If You Ask Me
Trump supporters don’t care about facts, policy ideas, or plans. Reading through a number of posts and associated comments about the first presidential debate, I came to a couple of conclusions. Conclusions that I had already held. 1. Hillary supporters aren’t going to be swayed by anything Donald Trump says or does. 2. Donald Trump supporters aren’t going to be swayed by anything Hillary says or does.
Trumpeters saw his performance the other night and cheered him on. He did everything they wanted him to do. He interrupted Clinton, he shouted over her, he avoided answering questions, and answers he did provide held no substance at all. He sniffled and chugged water, which if Hillary did either of those she would immediately be disqualified from the election. He was loud, argumentative, and spit out words that sound good but say nothing. “Jobs, jobs are terrible. I’ve been everywhere, total devastation. It’s awful.” *name check rust-belt states* “How do we fix it?” “We stop the companies from leaving.” Oh. Ok then.
Interacting with Trump supporters has told me that they are not going to the polls in November to make an informed decision. They’re going to make an emotional choice. They hate Hillary. They hate her because she’s a woman, because she’s white, because she’s wealthy, because she’s intelligent, because she’s stupid, because she makes mistakes, because she thinks she’s perfect, because she has secrets, because she’s done shady things in the past, because people have died under her leadership, because the Clinton Foundation purportedly gives only 10% to charity for every dollar taken in. Her husband’s infidelities are her fault.
Yesterday I listened to Rep. Chris Collins R-NY tell MSNBC that it might not be a bad idea for Trump to go after Hillary about her treatment of women. I wish I could find the transcript of that interview, because I almost swerved off the road listening to it. He said because of how vicious she was toward the women Bill cheated with, there may be a question as to how Hillary treats women. There’s a difference, according to Collins, between savagely attacking the women Bill preyed upon and standing silent next to her husband and saying “I forgive you”.
Then there’s the name calling. I’m not talking about labeling someone based on the evaluation of their actions or words, I’m talking about petty name calling like “libtard”, or “KILLary”, or equally as immature, you know the type. And like it or not, this type of voter will constitute about 40 million votes on November 8th. I engage with them semi-often on social media. It drives my wife nuts. “Brian, you’re not going to change their minds, and you’ll just end up frustrated” True on both accounts. But I don’t engage with the goal of changing their minds. “You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.” Many people say there’s no point in talking politics online or anywhere else. I disagree.
Read this from Tuesday as post-debate buzz was just getting off the ground on social media. Don’t forget the MSNBC gem at the end. And remember, 40+ million emotional votes on November 8th. The Republican Party of 2016.
https://youtu.be/V2ojOvJD6vc?t=2m23s
Tags: 2016 Presidential Debates, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton
Brian, I have one thing in common with the Trump voters you interact with. We all think you are nuts. They think you are nuts because you support KILLARY CUNTON, and I think it because you give these dopes the time of day.
Where, for example, did they get that 10% figure? It just took me 30 seconds to find out on SNOPES that it was from some random screed email being circulated among the gullible. It offered zero substantiation for the 10% claim, and yet you humored them. I don’t get it.
Part of the reason I give them the time is the chance someone who isn’t voting, doesn’t know who to vote for, or is voting third party trips over that conversation, maybe it’ll make them think again.
Sometimes I fact check, sometimes I don’t. The 10% thing I know is bullshit and is easily disproved with white-belt level Google-Fu. In hindsight, I should have just dropped the link to Snopes. But Snopes is controlled by the liberal media jason, didn’t you know that?
I’m good with being nuts.
@ Brian
“They’re going to make an emotional choice. They hate Hillary. They hate her because she’s a woman, because she’s white, because she’s wealthy, because she’s intelligent, because she’s stupid, because she makes mistakes, because she thinks she’s perfect, because she has secrets, because she’s done shady things in the past, because people have died under her leadership, because the Clinton Foundation purportedly gives only 10% to charity for every dollar taken in. Her husband’s infidelities are her fault.”
You’re a legend in your own mind. (Got it right, this time)
Unfortunately, if it was Mitt Romney who ran this year. It’s not personal about Hillary or that she is White or a woman or rich or any of those things. Some people are sick of the career politicians. They’re sick of the status quo! You’re making a general statement and putting everyone, who is not voting for Hillary in a box…….and you’re wrong.
Thanks again, Prop Joe!
Speaking of general statements, be a little more specific of the status quo thing. Because there are many things. Most things change, whether they change for you specifically or not. So elaborate on the status quo thing.
@OA: So you’ll vote for a brainless white supremacist because you’ve swallowed gallons of propaganda swill about Hillary Clinton. That’s like cutting off your leg because you sprained your ankle.
You’re welcome… I’m proud to do my part in making America great again, one grammar error at a time!
“So you’ll vote for a brainless white supremacist because you’ve swallowed gallons of propaganda swill about Hillary Clinton. That’s like cutting off your leg because you sprained your ankle.”
Yeah, that’s not the reason he’ll vote for (or is considering voting for) Trump. Either he agrees with Trump’s white supremacy crap or he doesn’t necessarily agree, but is okay with it. You simply cannot separate Trump’s racist/sexist language from the man or your vote. Trump leads with this crap – it’s what he is running on.
