Fulchrum posted:

I mistook your endless vapid whining

Raskolnikov38 posted:

turn on your monitor

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Majorian posted:

As someone else pointed out in the other thread, though, those are just the inner city areas. The whole Youngstown–Warren–Boardman metropolitan area is overwhelmingly white: almost 87%.


That's still a really big issue for the Dems, though: either way, the Democratic candidate didn't get their votes. The Democratic platform did not speak to them specifically, and/or they did not trust the Democratic nominee to make good on her promises.


I mean, I agree on all of this, but the fact of the matter is, Obama also ran on a partially economically populist platform in 2008, and these counties turned out for him overwhelmingly. So the narrative that offering social welfare programs that benefit minorities as well as white people would somehow turn off too many white working class voters in these areas, doesn't seem particularly well-founded. (which I know you haven't explicitly argued, but it is an argument I've seen in this thread)

Fulchrum posted:

Do you have any response other than that? Planning to try a 'lurk moar' or a Rick roll next?

Fulchrum posted:

I mistook your endless vapid whining for Kingfish's. It all sounds the same to me.

Fulchrum posted:

Whereas you think if we just attack their heroes that will make them love us.

You are a dumb dense fucker who cannot comprehend a difference between "don't rail indiscriminately against all rich people and instead try to attack just the bad ones" and "we need to slash taxes and regulations on the ultra rich".

Ytlaya posted:

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that literally all really rich (like hundreds of millions of dollars and up) people are bad people. I can't conceive of any reason to have that much money and not donate all but enough to lift comfortably to charity. It's basically like having a button that will instantly ease the pain (if not outright save the lives) of literally thousands of people and choosing not to press it.

The closest thing to a reasonable excuse that I've heard is "if they keep the money they can continue to grow it and donate even more in the future," but you can always use that logic as an excuse to not take money away from the rich. It's also not at all clear that the return a rich person can achieve on his/her wealth are greater than the returns, but economic and social, of putting it to use helping people directly.

I realize that "literally all rich people are bad" isn't exactly a good political strategy, but it doesn't make it any less true. And, at the very least, I think that making rich people as a class into a political target isn't a problem. You can still make exceptions for "good ones", but saying "it is absurd that super-rich people exist while people live in poverty" is completely fine and an easy to understand message. It's certainly not any less reasonable than targeting bigots, which I'm sure you'd agree isn't a problem (and the average rich person is causing a hell of a lot more harm than most individual bigots).

Main Paineframe posted:

The Y-W-B metro area is overwhelmingly white, yes...but as I pointed out in response, it's also a lot less poor, with a poverty rate of less than half of Youngstown itself.

quote:

The Democratic candidate didn't get "their" votes, yes, but whose votes didn't they get? Was it the working-class whites who stayed home? Or was it the equally-numerous and even-poorer working-class blacks?

quote:

Did it even have anything to do with poverty at all? The poorest county in Ohio (a 91% white coal county with 30% of the population under the poverty line) voted Clinton,

quote:

In Ohio, 26 counties reported around 20 or more drug overdose deaths per 100,000 people in 2015. In all but two of these counties, Frydl said there was at least a 10 percent surge in voters who went to Trump compared with Republican candidate Mitt Romney in 2012, a 10 percent or more drop in voters who went to Hillary Clinton compared with Obama, or both of these trends. In five counties, the shift was big enough for the county to flip from Democrat in 2012 to Republican in 2016.

And in Pennsylvania, all but four of 33 high-overdose counties followed a similar trend. In three counties, the shift was enough for a complete Democrat-to-Republican flip.

In total, eight of 13 Ohio and Pennsylvania counties that flipped from Obama to Trump had around 20 or more deadly drug overdoses per 100,000 people.

quote:

But in Wisconsin — the state that ended up putting Trump over the top in the electoral vote early Wednesday morning — 22 counties that had once voted for Obama switched to Trump. Some of those counties — such as Sawyer, Forest and Adams — have some of the highest unemployment rates in the state.

