Bill Clinton: Trump knows how to get 'angry, white men to vote for him'

[DonViejo]

Source: Politico

By LOUIS NELSON 12/19/16 08:08 AM EST


President-elect Donald Trump “doesn’t know much,” former President Bill Clinton told a local newspaper earlier this month, but “one thing he does know is how to get angry, white men to vote for him.”

Clinton spoke to a reporter from The Record-Review, a weekly newspaper serving the towns of Bedford and Pound Ridge, New York, not far from the Clintons’ home in Chappaqua, New York. The former president held court earlier this month in Katonah, New York, where he took questions from the reporter and other customers inside a small bookstore.

On the question of Russian cyberattacks damaging the candidacy of his wife, Hillary Clinton, the former president said “you would need to have a single-digit IQ not to recognize what was going on.” But he blamed FBI Director James Comey for her loss, telling those gathered around him that he had “cost her the election” by announcing with less than two weeks to go before the election that the bureau was examining fresh evidence related to her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Clinton’s comments were published in " target="_blank">the newspaper’s print edition but have not been published online.

He also scoffed at the regular claim from Trump and his team that the president-elect’s Election Day win represented a “landslide” victory, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote. “Landslide? I got something like 370 electoral votes,” Clinton said, correctly recalling his 1992 total. “That was a landslide.”

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Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/bill-clinton-trump-hillary-loss-232803

[yellowcanine]

1. Just shut up Bill. You are not helping.

[LanternWaste]

12. Yes. Yes he is helping.

Yes. Yes he is helping.

(notice how we both provided objective evidence to support our premise?)

[LaydeeBug]

30. He is *totally* helping. nt

[BeyondGeography]

2. And angry white women

[TexasBushwhacker]

34. Yup. Including 45% of the college educated ones n/t

[Initech]

3. Can we tell angry white men to go fuck themselves in 2020?

Because as a white male, that is how I feel right now. They definitely ruined it this year.

[MFM008]

4. I say we tell them now

........

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

6. Yes, we can, but ...

... that doesn't cancel their right to vote.

We need a better tactic than that.

[brush]

27. We need to stop the repug cheating, with Russian help

That's what we need to stop as we actually got 3 million more votes.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

29. I don't think the Russians suppressed any votes.

That was all the work of Republicans.

[brush]

31. But they certainly hacked and worked to influence votes agains Clinton.

[Orsino]

5. No, he doesn't.

He only knows how to be himself, but he knew that TV news loved covering him. Angry white men voted for him because he is who they wish they were, and because the TV assured them it was okay.

[Tatiana]

7. Not sure if his health is failing, but the campaign should have sent Bubba out

to go get those "angry white men" himself -- especially in the Midwest. He told the truth about Obamacare and most of the very voters we needed were nodding their heads in agreement, while the media stirred themselves into a frenzy about the fact that Bill said something "bad" about Obamacare.

[kevink077]

8. What are white men so angry about?

I am a white male. The only thing I am angry about is how stupid the majority of white males were by voting for the pervert.

[Bucky]

10. What, was it like 65% of white men? Appalling

Of course the sad thing isn't the demographics. The sad thing is that 46% of Americans swallowed that shit, regardless of ethnicity. The 9% of blacks and the 30% of Hispanics voting for Trump are equally appalling.

[kevink077]

11. Agree--but...

Why has the term "angry white male" has been around for a few decades. White males have it pretty good in this country. what are they so angry about?

[Bucky]

13. As long as we talk in categories instead of treating humans as individuals...

... understanding will elude us.

"White males have it pretty good" is a cliche. You can't understand someone if you start off by invalidating their emotions.

[JudyM]

17. Usurpation of their absolute power and privilege. Neuropsychologically, losing something is an

extremely powerful negative. Far worse than not having something in the first place.

Couple that with one of the most powerful psychological distresses: perceived social ostracism, which we are hard wired to feel as actual pain (confers an evolutionary advantage to be supported as part of the social group), and it's clear that being marginalized from the very top of the social heap, puts you in hyper focus about that loss. And extremely motivated to get back up there, largely to the exclusion of other values. Behavioral Economics 101.

It's anger because they don't have the tools to process it except to turn it into anger. Many white men see the value and justice of diversity, while others just get mad.

And it shouldn't be overlooked that their anger is implicitly "validated" by the Christian Right.

[SubjectiveLife78]

20. Same thing that anyone who is angry is angry about

The feeling they have less and less control over their own life. We're all in that same boat, just that we all blame each other for that. White men blame black people/women. Democrats/Republicans blame Republicans/Democrats. Women blame men. Blacks blame whites. The 99% blames the 1%. Americans blame Russians. Muslims blame the west. The list goes on and on.

We're all prisoners of history. What happened before shapes the environment we live in today, and I think we all want to be able to break free from that in various ways. Of course that's very difficult to do. It's the downside of accumulated knowledge. Everything has been built up a certain way, but you can't go back and fix anything. Like the Electoral College for example. We're all pissed about it, but good luck trying to change it. All we can do is try to build on top of what's already there, but what's already there has thousands and thousands of years of history, momentum, and complexity on its side.

There's no sailing west these days. There's no open frontier. America couldn't even be established as a country if it tried doing it today, which is only the case because America basically wrote the rules of the international system we have. Which is a weird twist of history. Or makes perfect sense. Once you get to the top, you don't want others being able to play that same game.

We have nowhere to go anymore. The world is pretty full. Now we're rapidly adding robots and machines to that equation. Most people are increasingly unnecessary. A lot of people feel that what they want life to be, what they expect it to be, simply doesn't matter. That goes for anyone who is pissed off about anything. Angry white men, angry black men, angry women, angry whoever.

[QC]

24. I wish we had a like button on posts here. n/t

[moonscape]

32. 46% of Americans who voted - thankfully a far cry from 46% of Americans n/t

[JI7]

19. at "their country" being taken from them

[christx30]

22. Loss of jobs in the rust belt?

Mandated, expensive health insurance with crippling fines for noncompliance? I'm sure some of them are angry about that. And the "if you like your insurance, you can keep it" thing. A lot of them are angry at that loss. You can tell them that the more robust (and expensive) plans are better for them. But a lot of them don't like being told what's best for them. So they vote for someone in the party that has promised to repeal the law that has quadrupled their insurance.
Obamacare may have helped some people. But it has hurt others. If you dismiss the people that are hurt, you'all lose their votes.

[harun]

25. People are working harder and seeing Health Care, Education and Housing as

less and less attainable each year.

There it is in one sentence.

[Bucky]

9. I love the Big Dog. I'm not ready to hear sour grapes from him.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

14. The angriest white male on my Facebook feed went right to his comment like a moth to a flame....

...so I think he's got a point.

The thing is I'm a white male, and I can and do get angry about things, but "Angry White Male" is an entirely different subset of person. It's basically a reactionary who consciously or subconsciously creates a persecution complex around being a white male.

[treestar]

21. I've seen this

They truly believe the white males are the ones persecuted.

They are the victims. They are told they didn't get the job because of affirmative action. Or claim they were so told.

The other people are all getting something they aren't, in their view.

[moonscape]

33. "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." n/t

[geek tragedy]

15. He won white women too nt

[JI7]

18. at least white women aren't defending them

[Cha]

16. This isn't sour grapes.. it's a fact. He whipped 'em up with LIES.

[hughee99]

23. In Clinton's 1992 electoral landslide, didn't he get a smaller percentage of the popular vote than

trump did?

[yagotme]

28. I believe he got less than %50

in both elections, as I recall.

[CentralMass]

26. Angry white women too.