get rid of the idea that Russian hack stories are about disgruntled dems

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January 9, 2017 at 12:08 pm #62920

bnw
Blocked

Billy_T wrote:

Trump would have been defeated by Sanders and a dozen other Dems, in my view. His support is so thin it wouldn’t have been tough. The “anti-Clinton” vote was bigger than the “pro-Trump” vote, by light years.

Wrong again. From, http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/january_2017/gop_voters_more_aligned_with_trump_than_congress

GOP Voters More Aligned With Trump Than Congress

Monday, January 09, 2017

Most voters share the views of the president and the party coming to power, but Republicans identify a lot more with Donald Trump than with the GOP Congress.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 53% of all Likely U.S. Voters identify with the GOP team: 37% feel Trump’s views are closest to their own when it comes to the major issues facing the country, while another 16% feel most closely in sync with the average Republican member of Congress. Thirty-seven percent (37%) say the views of the average Democratic member of Congress are closest to their own. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Among Republicans, however, 63% say that Trump’s views are closest to their own when it comes to the major issues, while only 27% say that of the views of the average Republican member of Congress. Among Democrats, 72% identify with the average Congress member from their party, while just 16% think Trump’s views are closest to theirs.

Just a month before Election Day, 51% of GOP voters still felt that their party’s leaders didn’t want Trump to be president, although that was down from 66% four months earlier.

(Want a free daily email update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on January 3-4, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

More than half of all voters feel comfortable with the prospect of one party controlling both the Executive and Legislative branches of government, as Republicans will do when Trump enters the White House on January 20.

Among voters not affiliated with either major political party, 34% say their views most closely match Trump’s, while 16% are more aligned with the average GOP representative. Only 29% feel closer to the average Democrat in Congress, but 20% of these voters are undecided.

The Republican team of Trump and Congress earn majority support in most demographic categories, but the president-elect is the one voters are most likely to agree with.

Women, middle-aged voters and blacks lean more heavily than the others in the direction of the average Democrat in Congress.

Among voters who Strongly Disapprove of the job President Obama is doing, 76% say Trump’s views are closest to their own, compared to only 18% who say the same of the average GOP member of Congress.

Voters aren’t sure if the new Congress will be an improvement on the last one, but most want Congress to cooperate with Trump as much as possible. Fifty-four percent (54%) think major legislation to improve the country is likely to be passed during Trump’s first 100 days in office.

But only 48% of voters are confident that Trump and Congress will work together to do what’s best for the American people.

House Speaker Paul Ryan has gone from publicly criticizing Trump when he was the GOP’s presidential nominee to enthusiastically embracing him as president-elect. Following the election, Ryan is much more popular with his fellow Republicans and is better liked by all voters than any other congressional leader of either major party.

Last August, 47% of GOP voters sad their party should be more like Trump than Ryan. Thirty-six percent (36%) felt it should be more like Ryan.

Seventy-six percent (76%) of GOP voters told Rasmussen Reports last March that Republicans in Congress have lost touch with their party’s base. That’s consistent with Republican voter attitudes for years but was the highest finding since we first asked this question just after Election Day in November 2008. Democrats have always been much more enthusiastic about their congressional representatives.

The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

Sprinkles are for winners.

January 9, 2017 at 12:32 pm #62928
Billy_T
Participant
That’s one poll, bnw. And Rasmussen is well-known for its Republican bias.

Best to look at the polls in the aggregate.

This is a pretty good source for that:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html

____

Trump has the lowest approval rate of any incoming president in decades.

Trump’s approval rating is the lowest of any incoming president in nearly 25 years Sonam Sheth Dec. 21, 2016, 1:33 PM

excerpt:

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition approval rating is lower than that of his predecessors over almost the past 25 years, according to a new Gallup poll.

Trump’s approval rating hovers around 48%, which is at least 17 percentage points lower than the lowest approval rating that any of the past three presidents had during his transition.

George W. Bush had a 65% approval rating when he first took office, Bill Clinton took office with a 67% rating, and Barack Obama entered with a 75% rating.

