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How to win in 2020
7 years ago
General
After the 2016 election, people were asking how Trump won. Many said they voted for him because he was a businessman who promised to make America rich again. To bring back jobs. People on the left were skeptical. Trump won on the backs of white, middle class voters. Why are they worrying about jobs? Are we sure it wasn't Trump's ability to appeal to.the lowest common denominator? His profoundly racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, elitist, nationalist rhetoric surely just motivated all the evil scumlords to come out of their holes and vote, right?
Allow me to answer...78% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. Millennials are the first generation who are worse off than the one before us. Most people can't afford to buy homes, buy cars, go on vacations, retire, pay for college... The American Dream is all but dead, and that scares and angers people. This is the source of much of the discontent that Trump tapped into. He wasn't making up demons to scare voters, he was using ones that already existed. He did manage to scapegoat several groups that aren't responsible, but that only succeeded because there was already a problem. The thing that Trump and the Republicans refuse to acknowledge is that it's not the fault of immigrants, or the "Welfare State," or bad trade deals. It's the fault of Trump and the Republicans. Trickle-down economics was a Reagan policy. Deregulation is a Republican hallmark. The people responsible will NEVER accept blame for ruining things for everyone else. They'll blame lazy Millennials never taking responsibility for their lives, cheaters who scam the system and steal money through Welfare and Disability, immigrants for coming in and stealing our jobs, foreign countries for tempting our corporations to use their pseudo-slave labor.
Trump won because he said he'd make America great again. In the minds of most of his voters, America was great when the American Dream was still attainable. If the Democrats have a candidate who ignores this issue, Trump will win again. Climate Change is the greatest existential threat facing humanity...but it won't decide the next election. Neither will immigration, or Russian collusion, or how much of a landfill of a human being one of the candidates is. It won't even be the economy. The economy is doing great...the majority of people just can't feel it. Promise to ease the financial pain of the average American, to make things so their children can succeed in life, and you win.
Edit: Some of this stuff is easy to find through polling and statistical data. Some, though, requires some critical thinking. Look at the approval/disapproval numbers over time for Donald Trump. It's remarkably steady. Look at the few places it dips and surges, then correlate those to the events at that time. His numbers didn't show substantial movement when his negotiations with North Korea failed, when he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, when he cancelled the Iran nuclear deal, or when he openly sided with Russia over the US intelligence agencies. They haven't much changed since the Mueller Report ended with a fart rather than a bang. Where you do see a precipitous drop, though, is during the government shutdown. That shutdown was caused by Trump trying to force Congress to fund his border wall, the largest and loudest promise from his campaign. That is significant. It means that his base started turning on him when he threatened jobs. Jobs are more important than the wall. That's why his approval rating went back to its resting state shortly after the shutdown ended, despite Trump failing to get funding for his precious wall. I know a lot of people are bound and determined to hate Trump voters over all the shit they ushered into the White House with Trump...but for many, those are simply compromises they were willing to make over their main concern, not the main selling point. Don't allow your vendetta to blind you to the issues or Trump WILL win again.
Allow me to answer...78% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. Millennials are the first generation who are worse off than the one before us. Most people can't afford to buy homes, buy cars, go on vacations, retire, pay for college... The American Dream is all but dead, and that scares and angers people. This is the source of much of the discontent that Trump tapped into. He wasn't making up demons to scare voters, he was using ones that already existed. He did manage to scapegoat several groups that aren't responsible, but that only succeeded because there was already a problem. The thing that Trump and the Republicans refuse to acknowledge is that it's not the fault of immigrants, or the "Welfare State," or bad trade deals. It's the fault of Trump and the Republicans. Trickle-down economics was a Reagan policy. Deregulation is a Republican hallmark. The people responsible will NEVER accept blame for ruining things for everyone else. They'll blame lazy Millennials never taking responsibility for their lives, cheaters who scam the system and steal money through Welfare and Disability, immigrants for coming in and stealing our jobs, foreign countries for tempting our corporations to use their pseudo-slave labor.
Trump won because he said he'd make America great again. In the minds of most of his voters, America was great when the American Dream was still attainable. If the Democrats have a candidate who ignores this issue, Trump will win again. Climate Change is the greatest existential threat facing humanity...but it won't decide the next election. Neither will immigration, or Russian collusion, or how much of a landfill of a human being one of the candidates is. It won't even be the economy. The economy is doing great...the majority of people just can't feel it. Promise to ease the financial pain of the average American, to make things so their children can succeed in life, and you win.
