump. And they voted for Trump.
People who voted for him despite that voted for him one and only one reason: white male privilege. They were willing to take – they sought out – the worst possible white man to elevate to the highest position of power, solely to make the point that the worst possible white man still outranks the best possible woman or black.
If you can’t see that, it’s because you’re racist too.
I moved to Australia a few years ago. It’s like moving to another planet. Guns, race, sexism, religion, economics, basic math… they are all treated here as one would expect from a rational society. I look back at the USA like some kind of sick nightmare.
The absence of fear – economic, physical, cultural – is palpable here. It’s like moving from The Walking Dead to Disneyland.
I think the worst part of this article is the dishonest header that pretends that this pro-establishment democrat position is somehow a critique of democrats. I guess that is an attempt to blend with the Intercept usual tone, but it is misleading. The author is criticizing the position of the real pro-worker left to defend the self-interested ideology of the liberal elite. Why would we even pay attention to a British liberal journalist’s views about, say, the motivations of white midwesterns working class over the views of people that are actually familiar with them, like Sanders, Moore and others?
Disproving the author’s statistics, even if they were worse than normal in the field, does not disprove his argument. The candidate Trump mentioned economic issues, did nothing with them, but spent his time with attacks on the other. How could anyone seriously claim that he won other than by by giving racists a way to disguise their racism from themselves?
Isn’t there a fundamental disconnect in all the analysis here?
I mean, people for and against this article (as well as the article itself) are quoting statistics left and right based on the percentages of voter segments.
The reality is, Hilary won the election, if you use this “base” statistic: a larger percent of voters voted for Hilary.
So people can quote stats on both sides of the race/economy issue and both be correct (or, incorrect – hah!)
I mean, once you bring the Electoral College factor into things, many statistics lose their relevance, no?
Assuming the overwhelming polling agrees with the author, then what? Calling Trump voters racists and deplorables will do what exactly? We already knew the Republican base was largely racist and that they voted for Trump was no surprise. Right wing hate radio has primed the pump for white resentment for decades. But what about the other voters who had not voted in the past, who had voted for Obama in the past, or those who actually are suffering from economic anxiety?
Sanders and Warren are employing what’s called politics to try to peel off those Trump voters. Nothing, absolutely nothing, will be accomplished by calling them racists. Especially if you fail to provide your own narrative. That’s exactly what Hillary failed to do, provide a message other than Trump sucks. The only way we’re going to turn this country around is to provide a positive vision and that doesn’t include smearing the other side, regardless of how accurate it might be on occasion.
I agree, Glenn. Clinton may have lost more white blue collar voters to disaffection (i.e. they stayed home) than to Trump. For example, in the Rust Belt (which Trump won by 554,000), 750,000 people who voted for Obama stayed home in 2016.
As for calling out white racism, I think it’s important to do but we need to find a better way that doesn’t just alienate the racists and drive them deeper into the welcoming arms of the white supremacist fringe. Shaming doesn’t work. We need to find more effective means of helping white people see that it’s not people of color who are ruining their lives, it’s the capitalist system.
Yes all the white people who voted for Obama twice suddenly remembered they were racist and voted for Trump. The intercept has turned into garbage. This is apparently where all the article’s that dont make it into the Washington Post come now. Sad
What a faceplam. Hasan, if he ever tool statistics and data analysis, needs to return to school.
His underlying assumption is that demographics and responses to survey questions fuly explain the variance in votes. The variance can be partitioned, and some of the variance can be correlated to those independent variables, but one should never, ever assume that one understands the variance of the dependent variable because one has has posited and tested a hypothesis based on restricted information. It’s not simply a matter of correlation vs. causation, that is, the degree of colinearity between variables, it is the fundamental assumption that one can understand the question based on a simple set of independent variables (which just happen to coincide with variables collected by the Census Bureau data.) The real world simply doesn’t work like that. This article is not just bad political science, it’s pseudo-science. The numbers may tell you something, a little, but they are far from fully explanatory.
I suggest the Hasan remove his race goggles and start looking at other data. For example, look at poll results of voters’ responses to the question of the candidates’ trustworthiness. That’s just for starters. But for crying out loud, take a few courses in statistics and data analysis (not just an intro,) before you start to claim an understanding that’s deeper than your own biases. Again, this article is just a facepalm.
You are implying that you know statistics and data analysis. So let’s see a step by step analysis of the flaws in this article, and while you are at it, please show how what the democratic leaders believe is more reasonable based on statistical evidence.
How about this nugget that Hasan uses to support his argument:
“Philip Klinkner, a political scientist at Hamilton College and an expert on race relations, has pored over this ANES data and tells me that “whether it’s good politics to say so or not, the evidence from the 2016 election is very clear that attitudes about blacks, immigrants, and Muslims were a key component of Trump’s appeal.””
Nice quote huh? But since when are immigrants a race? Since when are Muslims a race? Immigration is, of course, an issue related to job availability, whether it’s Mexicans/Central Americans “taking” good manual labor jobs for lower wages, or H1B labor, mostly from Asia taking skilled jobs from Americans for lower wages. But that’s an economic issue, not a racial one. You find the same thing in Britain, only the ‘bad guys’ there are the Poles. The whole issue of Muslims is of course related to terrorism. Neither has anything to do with race. However you feel about it, conservative Trump voters are resentful of “jobs takers” and Muslim extremists. You have to be wearing race goggles to see it as primarily a racial issue.
As for the data itself, try this one for size- Hasan cites a 6/28/16 Reuters article in support of his argument. Here’s a part of that article. Note that the original data are only summarized.
“In nearly every case, Trump supporters were more likely to rate whites higher than blacks when their responses were compared with responses from Clinton supporters.
For example, 32 percent of Trump supporters placed whites closer to the top level of “intelligence” than they did blacks, compared with 22 percent of Clinton supporters who did the same.
About 40 percent of Trump supporters placed whites higher on the “hardworking” scale than blacks, while 25 percent of Clinton supporters did the same. And 44 percent of Trump supporters placed whites as more “well mannered” than blacks, compared with 30 percent of Clinton supporters.”
Okay, take the numbers at face value. On intelligence, ten percent more Trump supporters than Clinton supporters consider whites to be more intelligent than blacks. On the ‘hardworking’ and ‘well mannered’ scales, the difference is fifteen and fourteen percent. Fair enough. There is a difference, and though we don’t see the original data or the poll questions, let’s assume that the differences are significant.
In none of the three variables were the politically incorrect views held by a majority of either candidate’s supporters. So, how does this evidence show that Bernie and Stein are wrong, as Hasan claims, and that racial views mattered more than economics? Well, it doesn’t.
From those numbers, 56 to 68% of Trump supporters held non-bigoted views on those three variables. And 70 to 78% of Clinton supporters did too. So how does that support the notion that the election was all about racial bigotry rather than economics? And why did the roughly one fourth to one third of Democrats who are bigots vote for Hillary anyway, despite the purported Trumps appeal to their bigoted values? There’s no explanation. Not in these data, at least. You’d have to dig further. The truth lies in other variables, which is the crux of my point above. When you restrict your independent variables to certain types, you can only draw inferences based on those variable types. It doesn’t matter that other variables may be much more highly correlated and significant, or even causal, because you just didn’t look at them.
Hasan is hardly alone. Because Census data on gender, race, income, and schooling is readily and cheaply available, we’ve been corralled into thinking about every issue in those terms. You see it all the time, both in the popular press and in academic writing. Lazy (or funding-strapped) researchers tend to explain every dependent variable in terms of those Census variables. Social research is full of this stuff. We “see” what we’re shown. We don’t “see” what we’re not shown, or what is too expensive to see, or what we don’t actually want to measure and see.
What if the Census collected other data, like the ratio of the length of our index finger to the length of the ring finger? That also varies significantly among individuals. I’d guess that many academic researchers would use this as an explanatory variable too, just because the data were cheaply available. I’d bet there would be a whole cottage industry around it and a whole debate about it in academic journals. That’s a fanciful argument, but I’m far from convinced that human behavior, including political votes, can be predicted with any accuracy by the ‘standard’ variables. Those variables provide very limited insight.
I could go on with more examples from the article, but it’s not worth the effort since I think I’ve made my point. Hasan is clearly wearing race goggles and interprets economic resentment in racial terms. That’s not just wrong, it’s blind, and it’s probably a willful blindness. Otherwise known as bias. Bias is BS.
And for the record, in my opinion, just my opinion, Hillary lost because she was such a horrible candidate. She was clearly even more horrible than Trump in the eyes of voters in the majority of States.
Nobody said that all bigots voted for Trump, and it certainly was not necessary for racism to have been more important than economics.
You came on strong with a criticism of the author’s statistics and data analysis, but you have failed to do better.
I’m not going to write a treatise on data analysis and inferential statistics in the comments section of TI. Not only would it be too long, but no one here is that interested, and it’s available to those who search and are willing to work hard and learn. The bottom line is- Hasan is talking out of his ass.
Amen
This is so good.
“Why did a majority of Americans earning less than $50,000 a year vote for Clinton, not Trump, according to the exit polls?”
HRC won a majority of low-income voters, but she didn’t do nearly as well among them as Obama. In 2012, Obama won 63% of voters earning $30,000 or less, in 2016, HRC won just 53% of that demographic. Among voters earning $30k – $50, Obama won 57%, HRC just 51%. Given that those two groups make up a little more than 40% of the electorate, that’s a 6.5% of the voters abandoning the Democratic nominee.
“And why didn’t black or Latino working class voters flock to Trump with the same fervor as white working class voters? Or does their economic insecurity not count?”
Minorities moved Right more enthusiastically than Whites. Trump actually got a smaller percentage of the White vote than Romney, 58% to 59%, while picking up 2% of Blacks and Latinos, and 3% of Asians. This means that the minority votes that Trump picked up more than made up for the Whites he lost.
I don’t doubt that Trump won the racist vote, lord knows he courted it, but there’s plenty of data to support the idea that poor people and minorities moved Right during the election, and that whites moved, if not Left, away from the Right. Third-party candidates picked up 4-6% of Men, Women, Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, people making less than $30k, making $30k to $50k, making more $50k-100k, and more than $100k.
Came here to leave this exact comment.
When are muslims a race? Well, do you know many white muslims? What do you typically think of when you hear the word muslim? You picture someone from the middle east right? And if the anti immigration argument doesn’t have a racial component to it, then why wasn’t Trump talking about building a wall with Canada? Or blocking European immigrants?
Just subscribed to IT and this dishonest drivel is the first article i read. Did I serial misclick or something?
Poverty and hopelessness lead to bigotry and the need for scapegoats, old as the hills.
It’s connected, stupid.
While it’s true that economic issues fail to explain why people voted Trump, they fit quite well when explaining why people did’nt show up for Clinton. Rather than trying to win over rascists the democratic party should be trying to appeal to all those you stayed home.
What?
This is Bernie Sanders’ claim, and he’s NOT a Democrat.
You based your entire article on a false premise.
Bernie Sanders is blaming the Democratic Party for nominating Hillary Clinton instead of himself, by insisting that Trump supporters “could” have been reached with his Economic Populism.
Democrats know better: you can’t reason with a racist.
Bernie would have won – deal with it.
Can it not be about both?
Of course it is. Many if not most of the responses here are insisting that “the reason” that Trump is president is that Clinton was flawed to the point of getting him elected. The article itself rather sensationally concludes in the same way that the reason that Trump is president is racism among his supporters, end of story.
Both were factors, and it’s utterly impossible to conclude that one was “the reason”. Even if by that people really mean only “the decisive factor” or “the most significant reason”.
It’s extremely important to intelligently look at and discuss what all the various reasons are, but assertions along the lines of “No, *this* is “the reason”, which is what nearly every comment here plus the article are engaging in, are beyond pointless.
I think you’re overestimating the impact of racism on the election, just as others overestimate the impact of economic uncertainty. I think it became clear early in the campaign that the largest single motivator of Trump support was spite.
It will be a sad day if we ever apply the author’s logic to terrorism.
I know for a fact that Phil Klinkner is not smart… I had a class with him. Basing ANY conclusions off of his “research” is deeply misguided. The idiot thinks that Iraq was invaded to bring democracy. He’s nothing more than a vote counter. If you want deeper insight into the electorate, look somewhere else.
Good. Whites are beginning to act by challenging these Cultural Marxist interlopers so they can return to a sane normal life. Maybe its time for the dwindling white majority to vote for their interests the same way blacks and mestizos have been doing for decades–all with a pass from the media, of course.
I totally disagree with the writer. Certainly SOME Trump supporters may have been racist. I have known racist Democrats as well. Generalization does not work. Probably a quarter of Trump voters cast their ballots for him because they hated Hillary Clinton. Another 20-25% most likely voted for him based on economic needs and the fierce need for change. Possible 2-5% voted for him because of right-wing groups like the KKK, militias, the NRA, etc (He only won 50 % of the vote.) No way can I see the vast majority of Trump’s supporters as racist. Bernie is right.
Mehdi, your full of shit and you know it. Shove your fucking propaganda up your arse and keep wondering what’s wrong with the country. Your no better than Rachel meadow except that you pretend.
The whole intercept has gone to shit. I’m outta here.
Another Corporate Democrat apologist babbling incompreshsibly. Shillary called for Syria’s airbases to be bombed yesterday. Trump ironically granted her wish.
I’m sorry, but Hillary Clinton’s loss to an orange-faced racist buffoon reflects more poorly on her than Trump. Sanders/Ellison 2020!
If its not about the economy, then its about racism? No, its about Rush Limbaugh, Infowars, Breitbart, and their influence on rural America. Its about red state vs blue state culture. I mean, with the right wing soup you get a whole ton of stuff that relates neither directly to race nor to the economy. Its a package deal. Ranking the relative importance of all the various ingredients in the soup is secondary. I tend to downplay the economy as a factor because most people are smart enough to know that their lifes change little depending upon which party is in power. But its not an either/or situation with racism. Your closing sentences suggest that it is. Ok, so this is symptomatic of a larger issue facing the left. At what point does a generalized distaste for “pussy liberal” coastal elites
become racism? Racist screeds from Infowars commenters are fugitive compared to diatribes directed against globalists, communists, liberal elites, “snowflakes” ( a generalized term for whiny, entitled liberal activists), and the like. Sure, you can find racism in eating a hot dog at a ballgame or singing the national anthem, but thats your problem, not theirs. And their problem has a lot more to do with a generalized left aversion and feeling of resentment directed at their cute next door neighbor who packed up in a snit and moved to California than it has to do with whats going on in the local black neighborhoods. Look there. Thats where your answer lies. Its not the economy NOR racism, stupid. Its about the power and seduction of the blue states in rural America. Dorothy followed the rainbow to OZ. Auntie Em got left holding the bag, and spent the rest of her life fuming in front of the radio at night.
Which “race” is it that I/we hate so much?
Actually, it was Clinton, but keep stoking the race hate fires.
I had to double check I haven’t accidentally entered Buzzfeed. Even ignoring the main message of the article, there is something instantly recognizable in the argumentative tone of the writing that screams out “modern chickenshit sold-out non-journalism”. As if repeating the same point using different combinations of emotionally charged buzzwords would somehow make a solid case.
Love your comment.
Exactly.
When I start to read more and more bullshit articles like this at the Intercept I have to double check that I haven’t clicked on the Washington Post or CNN by mistake. Why do they have a clown like this writing for the Intercept?
