2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forum'Racial aversion increased greatly over the last 8 years'
Last edited Tue Dec 13, 2016, 12:03 PM - Edit history (1)
Worth reading: http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/12/13894546/obama-race-black-white-house-cornell-belcher-racism
An excerpt:
Its a disconnect thats frustrating to me. Theyre not voting against their economic interests; they are voting for their higher interests theres an idea that your group positioning doesnt matter economically. The idea that you can disconnect white people from their group position and make pocketbook arguments to them void of the history of their group is folly.
That is not to say dont target or dont go after them. Thats absolutely not what Im saying. What I am saying is just that the answer isnt simply a pocketbook argument we do have to inoculate against the increased tribalism and racialism in order to have that conversation. As long as there is a group sense of decline, we do have to calculate for that in our conversation and try to inoculate that as opposed to simply coming up with another argument about why raising the minimum wage is beneficial to you.
By the way, look at the last midterm [election] in Arkansas, which is full of the kind of blue-collar voters youre talking about. They voted against Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor who supported a minimum wage increase. There is a disconnect here that progressives need to understand if were going to make a more effective economic argument for blue-collar whites, and stop telling them that theyre voting against their economic interest. That is a complete lack of understanding by progressives of the connections between economics and identity.
Dream Girl
(5,111 posts)Really like this guy ...author of "Black Man in The White House"
forjusticethunders
(1,151 posts)The problem is that these attitudes are unconscious - they don't even realize the reason why they "want their country back" so bad is because they feel like nonwhite people are taking it from them.
Garrett78
(10,721 posts)The decimation of labor unions hasn't helped matters. Not enough white people recognize the common struggle.
Educating the young, more outreach to rural Democrats (not all of whom are white, by the way) and simply putting up a candidate who hasn't been victimized by 25+ years of slander could be key. It's a numbers game and the ongoing demographic shift should help in terms of nationwide (POTUS) and statewide (Senate and Governor) races. But voter suppression and gerrymandering must be addressed.
BainsBane
(54,806 posts)or race and economics. I believe the author is spot on.
I think evidence for that lies in the fact Trump voters are not poorer than Clinton voters but in fact more prosperous. They feel themselves declining relative to other groups--African Americans, women, Latinos, etc... They still have more than those groups, on average much more, but the disparity is not as great as it once was. Then there is the fact that ALL blacks and Latinos aren't poor, which upsets Trump voters understanding of the proper social order.