An article from the Intercept, confirming what many already knew...

[JHan]

Surprising, since I don't care much for the Intercept.

When some leaders say things that are demonstrably wrong it's a slap in the face to what we- PoC who make up a sizeable base of the Dem party- have experienced.

TOP DEMOCRATS ARE WRONG: TRUMP SUPPORTERS WERE MORE MOTIVATED BY RACISM THAN ECONOMIC ISSUES

by Mehdi Hasan

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.”

See also Blue_Tires post here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/118760856

The situation is deplorable.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Clearly obvious to people without a bias.

[jodymarie aimee]

2. love the

intercept

[Wellstone ruled]

3. This was the

hurrah for the so called White Majority. Now they are having buyers remorse.

[LonePirate]

4. This was obvious during primary season and it only intensified as the year progressed.

The seething hatred at his rallies and within his Reddit group clearly exhibited people weren't flocking to him for his novel ideas or (lack of a) keen intellect.

[JHan]

11. I stomached watching a couple rallies, just out of curiosity from start to finish.

Trump had his finger on the pulse of racial resentments. It was some real ugly shit.

[Squinch]

5. Yup.

[LisaM]

6. Yes! And I'm glad for this study.

I also think there was a subtext of sexism (even among women), but race was clearly an overwhelming factor.

[JHan]

7. Sexism was a big one.. I know *some* non-white fellas who loved the juvenile sexist machismo talk..

Had to take them to task for it.

[CousinIT]

8. I know someone wh outright SAID he would not vote Hillary BECAUSE she was a woman

I think sexism and racism played a much bigger role in the 2016 election than anyone wants to admit.

[JHan]

10. Yep, met a few like that...

A dude even lectured me about "hormonal" changes and how "hormones" means women cannot deal with challenges as effectively as men. Dude in question is 20-fucking-8.

[eleny]

9. All you had to do was watch them at Trump's rallies

I listen to the Scahill's new Intercept podcast. No beef with him there.

Anyhow, it felt obvious that many Trump supporters were voting for the white man in a backlash to Obama.

And now Trump is failing them or stabbing them in the back. Whatever you call it he's doing them wrong. Fake-out!

[JCanete]

12. Racism is still not a root in and of itself. It's not something we are born with. Why people are

less humanizing of others is complicated, but it would be I think, incorrect to say that a lot of that wasn't directly related to misconceptions about how "those people" are affecting the security and safety of "good" people. It has a lot to do with fear on all kinds of levels, and economic insecurity feeds that impulse. They are afraid of losing, and they are led to believe(and are quite ready to believe) that the people taking from them and er...ruining America...are the least advantaged and most vulnerable...not the bastards in charge.

So I don't see how this undermines the argument that we could have reached these people on economics, in-fact the article sites the nonsense that people believe about people of color that suggests otherwise. If we'd been able to short-circuit that programming with something that gave them immediate and easily graspable hope for their own well-being, that very well might have trumped their worst instincts, which they most certainly fall back on when they are experiencing high levels of stress.

We cannot tackle class without tackling racism. That is absolutely true. We cannot tackle racism without tackling issues of class either.

[JustAnotherGen]

13. I dunno

There is a large segment of white folks:

Poor, Working Poor, Middle Class, Upper Middle Class, Rich and wealthy that resent -

A single working class black woman just as much as they hate Beyonce.


Their financial circumstances piss them off either way - because the very existence of them is an affront.

I've learned - I can't win with these people.


Eh - neither Perez nor Ellison are going to go along with the idea of catering to them. I think in 2017 - as we are seeing with Murphy in NJ it's about running against Trump.

2018 will probably be a lot of "we told you so's".

[qwlauren35]

14. Not sure if you were here a year ago...

But there was a lot of argument between black DUers and white DUers on this subject. Black DUers said that the two are distinctly different, while white people, who do not experience racism, argued that they are completely linked.

It got pretty ugly.

What the article is trying to say, in my mind, is that by focusing on class issues, Democrats lost. It was about race, and NOT ABOUT CLASS.

You seem to want to refute the data and put class in the mix. Your choice. But you cannot fix the problem if you won't see it for what it is. We have a race problem in America that is so bad, that we ended up with a shitty president just because he let racism factor into his campaign.

We have Americans, across class lines, across gender lines, across education lines, who think Obama was Muslim. The Tea Party backlash was because we had a black president. We elected Trump because we had a black president. The Republicans are in power because we had a black president. Not a damned thing to do with class.

As long as you continue to believe that class was a possible platform point, and choose not to deal with America's racism, we may continue to lose elections.

Your choice.

[JCanete]

16. Racism in this nation is not in question by me, at all. Why it is an effective tool--Why it

is promoted and reinforced by our leaders and our media is a big part of why it is so entrenched. Why the powers that be use racist, sexist and homophobic language, is because it's incredibly effective at stratifying and dividing people, and it is effective at getting them to vote against their actual best interests. Rhetoric and Disinformation continues to flow from the top . They are the ones who have spent hundreds of years using whatever the outlet, to promote fear of black people or foreigners, or homosexuals...etc. They are the ones who have ignored, as long as they could, the actual realities that marginalized people live with. Their media has often ignored stories that would humanize the people we abuse as a society. And when they haven't blatantly promoted racism, they've promoted post-racist bullshit which has allowed the institutionalization of it to fester and maim.

