dagblog - Comments for "Johnstown Never Believed Trump Would Help. They Still Love Him Anyway."

We need a law like this in

artappraiser — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 17:50:00 +0000

In reply to Johnstown Never Believed Trump Would Help. They Still Love Him Anyway.

We need a law like this in every state or at least in states representing a majority of the electoral college.

New Colorado law will give state's electoral college votes to national popular vote winner - CNNPolitics https://t.co/z9LlvFi3ye
— Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) March 18, 2019

Have you ever seen rural

rmrd0000 — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 17:31:09 +0000

In reply to As long as blacks. Latinos,

Have you ever seen rural whites making fun of blacks?

Democrats won’t be ignoring the rust belt. They are already there. Democrats won or came close in areas that should have been solidly Republican. Solid Trump voters aren’t budging. Every Democrat is talking about policies that benefit all. The big outlier may be Castro emphasizing reparations.

There is literally nothing that Democrats can do to turn solid Trump supporters. If Trump is found to have collude with Russia, they will ignore the evidence. You use the word tribal as a club to bludgeon everyone but the folks who are truly tribal. Other tribes ( blacks, whites, Latinos, Muslims, LGBT) are trying to work together, Trump supporters are not willing to compromise on anything.

Edit to add:

Republicans in Congress rarely oppose Trump because they are afraid Republican voters will primary them. The Republican base is rabid.

As long as blacks. Latinos,

artappraiser — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 15:56:21 +0000

In reply to The article notes the glee

As long as blacks. Latinos, transgenders, Muslims, and Gay are part of the Democratic coalition, I don’t see big shifts in Trump supporters.

The main point of writers of all 3 essays: you also won't see a Dem candidate winning the Electoral College with this situation. Nor a majority in the Senate.

P.S. The LBJ quote is nothing new. It is classic ruling class manipulation of tribalism to their own benefit, you can find it all through history. Like this example:

I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

Frequently attributed to Jay Gould, often in the context of strikebreaking activities during the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886. See for example Philip Sheldon Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume 2‎ - Page 50 (1975). A contemporary source has not been identified. Varying forms of the quotation circulated in the labor press as early as 1893, with or without the attribution to Gould.

Source: Wikipedia

You have never seen any blacks and/or liberal whites hating and making fun of rural whites?

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

The article notes the glee

rmrd0000 — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 15:30:43 +0000

In reply to Same meme again. Cross link

The article notes the glee that Trump supporters feel when black people are the targets of Trump’s venom.

Trump does not see white supremacy as a threat to the country.

As long as blacks. Latinos, transgenders, Muslims, and Gay are part of the Democratic coalition, I don’t see big shifts in Trump supporters.

Edit to add:

President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-white-man/

2nd Edit to add:

J.D. Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” likes to downplay the role of race, but his writing details racial bias and envy.

Trump’s election was seen, at least in part, as a backlash from white, working-class voters frustrated at their relative decline in status in America – symbolized, of course, by its first black president. Vance plays down this explanation, but I bring up a line in his book that seems to hint at a racially toned resentment. “Obama,” he writes, “strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities.”

“I think that Obama is everything that the American meritocracy values at a time when a lot of us feel like the American meritocracy doesn’t value very much about us at all,” he explains. “It is just sort of like everything about him. He’s like the American ideal at the very moment that we feel like we’re the opposite of the American ideal.”

He adds: “The natural question that comes – especially in the modern political context as part of that – is the fact he has black skin. I think for some people that’s definitely part of it. But I continue to think the racial explanation of the reaction to Obama doesn’t quite capture how much everything about him is both enviable but also dislikable. Because we dislike the things that we envy.”

There is an arrogance to Obama’s demeanour, he adds, that makes him especially difficult to relate to. “He talks in a way that a professor talks, he talks in a way that you sort of aspire to talk if you’re a young law student. Trump talks like a guy at a bar in West Virginia. Trump talks like my dad sitting around the dinner table.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/25/hillbilly-elegy-jd-vance-barack-obama-interview

Same meme again. Cross link

artappraiser — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 02:22:25 +0000

In reply to Johnstown Never Believed Trump Would Help. They Still Love Him Anyway.

