I’m a Coastal Elite from the Midwest: The Real Bubble Is Rural America

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/donald-trump-transitio...

You didn't think the US Government could be run entirely by outsiders did you ?

I really question this. It keeps getting said, but looking at the numbers from Wisconsin/Michigan/PA trump did get mroe votes, but really Hillary had a massive drop. He had 1300 more votes in Wisconsin than Romney, Hillary had 250k less than Obama.

So is it really angry white americans who trump stole in droves from the democrats... or a democratic candidate who couldn't get people to show up.

The rest of those red states are pretty much just the states that always vote red + florida (and florida does what florida does).

Even if manufacturing and coal mining where to increase ten fold, there would be no new jobs for people without a long education, due to automation.

However I also believe that there is some truth to most explanations for this election in the HN threads and various op-eds. There's too many factors to reduce it to just one party/group to blame.

If Hillary was playing to win she should have nominated a true-blue progressive and especially one that could have harness some of the OWS/99% energy (without actually formally supporting either).

Her campaign was about Her. Problem is, many many folks are just busy surviving and didn't see themselves with "Her".

Expect all the BushCo. prescience that led to the 9/11 attacks to lead to another one - which the Trump administration will use to launch another war.

Don't think it can happen?

If you want to see what "doing well" would look like, see the results of the 2008 or 2012 elections.

And what do you mean "over half the vote"? The current number according to Google has 48% going to Clinton. She got more than Trump, yes, but less than half.

If getting 60 million votes qualifies as "doing well," then how do you describe getting nearly 70 million votes in 2008? Is losing almost 10 million votes in 8 years, while the electorate has grown substantially and demographics have shifted considerably in your favor, a sign that everything is fine?

“I would love to,” he said. “I would do it in an instant.”"

Doesn't sound racist to me. Also digging this stuff up in the midst of an election is of course a reason for hyperbole. So did the Clintons with the leaked emails about Wikileaks, Russia or the sitting FBI-director.

And if they have job skills for jobs that don't exist anymore it's as if they don't have job skills at all. But it's certainly not their fault, it's the education system that has to teach job skills, you can't learn that by yourself.

"Bots" are the next gen automated phone menu.

First is that there has been population growth, and a continuing shift in the age demographics of the country. The absolute number of workers is now about 6% higher than before the recession, but there are also a larger number of retirees and other non-workers. In particular the percentage of people in prime “working age” range (25–54) is 5% lower than 10 years ago. The numbers of unemployed, underemployed, and discouraged workers are all way down since the recession.

Many people decide to retire (either voluntarily or after being laid off) during a recession, with no plan to return to work. So you always get a bit of a “cliff” effect, where people who might have retired over the following several years all get bundled into one group, masking the “natural” shape of the data in absence of the recession.

Many others decide to go to school in the years following a recession. A larger proportion of those in the 16–24 age range are students than before the recession.

The numbers of unemployed and discouraged workers are both down nearly to their pre-recession levels.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-4/people-who-are-not-in-t...

The 2014 percentage of people claiming to be not working because disabled/ill is up 1% compared to before recession. The percentage of retirees is up 1.5%. The percentage of students is up almost 1.5%. The percentage not working for “other reasons” is only up 0.3%.

Anyhow, inre his original

> national leadership has not done anything to address it

Obama and the Democrats have been trying hard to push for more infrastructure spending, improved childcare, more money to bail out struggling state governments, minimum wage increases, more parental leave, continuing fixes to the healthcare system, reduced prescription drug prices, relief for the heavily indebted, etc., but (a) they’ve faced unprecedented obstructionism and deliberate dysfunction from the GOP (for instance states refusing federal money for medicare expansion and trying to sabotage the ACA), and (b) these are difficult problems which can’t be solved by waving a wand and uttering a magic incantation.

The auto industry bailout and stimulus bill and ACA were what they could get passed through congress, not their preferred policy solutions to these problems.

At the state level a number of GOP-controlled states have cut state spending and employment dramatically, closed schools, slashed income taxes for the wealthy and replaced them with sales taxes, undertaken targeted campaigns to destroy local unions (both public and private sector), etc.

"To pin this election on the coastal elite is a cop-out. It’s intellectually dishonest, and it’s beneath us.

We, as a culture, have to stop infantilizing and deifying rural and white working-class Americans. Their experience is not more of a real American experience than anyone else’s, but when we say that it is, we give people a pass from seeing and understanding more of their country. More Americans need to see more of the United States. They need to shake hands with a Muslim, or talk soccer with a middle aged lesbian, or attend a lecture by a female business executive.