Trump’s disapproval rating of 48% during his transition is also the highest of any president in the past quarter-century. The Gallup study notes that a potential factor driving down the president-elect’s approval rating is that members of the opposing party are much more critical of Trump than they were of previous opponents.

Obama and Clinton had approval ratings of nearly 50% from members of the Republican Party, while Bush’s was almost 50% from Democrats.

According to the poll, Trump’s support among members of his own party, 86%, also lags behind Bush’s Republican support (93%). He also does significantly worse among independents than his predecessors did.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Billy_T.
January 9, 2017 at 7:45 pm #62973

bnw
Blocked

Billy_T wrote:

That’s one poll, bnw. And Rasmussen is well-known for its Republican bias.

Best to look at the polls in the aggregate.

This is a pretty good source for that:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html

____

Trump has the lowest approval rate of any incoming president in decades.

Trump’s approval rating is the lowest of any incoming president in nearly 25 years Sonam Sheth Dec. 21, 2016, 1:33 PM

excerpt:

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition approval rating is lower than that of his predecessors over almost the past 25 years, according to a new Gallup poll.

Trump’s approval rating hovers around 48%, which is at least 17 percentage points lower than the lowest approval rating that any of the past three presidents had during his transition.

George W. Bush had a 65% approval rating when he first took office, Bill Clinton took office with a 67% rating, and Barack Obama entered with a 75% rating.

Trump’s disapproval rating of 48% during his transition is also the highest of any president in the past quarter-century. The Gallup study notes that a potential factor driving down the president-elect’s approval rating is that members of the opposing party are much more critical of Trump than they were of previous opponents.

Obama and Clinton had approval ratings of nearly 50% from members of the Republican Party, while Bush’s was almost 50% from Democrats.

According to the poll, Trump’s support among members of his own party, 86%, also lags behind Bush’s Republican support (93%). He also does significantly worse among independents than his predecessors did.

Your post is irrelevant. Trump’s support among republicans is the issue. The Rasmussen poll specifically addresses his support amongst republicans.

The upside to being a Rams fan is heartbreak.

Sprinkles are for winners.

January 9, 2017 at 8:21 pm #62988

Billy_T
Participant

bnw wrote:

Your post is irrelevant. Trump’s support among republicans is the issue. The Rasmussen poll specifically addresses his support amongst republicans.

But Trump can’t win on Republican support alone, and he faced a very strong “Never Trump” movement that’s still there. He needed independents to win and for disaffected Dems to stay home or vote for Stein.

Without Clinton, with Sanders or someone like him, that doesn’t happen. There is no rallying cry for the Trump campaign, and no three decades of going after the Clintons to help galvanize opposition.

Sanders, for instance, hasn’t faced any real opposition from the GOP over the years. They’ve basically ignored him. Which means, instead of having thirty years of Oppo on the Dem candidate, they’d have to start fresh the summer of 2016.

Sorry, no way Trump would have won. He barely eked out a win against Clinton. And even his own campaign thought he was going to lose, right up into that evening.

He would have been toast if Sanders had run or pretty much any other Dem. Clinton was pretty much the only Dem he had a chance against.

January 9, 2017 at 11:35 pm #63005

zn
Moderator

Trump Invents New Fallback Lie on Russian Hacking

Jonathan Chait

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/trump-invents-new-fallback-lie-on-russian-hacking.html

Kellyanne Conway is not being terribly straightforward.
Last week, Donald Trump stubbornly stuck to the line he had maintained throughout the campaign: that nobody knows who hacked into Democratic Party emails. It could have been the Chinese, a lone obese man, etc. The “intelligence” — he insisted on using scare quotes — was suspiciously postponed, the Iraq War had shown that the CIA was untrustworthy in general, and trusted authority Julian Assange had suggested Russia might be getting unfairly blamed for the actions of a 14-year-old boy.