What on earth is TI doing employing Mehdi Hasan? Please send him back to the Daily Mail where he belongs http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2444637/Mehdi-Hasan-journalist-attacked-Daily-Mail-Question-Time-asked-write-paper.html
Last time I checked, Sanders was an independent, entered the Democratic race and then after he lost stayed independent. So how is his opinion an example for leading Democrats? Furthermore, from my perspective (German) it was always obvious that Clinton is for economic stability and Trump unpredictable. But never have I or anybody I know thought that Trump can be voted for economic reasons? Especially not for those left behind, lol no. And I think you misinterpret Sanders if you say he says poor people voted Trump because of the economy.
Is the Intercept going to start publishing this kind of argumentative crap. If you want to do an opinion piece, fine, lay out your argument, but stop acting like you can create consensus by force of will. What you have here is big data, probably cherry picked, but regardless, it’s open to interpretation. So stop pretending like there is a dispositive answer for questions like, “What were voters thinking? ” And please drop the the conversational belligerance. If I wanted to be lectured by a smug liberal I’d call my sister. .
You should call your sister anyway.
:)
This article is so dumb and so beneath the usual standards of the Intercept.
The “data” the author cites as “proof” of trump voters’ racism is totally being misused and misconstrued. Sure, this data proves that SOME of trump’s supporters are racist but convenienty leaves out any attempt to determine how big a portion of trump’s base is made up of these people.
Take for example the stat that if someone thinks Obama is a Muslim then they are 89% more likely to vote trump. This does NOT prove that all trump voters are racist. It proves that when you select people based on a hyper specific set of criteria (in this case a specific form of xenophobic ignorance) that people within in this subset are likely Trump voters. But the article conveniently avoids telling us what percentage of Trump voters actually fit into this category and believe Obama is Muslim. We have no clue. Is it half? An eight? .01%? We have no clue!
Im sure equally specific criteria can be found to sort people by and make Clinton voters look equally bad. I’m willing to bet there’s a small group of rabid pro-choice folks
who think there should be abortion kiosks on every street corner. I also bet that when polled, 98% of them would favor Hillary.
So by this article’s dumb logic… that must mean that ALL Hillary supporters want abortion kiosks! (Which is obviously just as untrue as the idea that all trump supporters are racist).
Please quit trying to use “data” and “studies” if you don’t understand how they work.
criteria
meant to target a specific form of ignorance small self selects slice of people who are ignorant in a very specific way that vote for trump. But until we have the stats on how many Trump voters believe trump is Muslim (a star conveniently left out) then we have NO clue whatsoever as to how large a segment
All that does is prove that
Thank you for this. This article has the logic of an ancient aliens episode.
Did you read the CNN poll result for “effect of international trade” that you linked to? It backs Sanders and Warren quite nicely, with Trump supporters firmly believing that free trade has cost the nation jobs.
You must have seen that while digging up reasons for it being only about race.
point taken but i for one, after among other things hearing what my entire pro-trump family has to say, have a very, very hard time believing that trump voters embody that kind of command of economic policy
Identify the disease? I think the disease are articles like this. Hilary lost by 1.3% or less in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If 98% of trump voters are racists then all hope is lost. If, like Sanders and Warren, you think that a huge amount of them aren’t racists then we need to figure out how to win a small amount them over. Calling them racist won’t help.
Sorry Medhi, I’d rather “coddle” the non-racist trump voters if it means we elect a progressive instead of electing republicans by calling half the country “racist.” You should too.
The moment you generalize all of Trump’s supporters under one group you’re just as immature as the mainstream media.
I have to contact The Intercept and retract my review of your website. I was incorrect in giving this place praise.
There are many things wrong with this article.
1) It doesn’t take into account the number of people that simply didn’t vote because they hated both candidates. The voter turnout was very low among Democrats in this election, which meant Clinton’s message didn’t energize the base.
2) You are claiming to have evidence for the election being decided based upon race by saying that given a person is racist, the probability of them being a Trump voter is much higher than a Clinton voter. This doesn’t mean that the the overall total pool of Trump voters was in fact only made up of racists. Those are two very different implications.
3) Many Trump voters may have been racist, but the way Democrats have historically won is forcing very high turnouts in elections. In 2020 this will only be accomplished by uniting people on progressive and liberal issues and creating a movement.
Last thing, no one is claiming campaigning on economic issues will “solve racism”. I don’t deny that racial tensions are definitely a motivating factor for economic anxiety. I claim that there are many more voters who will show up in troves if progressive economic stances are taken in campaigning. Including those workers in the rust belt and other blue collar workers that didn’t show up to vote (and those that voted for Trump of course). These voters will far outnumber those that vote based on racial motivations.
Hasan’s approach strikes me as a bit off-kilter here. While his numbers may be (or may not by his own estimation) be true, they are reflecting the voter, the person motivated to go out there and vote. This was a horrible election because it was almost entirely negative. Remember? People weren’t voting for someone, they were voting against someone else. That was the ugly angle on this election. So those people who voted, and certainly the exit poll results, are people who were motivated against something. This reflects nothing of the people who were disgusted by both candidates and just stayed away, only those who reacted to the negativity by voting. The sample may be accurate within its limits, but it is important to recognize those limits and the limit it puts on the accuracy of conclusions drawn about a broader population.
It did it again. My comment only shows up in the “Latest” tab & not in the “Threads” tab. Here’s the link for it:
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/06/top-democrats-are-wrong-trump-supporters-were-more-motivated-by-racism-than-economic-issues/?comments=1#comment-383113
Yep, I’m seeing the same (mis)behavior in the Cole story here: https://theintercept.com/2017/04/06/u-s-weighs-saturation-strike-on-syrian-government-in-response-to-chemical-attack/?comments=1#comment-383430
But the previous comment shows in both views … such is the nature of the intermittent bug …
I think maybe more white women wearing dashiki’s, and crying rape at every opportunity, and talking about diversity straight out of the 1980’s playbook might help reinvigorate the political process.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Mooovin along now, Nothing to see or hear here- Trump is backlash for the way Obama used the DHS as a domestic brown shirt outfit.
The article does not address the fact that one of the major ways any society deflects resistance to systemic oppression is by pitting people against each other on the basis of race.
It is obvious to me that economic issues being diverted into racial resentment underlie the vast majority of the ‘racism’ the article highlights.
And people know when they’ve been had in terms of being screwed in a globalized profit-motivated world economy that causes their lives to be lived in degradation and oppression. The fact that this pain is channeled/diverted into racial resentment is in no contradiction to stating that economic issues are the cause.
Failing to discuss this underlying issue in an article on the topic is a sign of dangerously shallow thinking.
(The only reason I am taking the time to post this comment is because this is The Intercept. I expect reactionary/sensationalist thinking on most sites, but it pains me to see the Intercept failing in this way.)
Agreed.
Demsheviks are projecting again. Your party is the author of racism. You haven’t changed.
Interesting article
but another explanation that fits the data
is that many voters simply disliked Hillary Clinton.
It _is_ a “popularity contest” after all..
white american democratic shitbags are just as racist as republican. It’s kinda funny to see white progressive american nazis or ‘democrats’ pretending to be the good guys. Funny and revolting.
Here’s the problem. You have an article that clearly lays out an argument based on statistics and then comes “free” with a truckload of bullshit.
“progressive american nazis or ‘democrats’…”
Christ, you are fucking stupid.
As long as you’re not actually implying that centrist democrats aren’t every bit as racist, you’re not incorrect.
Let’s be honest. Our entire society is racist. Studies have shown that most people have unconscious racial biases and can have racist attitudes elicited under the right conditions. Anyone who knows history knows that economic stress most certainly creates social stress between groups, even seen in the attitudes of minorities toward other minorities. It doesn’t take a genius to understand this.
A large part of why people disliked Clinton was because of her history of racism, along with her husband’s history of racism. It wasn’t even subtle racism. Democrats often are better at hiding their racism, but there is always an undercurrent of racism in our society. Was it racist that older whites preferred racist WASP Clinton over the Jewish Sanders?
Trump’s supporters were lower middle class. The whole economy is unstable with upward mobility decreasing and the middle class shrinking. These lower middle class people are at the very edge of falling down into the working class or even poverty. All it takes is a single job loss, health condition, accident, or whatever. Many lower middle class people are already in debt or not saving much if any money. They are precarious and they know it. That doesn’t create a happy state of mind.
What have Democrats done? Absolutely nothing other than offering Republican Lite.
As for those earning less than $50,000 a year, the majority did not vote for Clinton. The majority of those people did not vote for any particular candidate. The poor have low rates of voting or even registering. Why did a significant number of poor rural Latinos vote for Trump? Why did Latinos help Trump win Florida? Why did young minorities and poor minorities who have been hit hardest by economic problems hate Clinton so much and often chose not to vote at all, despite the Democratic threat that they were electing Trump?
Also, there is the problem that we don’t have good data. And much of the data we do have gets ignored or not put into context. We know that voters aren’t always honest in stating who they plan on voting for or who they did vote for. So, we have no certain knowledge of how many vote switchers there might or might not have been. Trump didn’t get more whites than other recent Republican presidential candidates, but interestingly Clinton got fewer minority votes than other recent Democratic presidential candidates.
Race wasn’t any more of a deciding issue than it ever has been. That is all we can tell from the data.
Author of article: “Why did a majority of Americans earning less than $50,000 a year vote for Clinton, not Trump, according to the exit polls?”
Non-white voters are over-represented in the under $50,000/yr. group, and they may even be the majority for that low-income group. That is why so many of them voted for Clinton. Such minority voters have historically voted for Democrats since the 1960s because they seek protection from white racism.
If only white voters are considered, I strongly suspect that the majority of white voters in the under $50,000/yr. group voted for Trump. These working class white voters, who live primarily in rural areas, have been left behind by the information economy.
Benjamin
Great observation. It’s sad to see the Establishment using racism as a means to further its own agenda. Of course, that’s nothing new.
I’m still waiting for something to shock me, this article is not news to me.
Yes, America is really this racist. The only surprise is it’s taken everyone else so long to figure it out. Racism is still one of America’s original sins for a reason.
Let’s not forget technology coming back to bite. The same internet sites that helped start the Arab Spring( look how that turned out..) Where initially used to spread the message of populism and nationalism based on racial identity. Once the election was lost and the msm discredited the social media internet providers began to filter content too late there are now sites which see tens of thousands of hits a week and are extremely nationalist sites.
When you ONLY have a problem with ethnocentrism when WHITES practice it….YOU are the racist.
Also, the headline is poorly written. “Top Democrats”? Cmon. That says to me DNC officials and the Hillary Brass and or the Leadership.
Lol, as an African American and I believe many people of color knew that racism was a motivating factor for many Trump voters. This is not shocking. As Dave Chappelle said on his opening monologue on SNL on November 12, 2006 “We know the whites”. America has racism and injustice engraved in American history and it’s never going away. There is some comfort knowing that some of racists are old and will be dying out soon. I don’t think the racists will regenerate as quickly and then we’ll have a 10 to 15 year window to change some of the institutional racism we see. Unfortunately, we have to around 10 years for them to die.
it’s not that simple
racism is a property of the competitive operating environment for life support because racism reduces competition.
please embrace that concept – as evil of course – as the currency system run by wallstreet perpetrates this.
Thank you for condsidering.
I think you need to look the start of racism in the US. IT’S roots are based in exploiting and exploitation. Native people weren’t killed and mistreated because of competition. They were exploited because they were deemed invaluable and unworthy. The heart of racism is under value.
i am quite aware.
Racism needs soil to survive.
That soil according to you is the inheritance of past relationships.
What you are not including is that most people DO NOT WANT TO BE RACISTS.
Plug that in.
The only thing that undermines that wish is a competitive operating environment.
That operating environment is the ‘criminal’ currency system that is in place today since 1913.
Please understand the difference between those past habits and relationships you speak of and the decision making processes that are built in to decisions regarding survival because of the currency system.
Once competition for mere survival is not required, there is no need to reject any ad hoc relationships and the institutions that hold them will evaporate for the most part. keyword…. NEED.
No the soil according to me the premise of devaluing a person. You’re under the assumption that most people do not want to be racists and I disagree. I don’t think most people give it much thought. Racist ideals are engrained in very fiber of american institutions. Inferior vs superior. Those are inferior are devalue and therefore do not matter. For example, do you or most people consciously think about the survival of ant colonies? No why, but many people do not attach a value to the lives of ants, ie therefore ants are insignificant.
most people want to be racists?
i think you might be stuck in the ghetto vs police scenario.
Your argument of inferior-superior is nothing more than a feel-good rationale for accounting for differences of economic power imo.
The biggest obstacle to overcoming racially bad attitudes is the currency system. One cannot be a racist unless one NEEDS to be a racist.
Jesus would never have been a Republican or Trump supporter. Ever. What hubris to make that poster.
The slave owners were Democrats.
Hmmm, slave owners were republican too. Slaves where owned in the north and the south.
Have you ever heard of the DIxiecrats? Beyond that, are you denying the fact that the majority of those old, slave holding states are now red?
Yes, at one point in time, the Republican areas (south) used to be democratic. The democrats used to be for small government , little regulations & slavery. After slavery was abolished a major shift happened in the parties and they basically flipped. Around 1836-1936. The dems started pushing social justice & regulations & republicans well, are what they are today.
http://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html
Yes, and now over 200 years later, the parties have flipped.
Bernie was for it, but Hillary opposed raising the minimum wage to a living wage. She and Bernie went round and round over that issue. Over half of Americans don’t have $500 for an emergency. When laborers work a full time job and still can’t keep a roof over their head and put food on the table, they are indentured servants dying on “slave wages.”
And we can thank Tricky Dick and Saint Raygun for opening the door so prosperity can make its egress….but just make certain to blame Democrats.
It’s not really 200 years ago. It was in the late 40s/early 50s that Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon, members of respective witch-hunting agencies in the House and Senate, refounded the party as a corrupt surveillance enterprise. Reagan was something of a bit player, just a point man in Hollywood at the time, but he made a fair front man while the shadow government continued to work.
In attempting to establish the degree to which white racial attitudes disproportionately benefited Trump in the 2016 Presidential elections, On must first establish a baseline for comparison. How have whites traditional voted in Presidential elections?
2000 Presidential elections – 42 % whites voted democratic
2004 Presidential elections – 41 % whites voted democratic
2008 Presidential elections – 43 % whites voted democratic
2012 Presidential elections – 39 % whites voted democratic
2016 Presidential elections – 37 % whites voted democratic
There was a 2% increase in white votes for Obama in 2008 than for Kerry in 2004
There was a 7% increase in black votes for Obama in 2008 than for Kerry in 2004
There was a 6% decrease in white votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 than for Obama in 2008
There was a 7% decrease in black votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 than for Obama in 2008
There was a 2% decrease in white votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 than for Obama in 2012
There was a 5% decrease in black votes for Hillary Clinton in 2016 than for Obama in 2012
To round out this picture, let’s examine the way in which black voters have traditionally voted in the last five presidential election cycles:
2000 Presidential elections – 90 % blacks voted democratic
2004 Presidential elections – 88 % blacks voted democratic
2008 Presidential elections – 95 % blacks voted democratic
2012 Presidential elections – 93 % blacks voted democratic
2016 Presidential elections – 88 % blacks voted democratic
Apropos of the foregoing statistics from the last five presidential election cycles, one can state as fact that:
1. A rough average of 40.5 % of whites vote democratic
2. A rough average of 91 % of blacks vote democratic
3. The highest percent of white votes for a democrat was for a black candidate, Barack Obama in 2008
4. Blacks are 225 % more likely to vote democratic than whites
5. There was a 6% average increase in blacks voting democratic when the candidate was black (2008 & 2012)
6. The was a 0.0 % average increase in whites voting democratic when the candidate was black (2008 & 2012)
In Nov 2016, Hillary Clinton’s favorable rating was 36%
In Nov 2016, Donald Trump’s favorable rating was 39.5%
In Nov 2008, Senator Obama’s favorable rating was 61%
In Nov 2008, Senator McCain’s favorable rating was 58%
Given the aforementioned facts, the following questions comes to mind:
Which race is more likely to vote along racial lines, whites or blacks?