Michigan had 12 counties that went from blue to red, including critical Macomb in the Detroit suburbs and the swing counties of Calhoun and Monroe.


Iowa had a whopping 31 of its 99 counties that went from the Obama column to Trump's. The bellwether county of Cedar, which has picked the winner of every presidential race since 1992, again got it right. Even though Obama carried it by 4 points in 2012, Trump won it by 18 this year.

You can check out the demographic trends, unemployment data, education level in these states and more in the state tables and results complied by the NPR Visuals Team. Other states, such as Minnesota and Maine, also saw significant swings from Obama to Trump. Clinton held on narrowly to win in Minnesota, though 19 counties went from the blue to the red column from four years ago. In Maine, Trump picked up 1 electoral vote for winning Maine's 2nd Congressional District.

Fulchrum posted:

You'd have far more success and would need to make way fewer caveats and distinctions if you just attacked the political philosophy that says that not only do the ultra rich deserve every dollar of that money, but that they should have more money, and asking them to pay taxes is heretical and theft.

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

Right. Therefore, the democrats must demonize the 0.1%.

I said this a page ago, and I think you somehow read it as "the democrats need to get on TV and tell everyone that oprah is a fat bitch and Iron Man has rusty armpits." While I think we all learned a lot about each other from that exchange, I'd like to give you a chance to go back and think about what I said, and maybe see that we're saying the same basic thing here.

Fulchrum posted:

Wait, do you actually think both that there does not exist a rich person who ever.votes for increasing their own taxes, and that there are no poor people in America who ever voted for lowering taxes on the rich? Cause that's the only possible way I can see you not getting the distinction here.

Agnosticnixie posted:

When was the last times the dems objectively increased taxes at the federal level?

Also yes, it's very possible. You're still absolutely not getting the point because you'd rather assume that every american is a groveling petty bourgeois who blesses the ground oligarchs step on.

Agnosticnixie posted:

When was the last times the dems objectively increased taxes at the federal level?

Majorian posted:

More precisely, there's a difference between the "wealthy and glamorous" (movie stars & celebrities), and corporate raiders like Jamie Dimon. The public associates George Clooney and Katy Perry and (God help us) the Kardashians with glamour. Those are the multi-millionaires that they admire. They may envy Wall Street crooks' money, but they also know that they are the ones responsible for a lot of their economic woes.

Fulchrum posted:

If only we could, say, point out some kind of political ideology that actively enabled wall street crooks and tries to weaken regulations on them

JeffersonClay posted:

If you can't make your point without falling back on "both parties are the same", maybe the point isn't worth making.

Majorian posted:

Given the pattern of formerly-blue Rust Belt and rural districts going over to Trump, in lily white and racially diverse areas alike, it seems pretty clear that poor white voters played a significant role. Obama won Iowa by more than 9 points in 2008, and still held it by almost six points in 2012. Yet Clinton lost it by ten points in 2016. Trump won Maine-2 by 12 points; Obama won it by eight in 2012.

Main Paineframe posted:

It seems perfectly clear that poor voters played a significant role, at least. Poor white areas overperformed for Trump, poor non-white areas underperformed for Hillary, and racially diverse areas did both...so why the eagerness to keep pointing at white people specifically rather than acknowledging her general overarching failure to gain traction among poor people of any race?

quote:

The "white working-class" narrative just translates to being nicer to the great white suburban expanses of the Rust Belt while ignoring the Flints and Youngstowns where the poverty is most concentrated.

Majorian posted:

That's not what I'm saying, though. Centrist Dems did, in fact, buy too much into neoliberalism, and that hurt the Dems' electoral prospects this time around.