We must start asking all Americans to be their better selves. We must all understand that America is a melting pot and that none of us has a more authentic American experience."

That's a far cry from your interpretation.

You mean with all that paid vacation time they don't have, after using all 5-10 days of it (if there's any at all) to stay home with sick kids, or holding it in reserve to do same later in the year? Hell, that's a problem for most families period, poor or not. Vacation time is very scarce for most people and will continue to be until some significant minimum is required by law.

The best pollsters were very hesitant about Clinton's lead.

There is no arrogance on the left, because the real left were out of the election as soon as Clinton was nominated.

Clinton was a centre-right corporate insider candidate. Trump was a far-right corporate outsider candidate. Neither has any genuine interest in working Americans.

The election was a farce because the only two candidates were crooks - Trump certainly, with his appalling record of failing to pay contractors and his likely mafia ties, and Clinton because of all the emails in WikiLeaks, at least some of which may be genuine.

The only people who will benefit from Trump in the short term are the 1% who will receive some generous tax cuts. In the long term, it's quite likely - or at least a serious possibility - that no one at all will benefit.

So - stop the crowing please. This isn't a sports game, and Trump's election isn't a touch down. The reality is the stadium is on fire, the crowd are about to start panicking, and there's an earthquake and a hurricane on the way.

What is this referring to? I've seen you say the same thing several times in this thread, is it referring to something?

Instead, most threads discussing the Clinton loss describe a class of people who are relegated to corners of the country with inadequate education and dying industries. It's that combination which leads voters in states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to ignore the hatred, the vitriol, the proven lack of business success, and the lack of government leadership in hopes of changing the status quo as it relates to them.

In summary: nearly 50% of voters chose to prioritize personal gain over human dignity.

(I voted for Clinton, but I consider myself solidly independent of any particular party.)

•••

I have no interest in continuing the thread, though, so feel free to get in the last word.

The modern left voted for, donated to and campaigned for Bernie, who also had the accusations of sexism slung at him. That was the establishment lashing out.

They also tested the anti-semitic accusations, though no doubt they fell flat because he was Jewish:

http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/262007/bernie-sanders-and-hi...

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/bernie-sander...

Pretty much every anti-establishment figure gets these attacks.

This is ridiculous on its face. The comparison is nonsensical. If I'm hiring someone for a job, I'm going to pay them the same wage so they're going to be roughly at the same income level.

Also, that's not true. For example, I'm a black man with a white barber. Why? Because he cuts my hair better than anyone else.

> Identity politics means judging someone first and foremost by their race, gender, and sexuality.

Funny. When I was taking part in various equality movements, the whole point was to NOT judge someone based on their race, gender, or sexuality. Looking past the exterior husk and judging someone on the content of their character was the point. I still don't like most people. However, it's not because they are part of some particular group, but because I just find something off-putting towards that particular person and I won't generalize my distaste to a whole group of individuals.

Amongst friends, I make fun of every group under the sun. Racial jokes, female jokes, I throw around racial slurs amongst friends as well. Some of my white friends greet me by saying 'What's up nigga." I'm pretty colorful with my language as well. It may surprise you, but a lot of us grew up with the sticks and stones may break bones, but words never hurt mentality. For me, words only have the power that you give them.

We're not all stereotypical white knight, social justice warriors seeking safe spaces and stifling dissent on college campuses. I'm not going to twitter shame you for making a blonde joke. If you can't look past your own biases and judge people on their own merits rather than taking lazy mental shortcuts, what hope is there?

I never called Trump supporters sexist. I called Trump sexist.

Look I will be honest if not polite.

The farmers I know are doing well for themselves. My sample may be biased because I only encounter ones with an interest in technology, but to a one they don't seem to be hurting objectively (feel like they are hurting? Probably a few).

But these are people making something people want, in an efficient way, and capturing a perfectly-reasonable proportion of the value they create.

That's farmers though.

Rural "workers" I feel sorry for but only so much. I don't know these people like I know the farmers I know--farmers I meet through work, these I know only as extended family, friends thereof, and people I meet in passing while traveling for work--but I have met enough and known enough to know what the deal often is.