That's partly racism on the part of the people in the media. No question. They don't even see that they're being racist sometimes...they're caught up in those same lies that we've told ourselves, or that we've been told. But it is more than that. It is cynical exploitation of these issues for the sake of maintaining power, specifically as it manifests as money.

Trying to combat racism without turning off that tap is going to be near impossible. We need to draw people's attention to that tap, and to the rich fuckers who are pissing on everyone's heads and saying it was " that brown person over there" who did it.

[JHan]

17. LBJ addressed this:

I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you

[JCanete]

24. I certainly see wisdom in that statement, and it does pretty much sum up how the behavior

manifests. nt

[peggysue2]

15. Welcome to the party, Intercept

Is anyone seriously shocked that racism played a part in the 2016 race? Or sexism? Though I recall reading several DU posters who vehemently disagreed, said the anyone claiming sexism was wrong, wrong, wrong. It's easier to say that the white working class was driven by desperation--no jobs, no options, utter despair. But who did these voters blame for their predicament? Nasty immigrants, uppity blacks and . . . obnoxious women.

I had a recent conversation with a good friend, a true blue Dem, working class white who voted for Hillary but said quite pointedly,"people voted for Trump because they were pissed off that the 'undeserving' were getting more than they were."

Says it all.

So three cheers for the Intercept crew. They saw the light. About 6 months too late. They were too busy demonizing Hillary Clinton. Because emails. Or President Obama because . . . whatever. And I say this as someone who was critical of a number of POTUS's policy issues.

But now? It all sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it?? My petty complaints about President Obama or Hillary Clinton's email brouhaha (which I never bought into).

Nothing like a fascist to cleanse a voter's palate. And/or scare the bejesus out of all of us.

[Tarheel_Dem]

18. The Intercept still sucks, but even a broken clock.............

[JHan]

19. lol.++

[certainot]

20. still missing the point. these levels of racism are a symptom of ignoring talk radio

it is absurd that there is still no polling to make the essential association - talk radio.

the economic angle is nutty and racism is a closer association but it's still missing the real problem

there will always be racism but by ignoring racism blasting daily from 1200 radio stations we've made it more 'acceptable'.

people who ignore talk radio have no clue how much racism gets excused by limbaugh and spawn. the immigration issue used to sell voter suppression, attacking trayvon martin and michael brown and defending their killers, egging on cops during demonstrations, BLM, and more were regular topics for a few hundred racists on 1200 radio stations. reaching 50 mil a week.

what makes this tragically absurd is that 257 limbaugh stations, many of the loudest of the 1200, depend to a large extent on black athletes.

at least 88 major universities broadcast sports on more than 257 limbaugh stations. those associations bring in ad dollars to pay for the racism from those stations.

those stations are essentially KKK-lite and those schools have no excuse not to look for apolitical alternatives. all americans have to do to effect a huge reduction in racist propaganda and move the country 10 -20 points left is to push those unis to do the right thing.

[JHan]

22. I could be mistaken but..

You've touched on this before - talk radio- on this board. And I agree, in some areas RW talk radio is all you'll hear of politics. It's not hard to see how constant drumming of anti immigrant, pro white Christian narratives all day , feeding fear and suspicion of government and "others" is validating for many Americans. And shock jocks may come in different flavors, but they are all pushing the same themes from Don Imus to Limbaugh.

Still, the soil was fertile for Trump, and these shock jocks, to sow toxic politics. If the mindset exists, it's too easy for someone to come along and stir it up to bring it to the surface. Trump's campaign borrowed from Nixon's - "law and order" , the attacks on the media, "silent majority" - code for "real Americans" also code for "white people".

[certainot]

23. that's my point - the soil is shit in and turned by these blowhards. they eased the shame

and make it acceptable because the call screeners make sure no one gets in their face. when they get called racists they yell political correctness. most of it is sold with lies that are never challenged - from made-up and cherry-picked statistics to plain old racism.

trump is the talk raido president.

In the New York Magazine, April 3, 2016, Gabriel Sherman wrote a piece titled “Operation Trump”:

Throughout 2014, the three (Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, and Sam Nunberg) fed Trump strategy memos and political intelligence. “I listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, and he was getting reports from me,” Nunberg recalled. What those reports said was that the GOP base was frothing over a handful of issues including immigration, Obamacare, and Common Core.

thing is, it may have been the russians that told trump's guys to study talk radio.

limbaugh got trump through the primaries as his main supporter/excuser and attacker of the gop establishment and money candidates - that's how trump beat the big money. it's limbaugh now leading the attacks on susan rice and 'pencil necked' schiff.

fbi should be checking out limbaugh too.

[ismnotwasm]

21. K&R