Comment by pionar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pionar | Hacker News Reader

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I've heard the alternative view, and do understand it somewhat (Disclaimer, I voted for Clinton).

This election wasn't about women. This election wasn't about immigration, or minorities. This election was about the working class (blue-collar folks) feeling like they're getting shafted by government.

I live in what's usually a heavily Democratic state, Michigan. This year it'll probably go for Trump. Not because of Muslims, not because of terrorism, but because of the economy.

For years, these people (mostly white, blue-collar workers) have been told the economy's doing great for most people, free trade is great for most people, unemployment is low for most people, and the ACA helps most people.

However, for these folks, they see themselves as not part of that most people that are benefiting from our economic policies. All they hear from the establishment is the same bullshit "promises" and corporatism that they've been given for the past 30 years.

They're sick of it. They're sick of Democrats and Republicans toeing the same line, deferring to "the market" and not doing anything about it.

Donald Trump had answers. Whether those are the right answers remains to be seen (my guess is they're not). Trump said what they wanted to hear, and wasn't afraid of pissing off the establishment along the way. That's what these folks want.

They didn't vote for Donald Trump the person, they voted for Donald Trump the personality.

This election wasn't about immigration

It was about immigration in part. I've been hearing variations of your comment from many sources for a while now and I think it reflects the establishment's fears that Trump might actually fix immigration. And by fix, I mean "reduce to non-insane levels".

Anyway, he absolutely got the nomination by being the only credible candidate to denounce illegal immigration in particular, and if he doesn't deliver on that, there are going to be a lot of pissed-off Trump supporters, blue collar or otherwise.

...

Other people mention bigotry or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, in-force policies such as massive 3rd world immigration and affirmative action are institutional bigotry of the most brazen and damaging sort, aimed deliberately at this country's founding stock, including me. This isn't make-believe bigotry, or sticks-and-stones bigotry, but real life bigotry, with force of law. Liberals are mostly unable to process this kind of thinking in any coherent way, but try to understand it in the adage, "Even a worm may turn." And we're the worm.

I think more obvious examples of Trumpian bigotry are things like the claim that "thousands of Muslims" celebrated 9/11 in New Jersey.

That has little to do with how many generations you've had to live in the US before you qualify as "founding stock."

(Out of curiosity, though, where is your cut-off line? Is it only first-generation immigrants, or somewhere farther back? I haven't heard this "founding stock" argument before.)

I live in Greece. The US immigration is nowhere near insane levels. You guys have it easy! You have a lot of room, a solid immigration and integration process and a country generally very open to opportunities.

You simply have a job crisis. Everybody does, don't feel singled out :)

And all the other stuff--the bigotry, the misogyny, etc--is simply not a deal breaker?

I find some of that quite surprising.

Priorities.

Unfortunate as it may be, when you are not the target of bigotry or misogyny, it's much easier not to see those issues as a deal breaker, even if you disagree with them.

Remember that, when it's not self-interest, the only thing that makes those issues a deal breaker is empathy. Today's world has very little empathy; the US especially, with its corporate-centric philosophy.

It's not that surprising.

Agreed that it's about priorities. I'm from a poor state that went to Trump in a landslide. I personally know many people who voted for him. Most were somewhat embarrassed by it. They were ones who lied to or ignored pollsters, who wavered until the last moment. They found Trump despicable, or at least not worthy of the presidency. To understand why they would vote for him anyway, I think about how my vote for Clinton was not an endorsement of her history of warmongering, her complicity with the evils of Wall Street, her failure to advocate strong enough solutions to certain social problems until pushed by Sanders...

(what follows isn't a disagreement with the above posters, just a remark for context)

I vehemently disagree with their reasons (such as they are) for voting for Trump, but reducing the explanation of their behavior to bigotry---the easiest, most accessible, most self-affirming, and most totalizing explanation available to isolated liberals---misplaces the real problems and thus opens to misguided solutions. Yes, the Trump supporters who make the news are terrible people, and there are many of them. But they aren't over half the country. Explaining Trump's success -primarily- in this way is a failure of empathy on the part of liberals, a failure to understand the majority of the country as decent, caring human beings just like you and I who have, in fact, gotten shafted. Almost all economic recovery the past few years has gone to major cities and life for rural communities is only getting worse. We all know here that Clinton had proposals for addressing this (a 500 billion injection into infrastructure for example), but, for better or for worse---okay, for worse---Trump is who connected on this sentiment.

Everyone knows Trump is a wild card---to put it kindly---who has no concrete policies, but it's worth remembering that the main focus of his victory speech last night was promising to bring back the New Deal, for a "socialist" program of government supported work, to distribute jobs across the whole country by fiat. Whether he will make good on his word and can then force it through the Republican establishment in Congress and whether it will then work all remains to be seen.

Thanks. Really good points.

One striking observation to me is the lack of ideological purity in Trump's economic plan. You (correctly) describe it as socialist.

Similarly, Hitler's economic views were inconsistent or incoherent. He ran vehemently against "Marxist" socialists and against "Jewish" capitalists, arguing that the Marxists were acting as a front for the capitalists. Meanwhile, he inflated unemployment numbers, claimed the economy was doing worse than it was, and promised infeasible fixes devoid of specificity.

I'm not arguing all of Trump's supporters are primarily motivated by bigotry. But I think they're willing to tolerate bigotry in the name of economic progress, and unfortunately they may get the bigotry without the progress.

> Similarly, Hitler's economic views were inconsistent or incoherent. He ran vehemently against "Marxist" socialists and against "Jewish" capitalists, arguing that the Marxists were acting as a front for the capitalists.

This is a hallmark of Fascist ideology. There is no internal consistency or coherency, only political expediency and appeals to emotion/fear.

The problem is that stuff doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not bigotry and misogyny vs. a house plant. It's bigotry and misogyny vs. lies, apparent technical incompetence, cronyism, disregard for the law, and everything else that Hilary's opponents see in her. Both sides are terrible, and no they're not equally terrible, but at some point some people throw up their hands and move past the personal/character issues and vote along with their interests and the person they perceive to stand up for those interests.

Disclaimer: I couldn't get over Trump's character issues personally, and I don't for a moment believe that even when he says exactly what I want him to say that he believes it and will act on it in a responsible manner. But I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what's in the minds of people who will vote for him, and these are things I've come to believe.

Great post. This view (not you specifically but voters in general) amazes me: "It's bigotry and misogyny vs. lies".

Trump set a new standard for blatantly lying about many issues - 51% vs 12% for Clinton according to Politifact. From what I have read/heard, voters either buy into the lie, don't care, or understand that Trump is just saying what he needs to say to get elected.

Fact checking was meant to end this behavior but instead we are reached the point where a candidate can have a 51% rating and still win.

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/

Which was exactly the same as Brexit, lessons are still not being learned.

Like Brexit, in ten years the demographics will have shifted to the point where the vote would never have succeeded.

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