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Comment by Ralfp | Hacker News Reader

I've always though people are voting for Trump because there is quite a lot of disillusioned people who consider Trump the anti-establishment choice, whatever the system they are imagining is. Hence "drain the swamp" and "you will be in jail" things. If far left is such an issue, why focus polls keep bringing up economy as top issue for his voters and things like abortion or trans rights come up last? Why conservative candidates who run on mainly anti-trans platforms or anti-abortion platforms lose to conservative candidates that pitch economy as their focus? Why those claims fail to mobilize voters?

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I'm just spitballing, but I think you could explain it that the disillusioned people aren't anti-trans by itself, but rather anti what they perceive is so much attention being spent on the issue rather than the "real problems". So "culture war" fuels negative condemnation of the other side, while not directly creating positive support for their own politicians.

Of course that's still totally disconnected from reality given that if you're concerned about inflation you shouldn't be voting for the guy that oversaw the printing of trillions of dollars (monetary inflation) that caused immediate asset inflation (his goal) but price inflation spread over several years as monetary velocity went back up. And if you're concerned with taxes going up, you shouldn't be voting for the guy that signed those tax increases into law. So I don't think rationality actually has much to do with where we're at.

I'm not sure whether you have a question for me.

I'll just make the observation that what people "say" is important to them is often not reflected in how they actually vote. E.g. you can find countless stories of red-state voters who are on Obamacare, and who say that healthcare is a top priority ... who nevertheless vote Republican.

> there is quite a lot of disillusioned people who consider Trump the anti-establishment choice

I agree with you here, although I think this is an idiotic choice by entitled, lazy, out-of-touch people. And I'm not willing to give them a pass.

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