Krugman on Trump voters

If it were about economic anxiety, they’d support Sanders or Stein, not Trump. Trump offers the vast majority of Americans nothing. Nada. Zilch. But he will give himself a massive tax break worth tens of millions of dollars a year, and his heirs, and corporate America, and all billionaires. He’s pushing standard issue voodoo economics which has never helped a single Americans outside the richest 1%.

It IS all about race and white supremacy.

And then, of course, there is this bombshell, which should end his campaign, but won’t. Primarily because the media are more focused on Clinton’s being sick and her basket of deplorables comment, and their bosses don’t want them investigating capitalists anyway.

How the Trump Organization’s Foreign Business Ties Could Upend U.S. National Security By Kurt Eichenwald On 9/14/16 at 5:30 AM

zn wrote:

Paul Krugman destroys the media myth that Trump voters have economic anxiety: It’s about race

Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman shot down the idea on Thursday that Donald Trump’s supporters are motivated by economic concerns.

“Ultimately, it’s about race,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “You cannot understand anything that’s happening in this election and US politics without seeing it as — unfortunately, a fairly large fraction of Americans who don’t like the fact that we’re becoming a multiracial, multicultural country.”

“They think that eats into their economic opportunity?” Amanpour asked.

“It eats into their identity,” said Krugman. “It’s really not about economics.”

Krugman added that in his circles, “economic anxiety” has become “kind of a joke slogan” when discussing Trump voters’ ideologies.

“That is fascinating,” she said. “The conventional wisdom is that it is all about economic hardship, and you’re saying no.”

“There is economic hardship,” Krugman replied. “West Virginia is not a happy place. But, mostly, we wouldn’t be as resistant to good news if weren’t really about something else. And it’s really mostly about race.”

I have observed myself that photos and video of Trump rallies reveal more signs about race than about jobs. That has been true all along. FWIW.

bnw wrote:

Zooey wrote:

I have observed myself that photos and video of Trump rallies reveal more signs about race than about jobs. That has been true all along. FWIW.

Its worth nothing. Always playing the race card won’t work any more. The problems of illegal immigration are real and the establishment ignoring the situation and working to make it worse has energized people to respond at the ballot box. One of many issues that needs to be addressed. Ford is moving their small car production to Mexico using the taxpayer funds to build the new plant in Mexico. Government is broke and must be fixed.

We know it’s about race and white supremacy. If it weren’t, why would Trump hire Bannon, a white supremacist, to run his campaign? It’s actually amazing that this was a story for such a short time. It’s as if George Wallace were the nominee, and after an initial reaction of OMG, it’s now just “meh.” Trump has succeeded in selling white supremacy back to Americans, and mainstreaming it.

But, to me, the biggest tell is he has absolutely NO economic answers other than to pay himself tens of millions more via new tax breaks, and put tens of millions more in the pockets of his heirs by ending the Estate Tax — which ONLY impact 0.2% of the country anyway.

Nothing he proposes will add one single job for Americans. Not one. And, if you read the Newsweek article, he’s going to be tied to foreign investors, partners and creditors to a greater degree than any president in history. His business empire depends upon it. And he owes the Chinese 650 million, personally.

Any working class person who votes for Trump is voting against his or her own best interests, many times over.

That’s racist in itself.
The media, on behalf of the Democrats, are pulling out all the stops on this one.

What i see is….a lot of Trump voters wont admit that the Trump camp has a big racist-faction. They dont want to see it, or simply wont admit to it.

But I also think its hard for the clinton voters to see that theres big factions in the Trump camp that are NOT part of the big racist faction. There’s plenty of voters who just think of him as an ‘outsider’ and a ross perot type, etc.

I agree with a lot of your assessment, but I think you’re leaving out another perspective: Leftists, who detest both parties, won’t vote for either candidate, but see Trump as a racist demagogue, and a large portion of his voters following him because of that.

By no means all of them. But a significant portion. We know it’s significant, because study after study, asking them to describe their own views, shows us this. Hell, 20% of his supporters in South Carolina said Lincoln never should have freed the slaves, and a much higher percentage said the South should have won — which is defacto support for slavery. More than 65% of his supporters, regardless of state, think Obama isn’t eligible to be the president, being born elsewhere. Trump himself led the racist birther (papers please!) charge for six years until just yesterday, when he scammed the media into helping him do an infomercial for his campaign and his new hotel, because he said he’d say something big about birtherism.