@pandora: I agree. But I think the underlying racism/misogyny is why men and conservative women were so eager to buy the shoddy goods on offer.
Agreed. You cannot separate a vote for Trump (or even a defense of Trump) from racism or misogyny. It’s really the only thing Trump is selling.
In other words, like a few of us said yesterday to the consternation of others, Trump is a protest vote. It’s baldly obvious. The fact the he is a “major party nominee” is irrelevant.
The protest is against established civic structure. If you don’t like established norms, just wait till there aren’t any. It’ll get much worse.
A lot of it is just angry rubes who stay glued to talk radio and Fix news without any serious critical analysis or reality checks
Trump is as much of an insider as any of them
mouse, that’s very true. But unfortunately, like with most facts, Trumpers just don’t care. All these seeming paradoxes are even more evidence. It’s a “fuck you.”
The protest is against established civic structure.
It isn’t a protest when you are voting for the same messaging used to motivate the GOP core since Lee Atwater. Maybe before. Trump has just largely removed the dog whistle. It is all out in the open with the new thing being that we don’t have to live with political correctness. He is still trying to see the same old and completely tired trickle down economic program that was always the Trojan Horse for the racist shit.
Lee Atwater, disgusting as he was, had a cogent political policy agenda. Atwater was also a political insider working in the Reagan and GHWB administrations as well as at the RNC. Trump has no clear policy agenda so far as I can tell and is a TV showman and a huckster.
Not having to live with political correctness isn’t secondary. You’re losing the plot.
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Oh I have the plot all right. And the plot was always to hide the pillaging of America behind this racist bullshit. Trump has some of the same trickle down BS as part of his platform — if anything because it benefits him. Atwater had the same plan, except he wouldn’t have benefited from it as much. Trump wants to cut back on “regulations” so businesses could, say, build a landfill next to your house because the builder will make alot of money. He’s a fan of Kelo (surprise) and a raft of other business friendly bullshit. He is wrapping that up in this faux populist stance, but he still selling the same corporate BS.
Wait… the protest of the established civic structure of what? Being allowed to be openly racist, sexist and xenophobic? If that’s what you mean by protest vote then I’ll agree.
Trump isn’t an aberration; some sort of deviation from the path. He is where the path the Republicans built leads – and they’ve been building this racist, sexist, xenophobic path for decades. He really isn’t saying anything different than many (and I mean many) Republicans. He has just removed the coded language. He’s loud and proud with his racism, sexism and xenophobia – it’s what his supporters love about him. If he called Hillary the C word and Obama the N word his supporters would roar with approval – just like they do when he tells them that it would a shame if someone shot Hillary. There is nothing deep or complex about Trump supporters.
Dorian–while some Trump voters are protest votes, most aren’t.
Here’s why I think that:
1) These people believe they are the majority, and that they can win. It’s not a protest vote if you really believe your candidate can win.
2) Reagan used to say that he was a Democrat until the Democrats left him. These folks believe that they were America until a lot of black people, brown people, queer people, and people with unapologetic vaginas left with their country. They don’t see themselves as protesting but reclaiming.
3) And they aren’t wrong in the sense that the Tea Party took over a huge chunk of the GOP and started the process of hollowing it out so that it could be remade into something quite different. They’ve actually won a goodly number of elections on the state and Federal level over the past decade.
In other words, their objective is not to protest Clinton or even the status quo; they see themselves as about one-third of the way through a campaign to change that status quo–and it’s difficult to look at Congress and say they haven’t been successful.
That Trump may not personally be a winner (and that many of them actually know that( is not really relevant. If they could read History they’d tell you that this is 1856 and Trump is John Charles Fremont, with 1860 and their Lincoln still in the future.
I’m hoping that something happens, that someone else comes to the foreground, to be perfectly honest.
I’ve said it multiple times; they’re both idiots!
But, like I said, if Trump wins, It’s going to interesting to watch the DLer’s heads explode.
Why is she an idiot? Can you explain, in detail?
And it won’t be DL heads exploding it will be our country exploding. Why you get off on that escapes me. Weren’t you a Bernie supporter?
Pandora, why should I tell you?
I had numerous questions, about Mr. Young, when he was running for Mayor. And you would not answer my questions.
So the answer is that you are just following the Fox News lead.
You did get your questions answered and got plenty of your incorrect statements answered about Mr. Young too. If you think that continuing to ask questions that were answered somehow helped your effort to discredit him, then you found out how that works here. You are going to need to get brighter than this if you want to survive here.
Wrong, you never answered my questions. Now, it’s water under the bridge. The more experienced person won, not the more popular.
Yes, we did. I even gave you links to posts dealing with mayor’s race, along with the key search word so you could find the rest of them. I didn’t link to every post because, come on… there’s a flippin’ search bar on this site. I linked to posts and showed you how to find more. If you couldn’t handle a basic search it isn’t my job to search and link to every post for you.
(Or you could have said, “I have no idea how to perform a basic search. Pandora, could you please explain to me how to do this. Thank you.”)
Another guy showing up here looking for everyone else to do his homework for him.
You’ve mistaken us for Fox News.