Which race is more likely to vote along party lines, whites or blacks?
Karl – bless your heart. You worked mighty hard digging up all those facts and figures to try and paint a pretty picture. But it just don’t cut muster :)
The problem is not which race is voting along party lines. Its the de facto formation of a white nationalist party inside the Republican Party. The people of color in this country tend to vote for the Democratic Party because they support them as full citizens and people. Their chosen party does not invalidate the lives of white americans. Unfortunately, white americans have been fed a steady diet of racial superiority that has created quite a resentment as they try to hold on to their ill gotten gains. So I applaud that a chunk of white people in the US can see past their supremacist upbringing and vote to empower everyone in the country and not just their narrow racial group. But you wouldn’t comment on the voting patterns of Jews if they were all voting against Nazis and you wouldn’t comment on the voting patterns of blacks in South Africa during apartheid. If you think these are overblown examples, well maybe you’re right. Or maybe you should examine what motivates your vote :)
I never said that it was. The author’s main thesis is that trump’s appeal to voters was driven more by “racial resentment” then by economic anxiety. Racial resentment is defined by political scientists as a belief among whites that “blacks are demanding and undeserving and do not require any form of special government assistance.” They go on to claim that this particular form of racial prejudice is currently expressed in the language of “American individualism” which contends “that blacks do not try hard enough to overcome the difficulties they face and they take what they have not earned.” How, then, does this form of racism translate into a Trump victory. Surely, blacks would be deeply offended by any candidate employing the language of “American Individualism”, would they not? Yet, the number of Black ballots counted nationally significantly decreased by more than 11 percent when compared to Black voter performance in the 2012 presidential election cycle – when a black presidential candidate was up for reelection. If the marked decrease in black voter turnout in 2016 was not driven by black racial preference for a candidate of color, how do you explain it? If blacks only vote for democratic candidates because the “Democratic Party… supports them as full citizens and people”, one would expect that Hillary Clinton would have drawn numbers comparable to Obama given the alleged “white nationalist” undertones of Trump’s appeal. Of the the last five presidential elections, black voter turnout was highest in 2008 and 2012 when a black candidate, Barrack Obama, was on the ballot. Not only did less blacks vote in the 2016 presidential election, but those who did vote cast 5% less votes for a white democratic candidate then for Obama in 2012. A 7% percent difference is evident when comparing black voter preference in 2008 to that of 2016. In short, your own thesis lacks statistical merit.
Karl: “Which race is more likely to vote along racial lines, whites or blacks?
Which race is more likely to vote along party lines, whites or blacks?”
Of the various presidential candidates for the years that you mentioned, Trump was the only one who was anti-immigrant and made a direct appeal to the racism of white voters. For this reason, your analysis is too simple to answer the questions that you have posed.
There is also a rather astounding rural-urban divide in election politics. Urban voters overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates, while rural voters overwhelmingly support Republican candidates. This also makes the interpretation of the role of racism in American politics more difficult.
I do know one thing for certain. No other developed country in the world, where white people are the majority, would ever elect a black guy to be president. They are more racist than we are. This can only happen in the United States, the land of immigrants.
Trump’s immigration policies are largely based on those enacted by the Obama administration; thus, the vast majority of Muslim countries remain unaffected by his reevaluation of those policies.
Please provide a single campaign video wherein Trump directly appeals to the racism of white voters
Trump advocated much harsher immigration policies than anything that Obama had implemented, namely the deportation of 10 million illegal immigrants (primarily Hispanic) and banning Muslims from entering the country. The Federal courts have already blocked his more important executive orders concerning immigration.
As for the direct appeals to white racism, you need only listen to the 1st day of the Republican National Convention and the never-ending attack against Hispanic immigrants, who were characterized as rapists, murderers, job-stealers, and ‘bad hombres,’ all of this highlighting the repeated statements by Trump on the campaign trail. It is no accident that Trump was enthusiastically supported by the KKK and other white nationalist groups.
Trump attempted to temporarily halt immigration from a small number of Muslim countries that were already predesignated by the Obama administration as potential sources of terrorism.
Illegal is the key word. Personally, I would have initiated an amnesty period of 120 days to allow for the voluntary registration of illegal aliens. The amnesty would also apply to employers who, during that period, could either hire and/or register illegal aliens as employees without threat of consequence. Those illegal aliens who are gainfully employed by the end of that 120 period would be allowed to stay in the country with the stipulation that their status could be revoked with any breach of US law. Those who were not gainfully employed, would be returned to their home countries pending a review of their status. Those who failed to register would be subject to arrest and deportation without a hearing. If during that 120 twenty day period, an illegal immigrant
The Nation of Islam leader endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008. Is Obama a racist?
I do agree with you that Trump engaged in some questionable hyperbolic rhetoric that had the potential of exiting the passion of those who already harbored racial hatred. However, the level of that hyperbole is no more offensive then the race-centric rhetoric routinely employed by groups like the Nation of Islam or Black Lives Matter.
I guess things aren’t ?going too well for The Intercept if they’re now publishing click bait like this rubbish
I think the author is correct. Indeed, when Trump won I was devastated, knowing the disastrous race conflict to come.
But it misses an important point. Why did racism become legitimized? The problem had been troubling me for a while but became clear with the Ryan Lochte scandal, where white men were held responsible for a guy getting drunk and acting like an idiot.
The rhetoric of the left (attacking whites, blaming a few thousand racist incidents on 17 million Brexit supporters etc etc ) was not only mirroring the rhetoric of the alt right (blaming Moslems for terrorism, attacking Mexicans as gangsters etc etc).
So what happens. Previously reasonable people on both sides (1) get defensive and (2) see that racism is now legitimate
I disagree. According to the late historian Howard Zinn, Kerry lost in 2004 because he didn’t oppose the Iraq war.
Obama got the message and campaigned on pledge of ending the Iraq war. He won.
Hillary was for regime change in Syria. She lost.
Trump campaigned on pledge of anti-regime change policy in Syria. He won in the same states that twice handed victory to a Black man with a Muslim first name, proving it is NOT racism that landed Trump in the WH.
I just heard Republican Senator Massey tell a CNN host that his phone melted off the hook in 2013 from his constituents opposing US involvement in Syria in response to that false flag chemical attack. Got that? His Republican supporters opposed US intervention in Syria. Shoots to hell the myth that Republicans are for military intervention. Apparently the Democrats didn’t get the memo either. Americans, whether peacenick or fiscal conservative, Republican, Democrat or Independent voters are opposed to war and are tired of paying for it.
That racism and misogyny didn’t seem to bother them one bit…
You sound like an anti-abortion one issue voter. You’ve somehow taken war as personally affecting you or someone very close to you but never racism.
I am a Sander’s supporter. I voted for Obana in 2008 and 2012. Let me make it clear. If Trump and the neocons go unchecked, according to Albert Einstein World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones, so the luxury of debating all the important issues facing humanity won’t be an option unless we fix the threat of nuclear holocaust first.
you sound like one of those israeli genocidal maniacs cheering for the yinon plan.
i did not get that impression at all
Dana sounds like a Bernie supporter to me as ost people in the US were – except for the aipac zionista organised criminals who mask as jewish persons for protection for their game of murder for land theft – who also want to steal land in syria.
I’m having a problem with polls these days. I haven’t seen where any of the pollsters have explained how they could be so far off on the presidential election and what they’ve done to correct the issues. The media had a lot to do with his winning but that’s not what the issue is for me with this article.
I’ve read thus far and no one has brought up the anomaly of Operation Cross Check which was conducted after the passing of enabling legislation in 29 Red States. Voter polling lists were gathered and compared for duplicate names with the implication that these persons had voted feloniously in at least two states. Seven million duplicate names were listed as potential felons and many were scrubbed from their polling place lists so that on election day these persons were either turned away or given Provisional Ballots that weren’t counted. Several million mostly Democratic voters fell into this category and went missing from state’s election returns whose Electoral Voters went for Trump, to the complete surprise of the winning candidate. The election turned on 70,000 votes in select precincts and states.
For a look into the mechanics of this nefarious plot to gerrymander the presidency see Greg Palast’s documentary, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” available on vimeo.com for $2.99.
The media was conscripted by Donald Trump’s bombast, occasionally racist and thoroughly anti-PC, which got him 24-7 coverage making him a household name and de facto winner in a matter of months. He got more free publicity than money can buy being on cable news around the clock. He certainly enjoyed more coverage than all the other candidates combined. That played a HUGE part in his winning the election.
The Russians played a part as a chew toy for the media but their influence was minimal. Their wiretaps and release of DNC email certainly did distract from coverage of Operation Cross Check and the paper trail of that aggravated plot of election fraud and massive voter disenfranchisement that sealed the deal for the Republicans.
The motive for all this election manipulation is being played out as I type, in the selection of a dyed in the wool Republican ideologue to sit on the SCOTUS. For the Koch’s and their fascist corporations compatriots in funding the Dark Money capturing the Supreme Court is the ultimate prize. Their investment in having 5:4 decisions will be paid back many times over.
There’s just one problem with all this analysis: not all electorates are the same.
This article fails to articulate the differences in voter turnout over the past several presidential elections & how they affect the outcome of said contests.
There is also the matter of voter suppression laws & practices by many state governments that don’t have anything to do with the racism of voters as they do the racism inherent in our institutions coupled with the willingness of the Republican Party to exploit that racism to their benefit.
There is always talk of what the people who DID vote were voting for–or against, as the case may be–but hardly ever any talk about what the people who decided not to vote–or forgot to vote–were thinking & why they went down that path.
Oddly enough, the Intercept ran a piece about the steady decline of white working-class voter participation over the years & how it undercut the narrative that Trump somehow was the Pied Piper of the white working-class (Apologies for the metaphor; I watched “Shrek” the night before):
https://theintercept.com/2016/08/10/the-great-white-hype-no-one-is-energizing-the-white-working-class-not-even-donald-trump/
Senator Joe Donnelly (D-IN) recently whined at a townhall in Muncie, Indiana, that if turnout were even close to 50%, “an earthquake would occur:”
http://www.thestarpress.com/story/news/local/2017/03/19/donnelly-town-hall-draws-supportive-crowd/99181084/
The problem with that “analysis” is the cognitive dissonance between that poor turnout rate he was complaining about & the complete lack of any attempt by either him or Baron Hill or Evan Bayh or Hillary Clinton in 2016 to do something about that.
In other words, maybe the reason voter turnout was at 27%–not 28%, as the Star Press noted–in 2014 had less to do with Republicans & more to do with the lack of any perceptible alternative. From that same Star Press article:
“Rules that make it harder for some people to vote are unlikely to change through the legislature now, he warned, so he encouraged individuals not only to vote for themselves but to do what they can to make sure friends and neighbors do so.”
That’s it? That’s your great solution to voter suppression? What about how Republicans effectively stole a Supreme Court pick with their obstruction through all of last year of even a hearing for Merrick Garland, who should never have been picked anyway? (I signed an online petition in favor of Ohio State Law Professor Michelle Alexander to be the next Supreme Court Justice) What’s his plan for that?
Oh, wait. He came out & endorsed Neil Gorsuch.
At some point, people do have to find some reason to vote FOR a particular candidate, not just against another. Otherwise, they might not bother to show up at all, especially if there has been no change in their lives for the better from those that dare call themselves “leaders” in decades.
Racism is a demon that breezes through the walls between one person and another and one race and another. Racism by whites, blacks, or any other race sloshes back and forth like water in the ruptured compartments of the Titanic. And so we have to recognize that Obama and some of the other high profile “civil rights” people badly let the country down by failing to stand up against “identity politics” before it became white identity politics.
No, people do not have the right to randomly burn down stores because they’re black.
Yes, shooting a random police officer because he is white is a lynching.
It is not racist to say that black lives matter. It is also not racist to say that white lives matter. Put the two signs in the same parade, mix in a few more flavors, call it a rainbow coalition.
A decent racial policy puts a lot of resources into ensuring upward mobility for everyone of every race. It is not constructed of set-asides for minority businesses and affirmative action for minority graduates. You do not heal a stab wound by poking a knife into it and then pulling it out very quickly to suck it back closed! And you don’t heal the effects of discrimination by opposite discrimination. You heal it by helping the whole organism to grow and repair its damage. That means being liberal and fighting the transgenerational denial of opportunity and freedom to the poor as a single thing, rather than being for one race and another.
We need a politician to have the courage to throw away the poison bait of Census race forms. I don’t care what color the politician is, if he doesn’t care what color the voters in each ward he speaks to are. Address racially important issues, but address them according to a consistent philosophy of what is just! Tell every crowd the same thing! Don’t treat us like we’re each a data point of a made-up white/black/Hispanic/Asian and Pacific Islander mosaic from which each race gets a few stereotypical sops in proportion to their occurrence in the politician’s district. BELIEVE something, don’t be a robot for a machine.
And above all, respect the right to freedom of speech, without which all the others fall apart! Not every noose on campus is a threat to a racist lynching. A lot of students look at a noose as something they can hang themselves with after they see their scores on the final, and nothing else. A lot of non-blacks in history died at the end of a noose. Don’t assume this-has-to-be-that-has-to-be-that. A little understanding for the high school student in blackface today will head off Trump votes all over the country tomorrow. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t say what you want about it – just don’t expect some kind of official punishment every time someone does something in poor taste.
It’s not racist to expect immigration laws to be enforced. Nor is it racist to disbelieve any religion, nor to say so. Tying such matters of opinion to race also ties race to those matters of opinion – which can create racism out of nothing, and of course, there’s never quite nothing to begin with.
Give significant tax breaks to those having mixed race children.
What’s almost amusing, is that was pretty much the opinion of an AF Col. who was friends of the family in the 60s (W, M, ne’ Memphis, TN). Seems we have a way to go to achieve that one, but I’m not one to argue that in the far distant future (should humans on earth survive that long), we might not see it.
Re: that raw power of the state, while I have some sympathy, that is how laws are made. I am reluctant to point to any other marginalized group benefiting from the raw power of the state lest I be accused of diminishing the very special circumstances of racism, nor would I want to be accused of equating black Americans as a group to any other element of Americans who have felt oppressed…. but the raw power of the state is how laws are made. To the extent that the raw power of the state (hereafter: RPotS) has benefited Asians, women, LGBTQ(pardon, I forget the suffix here), etc – would you really argue that the RPotS should not be used on behalf of black Americans lest we experience a backlash? No; of course you wouldn’t. The RPotS is, for better or worse, the tool we have as a society for people whose life clocks tick in the present.
I think there are universal projects that can make the lives of everyone better; and, universalism is the key. Universal programs (All Belong, – The Good Common School), will benefit the most marginalized. Will that solve racism? Of course not. But it will help an awful lot of black (and white) Americans. “Free college” while universal for all who can gain admission, has problems. I prefer the strategy that Matt Bruenig recently outlined in a Jacobin podcast – a more universal support post-high school that would apply to everyone. UBI has possibilities, but not for the same reason that tech entrepreneurs want to tout. All of these kinds of efforts will require the RPotS.
But, here’s the thing, Milton. If the Democrats don’t lead on these kinds of programs, I do think Republicans will pick them up and run with them, eventually. and, I’d much prefer the Democrats get credit for a whole array of reasons.
Sure; two steps forward, on step back backlash, two steps forward, one step back backlash. If you have a better approach, I’m all ears.
