Moral Equivalents?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
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You don’t understand the relevance of both parties needing to introspect and take responsibility for their screw-ups and stop blaming everyone else? Despite the fact that I’ve explained it no less than three times?

It is, but you have to spend some time looking at post-election analyses. Have you? But more importantly - and you’re more convinced that racism drove those votes in the flipped Midwestern states?

…yep, I recognized that, and I said in my previous post, there’s no new data to support such a claim. All he has is speculation.

Trump’s purported solutions aren’t the issue - the economic anxieties are real, and there are legitimate solutions to them, but what matters is Trump spoke to those economic anxieties like Democrats used to, and he won Democratic votes as a result.

These voters were told they and their issues matter.

Oh, to be clear, I don’t think he only adopted this view in connection with the election. But I still think the critcism is legitimate - it’s always about Them.

Coates believes Trump is a racist demon Hell-bent on reversing Obama’s legacy out of hatred of his blackness. I shortened that view to saying he thinks Trump is George Wallace 2.0. Did Coates ever use the phrase “George Wallace 2.0”? Probably not, but I have no idea. Does it matter? No. I merely truncated his views (accurately) with my phrasing. To worry that Coates didn’t actually use the phrase is pedantic.

No, I disagree with him, that’s it. I’d enjoy a beer with him, regardless. I’m comfortable with disagreement, you don’t appear to be. Disagreement isn’t puzzling, not is it obsessing.

No, I just know groupthink when I see it.

I’ve been saying the same. There is great overlap between PoC and WWC - to know it, though, you have to talk to both camps, something neither party has been willing to do.

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Not only do I not understand, at this point I’m not even sure to whom you’re referring vis a vis the term “both parties.” Neither am I sure what is entailed by their “screw ups.”

No, I have not spent time trying to make your argument for you.

I am convinced racial anxiety played a role. Am I arguing it was the principal driving force? No.

Why is it when POC are “told they and their issues matter,” you deride it as IP, but when it’s done for the white working class, it’s not?

Again, absent evidence that Coates considers racism to be the only significant factor, I fail to see how this is a legitimate criticism.

You are still not getting my point.

I am happy to stipulate that Coates thinks Trump is a racist. I am happy to let stand unchallenged your assertion that he thinks Trump is Wallace 2.0. The issue at hand is not what Coates himself believes; rather, it concerns your assertion that Coates has stated that POC writ large feel the same way. To my knowledge, Coates has made no such claim about the state of mind re POC in general.

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I’ve been reading this exchange and I’ve gotta be honest I’m really confused by this response, Ed.

@thunderbolt23 has said a couple of time that “these voters were told they and their issues matter” crosses racial lines. It isn’t just white working class it’s THE working class many of whom are black and Hispanic.

I can’t figure out if you’re purposefully ignoring that or what? Like I said, I’m really confused here. I know you get it because you’re a very intelligent person.

305

If Trump’s message had truly been aimed at working-class individuals without regard to ethnicity, it follows that it should have been equally effective in motivating all (meaning, of all ethnicities) working-class individuals to vote for him, not just the white ones. This was clearly not the case. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that Trump’s message targeted disaffected whites; ie, was IP aimed at this group. The claim that Trump’s message “crosses racial lines” is not supported by the data.

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I don’t agree that that necessarily follows. Trump wasn’t a single issue candidate. In fact, he was all over the place. It’s possible that his stance on a separate issue, immigration, for example, could have negated support, particularly from Hispanic voters, that he may have gotten because they agree with his pro-manufacturing position.

Couple that with HRC being just awful and you get a black voter turnout decrease of 7% and, low and behold, Obama held an 87 point black vote advantage to Hillary’s 80 point advantage, a drop of 7…

It seems much more likely to me that black voters simply didn’t come out for Clinton.

Also, assuming this is accurate:

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Trump had a legitimate shot at about 15% of Black voters (that’s being generous) and he didn’t sway any of them. Many simply decided to stay home. I think you’re making a mighty leap insinuating this is because Trump’s message was white-centric.

I’m not really even sure what this means to be honest. The fact that minorities didn’t vote for him more so than prior Republican candidates isn’t data supporting the notion that his message was white centric. It very easily could be something as simple as black voters predominately voted Dem and the Dem candidate was god awful so they stayed home. It’s hardly shocking that Trump didn’t do well with Hispanics based on his immigration stance(s) not because of his economic stance(s).