The standard story for these dudes tends to be they grew up in town, didn't do that well in high school--and these guys are usually older so they missed the big student loan expansions that changed college from rich kids and smart kids only to something most people had a crack at--but at least back then you really could walk onto the proverbial factory floor (or learn a skilled trade, but those guys' lives have tended to follow a different arc and I skip them here) and wind up with a stable, good paying job.

So the standard story continues with them doing hard honest work and being paid well for awhile--long enough to have settled down and started a family--but of course we all know the story ends once the factory shut down fifteen or twenty years ago.

Since then it has been a long, punishing grind, the city they live in has started falling apart, the good kids leave the area and try to make it elsewhere, the young people who are left are a mix of bad kids (drugs, petty crime), the unambitious, and a handful of saints i both admire and pity (hanging around out of a sense of obligation for a sick relative or similar).

It's a sad story, but to treat them as having had no agency in all this time is profoundly insulting--insulting in a way far graver than any any snark I can make in passing--and I refuse to do so.

The local factory closing and thus derailing your world and the life plans you made in it: that's a tragedy for you and yours, and I am truly sympathetic for the difficulties so imposed.

Failing to better yourself beyond "some high school, worked hard and honest for awhile"? That's on you. Spending multiple decades in the same place, waiting for outside forces to benevolently restore the favorable circumstances of yesteryear? That's on you. Failing to go to where there are actual jobs suitable for the skills they have (often, again being honest, out of a fear of urban life that would be comical if the consequences weren't so unfortunate)? That's on you.

We aren't taking about children here; these are grown men, possessed of automobiles, clean criminal records, and an admirable willingness to do hard, unrewarding work...but they are often also grown men feeling entitled to have that work offered to them in the place and manner of their own choosing, on terms of their own choosing, in accordance with the world they grew up in...and affording them a social stature and respect concordant with their own pride and self image.

With deep sympathy: the ask is too high, the world has been telling them that for decades, and after awhile any sympathy I have for their plight becomes entangled with scorn for failing to take real responsibility for their own lives.

It's hard for me, personally: as a rather more devout person than many on this site I really and sincerely believe that every human being possesses an intrinsic dignity and that we are all truly and equally alike in god's eyes and to love everyone as my neighbor...but it's hard not to slip into scorn and derision for people whose pride had lead them to fail to act like responsible adults and transformed what should have been a mere difficult period into a lifetime of struggle, disappointment, and resentment...and I have to struggle at it to keep my own disappointment in them from becoming something worse.

To a complete outsider, the situation of poor rural whites summarizes as "sucks, and has sucked for 20-30 years".

One interpretation is that (on average) things are as they are due to lack of capability: in short, "those people" are sufficiently stupid--and consequently also ignorant--that it would be inappropriate to hold them fully-responsible for their decisions and circumstances (in the same way we don't for children or the mentally-handicapped).

An alternative interpretation is that (on average) things are as they are due to lack of character: in short, "those people" are sufficiently sound of mind and body that it would be inappropriate not to hold them fully-responsible for their decisions and circumstances (just as we do for everyone else).

As insulting and demeaning as it is to be thought stupid and ignorant, in this specific case being considered stupid and ignorant is, in fact, coming from a place of (unconscious) charity.

I'm deadly serious here.

Someone cruel and nasty will default to the second interpretation--your life sucks because you suck at life, and moreover it's your own fault for choosing to suck at life, despite having been perfectly capable of not sucking at it.

Someone kind-hearted and generous will default to looking for some other--any other--interpretation (many would say: "excuse"): perhaps your life sucks because of systemic discrimination and structural racism? perhaps your life sucks because of structural economic changes brought about due to unfair trade policies? perhaps your life sucks because your formative years were in a difficult and unstable environment, given inadequate education and surrounded by crumbling infrastructure? or, perhaps, your life sucks because you are simply stupid--and therefore also ignorant--and you thus are simply incapable of effectively navigating the modern world?...

So as patronizing and demeaning as it was to be thought of as stupid and backwards--and to know that's what you were seen as--at least it came from a place of kindness (if you had the eyes to see).

With love and sadness, I don't see that unconscious kindness surviving for much longer: rural america has now commanded the nation's attention and asked to be treated seriously, but will likely find that the consequence of asking the rest of the nation to treat rural america seriously will, eventually, shift the default coastal outlook away from the insulting "those poor morons, too stupid and ignorant to know how to help themselves" and towards "those useless trash, too lazy and prideful to help themselves"...and that this shift will be irreversible once it does get underway.