Edit: Some of this stuff is easy to find through polling and statistical data. Some, though, requires some critical thinking. Look at the approval/disapproval numbers over time for Donald Trump. It's remarkably steady. Look at the few places it dips and surges, then correlate those to the events at that time. His numbers didn't show substantial movement when his negotiations with North Korea failed, when he pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, when he cancelled the Iran nuclear deal, or when he openly sided with Russia over the US intelligence agencies. They haven't much changed since the Mueller Report ended with a fart rather than a bang. Where you do see a precipitous drop, though, is during the government shutdown. That shutdown was caused by Trump trying to force Congress to fund his border wall, the largest and loudest promise from his campaign. That is significant. It means that his base started turning on him when he threatened jobs. Jobs are more important than the wall. That's why his approval rating went back to its resting state shortly after the shutdown ended, despite Trump failing to get funding for his precious wall. I know a lot of people are bound and determined to hate Trump voters over all the shit they ushered into the White House with Trump...but for many, those are simply compromises they were willing to make over their main concern, not the main selling point. Don't allow your vendetta to blind you to the issues or Trump WILL win again.
Second, it's not just wages. The minimum wage in my state is almost double the national minimum, and we STILL struggle. Unregulated enterprise gouging the shit out of people is just as bad as, if not worse than, wage stagnation.
Third, there are several candidates in the Democratic primaries who are anti-globalist and pro-consumer. Elizabeth Warren has been a champion for things like that since before she became a senator. She's even refusing to meet with or solicit big, wealthy donors. She wants her campaign to be completely grassroots and for the people. Bernie Sanders is another one who isn't a typical neo-liberal crony capitalist. He's the first major presidential candidate to proudly describe himself as a socialist. Don't be fooled, we have options. We just need to make sure shit doesn't go wrong and saddle us with Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.
Your words may be falling on deaf ears.
During the time the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was enacted, the amount of migrants let in per year also increased. Prior the US had been averaging about a quarter million per year for several decades, after the act passed it soon shot up to more than a million year, mostly from latin america rather than Europe, as it was before that. A side effect people don't like to talk about is the affect this had on crime. Violent crime shot up as high as 470% just going from the early 60s to the 90s. When people compare crime today they compare it to the 90s, the peak of crime; that's what they mean when they say 'crime is down', the reality is that even today it still sits at 240% higher (than the early 60s), this might be why people have noticed how aggressive the police in the US have become over the years. Also I personally would say that demographics haven't shifted just a bit, they've shifted a lot. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta.....ity_agegroups/ For whatever that is worth. I talk about migration because that is related to the availability of labour, which it turn affects wages (even if not the only factor : ) ).
I actually strongly agree with you that unregulated enterprise is royally screwing people, it might be worse than stagnated wages as you say, but both of them sure as hell compound with eachother to very uncomfortable degree. I'd entirely stand with you to try to make change to that, if possible; I tend to bring up wages since simple rule of supply and demand dictates that too much available labour drives down the cost of labour (wages), obviously it's a rather complex puzzle and it's just one piece, it's just one you'll never see anyone tackle.
As to your third point, I'm relatively neutral towards a lot of candidates, I do recall Sanders getting screwed over pretty hard in 2016, I don't agree with all that he said but he seemed like one of the better ones for sure. I'd support any candidate on either side of the aisle as long as they don't have big interest money pouring into them. This can be anything from corporate, to bankers or foreign money (like saudi or aipac money etc). Any candidate who refuses to take money from "big money" or bow to foreign interests would certainly have my vote.
Thanks for your thoughts, Red, it's nice to hear another perspective
Back in the late 1800's and early 1900's when the Irish and Italian immigrant surges occurred, there were no such laws or protections. At that point, the business model was "We don't need to pay you more. If you don't like what you make, we can easily hire some Mick to replace you and make less for more hours." So at that time, immigration kept wages low, which is what fueled a lot of hatred towards immigrants back in those days. What we've seen more recently is meant to emulate that hatred. The thing is that the Latin American immigrants don't take our jobs, but as long as people think they do, politicians have buttons they can push to manipulate people. Scapegoating is as old as civilization itself, and people still fall for it.