Majorian posted:

Because it's illustrative of how far the Democrats have drifted from arguing for a platform that includes a strong social safety net, funded by taxing the wealthy. These are communities that have traditionally been Democrat-leaning, and for the last couple decades, they've been really suffering. Bill Clinton's policies played a part in that, and while I think Obama helped alleviate their pain a bit, his administration didn't accomplish enough to give them the relief that they needed. Clinton came off as thoroughly apathetic towards their misery. That's a bad look for the Democrats, when they're trying to portray themselves as the defenders of the underrepresented and the dispossessed.

But again, nobody is arguing in favor of strengthening the social safety net exclusively for poor whites. Far from it - pretty much every economic justice-minded left-Dem and socialist in the U.S. will acknowledge that social welfare programs that help minorities overcome structural disadvantages need to be baked into the platform from the get-go.

Majorian posted:

That's not what I'm saying, though. Centrist Dems did, in fact, buy too much into neoliberalism, and that hurt the Dems' electoral prospects this time around.

Majorian posted:

Because it's illustrative of how far the Democrats have drifted from arguing for a platform that includes a strong social safety net, funded by taxing the wealthy. These are communities that have traditionally been Democrat-leaning, and for the last couple decades, they've been really suffering. Bill Clinton's policies played a part in that, and while I think Obama helped alleviate their pain a bit, his administration didn't accomplish enough to give them the relief that they needed. Clinton came off as thoroughly apathetic towards their misery. That's a bad look for the Democrats, when they're trying to portray themselves as the defenders of the underrepresented and the dispossessed.


But again, nobody is arguing in favor of strengthening the social safety net exclusively for poor whites. Far from it - pretty much every economic justice-minded left-Dem and socialist in the U.S. will acknowledge that social welfare programs that help minorities overcome structural disadvantages need to be baked into the platform from the get-go.

Main Paineframe posted:

So, again, why say "poor whites" rather than "poor people"? It's an odd and out-of-place addition if your point is just that Dems haven't done enough for the economically disadvantaged, which is certainly true.

Mooseontheloose posted:

Didn't the Dems vote against the TPP and the Republicans vote for TPP?

JeffersonClay posted:

This just isn't true, expanding social welfare was baked in. The platform was as progressive in 2016 as it has ever been. Obamacare was the biggest expansion of the safety net in a generation.

Majorian posted:

Well, remember, this discussion grew out of someone in the Trump Admin thread saying that poor white people who voted for Trump deserve to suffer from lack of health care. If you read my commentary on the topic in other threads, you'll see that I'm pretty insistent on the Dems running on helping the poor and disadvantaged across the board.


Clinton hemmed and hawed on the issue throughout most of the campaign, leading a lot of people to speculate that she favored it. She eventually came out against it, but Terry McAuliffe, her friend and 2008 campaign chair, said she was secretly in favor of it. Overall, the Dems were divided on it, and Obama supported it.


That's a pretty low hurdle there, you realize. Obamacare was a good thing, but it was a pretty limited expansion of the safety net, especially after decades of it being eroded by Republicans and Democrats alike. The fact of the matter is, a lot of poor communities didn't get the relief that they needed under the Obama Administration. One can argue that that wasn't all their fault, and that it was in fact mostly the fault of the Republicans, and I would mostly agree with that. But I'm a political junkie. I don't have to work three part-time jobs to keep me and my family alive. I have the time and energy to actually pay attention to this poo poo. A lot of poor rural and Rust Belt voters don't have these luxuries. They just know poo poo for them and their communities got worse under Obama.

Majorian posted:

That's a pretty low hurdle there, you realize. Obamacare was a good thing, but it was a pretty limited expansion of the safety net, especially after decades of it being eroded by Republicans and Democrats alike. The fact of the matter is, a lot of poor communities didn't get the relief that they needed under the Obama Administration. One can argue that that wasn't all their fault, and that it was in fact mostly the fault of the Republicans, and I would mostly agree with that. But I'm a political junkie. I don't have to work three part-time jobs to keep me and my family alive. I have the time and energy to actually pay attention to this poo poo. A lot of poor rural and Rust Belt voters don't have these luxuries. They just know poo poo for them and their communities got worse under Obama.