After all of which, it's time to return to your point: the challenges and difficulties you point out are real...and on top of that, success is not guaranteed, you can move to a larger city, wind up failing, and return home worse off for having even bothered to try.

But, to raise those challenges as anything other than common and mundane--difficult, yes, but similar in nature and magnitude to the problems we all face and deal with, in our own ways, such as our abilities are--is at once to illustrate "I am still living in a bubble" and to engage in what, outside that bubble, will likely come across as "special pleading": it's too hard, my circumstances are special...which I both understand and empathize with, but also makes it that much harder to grant as much respect as one might hope for from within said bubble.

Which is why I am pessimistic: asking for respect and to be taken seriously means people who used to look down upon rural people from a position of ignorance, but also (unconscious) charity and good will...those people will now take a closer look, and I think that will result not in increased respect, but only in harsh judgment and the loss of that former kindness and charity (as unrecognized and unconscious as it was).

It's very close and the lead switched at least once. We won't know who finally won the popular vote until the counting is done.

What I do think the results indicate is that neither party is effectively capturing the support of a large majority of Americans. The typical observation is that we are a country divided, but I rather think that there are a large number of Americans who would prefer voting for a synthesis of typical Democratic and Republican policies, but that isn't possible. Some of those people fall on the Democratic side and some fall on the Republic side during an election and that changes depending on the candidates.

But none of your points explain why. Trump said terrible things, that he would commit war crimes, restrict the first amendment, he won't respect the election if he loses. He's praised dictators, denied climate change, committed charity fraud, stiffed 800+ small businesses, walks in on underage girls changing and brags about it. He lies about something one day and deflects attention away to blame someone else when called out on it.

It's fascinating that he gets a pass on saying and doing these things. "It's an exaggeration." Personally, I think it's because he was a reality TV star. We expect celebrities to say and do ridiculous things, and then roll our eyes at it.

Except he's president now, and he isn't acting.

And I can appreciate Trump's anti corruption policies. It will be very interesting to see if he does engage in a trade war, slapping tariffs on goods made outside the US. If he passed legislation about charging taxes on carried interest that too would be positive.

However I'm scared as all hell about everything else. If he does anything good that will be a minor miracle. He is a sociopath and a narcissist. His tax plan will blow a hole in the federal budget while maintaining entitlements. There was an article where he asked the generals "why cant we just nuke them" 3 times. It's going to be like Bush but a lot worse.

Don't forget:

* Minorities. Although Trump didn't win their vote outright, more minorities voted Republican this time than last. He even won the Hispanic vote in NYC.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/elections/e...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/20/donald-trump...

As far as last count Hillary won the popular vote (though not by much). The election was very close at any rate.

Trump was just better at parroting and promising the things he heard from rural Americans. He listened to them. And he sold them on their own ideas and made them sound tenable. That's all there is to it.

Have you read said's response? I came to learn something, hoping to take something away. This guy said is a member of a different minority group resentful of African Americans overrepresentation in this country, and is an Indian. This is not an isolated incident for me so far, where I've heard from either a member of a minority group or a woman voted for Trump that has no substance, but rooted in resentment against another minority group. This is making me more depressed.

Maybe this is a couple of isolated incidents. But what I'm learning is only making me more depressed.

There are clearly still a lot of terrible people, and they love it that Trump won. They feel that this result proved them right, and allows them to act out their bigotry.

It is so obvious you have an axe to grind and that you voted for Trump because of things totally unrelated to his policies. You voted for Trump because there is too much Kanye and Lebron in the media.

Not shocking though. I've read and heard a few members of minority groups talk about why they voted for Trump. Women afraid of Brown and Black people. Latinos afraid of Muslims. Muslims afraid of women being in control. You would think that after so many minority groups would feel attacked by Trump that they might band together. I want to say it's disappointing but it's not totally surprising. Totally divorced from what the substance of this election was supposed to be about. Your axe to grind.

The KKK is having a rally in NC to celebrate Trump's victory. You might want to share your concerns with them, you have a lot in common. I'd be very curious to hear how it goes.

No they don't.

They represent a specific vision of the future.

There are many people living very high standards of living all around Bavaria, Stwitzerland, Netherlands, Scandinavia - that are not part of 'city centres, multiculturalism, or high tech'.

The future is whatever we want to make it.

but that is a level you are happy with?

"we see the rural US as a bunch of Cletus Spucklers"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cletus_Spuckler

Literally a cartoon stereotype of rural Americans.

I do hope this is just an epic troll.