Over the weekend, his line changed. Now, the very idea that Trump had mocked U.S. intelligence was an invention of the “dishonest media”; in fact, he is “a big fan.” Trump cited intelligence as his authority that Russia attempted to hack both parties, but only succeeded in hacking Democrats because Republicans had “strong defense.” (In reality, U.S. intelligence believes Russia successfully hacked both parties, but only released Democratic emails.) Trump and his supporters retreated to a new line, insisting in an official statement that the report had proved “there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines.”

Kellyanne Conway made the talk-show rounds on Sunday to press home the point that the official report concluded that Russian email hacking had no influence on the election whatsoever. “They did not succeed in throwing the election to Donald Trump,” she told Chuck Todd. “If you read the full report, they make clear, Mr. Clapper in his testimony made very clear in his testimony, under oath, that any attempt, any aspiration to influence our elections failed. They were not successful in doing that,” she insisted to Jake Tapper.

This is completely false. In fact, the intelligence report that Conway refers to took no position whatsoever on whether Russian hacking changed the outcome of the election. “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election,” it states. “The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.” And James Clapper, whose testimony Conway also cites as evidence that Russian hacking failed to influence the election outcome, took the same position, which, he said, “certainly isn’t the purview of the U.S. intelligence community.”

It isn’t just outside the purview of the intelligence community to say conclusively whether the Russian email hacks made Trump president. It’s outside the realm of human knowledge altogether, since it would require re-running the election in an alternate universe in which every other factor was identical save the presence of hacked emails published on WikiLeaks. Still, in an election that could have been reversed by a swing of 0.7 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin plus 0.3 percent of the vote in Michigan, it seems quite likely that the revelations produced by the Russian hack made a large enough difference to change such a small number of votes. Trump cited WikiLeaks revelations 164 times during the election, according to Igor Volsky and Judd Legum. WikiLeaks emails were central to Trump’s case that Hillary Clinton was corrupt and disqualified from holding office. WikiLeaks emails also infuriated supporters of Bernie Sanders, some of whom never came around to supporting Clinton after the primary grudge. Most important, the leaked emails generated countless headlines connecting Clinton to “emails,” which to low-information voters had become a catch-all phrase summarizing an aura of scandal around the Democratic candidate.

Yet in falsely insisting that U.S. intelligence concluded that Russia failed to influence the election’s outcome, Trump’s campaign has articulated a defense conservatives are more eager to support than a straightforward denial of Russian guilt. The conservative movement and the Republican apparatus has largely embraced its new president, and have come to see skeptical coverage of a president who promises to enact cast new swaths of right-wing policy as a plot by the liberal media. The conservative pundit David Harsanyi, in a column published in National Review, the Federalist, Reason, and Hot Air, insists, “there’s no evidence that the Russians had anything to do with Trump’s victory,” and that any suggestions to the contrary have been made because “the Left” wants “to delegitimize the democratic validity of Trump’s presidency.”

Harsanyi’s argument rests on his inability to understand the difference between the probability of an outcome and its provability. I wrote in a column it was “probable” that Russia’s attack changed enough votes to elect Trump, while conceding it could not be known for certain. Harsanyi makes the case that this is a prima facie contradiction:

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait asserted — in a single paragraph — that not only was there “evidence that Russian intelligence carried out a successful plan to pick the government of the United States” but that it was “probable that the hacks swung enough votes to decide a very tight race” and that the latter could not be “proven.”
I wrote that passage assuming readers would understand that a hypothetical scenario could be probable without being provable. This was a mistake, so I will walk Harsanyi through the concept. A hypothetical scenario might be predicted with some confidence even though its outcome is not provable. If I were to play Steph Curry in a one-on-one basketball game, it is overwhelmingly likely that Curry would win, but we can’t say this for certain; maybe I would get the ball first and hit crazy shot after crazy shot, or maybe Curry would break his leg and I’d repeatedly drive for layups while he writhed in agony on the floor. That Curry would win is not a provable fact.

