Privileged people calling less privileged people "stupid" doesn't seem to be working...

[pengaleng]

I hope people stop using the word privilege.

 

[brogdale]

The exit evidence reinforces the notion of a demagogue inflaming & exploiting expectations amongst white folks that they should be significantly better off than black/brown folks.

 

[bimble]

So it's like I said in post #41 which bimble didn't think was worth replying to.

Sorry, yes your post makes sense of course. There'll be loads more numbers coming out to chew over at leisure, I just think its too early to set in stone a definitive story of what just happened and why. Also I think the huge numbers that did not vote at all this time are significant.

 

[brogdale]

What do you mean?

I mean that in most elections - general or local - fewer of those on low incomes cast votes compared to those on middle or high incomes.

Yeah, but if the 'left behind' thesis had validity those that did vote should have done for the demagogue.

 

[sihhi]

What do you find interesting about these figures? In the context of this thread specifically.

I think that liberals will continue to call nationalism/protectionism-minded 'white' voters 'stupid' because of such figures.

We might see similar things in France's elections and the next British general elections.

 

[likesfish]

One of the problems is "the left"
Play identiy politics which runs into the problem the 90% of the population arnt BME and get a little bit sick of being labelled stupid racists and less hard working than immigrants etc etc. Also the obession with israel doesnt help.

The Unions have declined and work has changed a lot.

 

[killer b]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think when pointing to the demographics and saying ‘look, it’s not the working class at all!’, people are missing that the demographic of trumps support includes the traditional republican vote as well. The additional support from angry whites was enough to push him over the line, not enough to constitute his entire base.

CF Brexit – the disenfranchised poor are only a part of the story in both cases – but a significant enough part to make a difference. I guess most of the working class (if they vote at all) will still vote along the usual partisan lines.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think when pointing to the demographics and saying ‘look, it’s not the working class at all!’, people are missing that the demographic of trumps support includes the traditional republican vote as well. The additional support from angry whites was enough to push him over the line, not enough to constitute his entire base.

CF Brexit – the disenfranchised poor are only a part of the story in both cases – but a significant enough part to make a difference. I guess most of the working class (if they vote at all) will still vote along the usual partisan lines.

It's a complicated picture in the US anyway. Some of the richest bits are Democrat-majority, some of the poorest bits Republican-majority. And that's been true for years, at least since the Dems lost the South. And let's not forget why they lost the South - they lost the south because racist white people of whatever income bracket stopped voting for them post-LBJ. There's no cosy way to wrap that up.

 

[sihhi]

Yeah, but if the 'left behind' thesis had validity those that did vote should have done for the demagogue.

There was a 16% swing in that direction.
Trump as a candidate was a poor demagogue for reasons discussed ad nauseam the photos of his gold room and towers etc.
There will be better ones.

 

[redsquirrel]

Yeah, but if the 'left behind' thesis had validity those that did vote should have done for the demagogue.

But as killer b says, for the thesis to be valid it doesn't require a wholesale switching of voters just a significant chunk of them. UKIP didn't take any seats of Labour at the last election but it'd be nonsense to say that there wasn't a drift towards UKIP.

 

[sihhi]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think when pointing to the demographics and saying ‘look, it’s not the working class at all!’, people are missing that the demographic of trumps support includes the traditional republican vote as well. The additional support from angry whites was enough to push him over the line, not enough to constitute his entire base.

CF Brexit – the disenfranchised poor are only a part of the story in both cases – but a significant enough part to make a difference. I guess most of the working class (if they vote at all) will still vote along the usual partisan lines.

Well yes it seems to me the Dems could not get 'their base' out this time unlike in 2008.

 

[8ball]

Is "privileged" a code word for educated?

Education certainly is a privilege.

 

[Gromit]

I'm puzzled at why this is in UK Politics

Yeah cause it will have no effect on the UK and it's political decisions whatsoever.

 

[seventh bullet]

There's as much a cultural break in direction/outlook needed in the left, that while not of course unconnected to the political perspective, is IMO one that might be harder to deal with.

We need to move from an introspective, sub-cultural, low ambition, activist focused scene to a class based, massively ambitious, problem solving, organized movement.

Answers as to how to do this on a postcard please...

'In the left' is the problem. Start with people outside of it, including me, first.

 

[Gromit]

Is "privileged" a code word for educated?

US pundits seem to be concentrating analysis on college educated V non college educated. Especially when it comes to the female vote. It seems it is very significant.

