I don't see that NPR is at all relevant to it. Having a different source of information won't suddenly make people able to comprehend an utterly different way of thinking. I'm sure I could consume nothing but Fox News and other right-wing media and I'd still be unable to comprehend it.
I was basically raised Republican, spent some time as a libertarian, and gradually came around to a Democrat-leaning independent viewpoint. I understand why someone would have voted for Mitt Romney. I understand why someone would have voted for John McCain. I seriously considered voting for John McCain, and the main reason I didn't was his choice of VP.
But Trump eludes me. The man is basically what you get when the worst kind of used car salesman is born into money. I cannot understand how anyone can look at him and say, yes, that man should be leading this country. Not because he disagrees with what I, a Democrat-leaning independent believe, but because he clearly has no actual beliefs, principles, or policies of his own, and for nearly every position he has ever espoused, he has also espoused the opposite, sometimes within the same sentence.
I can understand why a person would believe that we should have less gun control. I can't understand why that person would then vote for Donald Trump, who said that the police should search people on the street and confiscate their guns.
And I think you underestimate the pure hatred for Hillary Clinton. Far more voted against her than for him. When your life is miserable and your community is dying and a rich lady you've hated for decades tells you "America is already great" (this was actually her slogan!), well....
Imagine being a truck driver and watching this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YttscNOoAjA
Finally, at the end of the day your rank and file republicans are just going to go to the polls and check the box next to 'R' like they always do, no matter what. Religious republicans will say a prayer when they do it, poor ones will convince themselves he'll help them, moderate ones will convince themselves Hillary is worse. You'd sooner convert one of them than convince a lifelong fan to change their favorite sports team. Similar with democrats.
They support Trump because they admire him, plain and simple. He's a blowhard who's blustered his way into becoming President of the United States.
A regular working-class guy knows he's no Obama, or Lincoln, or Ronald Reagan. But he looks at Trump and thinks to himself, 'If THAT guy can make it, then so can I.' To them, Trump is literally the American Dream of upward mobility incarnate.
He may have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he doesn't have class. He acts like the boorish nouveau riche who upends all the upper crust's social and political conventions. The more elites (regardless of party) are offended and publish long screeds about how he will destroy the Republic, the more the base love him.
Who do you trust more -- coastal and city elites who think your religion is hogwash, your values are garbage, your biggest problems are that you're ignorant, racist, and white?
A Republican Party that says they're for you, and then turns around and nakedly passes legislation that will gut your communities and keep shipping jobs off shore?
Or an untried, loud-mouth demagogue who promises everything to you, but at least he's not part of the same system that's been screwing you over for the past 30 years?
When you feel your back's against the wall and you've nothing to lose, you roll the dice.
- Clinton took the midwestern 'blue firewall' for granted
- Russia
- Comey
- Sexism
- Voter suppression, especially amongst African-Americans
- Really wrong candidate for a strongly populism-tinged election cycle
120,000 votes total across three states would've flipped the election, and we'd be having a totally different conversation right now.
n.b. I voted for Clinton in the primaries and general.
Of course, this is nothing compared to 2000, where the number was a mere 269.
If it seems like I'm singling out NPR, I didn't mean to. All left wing outlets messed up or this wouldn't be an issue. I'm saying the audience should do a better job of understanding the people who voted for Trump. And the left-leaning media has to produce many, many pieces aimed in that direction.
Why would Fox News produce pieces to explain to cosmopolitan types why Obama policies failed to improve poverty in Tennessee or El Paso? Or why Iowans without employer-provided healthcare feel like collateral damage in the battle for socialized medicine?
Well, over 40% of voters last time around certainly understood. I've read thoughtful and/or insightful things as well, so there's media out there. It's just a matter of people with appropriate credibility consuming, curating, and re-explaining these things to their audiences. I could repost things I've found compelling, but until the Terry Gross's and John Oliver's of the world start taking white blue collar concerns at face value (not just people not smart enough to be cosmopolitan socialists yet), I'm not sure it will help much.
What concerns are these, specifically?
Middle-aged white people in the US are seeing increase in mortality while other groups in the US and outside see drops [1]. This is the result of chronic long-term stressors.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising...
The surprising speed of the change has been explained by some as being due to individuals not actually being against it, but believing that everyone else was against it, and so going with the flow. When it became an issue, it became clear that it was actually only a minority that was against it, so it became socially acceptable to be for it.
There are still some fascinating demographic gaps though, as shown by these nice graphs of pew poll results:
http://www.people-press.org/2017/06/26/support-for-same-sex-...
Everyone is being made economically irrelevant by automation, immigrants or outsourcing. Non-white Conservatives and Christians also feel their value systems are being ignored, circumvented, etc. It's not just white people who wear the blue collars, or work in the mines and steel mills, or who hold those "traditional" American values/
Why then is the explanation of Trump's rise often presented as a reaction to the cultural oppression and disenfranchisement of white people exclusively, when so many of the complaints mentioned as valid reasons for Trump support have nothing to do with race? It seems like an attempt at alt-right retroactive continuity.
Two reasons: because the liberal left has made simply 'being white' and 'being male' as something to apologize for (check your privilege?), and because working-class white folks have been disproportionately negatively affected by the economic shocks of the last three decades -- this while blacks have been making wide gains in income [2].
The liberal left has been pushing identity politics based on race for a long time. It should surprise no one when poor white people accurately see that they are fast becoming a minority and they should use that type of politics for their own ends.
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/05/news/economy/working-class-m... [2] http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/african-amer...