Or, if instead of nominating Trump, the Republicans had nominated Charles Manson, it is likely that Hillary Clinton would have won, but again, we can’t say this for certain. In fact, I have my doubts. Republicans would initially view Manson as a dangerous maniac who must be stopped, as Republicans (like Harsanyi) did in early 2016 with Trump, but maybe over time they would place his flaws in context: Manson and Clinton both did radical things in the 1960s, and both are accused murderers, but only one of them used an unsecured email server and plans to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat with a left-wing justice etc., etc. Who’s to say? The human mind is capable of tremendous rationalization.

Trump, his supporters, and the enemies of his critics want very badly to deny that Russian hacking might have played a decisive role in his razor-thin victory. And so Trump and his supporters will provide reasons — or, at least, sentences in the English language that sound like reasons — to deny this, and those reasons will be believed.

January 11, 2017 at 3:32 am #63078

Eternal Ramnation
Participant

zn wrote:

American intel has already made clear that among many other things the russians did, yes they hacked the dems (and the republicans too they just didn’t release that info).

They did do the hacking. That’s not all they did.

And this topic has nothing to do with who won the election. It has to do with whether it’s true there was russian involvement in the election in various ways.

And. Yes, there was.

ON TOP OF IT, this is not about dems whining. It goes way beyond that. Anyone who tries to construe it as JUST dems whining is just not engaging with the entire issue and all the info we have.

I see this discussion as Jane Democracy’s corpse is found and this discussion is focused on the small cuts and abrasions on her back.Are they from glass beer bottle glass? whiskey bottle glass ,what store was the glass bought at? Meanwhile there’s a massive hole where her heat used to be , a large and very bloody butcher knife with noticeably stumpy fingerprints on it lays at her side and a trail of bloody footprints leading to a limo headed for an inauguration.

January 11, 2017 at 7:51 am #63081

wv
Participant

Eternal Ramnation wrote:

zn wrote:

American intel has already made clear that among many other things the russians did, yes they hacked the dems (and the republicans too they just didn’t release that info).

They did do the hacking. That’s not all they did.

And this topic has nothing to do with who won the election. It has to do with whether it’s true there was russian involvement in the election in various ways.

And. Yes, there was.

ON TOP OF IT, this is not about dems whining. It goes way beyond that. Anyone who tries to construe it as JUST dems whining is just not engaging with the entire issue and all the info we have.

I see this discussion as Jane Democracy’s corpse is found and this discussion is focused on the small cuts and abrasions on her back.Are they from glass beer bottle glass? whiskey bottle glass ,what store was the glass bought at? Meanwhile there’s a massive hole where her heat used to be , a large and very bloody butcher knife with noticeably stumpy fingerprints on it lays at her side and a trail of bloody footprints leading to a limo headed for an inauguration.

——————-

Well, I’m in a similar camp. The “russian hacking” story seems like a minor issue to me, given what the corporotacracy (and the CIA/NSA in particular) is and has been doing to the biosphere over the last fifty years.

Others have a different view, i know.

I wonder how the powers-that-be will try and counter
all this ‘hacking’ in the future, btw?

And i wonder how much the CIA interfered in RUSSIAN politics
over the last few decades? Where’s the stories on that? 🙂

w
v

January 11, 2017 at 8:51 am #63082

zn
Moderator

wv wrote:

And i wonder how much the CIA interfered in RUSSIAN politics
over the last few decades? Where’s the stories on that?

Should either one happen? Remember, some of us can’t be tarred with the “yeah well the USA does it too” brush. Some of us have been complaining about THAT all along, too.

And, of course, how exactly would the USA intervene in a Russian “fair election”? Who is the Russian Barry Sanders? Maybe the USA backed HIM.

Though one thing has happened. We’ve gone from the “there was no Russian election intervention” story to “well okay but what difference does it make” (which is Trump’s reaction, after initially denying it was real.)

January 11, 2017 at 8:59 am #63083

Billy_T
Participant

wv wrote:

Eternal Ramnation wrote:

zn wrote:

American intel has already made clear that among many other things the russians did, yes they hacked the dems (and the republicans too they just didn’t release that info).

They did do the hacking. That’s not all they did.

And this topic has nothing to do with who won the election. It has to do with whether it’s true there was russian involvement in the election in various ways.

And. Yes, there was.