So, again, no one is saying it’s all of his supporters. But it is a significant chunk. More importantly, to me, Trump himself built his campaign on the twin pillars of birtherism and hatred and fear of brown people supposedly coming to take our jobs from us. If he had not done so, he never would have won the Republican nomination. What else is he offering, but a shot in the arm for white nationalists?

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Billy_T.

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

<Hell, 20% of his supporters in South Carolina said Lincoln never should have freed the slaves, and a much higher percentage said the South should have won — which is defacto support for slavery…

————-
Well, i hadn’t seen that survey (and of course Trumpists will deny its validity), but it doesn’t surprise me.

Having said that, I bet you could find 20 percent of Clinton voters believe in some pretty batshit-crazy stuff. Religion, etc.

We are trapped on Earth, comrad. Itz a madhouse.

PS – I’m also always ‘wondering’ about ‘strategy’. Like, for example, I personally would like to burn an amerikan flag (and almost every other national flag) every day. But i dont because its bad strategy. Just alienates the masses. I also wonder about calling out Trumpists as ‘ignorant racists’ etc, etc, and so forth. I dont know that that is good strategy. So, i tend to resist it, or go in another direction. Even though, yes, its true, that a big loud faction of Trumpists are the worst kind of david-duke racists.

w
v

I think you’re right about the strategy part. Something to keep fresh in one’s mind.

And, yes, a lot of Dems believe in whacked out stuff too. And, now that you mention strategy, they have a real issue with that as well.

(For instance): On another forum, I’ve seen Clinton supporters just go off on people who are thinking about voting for Stein, and they usually add virtual hatred of millennials to their rants. I’ve tried to tell them, if you really want people to vote for your candidate of choice, it’s never a good idea to berate them, slap them about the head verbally, scold them and humiliate them, etc. And, of course, their go to scold/scapegoat move is “Nader gave us Bush!!” Um, no he didn’t. It’s physically and logically impossible for a third party candidate in one state to do that, not to mention the fact that 308,000 Democrats voted for Bush in Florida. And I tell them this. And I also tell them you’re not going to get people to switch if you blame them for all the evils of the world, etc. Expecting them to ignore that tongue lashing you just gave them isn’t very realistic.

They don’t listen.

NewMexicoRam wrote:

That’s racist in itself.
The media, on behalf of the Democrats, are pulling out all the stops on this one.

It is getting ridiculous. When Hildabeast fainted they reported it as “Stumbled getting into vehicle”. Shameless leftists in the media don’t understand that the people know they lie constantly thus their 6% approval rating.

Please excuse my prying with a crowbar. How long have you lived in New Mexico?

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by bnw.

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

<And, of course, their go to scold/scapegoat move is “Nader gave us Bush!!” Um, no he didn’t. It’s physically and logically impossible for a third party candidate in one state to do that, not to mention the fact that 308,000 Democrats voted for Bush in Florida. And I tell them this. And I also tell them you’re not going to get people to switch if you blame them for all the evils of the world, etc. Expecting them to ignore that tongue lashing you just gave them isn’t very realistic.
They don’t listen.

—————
Thats a lot of Dems voting for Bush. I didn’t realize that many Dems had gone Rep.

Anyway, I am smiling thinking of you posting on Democrat sites. I could never do it. My head would explode. Or worse, it wouldn’t explode and I’d have to suffer longer.

w
v

This postmortem from 2000 is good for several reasons, not just the 308,000 stat. But here it is:

I’m grateful to Tim Wise, a Nashville writer and activist who dug into the Florida tallies and exit polls to find some stunning results that refute the “Ralph did it” assault. Wise’s full report will appear in a forthcoming issue of Z magazine, but the essence of it is that Gore was the problem, not Nader. Start with two constituent groups that Democratic nominees usually win in the Sunshine State:

1) Seniors. By a 51-47 percent margin, Gore lost the over-65 vote in Florida. Bush got 67,000 more senior votes than Gore did, even after all the Democratic scare talk about vanishing Social Security benefits. Had Gore simply broken even with this constituency, he would have won.