Same meme again. Cross link to Daily Beast op-ed I posted on news thread about Liz Warren: Democrats Need to Understand That This Election Will Be Won—or Lost—in Places Like Lordstown, Ohio; Democratic candidates are mostly from blue bubbles, and so is their base. But unless they talk to people in struggling cities and small towns, they will lose.

Venture capitalist spreading

artappraiser — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 02:12:47 +0000

In reply to Johnstown Never Believed Trump Would Help. They Still Love Him Anyway.

Venture capitalist spreading funding to Middle America

Billionaire Steve Case says too much venture capitalist money goes to businesses on the coasts. So he's touring the middle of the country on a bus in search of the next big idea

Sharon Alfonski for 60 Minutes, March 17 (both video & text)

[....] Steve Case: I wanna get everybody on the bus. There are entrepreneurs like me all over the country. Most people are not paying attention to them. Most people in their communities don't believe in them. Most people on the coasts don't think there's anything interesting, innovative happening in the middle of the country. [....]

[....] The poverty rate in Memphis is almost two times the national average, crime is rampant and 30,000 people have left the city in the last decade. Memphis is a hard sell to investors and entrepreneurs have paid for it.

Steve Case: I realized it because I, you know, spent a lotta time traveling around the-- the country. There-- most people in this country wake up in the morning anxious, fearful about the future.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Fearful?

Steve Case: They're fearful.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Why?

Steve Case: Because the things they see happening, mostly on the coasts, are hurting their family, hurting their community. They see that these Silicon Valley companies bragging about disruption, sometimes that's code words for job destruction in their backyard. And that troubles them. They're losing jobs, not gaining jobs.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And do you feel that when you go there? Do you feel that they think, "We've kind of been forgotten here--"

Steve Case: Of course. They have been forgotten. It's not about a feeling about being left behind, they have been left behind. We have to kinda level the playing field so everybody everywhere really does feel like they have a shot at the American dream. Right now, they don't. [....]

[....] J.D. Vance agrees. It's the reason he became Case's partner in the Rise of the Rest fund. Vance, wrote the New York Times' best-seller "Hillbilly Elegy."

Sharyn Alfonsi: Do you still consider yourself a hillbilly?

J.D. Vance: (LAUGH) I certainly do. I certainly do, and it's the thing I'm proudest of.

Sharyn Alfonsi: A hillbilly in a blue blazer now? (LAUGHTER)

J.D. Vance: Yeah, well, my-- my wife dressed me, so you can talk to her about that.

Vance's book details his upbringing in Appalachia, surrounded by heartbreaking poverty, drug addiction and instability.

After a stint in the Marines, then earning degrees from Ohio State and Yale Law School, Vance began a career as a high tech investor in Silicon Valley.

J.D. Vance: I definitely get a little bit skeptical when somebody's development a new app for parking, and they tell me they're changing the (LAUGHTER) world. So, I do think sometimes folks in San Francisco can drink a little bit too much of their own Kool-Aid.

Discouraged by so called "transformational technologies" that weren't, two years ago, Vance moved back to Ohio to help run the Rise of the Rest Fund.

He says many of his Silicon Valley friends had preconceived ideas about people from small towns.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Did you ever feel like you had to be defensive about where you were from?

J.D. Vance: Oh, sure, sure. I definitely had to defend this part of the world, d-- had to defend some of the people who lived here.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Defend them from what?

J.D. Vance: I-- I think defend them from the assumption that they're all stupid and that they don't know what they really want in the world. I think there is this-- this presumption that the only people who live here are the people who are forced to live here. They can't get out, or they're too dumb to know that they should leave. And that's just not true. I think people are here because they care about their communities and they want to build something special here just as folks in San Francisco want to build something special there [....]