ON TOP OF IT, this is not about dems whining. It goes way beyond that. Anyone who tries to construe it as JUST dems whining is just not engaging with the entire issue and all the info we have.

I see this discussion as Jane Democracy’s corpse is found and this discussion is focused on the small cuts and abrasions on her back.Are they from glass beer bottle glass? whiskey bottle glass ,what store was the glass bought at? Meanwhile there’s a massive hole where her heat used to be , a large and very bloody butcher knife with noticeably stumpy fingerprints on it lays at her side and a trail of bloody footprints leading to a limo headed for an inauguration.

——————-

Well, I’m in a similar camp. The “russian hacking” story seems like a minor issue to me, given what the corporotacracy (and the CIA/NSA in particular) is and has been doing to the biosphere over the last fifty years.

Others have a different view, i know.

I wonder how the powers-that-be will try and counter
all this ‘hacking’ in the future, btw?

And i wonder how much the CIA interfered in RUSSIAN politics
over the last few decades? Where’s the stories on that? 🙂

w
v

To me, the fact that the American empire has done this to the Russian Empire is all the more reason to believe the Russian Empire did this to the American Empire. World without end.

Also, IMO, if someone is bothered by American Empire activities like this — I am, deeply — it stands to reason they’d also have to feel the same way about Russian Empire activities.

Same thing about the corporatocracy. As mentioned the other day, Russia, after the overthrow of its version of State Capitalism, quickly succumbed to a kind of neoliberalism on steroids, worse than our own, which is the worst in the West. It’s not like someone can legitimately say, “America, bad guys; Russia, good guys,” and go from there. The reverse wouldn’t be accurate, either.

I’m against empire, period. That includes Russia’s. And in this case, Russia very likely had a big impact on our elections, and that’s anti-democratic, another thing I’m concerned about. You and I both want the actual thing.

January 11, 2017 at 11:34 am #63095

wv
Participant

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

And i wonder how much the CIA interfered in RUSSIAN politics
over the last few decades? Where’s the stories on that?

Should either one happen? Remember, some of us can’t be tarred with the “yeah well the USA does it too” brush. Some of us have been complaining about THAT all along, too.

And, of course, how exactly would the USA intervene in a Russian “fair election”? Who is the Russian Barry Sanders? Maybe the USA backed HIM.

Though one thing has happened. We’ve gone from the “there was no Russian election intervention” story to “well okay but what difference does it make” (which is Trump’s reaction, after initially denying it was real.)

———–
Um…no. I have never ever said there was no russian influence. I have said what Chomsky has said: “enh”. That is way different from denying the russian hacking.

My own emphasis is on the hypocrisy of all the MSN sites howling over the russian hacking. Their howling is selective and it distracts people from all the shit this government has done to other nations.
So, my thing is, dont complain about the rooskies if you are also not going to complain about the CIA. (I know u complain about both).

Which is the more important story — what the rooskies did or how the US has interfered in countless elections all over the globe? Which story is going to get played up in the US and which story is going to get suppressed or ignored?

So which story ‘needs’ more energy devoted to it?
And which story doesnt.

For me this is similar to the class vs id-politix thing. You think class and id-pol can both be talked about, and i think class needs more emphasis. Blah blah blah.