I apologize for not making myself clear there. I meant — mean — that there are laws and politics. Politics (in this limited context) is the process of goodlaw making — passing laws that people already accept as common sensical. Imagine, for instance, a law is passed mandating the amputation of one little toe (say for security purposes) of every man, woman, and child. Or imagine a Handmaid’s Tale sort of context. Without proper political preparation, laws that demand a new political terrain must be imposed by the RPotS. In contrast, free ice cream for everyone wouldn’t have to be imposed by the RPotS.
When Brown v. Board was decided, Eisenhower had a constitutional duty to enforce desegregation. He used the national guard to do so. That’s what I meant by RPotS. Physical force.
In return for for cooperation, the Southern whites got absolutely nothing. They couldn’t say, for instance, “well, Ah doen much like it, but Ah shur do like mah brand new chevy them feds gave me.” That’s the politics of it. A better example of things going all wrong because of insufficient preparation was Stalin collectivizing Soviet farms. That was RPotS. Millions died.
Earthshaking political change must be nurtured rather than imposed.
Eisenhower was a general. I think Stevenson might have handled it differently because he was a politician. But then, later, Johnson butchered the politics of it too, so maybe I’m wrong. It’s like if you want your kid to go to school and he/she refuses. Sure, you can drag him/her to the classroom and shackle him/her to the desk, but the essence of school has been lost.
And yes, if Trump wasn’t such a doofus, he would have solved Obamacare by demanding a single payer system. He still might. I share your apprehension. The problem isn’t socialism (despite the Republican chants and their voodoo rattles), the problem is cost. Fortunately there’s a big pile of cash for universal care — a $736b in 2017 defense spending pile of cash. That’s a (say) $150b compromise awaiting the Democrats’ initiative … and I suspect that was the hidden point of ACA. First establish the principle, then impose the laws. If you need the RPotS, I think you’ve already lost. Further, with universal care, I suspect much of the social animus expressed by racism would diminish. Not vanish, but diminish.
I really can’t explain why Clinton didn’t make single payer a central tenet of her campaign. Instead she made the same mistake Democrats have made since the Republicans crucified Carter. Appealing to the decency of the American people. Obama pulled it off; Clinton couldn’t credibly deliver a similar pose. She ended up sounding fake and defensive.
There are still ways to diminish racism. Pour money into cities; pay residents instead of professional police to regulate inner cities; end broken window policing; stop financing civil offices with confiscated money; establish apprenticeship programs via SBA, establish free colleges … a society doesn’t grow when it divides and exploits its citizens — pitting demographic groups against one another like in the Hunger Garmes. That’s still the problem of which racism is a major indecent and powerful subset.
Sorry, but I knew this story was tripe as soon as I got the part about Bernie being the de facto leader of the resistance.
Once you see a straw man like that propped up, the torches are next, and I ain’t gonna bother reading.
While of course there are more than a few racists who voted for Drumpf, that doesn’t excuse Clinton’s loss in any way, shape, or form. Neither does sexism.
She lost because she was defending her husband’s NAFTA and China trade policies to people in the Rust Belt whose careers, lives, and cities had been royally fucked over, and when they got a chance to fuck back by sticking it to a Clinton, they did.
It’s neoliberalism that got rejected, not racism that got embraced.
spot on
Bingo!
Nailed it.
Exactly correct. Great post.
So, you stopped reading, and added a comment!
Just think about the facts and figures you could have learned, absorbed into your own thinking, and turned into insight! Oh well, no matter, you already know everything!
You do make one cogent point: “a Clinton” was rejected. That is true. It was a poor choice for her to run, in retrospect.
That doesn’t negate the premise of the article, or the facts and information within.
It’s a complex matter. But willfully ignoring the virulent strains of racism that became a life-blood to the Trump campaign is a losing proposition, and weakens the prospect of any political change.
“Her husband’s”? Didn’t realize she was married to Nixon and Reagan.
Sure, sure–blame it all on NAFTA and democrats, who controlled neither house of Congress after Clinton’s first two years.
If we are going to have a grand forgetting, we might as well hand Republicans the keys and put a for sale sign in front of the country.
I think the way to look at this is that the really important thing for Trump was that he won the Republican nomination. This required Republican voters to either stay home or vote Democrat, and for a huge number of them, the latter is like treason to your whole culture and everybody you know, family and friends. They’ve spent a lot of years associating “Republican” with “American”, so it would be like voting for Sweden to take over the USA or something.
Most people didn’t hope for that, but rather for them staying home, while extra voters would show up for the Democrats, repelled by Trump.
I’m not sure how many did the latter, but I gather quite a few people that have “stayed home” for McCain and Romney had really found their man and DID show up, more than compensating for the R’s who stayed home.
I believe I read that for every Trump voter who switched from Obama last time, there were five that switched from not-voting-at-all to Trump voting.
Those folks strike me as your racial/sexist problem, but the ones who voted R for years and continued to do so were just kind of prisoners of their cultural position – maybe not liking Trump, but also not *disliking him enough* to be “traitors” to their whole subculture.
It took a good 40 years to turn “Republican” into “Only Good American”, and it’ll be another generation to reduce it back to a mere political party again.
For the cultural Republicans, as Trump made a fool of himself during the campaign, this behavior made them support Trump more. These cultural Republicans justified his idiotic and means statements as “fake news” created by liberals and then realizing these idiotic and means statements from the top of the Republican ticket might energize the Democratic vote they came out in droves to support their defective but glorious (in there minds) leading candidate of their cultural movement.
These cultural Republicans are racists, but if the Republican Party nominated a black hispanic Muslim they would support that candidate while still being racist to every other black, Latino, or Muslin. The cultural identification as a Republican overwhelms everything: good sense, rationality, fear of incompetence running the nation, and even bigotry.
The only way to beat this culture is to overwhelm their votes with many more votes for the opposition, be that Democrats, or some other form of opposition.
“Sorry, but how can any of these prejudices be blamed on free trade or low wages?”
No need to apologize. I’ll tell you. People are suffering and they are punching down (in the words of Jimmy Dore). I think Bernie’s point is not that racism doesn’t exist or doesn’t motivate people. He is pointing out that when half of the country’s population is fighting over scraps, struggling, wondering why they can’t get ahead, and many are plainly suffering, it is difficult to hear that the economy has “recovered”. I think Bernie is pointing out that if people weren’t suffering, they might not be looking so hard for someone to blame, or accepting the script of the only presidential candidate who acknowledged their pain. I am uncomfortable with the simplistic “either/or” tone of this article. Mounds of selected data are not a replacement for depth of thought. Racism is real, and ugly and has deep gnarled roots in this country. Economic justice is one way to fight institutional racism. I think Bernie noticed that calling people deplorable as humans is not a good way to win people over to your side. Exercising an ounce of empathy and acknowledging someone’s pain, even for people who ARE wrong about something, can also be a morally correct way to fight racism.
While I appreciate this perspective, it’s obviously not not either/or. The economy and racism/intolerance — among a host of other factors — have led to this current dreadful reality and to pit one against the other isn’t going to get us out of it.
pardon my interruption but
we just got nuked
HILLARY THE WHORE FOR WALLSTREET GAVE US GORSUCH.
she betrayed everyone and only has herself to blame.
but she is such a miserable coniving despicable thieving creature she will refuse to take responsibility for this.
KCUF!
No, Trump got us Gorsuch as he was the one who nominated him.
Well, it may be that the diagnosis will take more work, BUT I am extremely happy to see a serious discussion opened.
I cannot believe how many people not only deny that racism was the primary motor if Trump’s victory, but also — and far worse — categorically refuse to consider the possibility.
We won’t get anywhere like that.
It seems that a lot of people refuse to face what Trump’s victory may mean about American society. We have to face it.
We are also at the point when an editorial like this takes more courage to write than it ever should. I do not like where this is going. The elimination of the ability to filibuster a right-wing ideologue lifetime appointment to the United States Supreme Court is very ominous. Every day, a new travesty. The excuse machine grinds on.
Racism wasn’t the “primary motor”. Economics was. That Trump won via his BS was less about his BS and more about Clinton’s status quo campaign. People without jobs or prospects aren’t interested in the status quo, whether white or black.
Trump’s victory’s meaning about his win is basically that both the Democrats and Republicans don’t give a tiny shit about poor people, and even struggling middle-classers. Once Democrats go back to caring or feigning to care about, they’ll win again. The current Party though shows no inclination to do so.
Every day is indeed a new tragedy under Trump. It also was under Obama, if you care to actually review dead foreigners, domestic wealth disparity, real wage, etc.
btw: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/08/standing-rock-north-dakota-access-protesters-election-vote
‘Hillary Clinton drew widespread scorn for her 27 October statement on the pipeline. In her first acknowledgement of the months-long standoff, the Democratic nominee took no position, saying, “It’s important that on the ground in North Dakota, everyone respects demonstrators’ rights to protest peacefully, and workers’ rights to do their jobs safely.”
“Hillary is the queen of all fracking … Hillary is going to put in more pipelines,” said Wakiya. “Both of them are all about money. I’m ashamed of both of them.”’
“Trump really doesn’t like Indians,” he said. “If [Clinton] gets in, it’s just all the same.”
“Other candidates merit an occasional mention by the Standing Rock activists. Some give credit to Jill Stein for showing up and joining an action, while others speak fondly of Bernie Sanders, who spoke frequently about Native American issues during his primary campaign.”
Why would a Native American, or black American, vote for the continuing status quo which screws them? Who only feigns to care about them until elected, then abandons?
Well, no. Start with the whole of what Bernie Sanders has been saying (distorting or otherwise misreprresenting others inorder to discredit them is a cheap propaganda trick). He’s talking about why people assume racist or other form of bigoted beliefs, and how some politicians etc manipulate that. The insipid presumption behind this piece is that this is some sort of ‘either/or’ (almost never the case). Yes people (among other reasons) voted based on racist beliefs and fears – that is something Bernie actually says, repeatedly. What he does, though, is look to how and why such beliefs exist or become enflamed. And you’d have to be blind and ignorant to seriously assert that economic insecurity hasn’t, historically, been a major factor.
Looking at why a problem exists as it does isn’t denying the problem, it’s addressing it. It’s also the opposite of being bigoted – which is exactly what “they’re just bigots” is.
Leave it to the left and their OBSESSION with race. More BS all the time because they cannot face the facts that they lost to someone who has policies to make America great again for EVERYONE, not just the one’s Democrats pick and choose in life’s lottery according to how they want to determine who get’s what benefits, hand outs, etc. so they can be a part of the great dependent class, i.e. slaves. The Democrat party is the most racist group of people I’ve ever come across. It’s no wonder they founded the KKK, the only thing missing from them today is their white hoods.
a Pew Research election exit poll shows “Trump won whites by virtually the same margin as Romney in 2012″
Clinton did worse than Obama with blacks
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/
That’s not surprising, but it doesn’t demonstrate the point you’re trying to make. Statistics don’t work like that. While the racist demo certainly voted for Trump (which is reflected in these studies) it doesn’t mean that all those who voted for Trump did so because of racism.
Yeah, file this under no shit!
I believe that Sanders, Warren and the DNC were to frightened with the idea of stating the truth of the election motives. To issue such a statement would stimulate a potential civil war, yet that perspective is still a rather prominent possibility. I believe that most reject that level of conflict because of the growing interference of foreign governments in our nation!
The facts are clearly being produced every day under the GOP/Trump reign that has verbally committed themselves to eliminate every single effort by Obama at improving the nations security. It is obvious to people on the other side of the world that this function of destroying good laws that support the working classes because they were instituted by a black president are unmistakeable racist it motivation. It’s sad that so many folks here can’t see beyond their anger of loosing ground in the race to ‘keeping up with the Jones’!!!!
“I believe that Sanders, Warren and the DNC were to frightened with the idea of stating the truth of the election motives.”
How, exactly, is that going to help us?How will hiding from the facts move us forward?
Could it be that the author is correct and Sanders, Warren and Moore just don’t want to face facts?
Fixing racism is hard. Railing against economic injustice is far easier. I think Sanders, Warren and Moore see the world through a ‘white people’ lens and want to focus primarily on working with ‘white people’.
We are all human. There is only one race of people – the human race. Sanders, Warren and Moore have drunk the Kool-Aid and actually believe the POC are different than ‘white people’. We are not. But as long as you treat us differently, you will see us as different.
Or put another way, why do so many ‘white Progressives’ have so few POC as friends? I can understand why Trump voters (90+% white) don’t have a bunch of POC in their lives. But Sanders, Warren and Moore? Interesting…
“If Democrats are going to have any chance of winning back the White House in 2020, they have to understand why they lost in 2016, and that understanding has to be based on facts and figures, however inconvenient or awkward.”
This is where an article like this fails in my opinion. No one is arguing against the data showing Trump’s supporters are mostly motivated by racism — that’s obvious, but that isn’t why Trump won the election.
GOP election fraud and voter suppression tactics are what effectively have moved the presidential goalposts way over onto the Republican side. So it’s not a matter of winning the election but rather overcoming that fraudulent advantage — that’s not the way the democratic process is supposed to function. Hillary won the popular vote by nearly 3 million. If it weren’t for GOP election fraud she would be president, and if it weren’t for DNC election fraud in the primaries Bernie would be president.
We can beat our heads against the wall all we want about why we weren’t able to win a an election, but the real problem is the fraud itself. This, and the GOP gerrymandering that made their domination of congress possible, are the real culprits were should be waging our battles against.
Weird how Bernie and Warren are only called “top Democrats” for arguments like this.
“Always remember: You have to identify the disease before you can begin work on a cure. In the case of support for Donald Trump, the results are in: It isn’t the economy. It’s the racism, stupid.”
bingo….bang….boing…..bong…..
Think about it this way. Two candidates go to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to campaign in economically distressed areas. This is hypothetical, because in the last election only one candidate did. Let’s say candidate A said, “Everything is great, No need to change a thing. Let’s stick with the status quo.” Candidate B says, “You are unemployed and poor because dirty Mexicans are taking your jobs, and I will protect you from them.” Which message do you think will be more persuasive? Which one is going to win? Does it really take someone who is inherently racist to go with Candidate B when they really do not have any other real choice?
There’s not a clear differentiation here between Trump supporters and Trump voters. I don’t think there is an argument at all to assert that a majority of Trump supporters are racist, xenophobes. But not every Trump voter is a Trump supporter. There is also exit poll evidence that people were voting against Clinton. This was crucial in those Midwestern states that swung the election to Trump in the Electoral College. Those margins were extremely thin. Likewise, I recall reading exit poll data that there were a million voters who voted for Obama who didn’t vote for Clinton in those states. Roughly a 1/5 went to Trump or a third party but the other 4/5 didn’t vote. No whether that was due to voter suppression (for WI at least has a restrictive voter ID law) or dissatisfaction with the choices, that exit poll study didn’t (couldn’t?) determine. But economic malaise is one of the causes of voter apathy. So, the economic argument of Sanders and Warren remains relevant. While the Dem’s will never win over the core racist Trump voters, the Dem’s DO need to win back a majority of their previous voters in those Midwestern states.
I find some of the statistics in this article a little selective. Why would the author argue that those making under $50,000 annually voted for Clinton and so the poorer class did not vote Trump? Given that the majority of middle class American citizens (those most likely to vote Clinton) I would presume make less than $50k per annum individually and outnumber the genuinely impoverished who would vote Trump, this just smells of selective grouping.
Also, let’s assume that what you say is true (while pushing all of the highly selective statistics aside) this leads to a problem in combating this supposed racism. After all, if the least educated are not so racist then how do we combat racism? Obviously education does not influence whether people are racist or not which is always said to be the case. So, what can we do?