2) White Women. This group typically votes Democratic in Florida, or splits evenly. Gore lost them to Bush by 53-44 percent. Had he gotten 50 percent of these votes, he’d have added 65,000 votes to his total — plenty enough to have put the state in his column election night.

Now it gets really ugly for the Gore campaign, for there are two other Florida constituencies that cost them more votes than Nader did. First, Democrats. Yes, Democrats! Nader only drew 24,000 Democrats to his cause, yet 308,000 Democrats voted for Bush. Hello. If Gore had taken even 1 percent of these Democrats from Bush, Nader’s votes wouldn’t have mattered. Second, liberals. Sheesh. Gore lost 191,000 self-described liberals to Bush, compared to less than 34,000 who voted for Nader.

Gore couldn’t even win his home state because we know he’s full of crap.

bnw wrote:

You will have to realize that disagreeing with your position doesn’t make people racist.

That’s true.

Painting everybody who fits one racial profile as more likely to meet specific behavioral criteria than people from another race is what makes people racist.

It has nothing to do with whether they agree with me or not.

Billy_T wrote:

Trump has done and said dozens and dozens of despicable things, each of which should have ended his campaign — of not put him in jail.

Spoken like a true leftist. They want freedom of speech but not for anyone else. Stalin and Mao and Hitler would be so proud.

Billy_T wrote:

Bnw,

I’ll break with my promise just this time and respond to your unprovoked personal slam:

Spoken like a true leftist. They want freedom of speech but not for anyone else. Stalin and Mao and Hitler would be so proud.

His actions. As I said, his actions. THOSE should have put him in jail. He can say whatever the hell he wants, outside of inciting violence, which he so often does. I’m all for “freedom of speech,” as are all the leftists here. But he should have been jailed for his business dealings long ago. Read the Newsweek article for a good start, and the one on his charity scams too.

Also, Hitler’s on your side of the political aisle, not ours. He was a righty. Leftists, in fact, made up the vast, vast majority of the forces fighting him. All the resistance movements, in fact, were DOMINATED by leftists. Socialists, communists, libertarian socialists, left-anarchists, especially.

Now, back to ignoring you.

Stop it. Don’t deflect and don’t deny. What you wrote was clear-

“Trump has done and said dozens and dozens of despicable things, each of which should have ended his campaign — of not put him in jail.”

Save your rewrite of history too. National Socialism. Of course Hitler didn’t kill anywhere near the number of people Stalin and Mao did.

This makes at least three times you broke your promise to not post to me. Its OK I know I’m irresistible.

Billy_T wrote:

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Bnw,

I’ll break with my promise just this time and respond to your unprovoked personal slam:

Spoken like a true leftist. They want freedom of speech but not for anyone else. Stalin and Mao and Hitler would be so proud.

His actions. As I said, his actions. THOSE should have put him in jail. He can say whatever the hell he wants, outside of inciting violence, which he so often does. I’m all for “freedom of speech,” as are all the leftists here. But he should have been jailed for his business dealings long ago. Read the Newsweek article for a good start, and the one on his charity scams too.

Also, Hitler’s on your side of the political aisle, not ours. He was a righty. Leftists, in fact, made up the vast, vast majority of the forces fighting him. All the resistance movements, in fact, were DOMINATED by leftists. Socialists, communists, libertarian socialists, left-anarchists, especially.

Now, back to ignoring you.

Stop it. Don’t deflect and don’t deny. What you wrote was clear-

“Trump has done and said dozens and dozens of despicable things, each of which should have ended his campaign — of not put him in jail.”

Save your rewrite of history too. National Socialism. Of course Hitler didn’t kill anywhere near the number of people Stalin and Mao did.

This makes at least three times you broke your promise to not post to me. Its OK I know I’m irresistible.

I was OBVIOUSLY talking about his actions. I have never in my life said or suggested that people should be jailed for their political speech. It’s not on the page, bnw. It’s not there, or anywhere else. Not in virtual worlds or in the real world. I’ve ALWAYS supported freedom of speech.

It most certainly is on the page. Again, this is what you wrote-

“Trump has done and said dozens and dozens of despicable things, each of which should have ended his campaign — of not put him in jail.”

Complain all you want but you wrote it. You can always admit you made a mistake.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by bnw.