5thhorseman wrote:Per wrote:5thhorseman wrote:Topper wrote:The more I think about yesterday's election, the more I realize, democracy was the biggest winner.
I'm not a Trump supporter, but all these people venting on FB, are missing the point. Do they honestly believe that 47% of the electorate are racist, sexist, xenophobic idiots? To think this way is dismissive of the real reasons that people voted this way.
I think Michael Moore nails it. A lot of people voted for Trump as a big fuckoff to Washington.
Sort of like voting a goon into the Allstar game.
Yeah, but why are they so pissed off about Washington? In this election?
You tell me. From where I'm sitting (Sweden), I can only speculate.
Trump's core supporters are rural white men without a college degree. The redneck vote.
In the end he also got a narrow majority among white men
with a college degree, but less than Republican candidates usually get.
Hillary got 92% of the black vote, two thirds of the Latino vote and also a majority of the female vote.
She also got a majority of the total vote. In most democracies that would have mad her the winner, but the arcane electoral system used in the US means some votes are worth more than others, and most of her voters were concentrated to the coasts and big cities, whereas Trump's where spread all over the prairie.
So, my guess is that the angry white male that voted for Trump typically feels they have been neglected by Washington for a long time, while all the money and attention is directed towards women and minorities.
They also tend to be less interested in the environment and might not feel thrilled about free college education, as that ship has already sailed for them, and why should their tax money fund someone else's education?
There's also a surge of protectionism. A lot of people think they have lost jobs because of Nafta and other trade agreements, which is bullshit. The US economy has gained from Nafta. Growth is up, exports are up. But of course, with increased competition some companies are bound to be losers. That's part of capitalism. But the bif Picture is that free trade is good for all countries that engage in it. The science and the track record are solid. There is no questioning it. Unfortunately most people who do not umderstand economics think that there is a fixed amount of wealth to go around, and when some one gains, some one else loses. That's wrong. Nafta has been even greater for Mexico and Canada, but as the Mexicans and Canadians have benefitted from trade with the US, they have bought more American goods, which means all three countries are winners. The problem is that the media focuses more on the companies that go belly up than the companies that triple their sales, and so people that don't see the whole picture get the impression that free trade is bad. Either way, free trade bashing was clearly a winning strategy in these elections, and pretty much all candidates engaged in it, but Trump probably the most. Sad really. Protectionsim is like peeing in your boots to keep your feet warm in winter. It feels good for a while, but then you end up having to amputate them.
As a European I cannot understand why so many low income Americans are upset that they now get affordable health care. Sure, the system Obama introduced is not as good as what we have here or that you have in Canada, but Obama specifically chose to stay away from a single payer public Health version as he was hoping this hybrid version, which is more or less the same as what Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusettes, would help gain support across the aisle. Not sure that that worked out as well as he had hoped. Either way, some 30 million Americans that did not have health insurance now do, and to me that seems like a great leap toward finally becoming a civilised society. But obviously a lot of Americans would rather let big pharma, the hospitals and insurance companies continue to scam them.