Plus, the comment about minorities not voting Trump is not particularly accurate and seems somewhat amusing since one of the photos you used of Trump supporters shows an African American among them and statistics show that Latin and African Americans did vote Trump in significant numbers.
I don’t agree with this at all.
Sanders has an extremely important point. Were all Trump voters motivated by economic issues? No, but enough were that they would have won the election. I think that Sanders was absolutely right.
The Democrats need to assume full responsibility for the loss. That’s something they are not capable of doing.
I think Glenn Greenwald raises some very important points too – the Democrats basically screwed over their base and expected them to vote for a pro-war, pro-Wall Street candidate.
“I think that Sanders was absolutely right.”
This entire article proves you wrong. Do you have any data to convince us of your position?
Are you saying that Sanders and Warren are against war? That’s curious.
The question isn’t necessarily whether Trump voters would have voted Sanders, but if Bernie would have gotten non-voters to the polls
“a pro-war, pro-Wall Street candidate.”
How willfully ignorant must one be to think this only applies to Clinton? Trump is this to the 10th power. To deny so is to be disingenuous.
So if we have to assume that both Trump & Clinton were the same in this regard, and we do have to, then what was the clincher for Trump voters?
• Race
• Fake news about Clinton (pizza porno, Ben Gauzee, et al)
Willful ignorance. Willful.
I disagree with this assumption.
Most right wingers are too uninformed/stupid to see the truth about Trump. For them Trump is an anti-establishment hero. Whereas Clinton had to deal with a much more informed and critical voter base, a lot of them left wingers who are naturally opposed to war and Wall Street.
So no, we don’t have to assume Trump & Clinton are the same in the eyes of their respective voter bases (even though in reality their stances pro-war and pro-Wall Street are pretty close).
prior to the election, when trump was making all his racist statements, the media via the pollsters mostly agreed that Clinton had a lock on the presidency
she campaigned specifically on racial and gender equality … the pundits said race as an issue would actually work to Clinton’s advantage
what she didn’t do was address the ever-widening economic crater left by globalism … and why should she have? all the people whose opinions mattered most said she would win without having to “go there”
Giant informal fallacy
it’s both bigotry and economic pain. you shoulda just wrote that.
these hillanistas seem to think that racism was invented in 2015.
RRRRRRRRAAAAAAACIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSST!!!!!!!!!!!
You are a gigantic fool, Mehdi Hasan.
I think Mehdi misses the point. I don’t think that many would argue that a significant majority of Trump voters are motivated by racism. The fact is that the election turned on about 109,000 votes total in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Would you say that there weren’t 109,000 votes in those three states that were not motivated by racism? The author’s throw away statement that maybe using a broad brush to paint all Trump supporters as racists is bad politics refers to a very significant issue. The author also fails to note that people are likely to accept racist explanations for their economic situation when democrats rally around the status quo telling those who live in the rust belt states that everything is great no need to change. Does the author think that the many people in those states that voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, and then Trump in 2016 were motivated by racism? Democrats love to blame and attack voters for their failures instead of figuring out how to best persuade them. Clearly Trump was running a racist campaign. It is better to attack Trump than making self-defeating comments about deplorables. Clinton’s deplorables was her 47% comment. That led to her loss. Think about it this way, if someone is not convinced by Clinton and is thinking about Trump because he/she is motivated by economic issues, don’t you think that that person would be turned off by the deplorables comment? Does it not simply make more sense to go after Trump rather than the voters? Bad politics is not some minor point here. You might want to consider that instead of voter bashing. And yes I agree that most Trump voters are probably motivated by racism, but does saying that make me feel smugly better about myself and my decisions rather than making smart decisions about what to say in a political campaign?
“You have to identify the disease before you can begin work on a cure. ”
The disease is blaming other people for your problems, that cuts both ways.
Hillary Clinton lost in part because she “flagged” people like me who were critical of her only to warn her and help her. I have been unable to post comments anywhere since being “flagged” and banned from a Democratic forum, even though I donated $2500 to the Democratic Party and voted for Hillary Clinton! I know that isn’t much, but really I donated $0 to the Republican Party. Why have I been rejected by the Democratic party simply because I didn’t join their “Hillary is and has always been perfect” echo chamber? I haven’t donated to the Democratic Party. When people can’t speak out and say they disagree with the regime change in Libya and it’s disastrous consequences without being flagged as a troll, then what kind of party is the Democratic Party, and what kind of Democracy do we have?
It looks like we are into censorship. RT programs are not showing up on YouTube. YouTube channels like Jimmy Dore Show is being de-monetized as are other alternative media show.
The MSM/Deep State is pushing the “Assad used chemical weapons against his own people” argument again. Trump is threatening to “strike Syria.”
It’s starting to look bad. The Deep State is moving for some reason.
Your tinfoil hat doesn’t seem to be working.
Yes. It’s begun and it’s personalized for the end user and Pierre? It’s not the Russians that are doing it.
I don’t know Jimmy Dore, but the show hardly seems “demonetized” — after looking it up, YouTube won’t even show it to me without a subscription! Which sounds like the beginning of the end for YouTube – it was scarcely any time at all between when Hulu started having some premium content and it was just another online $forget$about$it. Plus side, YouTube has been censoring so much as to be losing relevance anyway, and if we get everyone watching LiveLeak it might be a (modest) step in the right direction.
Racism isn’t something you can talk away. Racism in our country is systemic, generational and a vicious cycle.
Take for instance the Rural/Urban divide when it came to votes for trump/hillary. That divide is not just a economic one, it is a racial one. Urban areas are very multi colored, and the white people living in them are for the most part not racist. The surrounding suburbs and countryside are seas of white, and racist whites at that.
In ancient times, when the civil rights movement was underway, desegregation didn’t sit well with a lot of White people. So if they couldn’t segregate the blacks, they’d segregate themselves. Enter white flight. Suburbs were already a thing, thanks to the 50’s and the upper middle class. But the next 30 years brought about massive growth of suburban lower income white people as well. At the time this was a great thing for white people. Gas was cheap. Cars were cheap. The American dream was real.
But why run?
Around the same time, Black people were given a unique opportunity by Martin Luther King to ‘reintegrate’ into American society.
They did not.
But you cannot really blame them. Black America has been forcefully kept separate from the rest of America for the past 250 years. Now, all of a sudden you want them to drop the culture, language, music, morals, dress, and customs they had developed over the past 250 years? No surprise at all. It’s also not a surprise that Black people are just as discriminatory toward white people as white people are toward blacks. I’ll get back to this caveat in a bit.
Anyway, this cultural divide is also the heart of the racial divide. White people today for the most part don’t hate black people because they hate their skin color or believe in white supremacist pseudo science. They hate rap. They hate Ebonics. They hate having a culture waging open cultural war on their own, one they are losing. Most people who’ve been in public school in the past 30 years know that Black culture gets to define who and what is ‘cool’ these days. Being excluded by that force fosters a resentment that lasts a lifetime.
Everything else you hear, about black crime and education levels and everything else is just straw grasping to rationalize a resentment that goes back to the playground. A resentment that gets carried into a number of institutions that allow ostracized white children to have the last laugh. Particularly the legal system. That is assuming they don’t lose it beforehand and go all columbine or sandy hook on their hip hop oppressors. This of course becomes a vicious feedback loop, as scorned white children become racially biased police officers. Generating even more anti white resentment, encouraging black people to push their culture even harder.
…
So now here we are, a culture war drawn along racial lines. But also now along geographical and economic lines. The past 17 years have seen a great shift in geographical wealth distribution. Wealth and jobs have come back to the cities. The ‘liberal elite’ aka white people who no longer discriminate against colored people gladly moved their businesses to the city, where it is much easier to make money. Meanwhile, repeat, frequent market crashes coupled with the Pill mill epidemic has turned white suburban America into a drug addled wasteland. The drug situation among poor rural white people is so bad that business leaders are having to import ‘clean’ foreign workers into the suburbs in order to comply with corporate and federal policy. This makes the job situation even worse for suburban and rural white folk. The drug war, long the oppressor of black people, has turned its fangs on the whites. Oh the irony.
Compounding this is the fact many suburban and rural areas are poorly connected to urban job centers. The American dream expected you to have a car. So did city planners. Cars are one of the first things to go out the window for poor white folk.
Can’t move into the city either. All the low income housing that a poor white person could afford in the city is dominated by black people. If such a white person were to move into these neighborhoods, they would be beset upon on all sides like dogs on a three legged cat. The vicious cycle of the culture war strikes again.
…
As I hope you can begin to see, the issues of race, economics and geography are all very entangled with one another. It is no one issue that must be addressed, it is all three. My recommendations are as follows.
1. Reconnect poor white America with the cities. Build ambitious light rail projects that connect the furthest reaches of suburbia with downtown. High speed rail should be on the table for rural communities, like in Japan for instance.
2. End the drug war and stop treating the drug addicted like lepers and start helping them. Employers wouldn’t need to import Mexicans into areas that are already saturated with jobless Americans.
3. Black community leaders need to pitch in and help teach tolerance to black youth. White people shouldn’t be made to feel like outcasts because they like metal or don’t like drugs and rap.
4. Racially biased police officers should be phased out and replaced with racially tolerant police as they become available.
Do these things and I guarantee you things will get better.
I guess you have never heard of false equivalence.
‘…like dogs on a three legged cat.’ I am guessing you don’t know very many POC. We actually don’t do that.
Good theories though. Care to share some data links that back any of this up? You could also just come visit Oakland and see for yourself.
POC, like most white people, actually love and care for their neighbors – regardless of their skin color. We can be taught not to, but humans are born good.
This comment should be framed in gold and posted to the top of the comments section. Such an eloquent and excellent holistic perspective on this divisive issue.
Thank you for such a thoughtful piece that really takes an honest look at the current picture. In a sea of trolling there’s a diamond in the rough :)
LOL, this comments section is *mmmwa* a delicious broth of cringe and obliviousness, with a delightful soupçon of indifference. Keep it up, team!
This was a very weak piece.
I call bullshit on statistical “levels of racial resentment”.
Well, in the primary. Bernie was the white mans candidate according to Hillary. She got the nomination with her so called black firewall southern state strategy. I suppose when Bernie didn’t get the nomination. Being a white man and all. I couldn’t vote for Hillary, because according to her I was just a racist supporting Bernie. So Trump got my vote by default. Hillary injected race into the campaign. She drove the wedge. Not the voters. The blacks and the Mexicans supposedly stopped Bernie. Why would liberals not give them the gift of Donald Trump?
Exactly.
Besides, Hillary thought she could win with an identity politics platform. She supported NAFTA and the TPP, so she wasn’t a believable supporter of more decent jobs for a strong middle class. She supported regime change in Syria, and Libya, so she couldn’t run on the traditional democratic peace platform that Obama campaigned on in 2008. Voters realized that Hillary’s identity politics was hypocritical and ended at the border. She supported bombing people of color in other countries with depleted uranium munitions, creating future generations of deformed brown children and waves of uprooted brown refugees. She took money from SA, a regime that beheads gay people. She supported the overthrow of Gaddafi, which set women’s rights in Libya back to the stoneage.
The Republican Party has been racists party of choice since Nixon. I can’t believe people are wasting time doing studies on it, and writing articles about it. Trump was simply an explicit racist instead of an implicit racist like Romney. Unfortunately , the USA is fundamentally racist, therefore all black people now have to pay for Obamas dismal performance. And let’s not forget that Hillary is proud of having been a Goldwater Girl. Racism is a part of almost every US citizens character (myself included) , it’s only a matter of to what degree. All that I’ve said here is just the opinion of a 53 year old white grocery store clerk, who is married to a 72 year old black man, and lives in a black community…..opinions, everybody’s got one.
Maybe also some Trump voters were ‘anti-Washington establishment racists’. Over here in Europe we do not use the word race anymore ( except for animals) after the traumatic WWII extermination attempts. There is only one human race. There are however different religions, skin colours, genders, traditions and languages, nationalities….
That’s demonstrably false: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZJSY6DC6uQ
What a dissapointing editorial. The whole business of attributing Trump’s election to either the economy OR race is completely absurd. They clearly BOTH were important along with many other important factors. They also are not even distinct subjects, with all the overlap of race and class and economic conditions. For examplr, economic instability is known to elevate xenophobia and racism as people, as poor economic conditions creates more demand for scapegoats. The “evidence” in the article only supports that racism was a factor but failed to isolate it as the sole determining factor in this close election.
So beyond the absurdity of separating race and economics into either/or causes – this editorial is utterly dismissive of the practical reasons to stick to economics in political debate in favor of just calling people racist. There is no room for debate with racism – all a reasonable leader can do is condemn it, which I’m positive Sandars and Warren have done multple times. There is no logical argument in favor of racism, so there is little value in engaging the racists in logical debate. Calling racists racists evidently does little to nothing to make them any less racist. Economics, however, is an area that can be debated rationally from multiple angles, affects everyone, can be explained using hard numbers and facts, and is deeply connected ALL other political issues including racism. All this makes economics solid grounds tactically for political debate.
Racism should be and is roundly condemned by most politicians but one must acknowledge the practical limitations of what racial condemnation can accomplish, especially if it’s being said to the exclusion of all other rational political arguments.
GaryV: I was going to comment but you pretty much said what my feeling were to T..
People forget that Barrack Hussein Obama was elected twice. Black man with a Muslim name. People are desperate enough to gamble on Trump. All of the sudden a mass of the same voters became rabid racists? I’ts bad out there economically and getting worse for more and more people. Clinton had -0- message. People wanted change with Obama and now they want change with Trump. Both frauds in my opinion.
Did you guys read the article?
GaryV says “The ‘evidence’ in the article only supports that racism was a factor but failed to isolate it as the sole determining factor in this close election.”
Well, other than the author specifically pointing out the data that showed the under $50,000 set mostly voted for Clinton and that the more money a white person had, the more likely it was that they voted for Trump. That doesn’t show economic anxiety as a motivating factor. The author also specifically states that no one is saying that economic anxiety played no role at all. He did not at any point say that race was the sole determining factor, only the most important.
Ricko says “All of the sudden a mass of the same voters became rabid racists?”
For the answer to this, I’ll just insert the author’s own paragraph-
“Klinkner, though, gives short shrift to this argument. First, he tells me, ‘most of them didn’t vote for Obama. There weren’t many vote switchers between 2012 and 2016.’ Second, ‘working class whites shifted to Trump less because they were working class than because they were white.’ Klinkner points out that in 2016, Clinton, unlike Obama, faced a Republican candidate who ‘pushed the buttons of race and nativism in open and explicit ways that John McCain and Mitt Romney were unwilling or unable to do.’
It seems like you guys read a different article. The author addressed all of your points. And he provides data to back up his theories. I would love to see some data to back up yours.
Look, it’s hard for white people to admit that POC suffer from racism. I get it. There is an easy way to test if this is true though. Talk to some POC. We are all around you and, many of us, are real good at being friends with white people. Give it a try. You might learn something.
Love is in the air. Go get yourself some.
The author linked to 3 different articles that all linked back to the same single study from one organization – with a few dubious exit polls thrown in.
The data this article uses is very suspect. But it doesn’t matter what data you use if it fails the common sense test. You can’t tell me a near majority of the voter population is racist after a black man was elected president not once – but twice.
“working class whites shifted to Trump less because they were working class than because they were white.” Klinkner points out that in 2016, Clinton, unlike Obama, faced a Republican candidate who “pushed the buttons of race and nativism in open and explicit ways that John McCain and Mitt Romney were unwilling or unable to do.”