w
v

January 11, 2017 at 12:37 pm #63104

zn
Moderator

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/1434615213217737

Robert Reich

This morning a friend told me he’s stopped reading or watching the news. I asked him why.
“Because it just gets me upset,” he says.
“So you don’t know what’s been happening with Trump?”
“No. I have enough on my hands.”
“You’re not interested in claims that Trump and his people might have colluded with Putin’s henchmen in trying to throw the election for Trump?”
“Why should I be interested? What’s anyone going to do about it? He’ll be president in a few days.”
“If it’s true, he won’t get away with it,” I say.
“Of course he will. He gets away with everything. He doesn’t disclose his taxes. He gets away with it. He doesn’t divest his financial interests. He gets away with it. He breaks the nepotism law by putting his son-in-law and business partner into the White House. He gets away with it. He gets away with nominating the CEO of ExonMobil for Secretary of State – a man who’s buddies with Putin, who came up through the ranks at Exxon by managing the company’s Russia account, who got the fu*king “Order of Friendship” from Putin. This morning Trump has the audacity to send out a tweet saying we’re Nazi Germany because the FBI is investigating his Russian connection.”
“So you have been keeping up with the news,” I say, smiling.
“And you remember Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort? He’s a key player here. He knows the Russian oligarchs around Putin, and made a bundle from them. He was a go-between. Also Michael Flynn, Trump’s foreign policy advisor, who’s been in cahoots with Russian propaganda. And Trump’s guy Michael Cohen, his lawyer from way back. Cohen was involved, too. Had a meeting in Prague with Russian operatives. Cohen …”
I break in. “Hold on. You know more than I do.”
“I guess I have been following it a bit,” he says, sheepishly.
“That’s good. All of us have to stay informed.”
“It just gets me upset. Nobody’s going to do anything about any of this. Trump will get away with it.”
“I disagree. This will bring Trump down.”

January 11, 2017 at 12:42 pm #63105

zn
Moderator

wv wrote:

You think class and id-pol can both be talked about, and i think class needs more emphasis. Blah blah blah.

As far as I am concerned, the “identity politics” phrase is empty. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a catch phrase from those who reject certain (what are to me clear and obvious) truths.

Namely this.

You cannot separate class and race in discussing the USA and its politics. Not even by any “percentage.” Not even for “emphasis.” In the USA those 2 things cannot be separated. By any degree.

To me, any effort to do so just distorts everything.

Selecting one side of that and calling it “identity politics” does nothing for the discussion.

And in fact the majority of Trump voters are decently well off.

And, white.

So the demographics do not support the “beleagured working class support Trump” idea. Especially since in the USA there IS such a thing as “white working class,” a lot of whom are pro-Trump (in fact that’s his real majority. You leave race out of it and the way I see it, you’re just chasing windmills).

I never use the term “identity politics.” To me it is automatically dismissive.

I say “race.”

…

January 11, 2017 at 1:27 pm #63111

wv
Participant

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

You think class and id-pol can both be talked about, and i think class needs more emphasis. Blah blah blah.

As far as I am concerned, the “identity politics” phrase is empty. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a catch phrase from those who reject certain (what are to me clear and obvious) truths.

Namely this.

You cannot separate class and race in discussing the USA and its politics. Not even by any “percentage.” Not even for “emphasis.” In the USA those 2 things cannot be separated. By any degree.

To me, any effort to do so just distorts everything.

Selecting one side of that and calling it “identity politics” does nothing for the discussion.

And in fact the majority of Trump voters are decently well off.

And, white.

So the demographics do not support the “beleagured working class support Trump” idea. Especially since in the USA there IS such a thing as “white working class,” a lot of whom are pro-Trump (in fact that’s his real majority. You leave race out of it and the way I see it, you’re just chasing windmills).

I never use the term “identity politics.” To me it is automatically dismissive.

I say “race.”

…

————
I agree that, that is how you see it 🙂
We can both write each others posts on that topic.

w
v

January 11, 2017 at 1:31 pm #63112

wv
Participant

zn wrote:

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/1434615213217737

Robert Reich

This morning a friend told me he’s stopped reading or watching the news. I asked him why.
“Because it just gets me upset,” he says.
“So you don’t know what’s been happening with Trump?”
“No. I have enough on my hands.”
“You’re not interested in claims that Trump and his people might have colluded with Putin’s henchmen in trying to throw the election for Trump?”
“Why should I be interested? What’s anyone going to do about it? He’ll be president in a few days.”
“If it’s true, he won’t get away with it,” I say.
“Of course he will. He gets away with everything. He doesn’t disclose his taxes. He gets away with it. He doesn’t divest his financial interests. He gets away with it. He breaks the nepotism law by putting his son-in-law and business partner into the White House. He gets away with it. He gets away with nominating the CEO of ExonMobil for Secretary of State – a man who’s buddies with Putin, who came up through the ranks at Exxon by managing the company’s Russia account, who got the fu*king “Order of Friendship” from Putin. This morning Trump has the audacity to send out a tweet saying we’re Nazi Germany because the FBI is investigating his Russian connection.”
“So you have been keeping up with the news,” I say, smiling.
“And you remember Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort? He’s a key player here. He knows the Russian oligarchs around Putin, and made a bundle from them. He was a go-between. Also Michael Flynn, Trump’s foreign policy advisor, who’s been in cahoots with Russian propaganda. And Trump’s guy Michael Cohen, his lawyer from way back. Cohen was involved, too. Had a meeting in Prague with Russian operatives. Cohen …”
I break in. “Hold on. You know more than I do.”
“I guess I have been following it a bit,” he says, sheepishly.
“That’s good. All of us have to stay informed.”
“It just gets me upset. Nobody’s going to do anything about any of this. Trump will get away with it.”
“I disagree. This will bring Trump down.”

————
Not really responding to that article, but just an off-tangent response — I was talking to a cop today at the court-house. He’s a trump supporter. And i asked him point blank about all this ‘russian hacking stuff’ and he said, and i quote: “Its all bullshit”

I think he speaks for a lot of trumpies. They…dont…care. The MSM and the CIA could come up with videos, photos, audios, and a thousand witnesses — and the trumpies..would…not…care. Cause they hate the ‘system’ more than they care about the details about Trump. They ‘know’ he’s shady. They think the system is ‘worse’.

w
v

January 11, 2017 at 1:43 pm #63116

Billy_T
Participant

wv wrote:

Not really responding to that article, but just an off-tangent response — I was talking to a cop today at the court-house. He’s a trump supporter. And i asked him point blank about all this ‘russian hacking stuff’ and he said, and i quote: “Its all bullshit”

I think he speaks for a lot of trumpies. They…dont…care. The MSM and the CIA could come up with videos, photos, audios, and a thousand witnesses — and the trumpies..would…not…care. Cause they hate the ‘system’ more than they care about the details about Trump. They ‘know’ he’s shady. They think the system is ‘worse’.

w
v

What’s your take on that, WV? On what they mean by “the system” and what they want to replace it with.

Me? I don’t think they hate “the system” at all. I think they hate that fragments of it occasionally help people Trump supporters believe don’t deserve any help. Mostly people of color, immigrants, the undocumented, government workers, etc. etc. From my point of view, from what I’ve seen, they actually want the government to step in, a lot, be proactive in their lives, fix this, prevent that, make things work better — for THEM. They just hate even thinking that the folks they’ve decided are “unworthy” get any help at all, and the surveys we have about their attitudes back that up.

As in, they honestly seem to believe the government spends most of its time showering largesse on the folks those Trumpies can’t stand, and no time on them. The facts don’t support their conclusions. But that doesn’t stop them from believing that the system is out to get them, while it works overtime to help the “undeserving” to live like kings and queens.

January 11, 2017 at 1:49 pm #63119

Billy_T
Participant

I also don’t think they view “the system” as “Corporate America.” Except in some vague sense that the government is in collusion with them. But they tend not to hold the business world accountable for their plight. It’s rare to hear them say it’s a factor at all.

So what we’re really left with, is this simmering hatred and disgust for groups of people who are in even worse straits than the poorest Trumpies, and instead of looking up at the people REALLY screwing them over, they think it’s the fault of Mexicans, the Chinese, black and brown people already living here, etc. etc.

And they chose a billionaire conman as their savior.

It’s really heartbreaking, when you think about it.

January 11, 2017 at 2:08 pm #63122

Billy_T
Participant

Another quick thought: These same voters never expressed their distrust or criticism of “the system” when Bush was president. It’s not hard to track the almost instant change in attitudes once the Dems took (or take) power.

It’s a light switch, on and off.

Republicans control things? No real issues with “the system.” They tend to claim they love America then and tell anyone who doesn’t to leave — or worse.

Dems gain control? “America is being destroyed by the left!!”