JeffersonClay posted:

So Obama helped, but not enough? I guess that's possible, but the narrative that Democrats were punished for moving to the right is plainly false.

WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

ACA was like a 25% expansion to Medicaid (58m - 70m plus another 2m in the non-expansion states) enrollment before you even get into the marketplace subsidies

quote:

Surveys show that most enrollees in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces are happy with their plans. The Trump voters in our focus groups were representative of people who had not fared as well. Several described their frustration with being forced to change plans annually to keep premiums down, losing their doctors in the process. But asked about policies found in several Republican plans to replace the Affordable Care Act — including a tax credit to help defray the cost of premiums, a tax-preferred savings account and a large deductible typical of catastrophic coverage — several of these Trump voters recoiled, calling such proposals “not insurance at all.” One of those plans has been proposed by Representative Tom Price, Mr. Trump’s nominee to be secretary of Health and Human Services. These voters said they did not understand health savings accounts and displayed skepticism about the concept.

When told Mr. Trump might embrace a plan that included these elements, and particularly very high deductibles, they expressed disbelief. They were also worried about what they called “chaos” if there was a gap between repealing and replacing Obamacare. But most did not think that, as one participant put it, “a smart businessman like Trump would let that happen.” Some were uninsured before the Affordable Care Act and said they did not want to be uninsured again. Generally, the Trump voters on Medicaid were much more satisfied with their coverage.

Majorian posted:

If you move four steps to the right and then half a step to the left, you've still moved more to the right overall.

JeffersonClay posted:

So Obama helped, but not enough? I guess that's possible, but the narrative that Democrats were punished for moving to the right is plainly false.

JeffersonClay posted:

It doesn't make any sense that the electorate would punish the democrats for moving to the right decades ago by picking the first opportunity after they move left to punish them.

Kilroy posted:

You have got to be the most clueless fucker I've ever heard of.

Kilroy posted:

JC are you a rehabilitated libertarian? You need to drop the idea that humans are mainly self-interested, rational actors. You also need to jump off a cliff.

7c Nickel posted:

How do you square saying that with the idea that it was definitely Hillary's "neoliberalism" than sunk her?

7c Nickel posted:

How do you square saying that with the idea that it was definitely Hillary's "neoliberalism" than sunk her?

JeffersonClay posted:

It doesn't make any sense that the electorate would punish the democrats for moving to the right decades ago by picking the first opportunity after they move left to punish them.

Majorian posted:

They don't really pay attention to whether or not Obamacare was "right wing" or "left wing." All they care about is whether or not they were covered for their conditions, whether or not their premiums went up, whether or not their communities were getting less depressed, whether or not the opioid epidemic stopped destroying everything around them. Under Obama, their communities continued to suffer, and again, I'm fully aware that the Republicans deserve way more of the blame for that than Obama does. But we know that because we're political junkies who have the time, energy, and education to find this poo poo out. They have none of those things, so they blame the guy in charge.

Fulchrum posted:

So all that means is that the Dems need a giant gently caress-off finger to point at Republicans and scream "it was them!". Policy is irrelevant if blame is going to be misapplied and one side is intentionally starting fires just so they can blame the other.

Fulchrum posted:

So all that means is that the Dems need a giant gently caress-off finger to point at Republicans and scream "it was them!". Policy is irrelevant if blame is going to be misapplied and one side is intentionally starting fires just so they can blame the other.

Majorian posted:

They don't really pay attention to whether or not Obamacare was "right wing" or "left wing." All they care about is whether or not they were covered for their conditions, whether or not their premiums went up, whether or not their communities were getting less depressed, whether or not the opioid epidemic stopped destroying everything around them. Under Obama, their communities continued to suffer, and again, I'm fully aware that the Republicans deserve way more of the blame for that than Obama does. But we know that because we're political junkies who have the time, energy, and education to find this poo poo out. They have none of those things, so they blame the guy in charge.