That’s just weak. People voted for Obama twice, but then voted for Trump, against a white candidate, because Trump reminded them of their true racist priorities? That’s so weak it’s extraordinary.
Race is complicated. Liberals always want to divide the world: oppressors and oppressed, racists and non-racists, abusers and victims. It’s silly, frankly.
I know a lot of people that voted for Trump. Not one was racist, and many had voted Obama. But many of them hold opinions which might have a liberal throw them into a racist box. Many of these people have nothing against religious freedom, and they hold no prejudice against any religion. But they also see a connection between Islam and terror, and they think it takes an act of ideological blindness to ignore that connection. Of course all the hardcore racists voted Trump…but they already voted Republican anyway.
And scoring this based on who makes below 50 k a year is foolish. Many of those people are on govt benefits, and those people vote Democrat. The people that voted Trump tended to be people that work in the lower middle class income levels and are anxious about the economy, closing factories, unfair competition.
So all that really leaves you is a poll where more Clinton supporters listed the economy as their top worry. But the nature of the questioning impacts that result. For example, people worried about terrorism might list that at the top, or some cultural issue, but the economy could still have been a crucial factor.
Come one people.
“Not one was racist, and many had voted Obama.”
I am guessing you are white and talking about white people. (Telling that this is the ‘norm’ for you.)
The author doesn’t say everyone who voted for Trump is racist. Read the article again, as it will probably help clarify his arguments for you.
Can you please provide some links to back up your comments? The author provided plenty that refute what you are saying. You may not agree, but saying ‘I don’t agree’ is a pretty weak counter argument. I’m sure you have more to contribute to this discussion. Please share.
No, just no. The majority of Americans did not go to the voting booth to vote for Trump because of racism. Most Americans care about one thing and one thing only, the almighty bottom line aka the economy or rather their jobs, their taxes, etc.
Trump had three types of voters (in my opinion):
The anyone but Clinton camp
The “Deplorables” (or rather who I call deplorables. The racists, sexists, Islamophobes, and xenophobes). The statement, “Not all of Trumps supporters are racists, sexists and xenophobes, but all racists, sexists and xenophobes are Trump supporters”
And the largest group, the snake oil believers. The people who saw him as a shiny new penny in the political world. The “successful billionaire business man” who was going to help all Americans. They fell for his crap, err I mean trap…
Did his supporters blindly put aside his racist and sexists comments, heck yes they did. Did they put aside his comments regarding Hispanics and other nationalities, heck yes they did. They chose to ignore his hatred for sure. But he wasn’t elected by the majority of Americans for his hatred (aside from those that I listed in the “Deplorable” category).
Agreed. Mr. Hasan seems to think that voters of a candidate must be cheering for their entire platform. Instead, in the real world, poor-ass people might even be non-racists and support gay marriage but in their city/town/life neither of the parties have done jack-shit for them. Faced with a choice of the status quo (Clinton) or any semblance of change (snake oil), no duh. Some people not in NYC or San Francisco are actually struggling, Senator Clinton. Maybe you should’ve addressed that, or at least visited their areas rather than going to Hampton fundraisers and dancing with Beyonce.
Clinton’s hubris is only overmatched by her campaigning incompetence. And of course the DNC’s corruption and inability to read the electorate. And so far they’re still doubling down on that. Utterly depressing.
While Trump support was underrated, the results were predictable because pre-election polling consistently showed “direction of the country” in large negative figures. It was a change election.
This article correctly points out that part of the desired change driving the Trump vote had to do with African-Americans, immigrants, and Islam.
Can we, like the author, we simply stop there and conclude that this is simple racism? I don’t think so.
Regarding African-Americans, Trump’s campaign postulated that inner cities were hellholes for black Americans, without law and order. This attitude was decried by progressives, and indeed it is a pessimistic and over-sweeping caricature. Is it wholly wrong or misguided? I refer you to “911 Is A Joke” by Public Enemy or “Us” by Ice Cube.
Regarding immigrants, Trump pledged to enforce laws that describe and regulate immigration. I fail to see any racism in this, unless one was to perceive some inherent inability of certain subpopulations to comprehend or adhere to immigration laws. If so, then one may fairly criticize Trump for failing to provide reasonable accommodation of their involuntary condition. Otherwise, this is a situation where one should either ask for the law to be enforced equally, or for the law to be amended or repealed.
Regarding Islam, I certainly think that going by the Breitbart comments section that there is a huge amount of unfairly broad Islamophobia in the Trump-supporting base. Most populist critics of Islam in the USA fail to see a difference between Sunni and Shia, or to appreciate that hardline oppression by Koranic literalists falls mainly on Muslims, e.g. Sufis, Ahmadhi, Bahai rather than on the rednecks of ‘Murrica.
Nonetheless, it is entirely fair to debate whether religion in general and the Koran in particular contain passages that are incompatible with the post-Enlightenment trend towards liberal, secular, democratic and individual rights-based societies in the so-called West. I refer the author to Ibn Warraq, Ishad Manji, Tarek Fatah.
Such critiques are not racist, because there are many white Muslims – Kosovars, for example. It is an impolite and delicate topic, of course, but even so I think it is perfectly reasonable to undertake, in principle.
nonsense.
The US is being invaded by mexico at the rate of 1,000,000 avg a year since 1975. Mexico has declared war of a different sort on the US. Conquering a democracy is not best done with guns and bullets. Mexico doesnt have them and cannot win that way. Their soldiers are the future voters and their current weapons are protests, drug smuggling and distribution, and attempts to gain sympathy just like israel does.
As far as race goes, the repubs have always played the race card – that never changes. The only thing that did change was –
1. Trump promised to stop the invasion from south of the border
2. Hellary the 2-faced wallstreet whore promised to sell the US sovereignty to her wallstreet picked tribunal for guaranteed profits to be added to the tax bills of US citizens – because she crooked.
The only motivation for race was the race to take back America (north) before it falls into the hands of those we fought against in the last 2 centuries.
Uh, migration from Mexico is down and has been for a decade.
…and emigration to Canada is way up! ;-D
Not only are you wrong, your assertion is exactly opposite to the truth.
From Pew Research:
Your response will show you to be a liar or just misinformed.
He won’t reply. He’s just vomiting his racist lies then running away.
no sir.
i am correct.
the population increase from 1974 to present is NOT about mexican babies born to mexican citizens.
i stand by my calculations.
are more mexicans leaving than arriving? i hope so.
the cultural differences are enormous.
MAINLY, mexican persons are tribal by nature.
doesnt mean they are bad.
i am a nationalist not a racist and i can prove it.
respectfully, please have a good day.
Interesting thought, but E-Verify was never implemented to enforce our laws ? It requires locking up employers that the people do not want locked up. The economy and jobs that are not coming back. . . N.A.F.T.A. was supposed to help “their” economy so there would be no reason to come here. And again our politicians shined the light in our eyes so we wouldn’t see the truth – their saying the jobs being exported were low paying – which was at best a bold faced lie – – – We lost some good jobs – and they will not be back (two off the top of my head were Stanley Tools & Frigidaire).
Viewers/listeners to C-SPAN’s Washington Journal every day, as I have done for years, heard one caller after another caller on the Republican line say that they voted for Obama either once or twice.
Mehdi Hasan: What was the switch from Dem to Republican between 2008 and 2016?
Or take four year increments and further break down the numbers.
What was the switch from Dem to Indy or unaffiliated?
What is the breakdown of party affiliation today?
I think your conclusion is a little lacking.
I don’t doubt that racism was involved, but I think this election had a confluence of bad factors and in general this election was about emotion more than any rational or irrational feeling or indicator.
How could it be that people have been furious about their lack of a job, or a good-paying job, or any economic security when the country has been screwing the people the past forty years?
If Dems don’t figure out what went wrong, they haven’t got a prayer in 18 or 20.
Okay, but economic insecurity fuels racism, as people look for someone to blame they are often persuaded to point and blame “the other” by people who profit from the system causing economic insecurity. Certainly minority groups feel that insecurity as well. But I seem to recall some establishment Dems spending November blaming PoC (and Millennials) for not supporting Hillary as the had Obama…
folks will not admit a least 40% of white adults are racist scum
47% of americans are idiot scum ;) supported Hillary Clinton.
Who is backed and funded by George Soros a nazi calibrator. Donald Trump has added 3 trillion to the stock market created thousands of jobs but your candidate lost boo hoo, I’m an immigrant and supported Trump.
Hi Mr. Hasan, I think there were several reasons Hillary Clinton lost. I think of the Republican Party as a 3 legged stool. One leg consists of Racists and xenophobes and bigots, one leg consists of the Religious Fundamentalists (who want to have abortion outlawed, period), and one leg consists of extremely wealthy Ayn Rand sort of greedy crony Capitalists who have no qualms regarding the means they use to obtain more power and money. If none of that sounds attractive, it’s because Republican stool is offal! The Republicans won because people in the so called rust belt who had trusted the Democratic party to look out for them began to lose hope in them. They began to view them as the party who was in bed with corrupt corporations and Wall Street. In addition they began to view Hillary Clinton as owned by these entities. This was easy to do because there was a lot of evidence provided that she was (both real and fake evidence). The American people are not sophisticated purveyors of news, they don’t fact check. ;) So, I think that Robert Mercer used algorithms to target people on social media with anti Hillary “news”. In addition he (and Steve Bannon) used Cambridge Analytica to try to peg people, type people and target people. Simultaneously, wiki leaks and probably Russia were also targeting Hillary Clinton. Perhaps the predominantly Republican FBI was biased in the release information which harmed Hillary as well. I think the American people, who ordinarily wouldn’t have voted for Mr Trump came to view him as somehow more honest than Hillary Clinton.(I know, what the hell!) I think some simply wanted the regime changes in the Middle East and elsewhere to stop. They correctly connected Hillary Clinton with Libya and Syria and the chaos these regions are experiencing. I think they believed Mr. Trump was going to extricate us from these expensive and seemingly harmful interventions. I suspected right from the beginning this was not going to be the case, but many believed that Mr. Trump was going to somehow be different. I predict we will overturn Assad and then regime change Iran too and nothing, not even Mr. Putin will stand in the way of their master plan. I actually think the powers that be didn’t intend on Mr. Trump being elected. I think he was just supposed to lure away the racists and bigots like the Pied Piper lured away the rats. Americans were supposed to be so offended by him they turned to Hillary. Ahhh, the best laid plans of rats and men. The investment bankers would have won with either choice and Israel was going to win with either choice as well. I question if we ever really had much of a choice. Oh sure, we could pick whether we wanted abortion outlawed or not. We could pick whether or not to allow gay marriage. We could pick whether or not we were going to tackle climate change. As far as taxing or regulating the extremely wealthy or Wall Street, well, that was never going to happen. I voted for Hillary because I saw her as”the lesser of two evils”, but I can understand why some who had previously voted for Barrack Obama voted for Mr. Trump. Our system has been thoroughly taken over by the fundamentally corrupt and deeply selfish and self-interested. I have no idea how we’ll ever be able to clean it up. *Shrug*
If the economy is irrelevant, why did poor areas that supported Obama and Sanders go for Trump?
“political scientists have identified as “racial resentment.” The reluctance to acknowledge that bigotry, and tolerance of bigotry, is still so widespread in society is understandable”
I have never noticed a reluctance on the part of the American Left to acknowledge the existence of racism, or even to refrain from screaming about it at the top of their lungs. But if anyone is having any trouble with it Mehdi can not only teach you how to bang on about it endlessly, but also how to turn a set of medieval dogmas into a race, thereby putting it beyond any rational criticism.
It is pretty clear that that Mr. Hasan is not well versed in interpreting social science data, and I would caution readers to closely examine the evidence he cites in support of this opinion piece masquerading as fact. In general, there are many variables that interact with each other and ultimately influence how voters behave (racism, economics, party affiliation, gender, education level, etc). No one claims to deny that self reported racist and bigoted attitudes were more closely associated with Trump voters or that racism and bigotry do not remain major issues in american politics.
What I and many others do assert is that economic anxiety was the most important INDEPENDENT variable that led to Trumps victory.
This is because economic vulnerability combined with lower levels of education make individuals far more susceptible to bigoted attitudes and scapegoating, which explains why so many polls show a correlation between support for trump and bigoted attitudes. Nevertheless, it is economic anxiety which has a far greater independent effect on trump support. This is borne out by the many exit polls showing far higher levels of economic anxiety among trump voters than clinton voters. Of course many polls also show racism was higher among trump voters. These findings do not contradict each other. They simply need to be explained in terms of how they interact with each other. Given the link between economic anxiety, low education and racism, I would argue that economic anxiety had the most significant independent effect on trump support.
The author addresses all of your points. Maybe if you read the article again…
You you provide some links that refute the data?
“Given the link between economic anxiety, low education and racism…”
What link is that? You mean amongst white people? The author directly speaks to this ‘link’ (hint: you are wrong).
What a b**s*** article. I voted for Trump. I also voted twice for President Obama. I voted for Jesse Jackson when he ran for president, and for Shirley Chisholm when she did. Sanders and Warren are right. The only racist here is the author of this misbegotten piece of garbage article.
This might be stunning for you to hear but your personal anecdote is infinitesimally weaker evidence than multiple studies based on surveys and polling of large numbers of people.
If you want to refute the author’s claims, you might actually have to go beyond your own experience. To put it more bluntly, nobody with half a brain is about to draw broad conclusions on this matter, based on your individual experience. The better question is: are there studies that cast doubt upon or contradict the author’s narrative.
Sorry: ostensible Big Bads, plural: Assam as well as ISIS.
Thank you for this article, mr. Hasan. Sanders may have a (slight) chance to do something about economic equality in the future. He may even activate some of the 44% that didn’t vote last time. But what can he do to solve the issue of racism?
So, my question is: what practical policies can you advice a progressive candidate regarding racism?
Sanders is the most popular politician (by huge margins) in the U.S. .. he has some reasonable things to say about racism. *hint. surprise, bernie ties that to to broad fundamental economic inequality too.
Sanders was, and is now more than ever, a viable political alternative in my view … whether the Democratic Party thinks so or not.
*besides, anyone who voted for Trump (or Clinton for that matter) most likely has more pressing issues than ‘racism’ going on anyway, iykwim.
I know Sanders is very popular, that is why he may have a change to do something about economic equality in the future. However, Mr. Hasan says that racism is a very (or even the most) important factor in the election. Hence my question, what practical policies can Mr. Hasan advice a progressive candidate to solve the issue of racism? I honestly don’t know the answer to that, and maybe it is better for Sanders to focus on issues that he can solve.
He wants to end the drug war and shut down the private prison system, part of a broader push to de-militarize the police and repair their strained relations with the black community.
Doing this would keep a lot of people from getting sucked into a legal black hole that destroys their ability to prosper and accumulate wealth.
On top of that, a disproportionate number of economically struggling Americans are black, and things like Medicare-for-all and affordable higher education will bring greater equality of opportunity.
I see, those are sensible policies. (I was stuck in thinking that discrimination is in people’s heads.)
The underfunded legal defense for poor people, in combination with plea-bargaining, also does a lot of harm. But that is well-known, I guess.
How about the fact that Hillary didn’t pay attention to the white working class? How about the fact that Trump did, and he campaigned his heart out in the rust belt?
Regardless of race, when you think you are being taken for granted you aren’t going to be happy with the situation.
Trump addressed them as pepole. He saw them and acknowledged their struggles. He pledged to try his best and do right by them, instead of blowing them off because they were guaranteed to vote Hillary.
Why vote for the person who looks down on you so publicly when you can vote for the guy who acknowledges your hardship and bases parts of his campaign off of trying to address it?