Democratic supporters tend to have similar on/off switches, especially about matters of war and the surveillance state, but studies don’t show the swings to be as wild as with Republicans.

Regardless, I see this as a huge problem itself: The perception that America becomes something radically different when another party takes power, and that so many Americans view one another in starkly black and white terms. Good versus evil, etc.

January 11, 2017 at 2:50 pm #63124

zn
Moderator

Billy_T wrote:

So what we’re really left with, is this simmering hatred and disgust for groups of people who are in even worse straits than the poorest Trumpies, and instead of looking up at the people REALLY screwing them over, they think it’s the fault of Mexicans, the Chinese, black and brown people already living here, etc. etc.

Yeah see here’s the issue.

First off the term “identity politics” is a spin off from cultural theory and the idea of “cultural identity.” That term, CI, covered race, ethnicity, nationality, AND class. Class identity is also an identity. Except, once you enter race into it, it’s more divided. Anyway, class is NOT excluded from the cultural theory concept. It is not distinguished from race as a thing to be made separate. Largely because in the real world, it CAN’T be separated.

Granting identity is never a thing but a struggle OVER a thing. What does it mean to be a muslim immigrant in the USA. That question will have different answers.

So you can ask what does it mean to be white working class in the USA. That will never boil down to one answer. It’s in itself contested territory.

AND near as we can tell about Trump voters, their traditional american populist resistance to “outsiders” (ie anyone not them) will take right-wing turns as often as not.

So seeing oneself as an EMBATTLED working-class white american can, frequently, lead not to big revelations about the socio-economic system…drawing on that right-wing populist tradition, it is much more fueled by racial and cultural resentments.

Which, of course, is a huge part of the reality with Trump.

…

January 11, 2017 at 3:36 pm #63130

wv
Participant

Billy_T wrote:

What’s your take on that, WV? On what they mean by “the system” and what they want to replace it with.

————
Oh, i just think most of em are prisoners of mainstream rightwing memes, and propaganda. The usual blame the poor stuff.

Corporate-capitalist Propaganda works.

w
v

January 11, 2017 at 5:05 pm #63139
Billy_T
Participant
wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

What’s your take on that, WV? On what they mean by “the system” and what they want to replace it with.

————
Oh, i just think most of em are prisoners of mainstream rightwing memes, and propaganda. The usual blame the poor stuff.

Corporate-capitalist Propaganda works.

w
v

Agreed.

How do you typically respond to his supporters in real life?

I think we’re in a serious Catch22 with all of this, and it makes honest dialogue close to impossible. And I’m often finding myself forgetting my own advice about that. Talking to people honestly about the reasons for their views tends to just get folks to dig in deeper. It rarely seems to work.

Case in point: After Brexit passed, I wrote a little blog piece on a pro-Sanders, heavily anti-Clinton site, and I assumed it would be well received. Can’t remember the title, but it was basically that Brexit was a victory for the far right and the forces of racism, xenophobia and islamphobia, etc. etc. Nothing within light years of a condemnation of anyone there. I didn’t know anyone there at the time, even in the sense that we can “know” anonymous posters on a bulletin board. I just assumed I was “speaking truth to power,” albeit from a distance, hoping to spark further dialogue.

I was strongly condemned by a few, with a variety of “How dare you call me a racist!!” or “How dare you call ALL supporters of Brexit racist!!” or some variety of that.

(splitting this post in two to make it easier to deal with)
- This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Billy_T.
January 11, 2017 at 5:06 pm #63142

Billy_T
Participant

In short, I honestly think some people lose their minds when they even see the word (racism) on the page, and then they just skip over all the qualifiers and how it all fits together and who is really being talked about and why.

Which leads me to think this:

Whether or not it’s true that “you can’t separate race and class,” we on the left have to, cuz it rarely works to include them together. It pretty much never works, and it tends to shut down dialogue, and it does the opposite of what most people want to accomplish when they bring up the subject.

In short, “the left” is going to have to talk about “class” and hold back on the discussion of “race” for a different kind of discussion, if it wants to actually have a positive impact.

That’s my view, anyway.
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