 

[8ball]

I'm puzzled at why this is in UK Politics

A thread with this title could easily have been started on 24th June this year.

 

[chilango]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think when pointing to the demographics and saying ‘look, it’s not the working class at all!’, people are missing that the demographic of trumps support includes the traditional republican vote as well. The additional support from angry whites was enough to push him over the line, not enough to constitute his entire base.

CF Brexit – the disenfranchised poor are only a part of the story in both cases – but a significant enough part to make a difference. I guess most of the working class (if they vote at all) will still vote along the usual partisan lines.

Combine the additional support towards Trump (or Brexit or UKIP or Le Pen or whatever) with a continuing drift away from the Democrats (or Labour or the PS/PCF or whatever) and you have an electoral double whammy.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The least privileged group of all in the US - poor black people - voted overwhelmingly against Trump.

 

[mauvais]

But its not the defeat for Clinton we should be worried about.

Its the defeat (or failure) of "the left" to provide the vehicle for an utterly predictable revolt that we should be concerned about.

I don't disagree. But if you pin it at least in large part on the elites dismissing the electorate as thick racists, as the thread title suggests, then given what we now know about America, what would you do with it?

How much of the objective stupidity and racism required to install Trump do you consider to be immutable within any useful timeframe - more cause of the predicament than effect - and how much can be easily dispelled with the right offering and redefinition of the narrative? Clearly 50-something million people can't be written off but yet they - at the very least - held their nose and went with it, so what do you do with that? How welcoming are you willing to be?

And when facing people and ideas that are in themselves explicitly racist and/or stupid, rather than hitching a ride on it, how much are you going to outright reject them, how much are you going to ignore them, and how much are you going to tolerate, humour and accept them at the expense of your actual values?

What if your opponent lies and trades on total fiction? Does it even matter if you can disprove it in this supposedly post-truth [vomit] era?

What if you do all this as best you can and then you lose anyway? Different planet?

And what if you win by being the mirror of Trump? Is it worth anything?

This is a dangerous game. You can freely attack the elites for privilege, conservatism and all the rest of what they represent - as shown up by the disaster that was 'America is already great' - but if you introduce intelligence and racism into that cocktail - they think you're stupid! you're not! - you run the risk of legitimising the very things you're against. Plus you diminish individual responsibility for the vote, for politics. 'They made me do it' as another bona fide idea.

Yet, this late in proceedings, what's the alternative, apart from more patronising 'racism is not the answer' attemptedly-educative leadership from an elite?

There's something to be said for doing precisely nothing and letting the lessons be learnt on their own. But that too is a high stakes gamble and regards whatever happens in the interim as acceptable collateral damage.

 

[Mr Moose]

Indeed, seemed to work for Trump and Vote Leave.

It was the Express and Mail that won Brexit. 20+ years of headlines. The web and social media just allowed them better distribution.

 

[chilango]

I don't disagree. But if you pin it at least in large part on the elites dismissing the electorate as thick racists, as the thread title suggests, then given what we now know about America, what would you do with it?

How much of the objective stupidity and racism required to install Trump do you consider to be immutable within any useful timeframe - more cause of the predicament than effect - and how much can be easily dispelled with the right offering and redefinition of the narrative? Clearly 50-something million people can't be written off but yet they - at the very least - held their nose and went with it, so what do you do with that? How welcoming are you willing to be?

And when facing people and ideas that are in themselves explicitly racist and/or stupid, rather than hitching a ride on it, how much are you going to outright reject them, how much are you going to ignore them, and how much are you going to tolerate, humour and accept them at the expense of your actual values?

What if your opponent lies and trades on total fiction? Does it even matter if you can disprove it in this supposedly post-truth [vomit] era?

What if you do all this as best you can and then you lose anyway? Different planet?

And what if you win by being the mirror of Trump? Is it worth anything?

This is a dangerous game. You can freely attack the elites for privilege, conservatism and all the rest of what they represent - as shown up by the disaster that was 'America is already great' - but if you introduce intelligence and racism into that cocktail - they think you're stupid! you're not! - you run the risk of legitimising the very things you're against. Plus you diminish individual responsibility for the vote, for politics. 'They made me do it' as another bona fide idea.

Yet, this late in proceedings, what's the alternative, apart from more patronising 'racism is not the answer' attemptedly-educative leadership from an elite?

There's something to be said for doing precisely nothing and letting the lessons be learnt on their own. But that too is a high stakes gamble and regards whatever happens in the interim as acceptable collateral damage.