And what about the fact that working class whites were always told how privileged they were to just be white? Or how the whites are the source of all oppresion I’m this country. They aren’t oppressors, they are the working class. Some felt anger at the fact that society thinks they oppress them, when they are just trying to get by. When your party makes a habit of alienating people, those people tend to not think highly of their candidates.
If you want to keep saying that racism determined this election, then maybe you are right. But it wasn’t the kind of racism you are thinking of. If anything, it was the white working class that felt neglected and abused, and they saw a candidate who wouldn’t look at them as a monolith, but as people who are trying their best to make their communities a better place. Now sure, there were racists who voted for Trump, and there were racists who voted for Hillary. But this had a negligible impact on the end result anyway.
Whether or not Trump will follow through with his promises is one thing, but everyone should realize that he out-campaigned Hillary in the key swing states, which happened to have a white working class who felt neglected and were open to someone outside the status quo.
Just my 2 cents about the whole thing from an unbiased srandpoint.
It’s part of an ugly pattern across the West, and once again, the US is no exception. It’s not difficult to see the similarities between Geert Wilder’s rhetoric, for example, and that of Trump.
In the mean time, people’s lives are at stake. Rhetoric doesn’t occur in a vacuum. And the victims of the ostensible Big Bad (ISIS) are often bearing the worst of its consequences.
https://youtu.be/NR0uIPXY37g
Good article that helps explain the shallow attitudes of the winners; the “suck it up losers” is merely vengeful anger and the ” let’s wait and see what he does” shows they don’t care that Trump’s proven to be another Wall Street insider. If you still need to wait and see, you ain’t been watchin’ or you just don’t give a damn.
However, theres still the strong economic factor you didn’t highlight in your own sources: “40 percent of respondents who said they were struggling gave their support to Trump, far more than any other candidate”. Trump’s two main points were immigrants and economics; his twin towers, if you will.
However, you still have to mix in the gender blindness for Hillary when a far superior and uncorrupted candidate in Sanders was presented. Add in the color blindness in the black community (75% for the Clinton name in the primary) and you’ve got the entire 2016 election founded on voter ignorance on both sides.
With either candidate, Wall Street still wins. It’s always about their economy, stupid.
Democrats can learn something: don’t field corrupt candidates and let the millennials do the talking.
But they won’t.
Thanks for consolidating the info.
Calling people you disagree with racist may make you feel better, but it didn’t win you the election.
If the Democrat Party wants my vote, they can earn it. Until then, I don’t don’t need to hear from them.
What?! Maybe you have something the Democrat Party needs in order to change itself. It’s true you “don’t need to hear from them”, but just maybe they need to hear from you – in a living way – through a constancy of humble heart felt communication carried on with or in the Party. Heaven knows. We need each other more than ever these days. And, find ways to communicate the painful truths in ways that keep the gate open. No small challenge. And Worthy.
Please. With only around 50% of eligible voters voting for ‘the lesser of two evils’ in 2016 (the lowest turnout in 20yrs.- 08 was the highest @ +/-65%), surely relentless voter apathy and/or just resigned disgust [with the options] played a role.
*Hell, I voted for a black man ’08, and look what happened to me, Mehdi!
If Trump is the disease (& he is), you can blame it on Obamacare.
ps. I would vote for Bernie … he may be a socialist commie, but he’s a friendly socialist commie.
There appears to be a semantic error in the abstract of the Gallup study quoted in the article. It should read: “earn relatively high household incomes and are less [not “no less”] likely to be unemployed or exposed to competition through trade or immigration.”
voters may have found a home with trump, if they harbor class and race resentment. this could include other voters as well; HRC was known to attract a wide range of voters, one may consider that the stochastic distribution of other-dislike or dare say it hate is not confined to one side of the political spectrum or the other … although of course there is a definite skew right on race, we might find skew left on white low-ses or as they say the trailer park vote. but trump had a more definite or as we say a more defined demographic, if the politics of hope include all then the politics of hate certainly include low-ses people who live in trailers … HRC failed to see this and thus her loss to the “racist” vote could be construed as a loss to the very people she ran away from all her life, bill’s friends or her own brother at least. before we conclusively decide on prejudice at the key metric one should also consider teh real possibility of cross-voting between anti-woman, anti-black, and anti-trailer trash states or at least consider how this cross vote could manifest in a medium-turnout, medium-latency, moderate apathy but high anger election scenario. we need to consider all the possible outcomes of potential (but not inherently possible or even probable) election vote distributions before deciding which outcomes and which key metrics had the most influence
I blame your English teachers.
yes mr salzmann, everything happens because of exactly one distinct prior influence .. this is the essence of doug computer science
IF trump won
THEN the voters are racist
etc etc etc
Does this mean that it is not only your English teachers who are responsible for your inability to capitalize, punctuate, form sentences and paragraphs according to the accepted conventions of written English, etc.?
Well, OK, then, I blame all who may be responsible.
Are you an English teacher?
you can blame me, since i do it on purpose
i have to note that your use of etc. is incorrect, since “the accepted conventions of written English” doesn’t form the first item of a logical series of items that can be inferred by the reader
you could replace “etc.” with “and other idiosyncrasies that annoy me” … that would make sense
alternately, “your inability to capitalize, punctuate, form sentences and paragraphs, etc.” would be acceptable written english
just to be clear, in correct English it would have been something like this:
your inability to capitalize, punctuate, form sentences and paragraphs according to the accepted conventions of written English, the accepted conventions of casual conversation, the accepted conventions of doug, etc.?
english teachers may have to weigh in on this, but i think that writing “according to the accepted conventions of written English” in a sense “resets” the etc., making it refer to that clause
ok here’s my final rewrite:
Does this mean that it is not only your English teachers who are responsible for your inability to capitalize, punctuate, form sentences and paragraphs, etc. according to the accepted conventions of written English?
So, no excuse other than contempt for the conventions that make your writing more easily understandable to those who may wish to read it. Motivated by God knows and who cares what.
That pretty much consigns everything you write, in excess of ten words or so, to the tl;dr category.
Asshole.
dimwit
The quilting party is in overdrive today.
We have a “Latino” who voted for Trump.
We have a “Black” man who voted for Trump.
And a “Gen X” as well.
We have a show as usual. No zionists today. But you know they’re close by.
*shrug*
i’m giving up my sock puppets for lent
Our resident Alex Jones fan and Trump supporter claims Bernie Sanders is a “fringe” candidate (no, really). A link to a Business Insider piece didn’t dissuade him, not withstanding that the BI article is about a Fox poll. WaPo also reported on that Fox poll:
Among Independents, Bernie polls at +41. Trump is at +5.
Bernie would have won.
Bernie would have won.
A Roger Stone Fan
The problem with alternative history is that it’s not history.
It’s imaginary.
Do you seriously think there isn’t a cache of embarrassing Sander’s emails in Russian vaults? Do you think the Republicans would have not tweeted #socialistSanders like they did #crookedHillary or #secretMuslimObama? The point of a disinformation campaign isn’t to satisfy your fantasy. It is designed to delegitimatize your candidate no matter who it is.
(See #cowardKerry@SBVFT)
The discussion would have been different, but the outcome the same. That’s one of the problems with fantasy history. It turns your pre-existing desire into a certainly rather than a possibility; you end up believing the fantasy more adamantly than actuality will allow.
in discouraging times the fantasy becomes a talisman, an emotional respite … a chant, “if only, if only, if only …” Something to hold fast for comfort.
It’s very human but also very unrealistic.
Same old allegedly intellectual but certainly false argument about which is more salient- racism or class divisions and anxiety.
As a political historian, I’m discouraged by the lack of foundational historical knowledge evidenced in this schlock, and by the author’s facile and myopic interpretations of data.
Tiresome. And unhelpful.
Yepper. Well stated.
Succinct and to the point.
What Julie said.
What historical foundation explains away institutional racism in the US? Especially considering most US history that is taught is severely white-washed to normalize the anti-social behavior of white supremacists.
Another polemic denying the truth. No surprise there.
Julie, have you read the data referenced in the article yourself in coming to the conclusion that the authors point of view is “facile and myopic,” or is it that you simply hold on to the popular narrative put forth by the current Democratic leadership because it is more “helpful?”
Also, within the context of the article itself the author is merely stating an opinion, just as you have your opinion, and certainly didn’t evince a “lack of foundational historic knowledge.” Whatever that means in this context.
Finally!
Pretty Damnably Funny
http://taskandpurpose.com/jared-kushner-iraq-storybook-pictures/
Jared Kushner possibly “the whitest man in America” preparing to make the hard choices even while remaining tweeting best buds with Morning Joe Scarborough. Let’s sing it for them. Black guys help the white guys.
Nunes did nothing wrong (Susan Rice, Dennis Montgomery, Evelyn Farkas) the new House intel lineup utilizing Rep. Mike Conaway, assisted by Reps. Trey Gowdy and Tom Rooney will temporarily take over panel’s investigation into Russia and the 2016 election (Investigation 1)
Who handles investigating the leaking of unmasked US persons broadly throughout government and externally to the press? (Investigation 2).
Nunes added that the recusal will last while House Ethics Cmte reviews political accusations against him.
To the author: if you are going to come to this country to claim everything that works against you is racism, please go back to where you belong…
Sad to see the intercept travel down the same old, tired right -vs- left avenue… it’ll now enjoy salon.com fame.
The headline alone doesn’t bode well for the concept of ‘independent journalism’
I appreciate this article that shows facts instead of opinion.
But as explained by the Trump administration, there are ‘facts’, and then there are ‘alternative facts’.
The problem with the Gallup poll (page 5 pdf, last lines) is that
a) it included 125 000 individuals between July 2015 and 2 November 2016, i.e. before the wikileaks/Podesta e-mails were fully published and before HRC said in her ‘basket of deplorables’ statements in September 2016 that she wanted to ’empathize’ with the wretched and the poor of the USA who felt that their government has led them down, without saying that she wanted to help them.
b) the Gallup poll is biased as 63% voters had an unfavorable view of Trump, which is not similar as compared with the outcome of the election.
c) if you read the Case and Deaton study (please Google), you will find a Table that describes that it is the ‘blue collar’ (low Socioeconomic class) white worker of middle age that suffered most from the US economy that for instance shipped their jobs from Detroit to Mexico (cars) or from the rust belt to China (steel). Trump said that he didn’t like globalization, and therefore it is likely that white blue collar voters voted for Clinton.
But blue collar white voters are not worst of, both economically and in terms of health, in the USA. Please google ‘Branco Milanovic elephant graph’ and you will see that those who lay around the 75-85th percentile of global wealth distribution suffered the most from globalization as their wages didn’t go up, but stayed the same/went down in 2008 as compared with 1988.
Guess to which persons that global percentile applies to in the USA: white middle class blue collar worker (you can find that chart in the paper from Milanovic that also published the elephant graph). They are not the poorest individuals in the USA, whose global percentile lays between the 60-70th percentile
Who are the poorest in the USA? The blacks with low socioeconomic status. See the Case and Deaton study Table, in which it is explained that for them health improved quite a lot in 15 years time (although they are still a tiny bit worse of than whites). The Milanovic study shows that they who are around the 60-70th percentile of global wealth (poor black Americans) things improved when 2008 is compared with 1988. This probably explains why they prefered the status quo from the Democrats and voted for HRC instead of Trump: they have better lives in terms of health and money as compared with 1988.
This is why: ‘The results show mixed evidence that economic distress has motivated Trump support’ (quote Gallup poll). It is a mix of the wretched white community who are still slightly better of than blacks with low SES, who voted for Trump, while the wretched black community voted for HRC.
All of this is not explained in the article from The Intercept. Still these are important additional facts, so that is why I mention them here.
Gallup poll
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2822059
All of this is not rocket science that has to be translated by a journalist from the Intercept. Think for yourself. But thanks for the links in the article.
I’m sorry but compared to the integrity and exhaustively researched articles of Glenn this is garbage.
The Democratic party still is failing to realize that they represent, at the federal level at least, a party of bold faced lies, hypocrisy and plain double speak.
HRC ran on almost the exact same platform and “promises” that made Obama extremely popular. Increased transparency, improving wealth inequality, ceasing middle Eastern wars, reigning in Wall Street were all very attractive ideas for myself and my peers, yet in Obama’s two terms he did literally the exact opposite of everything that got him elected.
Hearing the same song and dance from HRC, combined with fixing the DNC primaries and the closed door speeches to Goldman Sachs threw huge red flags for anyone who bought into Obama’s promises.
People didn’t want the same thing for another 8 years, and Trump is and still delivers on that. Yes I disagree with almost everything Trump is doing?, but at least he owns up to it and the media is responding like actual journalists for once.
I was absolutely sick and tired of Obama and the DNC selling us fecal matter and calling it candy while the media praised how freeing and patriotic it was.
They need a serious wake up call to realize they have gotten so out of touch that Trump and these bizarre fundamental Republicans are more popular than them.
Completely ridiculous argument. This author fails to mention at all that Trump received more votes from Blacks and Latinos than Romney and McCain. As a black man from Wisconsin, I can state unequivocally that I am not a racist and that I voted for Donald J Trump. The reason why people abandoned this narrative was because it was proven false and if one focuses on these bad premises, it will only lead to defeat in the future!
As a Hispanic for Trump, I am offended by the author of this article. All of Trump supporters friends have been super nice to me. Very bias journalism. Can’t believe Greenwald allows this
social justice is a weak broth if it’s accompanied by crony capitalism and war mongering. blaming the race card for the democratic parties ongoing failure is just pathetic.
your comment makes no sense and is pathetic
Thank you, this was a sadly poor article
But that’s just a deflection, and I think you know it. If you read regularly, you know the staff of The Intercept isn’t exactly packed with raging neo-liberals.
You can’t argue against the evidence Hassan presented. What it comes down to, in the end, is that NONE OF THIS WILL CHANGE AS LONG AS SO MANY PEOPLE ARE CONVINCED THEY DON’T HAVE TO SEE IT!
(Sorry for the lapse into sustained caps lock. It’s an act of desperation—some crazy hope that if facts fail, shouting will magically get through.)
Anyone who thinks Hillary’s warmongering and capitalism drove away the white working class doesn’t know a thing about them. Americans in general, and especially the white working class voters you all are talking about here, love capitalism and they love war.
The fact that Democrats behave like scolding “I’m so superior” airheads also has something to do with it.
Especially since they never stand up for workers anymore (which apparently they once did), and are just nagging talkers who resemble the martyred know-it-alls in every family that no one really likes.
The level of intellectual laziness is astounding. I seriously hope some of these folks are just young, and haven’t had time to experience enough of life to know better. Of course, many may be rich pukes who have never had real contact with their ‘lessers’ – went to pricey private schools, live in affluent enclaves, interact with no one but similarly self-impressed ‘born on third base, are certain they blasted a triple down the line and ran hard to beat the tag’ types. Sorry, you’re not nearly as smart as you think, friend. Live for a while without a big fat financial cushion keeping you completely safe sometime.
Indeed – they don’t seem to see how truly desperate things are for many people.
Agreed. They don’t see the dire straits many people are in, and that talk doesn’t pay bills.
Of course Trump is no help, but we’re talking about motivation for his cultural support (such as it is).
Who are you referring to? Don’t really have a dog in this fight, it’s just your comment doesn’t seem to fit Maisie’s response.
My last two sentences don’t refer to Maisie, they refer to the type of people she was also criticizing. The ‘holier than thou, every economically desperate white Trump voter is a racist’ crowd.
Thanks for the clarification, I’m a little slow on the uptake today.
I have one entering college in the fall and two more headed there shortly thereafter. The cost difference from when I graduated in ’89 vs now is staggering. If I were in my 20’s today I’d look at the Dem establishment with a more jaundiced view than I do now.