Short answer: Provide a fucking alternative.

So people aren't left with a choice limited to (racist/sexist etc etc) populism or the status quo.

How to create that alternative is the problem.

 

[redsquirrel]

Similar point to the OP

Put this question in slightly more general terms and you are confronting the single great mystery of 2016. The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent professional (who really wasn’t all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone who didn’t accept their assessment. And then they lost. Maybe it’s time to consider whether there’s something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away.

And this is probably even more on the money

The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman. The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these Democrats are the “last thing standing” between us and the end of the world. It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Short answer: Provide a fucking alternative.

So people aren't left with a choice limited to (racist/sexist etc etc) populism or the status quo.

How to create that alternative is the problem.

But that's the point - that this was already lost before yesterday. It was lost on the day Clinton was chosen as the candidate. In terms of any kind of left position, yesterday's vote was merely determining what the defeat would look like. And this isn't new. When was there last a real choice in a US election?

 

[Pickman's model]

But that's the point - that this was already lost before yesterday. It was lost on the day Clinton was chosen as the candidate. In terms of any kind of left position, yesterday's vote was merely determining what the defeat would look like. And this isn't new. When was there last a real choice in a US election?

you say that NOW: but you weren't so fucking prescient during the campaign, were you?

 

[brogdale]

There was a 16% swing in that direction.
Trump as a candidate was a poor demagogue for reasons discussed ad nauseam the photos of his gold room and towers etc.
There will be better ones.

In the US, not for 4 years. Anyway how does his obscene personal wealth prevent him from prejudice-based rabble-rousing?

 

[chilango]

But that's the point - that this was already lost before yesterday. It was lost on the day Clinton was chosen as the candidate. In terms of any kind of left position, yesterday's vote was merely determining what the defeat would look like. And this isn't new. When was there last a real choice in a US election?

..or a British one.

I remember having almost the exact same discussions back in 1993 when Derek Beacon got elected as the BNP's first councillor.

Even then people were writing off the voters as thick racists whilst at the same time lining up to defend the status quo (in that case a rotten Labour council).

It's not new.

...but the vacuum is getting bigger and bigger as first the "harder" Left (CP, trots etc. collapse in place after place) and then the centre-left starts to drift far to the right, away from its base etc. etc.

On the plus side (sorta) is that it won't be too long before the left has a completely clean slate to build on

 

[J Ed]

Well yes it seems to me the Dems could not get 'their base' out this time unlike in 2008.

Yes, I suspect that a large part of the picture that we are going to see is the fact that black voters simply did not turn out for Clinton in the same way that they did for Obama and who can blame them. There are other factors at play of course, like voter suppression.

I wonder how effective the Trump campaign's facebook targeting of voters will be seen to be in the end, it seems to me like he used this very effectively in much the same way as the Tories did in 2015.

 

[Pickman's model]

..or a British one.

I remember having almost the exact same discussions back in 1993 when Derek Beacon got elected as the BNP's first councillor.

Even then people were writing off the voters as thick racists whilst at the same time lining up to defend the status quo (in that case a rotten Labour council).

It's not new.

...but the vacuum is getting bigger and bigger as first the "harder" Left (CP, trots etc. collapse in place after place) and then the centre-left starts to drift far to the right, away from its base etc. etc.

On the plus side (sorta) is that it won't be too long before the left has a completely clean slate to build on

this would be the lib dem run tower hamlets run by labour i suppose.

 

[brogdale]

But as killer b says, for the thesis to be valid it doesn't require a wholesale switching of voters just a significant chunk of them. UKIP didn't take any seats of Labour at the last election but it'd be nonsense to say that there wasn't a drift towards UKIP.

I remain convinced that the 'left behind' trope is far less credible than the notion of a (nostalgic) "remember better times" cohort. As UKIP spoke to those who remembered the benefits deriving from the period of post-war consensus/system competition, the exit data suggests that Trump spoke to those who used to feel better off than immigrants/blacks/the underclass.

 

[redsquirrel]

I remember having almost the exact same discussions back in 1993 when Derek Beacon got elected as the BNP's first councillor.

Even then people were writing off the voters as thick racists whilst at the same time lining up to defend the status quo (in that case a rotten Labour council).

Vote Labour/Clinton to keep out the BNP/Trump.

I remember when I first started posting on U75 some posters criticising that tactic, that sure it probably would work in the short term but sooner or later it was going to run out of steam and fail. Well it has/is and the consequences aren't good.

And yet many still persist in it.