And that doesn’t even take into account their love of war and Wall Street.
If I were a millenial (I am Gen X), I would be pissed. Trashed planet, crappy job possibilities, and a bunch of older folks who regularly piss and moan about how ‘entitled’ the young are. Please, young-uns, I promise, I am with you, like many other older farts that aren’t fat, dumb, and happy….
I’m Gen X as well and for the longest time I didn’t have kids. Well, last year I got remarried and now have three to think about (and my wife’s former spouse gambled away what savings they had so it’s up to me and her to figure out how to pay for school now…that’s a treat.)
Few things piss be off more than listening to Boomers or (pricks in) our generation talking about how easy the millennials have it. It’s simply not true. I think a lot of folks 50+ (and I just crossed over, what the hell happened to the time?) see younger Americans with their faces in electronics or interested in things that they would never find appealing and simply can’t relate to them.
I worked my way thru a state school and graduated with no debt. That same school will now cost my new daughter (well, me) $29,000.00/year to attend. She’s not capable of making enough to pay for it and is not academically gifted enough to get scholarships for it. But she’s smart enough to graduate and I have no doubt she will. We will find a way to pay for it so she can make it happen. And I have two more to pay for in the next six years.
But thanks to neoliberals in the Dems and the GOP student debt is never forgivable for kids that don’t have parents like me and my wife. And thanks to government subsidies of higher ed being shredded student debt now exceeds credit card debt in the US. The oligarchs are well on their way to creating a massive workforce of indentured servants.
But this election was decided by racism. ;-)
OK. I feel better, now. ;^)
Your meaning wasn’t clear, to me. Although Maisie is perfectly capable of taking care of herself (even by beating me up, when she thinks its appropriate), she’s our star millennial and I have a tendency to be protective of her.
(Even though she is an ageist, know-it-all smartass who doesn’t properly respect her elders. )
Watch out folks. I think Dougs trying to sweet talk Maisie.
Viva Ascerbia!
You betcha. In a world full of poorly-informed dull normals (and worse), I aim to sweet talk all the smart, well-informed, insightful and morally decent people I come across.
NP, I don’t pull many punches, but it isn’t ever personal, and I find many here to be smart folks who I heartily agree with almost all of the time. I do find some to be insufferable asses who IMO spout the same derpitude ad nauseum and basically pollute the space, without showing any sign of actually considering that others may have a point. But the comment section here gives me hope, the same way Bernie did during the campaign- I think most thinking, good-hearted people see how sick our system is, and really just want to promote the common good, for everyone.
As opposed to the holier than thou “I am so much better than folks who voted Hillary types”? Please if there is one thing that is proved by the comment section on this board its that there is no shortage of self righteous pomposity on the side that didnt vote for HRC.
And for what its worth many of those on this board who openly supported Trump have also been exposed as racists.
I think tiger tiger is fleshing out my description of the perspective of Trump’s supporters with regard to self-satisfied pompous liberals who are so annoyingly outspoken on the titular left. The “Sorry, you’re not nearly as smart as you think, friend…” line is directed at them, not me. At least I hope so!
Doesn’t fit Maisie’s response or Maisie’s reality (as understood by regulars here). She’s a millennial struggling to pay the bills, in a shared household, with crappy employment prospects, insanely burdensome student loans, etc. — a much more difficult and stressful environment than white middle- and working-class youngsters of some recent generations had to deal with.
And by the way, she’s as smart as smart gets. (Also sometimes, as smartass as it gets. ;^)
Why would I have an issue with Maisie? My views match hers, as does my economic situation, although a bit differently (long-term unemployed, laid-off after 10 successful years in a solid middle class IT job, can’t get anybody, even places like Target, to give me the time of day, starting to drown in credit card debt). I don’t think my views are all that subtle or that it’s difficult to get where I’m coming from- despise Hillary and Trump, love Bernie, hate how the nation I love has turned into an imperialist, militarist, plutocratic oligarchy. So now you know…. :)
We’re OK. See above.
It’s not that your views are subtle or vague, it’s that a couple of us were confused about the identity of the “friend” you were addressing.
Mea culpa, I don’t edit much, just fire away and hope its clear enough. Which it probably isn’t occasionally…
It seems all three of you (Doug, Contisertoli and you) have now rushed to my defense!
Thanks so much!
I’ll go and blush somewhere.
NP, we should all hang together (certain there are those who wouldn’t mind if we all hang separately… :) )
Somehow you manage to just ignore that real wages have not increased FOR FORTY YEARS. 40% of Americans are BANKRUPT. 80% could not pay an unexpected $1200 expense without having to borrow from friends, family or a payday lender. 90% of all new wealth accumulation since 2000 has gone to the top .1%.
This is the floor people are standing on, and it’s shifty, unstable ground. They are not secure, and all of the signs are that things will only get worse, not better – people who lose their jobs in their 40s and 50s have very very little chance of re-entering the labor force at the same level they left it. For the first time ever, life expectancy for middle age white women has gone down; their lower mortality is in part due to an epidemic of suicide.
You cannot ignore the decades leading up to this moment in time. While racial resentment is certainly present, Donald Trump didn’t invent it. It’s always been there – declining, but still there. But when people are feeling secure, when people feel they have a good future to look forward to, when people feel they can do all right by their kids, they aren’t as easy to manipulate on the basis of fear.
Trump drummed up a massive tidal wave of fear, in the process smearing all kinds of groups: Hispanics, Muslims, blacks, and women. – like 4 Horsemen of the Bigotrypocalypse, all present and accounted for in *every single speech he ever made*. How do you elevate racism over sexism as the motivating fear? How do you elevate either over religious bias? The intersectionality of these biases and fears are undeniable, yet none of the statistical analyses presented seem to be controlling for them in a way that clearly shows racism is the sole/major motivating factor of Trump voters.
And guess what – he still lost the majority vote. He was a majority in the areas of the country where people have been out of work the longest and hit the hardest by the criminally high cost of health care. I bet we can *also* predict who voted for Trump based on how many people you personally know who’ve died of a heroin addiction in the past 5 years. If that correlates highly with “Barack Obama is a Muslim” which fear is most motivating the vote of Trump INSTEAD OF HILLARY?
You may think that it is immaterial that Hillary received 4x the Russian trollbot negative headlines than Trump. But my mom, who has one handicapped daughter and one sexual abuse surviving daughter, voted for Trump – she hated his racism and sexism and religious bigotry, but she told me that “the Clintons are EVIL, honey. The horrible things they are doing – I just had no idea. Monica was just the beginning.” She earnestly believed all the bullshit, so did her sisters, so did everyone around them. She has always hated the Clintons, and this past election gave her a religiously motivated reason to vote against them at any cost. It wouldn’t have mattered who was running against Hillary – my mom was voting for whoever that was, period. If Donald Trump was a pig (her words) at least he was a known entity – an authoritarian, patriarchal man who made locker room jokes like her husband. When I asked her “What if he takes away your Medicare” her answer was full of boomer generation confidence in the government: Oh, he wouldn’t do that. No President would.
Bernie Sanders is in touch with actual lives in these actual places where my mom and most of the Trump voters live. You, sir, do not appear to be. Statistics can tell any story you want – the story you are telling is not false, for racial resentment was indeed a factor in the election. But it is not the whole story, or even the main story. When you have to decide between paying the rent or paying for your kid’s heroin rehab or the electric bill every month, month after month, you get depressed enough to kill yourself or you try to do what little you can to change things. Hillary didn’t run a campaign of changing things. She ran a campaign of calling anyone considering voting for Trump ‘a deplorable’ , sowing the seeds for a finger-pointing divisiveness we will reap for what looks like years to come. Meanwhile, corruption in Washington burning up civil liberties like a grassfire out of control, ensuring that the otherism will continue and worsen, because the only corrective to this situation is reverse the trend of utter powerlessness our special interest-directed, money ruled system keeps driving 99% of the country towards.
Um, yeah. Can we have The Intercept back please? If I wanted to read standard Leftist drivel posing as informed opinion, I’d read Salon.
This is without a doubt the worst piece I’ve ever read on The Intercept, and it sullies The Intercept’s reputation for excellence.
Insipid analysis by a writer with an axe to grind. Pointing to a small segment of the electorate and shouting “Racist, racist!” ignores the FACT that those pinheads were a very small slice of the actual votes. You can point at Hillary and say she did EXTREMELY well among Wall Street millionaires (she did), but the Fact is, they has no effect on the voting total outcomes. The writer also ignores that they racists were heavily centered in deep red states where Shills was non-competitive. In those states that Obama won and Shills lost, ECONOMICS was indeed the primary motivator.
Oh wait.
https://theintercept.com/2014/10/30/inside-story-matt-taibbis-departure-first-look-media/
Everyone’s counting on Jeremy Scahill this time.
Brilliant move on his part to get away from The Intercept. All the promise of a great site has turned into looney race baiting. If Greenwald ever left this site would be done.
The comment section on the Intercept is getting dumber by the day. Trolls everywhere….
Now that Marcie Wheeler and Ken Silverstein have abandoned the Intercept, is Matt Taibbi its next great white hope?
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/ken-silverstein-the-intercept-115586
It’s funny how people can go to work for a company and expect that costs won’t be watched or managed. lol.
The funny thing is, it’s absolutely the same at Politico I’ll bet. It’s just that they have gone through the growing pains of a new org and have all their budgeting and other processes and policies in place.
Of course, that whiner Silverstein didn’t bring that up now, did he?
His basic complaint is this; The Intercept didn’t meet my expectations.
To which I say, Welcome to the real world pal. Creating high expectation of others and having them not meet those expectations is a real disappointment in life.
When Hasan is on tv it is much easier to let such stupidity and divisiveness pass as nobody trusts televised media anyway. Writing it down and publishing it on TI however is something that should not be accepted. Because Hasan , calling other people racists makes you ultimately one yourself !
oh the old “no you’re the racist” routine hit Europe too huh?
Exactly…like saying that 8 years of Obama rule have made the USA more ‘racist’.
What magnificent rhetorical skills you have there. Ignore the entire body of evidence that the article is about, attack the person who wrote it (instead of, say, trying to come up with any sort of comeback as to why this evidence is false or misleading or in any way untrue), then finish it off with the schoolyard chant of “I know you are, but what am I?”.
You know that you can never come up with any defense other than resort to name-calling and primary school-rhetorics. The evidence is overwhelming and the conclusion is clear, with or without the author’s input. Why you even bothered to comment, when you will clearly never come up with a reasonable counter-argument, is beyond me.
Several members of my extended family voted for Trump. I’d classify the majority of them as racist. I understand Sanders/Warren not wanting to offend Trump supporters. They see what it did for Clinton.
I’d like to hear how members of your extended family classify you.
You know how the GOP used the phrase “Obama”. The way they referred to it was like using a curse word. They never paid any respect to his name. They treated his name like garbage just like they probably use it when classifying minorities.
So what ‘race’ are they ?
To learn racism played and plays a big part in choosing a president makes sense to me. It is a reality. I don’t grok why it is such a surprise to people. I value this essay because it points out a piece of reality that’s poisonous and at worst lethal. At one level to think that my racist attitudes don’t ultimately hurt me is a denial (defensive). There’s a First People’s saying – “so within so without”. The “different Other” out there is the mirror of the “different Other” within my own psychology. How I treat that outer “Other” is how I treat the disowned “Other” within. Rages, violence, cheating, lying, meanness, addictions act out the denial of the presence of this “inner Other” or medicate the tension of avoidance. As long as people are fearful of consciousness – the beauty of being Whole meaning both dark and light, familiar and unfamiliar, light and shadow – ignorance reigns and Soul weeps.
one could argue that both Obama and HRC lost the bigot vote
Trump, on the other hand, won the economic vote that Romney lost
so the election was in fact about economic issues
Exactly. In those states – PA, MI, WI – the racism factor, while present, was a very minor part of the vote. Hasan should just go join the #Resist movement… and this should be prominently labeled as an opinion piece.
What makes you think those states are special? Uneducated whites in those states moved away from the Dems at the same exact rate as those everywhere. Which means it’s not related to the economic plight of those states, but a more general white thing.
This article is most certainly NOT up to The Intercept’s usual standards (a CNN exit poll? Really?). Whatever you might want to claim about the people who voted for Trump aside, the fact remains that alternatives to the Democrats and Republicans saw a huge jump in support compared to 2012. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein tripled their vote totals. Evan McMullin, despite starting incredibly late and having to rely on write-in access in most states, garnered hundreds of thousands of votes. And many more people didn’t vote at all, having little to no confidence in or support of the electoral system.
These voters most certainly weren’t motivated as much by racism, having rejected both Clinton and Trump, but instead by economic policy, foreign policy, civil liberties and rights, democratic elections (The Economist recently downgraded us to flawed democracy status), and drug policy. Ignore these voters at your own professional and political peril.
Shhhhh!! This is no place for facts. Just call anyone who disagrees with your opinion a bigot and move on.
White racist votes didn’t beat Clinton–the unique institution called the Electoral College did. If American presidents were elected on popular vote, Clinton would have won and there would absolutely no talk about white racism as a factor. Instead there would have been celebrations over the American voter first electing a black man, then a woman to the Oval Office.
So given the reality of the Electoral College, the analysis of then election then goes to critical states which pushed Trump to victory. And the thesis of race and racism as the dominate factor simply does not hold up in explaining Trump’s victories in those states. In fact, in looking at the states which gave Trump the victory, race is a factor, but a secondary one at best. One of the primary factors over race was lower voter turnout among tradition minority base. Commentators on this article have articulated other factors.
Calling Sanders and Warren top democrats is a rather strange description. Nancy Pelosi is a top democrat. Schumer is a top democrat. The rich donors are top democrats. Sanders and Warren have no power within the democratic establishment other than their media visibility. The recent DNC election and appointments firmly established the neo-liberal Obama and Clinton wings as controlling the structures of the party. And these are anti-Bernie and very uncomfortable with Warren. Nancy Pelosi, maybe the top democrat in Congress, had to say in 2015 that Warren did not speak for the democratic party when Warren ragged about the lack punishment for banksters. Warren, this “top democrat” had absolutely no influence on changing this.
Yes, it’s extremely bizarre that he cites Warren and Sanders (and Michael Moore!) as top Democrats.
The real top Democrats are clueless and incompetent and will keep losing elections because their illogic and misreading of the electorate parrots this (ridiculous) article.
The U.S. is inherently a racist nation. Most indigenous natives (the first Americans) who lived in North America for 40,000 years before Plymouth Rock were virtually wiped out by the white European invaders. African slaves were pirated off to this continent over 400 years ago and enslaved in order to profit the white landowners and settlers. That legacy lives today and continues via a continuation of Jim Crow laws and customs.
However, I can see why Bernie Sanders avoids tagging racist whites as such. If he wants to get anywhere and expand his political reach he can’t afford to alienate them.
“That legacy lives today and continues via a continuation of Jim Crow laws”. I’d love to hear what Jim Crow laws are still laws in the US.
“Nor is their coddling of those who happily embraced an openly xenophobic candidate.”
So all who voted for Clinton “happily embraced an openly corporatist and warmongering candidate” even if there main reasons were say, being pro-choice? Are you a coddler of those voters, Mr. Hasan?
This looks like an attempt by the entrenched power elites to destroy progressives. They want Identity Politics because it’s cheaper for the 1%.
The Empire Strikes Back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alAz8Ie-EcA
Well… they were motivated by the idea that their economic problems were because of people who weren’t white… so sort of both. They had a problem (poor white people) and a scapegoat (other races) which went together hand in hand and bolstered each other.