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Fair enough. Let’s assume his immigration stance was enough to swamp his supposed ‘universal working class’ message with Hispanics. (We’ll set aside the fact that his immigration stance was emphatically white-centric in and of itself.) How do we explain the lack of support among AA working-class folk?

I agree, and that lack of turnout likely played a crucial role in her loss. But again, in addition to not voting for HRC, if Trump’s message had trans/an-ethnic appeal for the working class, why didn’t these same AA voters come out for him, rather than simply stay home?

The issue is that @thunderbolt23 (and you?) have argued that Trump’s message to working-class voters was trans/an-ethnic. If this is the case, why is it that, as per you, Trump “didn’t sway” these voters? Why did they ‘simply stay home’?

Am I? It seems like a pretty compelling explanation to me. Consider three possible messages Trump might have sent, and the expected effect on AA working-class voters:
-A genuinely trans/an-ethnic message: Working-class voters AA cross over and vote for him.
-A virulently/openly racist message: Working-class voters AA turn out to vote against him.
-A “white-centric” message: Working-class AA, not motivated either for or against him, stay home.

You may disagree, but I don’t think the leap is all that ‘mighty.’

Thesis-wise, you’re putting me in an impossible position. If black working-class voters had turned out for Trump, presumably you would claim this as evidence that his message was trans/an-ethnic. But when they didn’t turn out for him, you claim this fact can’t/shouldn’t be interpreted as evidence his message was white-centric. So essentially, you’re telling me it’s a case of heads you win, tails I lose.

OK, you tell me: What voter-related outcome would it have taken for you to say Trump’s message was white-centric?

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Because they may not have been swayable. But how they ultimately voted is completely irrelevant to the issue of whether or not the message was “to them” to not. Were arguing over the intent of the message, not the effectiveness of the message, and intent does not equal effectiveness.

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So, you’re saying that, had working-class AAs turned out for Trump, you would not be using that fact as evidence re the nature of his message–as ‘proof’ that his message was not aimed at white voters? Forgive me, but I have a hard time believing that would be the case.

310

Good Lord. Thanks anyway.

That isn’t the issue - my question is what do you know about what caused Trump to win? You’ve read Coates - have you read anything else?

Telling PoC they and their issues matter isn’t IP, never has been. But more importantly, telling the WWC they and their issues matter in 2016 was done so not on racial grounds, but rather on economic grounds that are not limited to race. Bad trade deals, immigration - those affect the black working class as well. In fact, constantly referring to them as WWC is really a kind of misnomer - working class is more appropriate.

That makes no sense.

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Lol, probably a good idea because, while I think his immigration stance is very dumb, it is hardly white-centric.

AA folk primarily vote for Democrats. That said, I think Trump’s economic message either a) wasn’t strong enough to sway them, B) was diluted by his other stance ie immigration, or C) a combination of both.

Let’s not forget, he was a pretty bad candidate

Because they primarily vote Dem?
Because the economic message wasn’t strong enough to sway their party affiliation?
Because a large percentage of AAs work in government (which he repeatedly talked about cutting)?
Because he’s anti-immigration
Because he’s not exactly pro-LQBTQ
Because he’s against Planned Parenthood
Because x,y,z.

There are a lot of possible reasons why his pro-working class/manufacturing base stance didn’t convince AAs to vote for him.

I think his economic message was racially toned def and I think he didn’t sway AAs for the reasons mentioned above. Further, overall voter turnout was down (58.6% to 54.2%), which very well could have been simply because both candidates were atrocious and people didn’t see the point in voting third party or at all.

He wasn’t a single issue candidate as mentioned above.

Which obviously didn’t happen.

Working class AAs would benefit from manufacturing jobs returning to the US…

Again, AAs could very easily 100% on board with Trump’s working-class message while being against everything else he stands for. So, they chose to stay home or vote Dem (which following prior trends).

I’m basically saying unless we actually ask a statistically significant number of AAs why they did or did not vote for Trump then we just have a bunch of speculation and a whole lot of noise.

None because a) Trump was not a single issue candidate and b) we don’t know why a voter voted for Trump unless we actually ask that question in a statistically significant way. Otherwise, we’re just guessing.

We know a lot of people vote party lines.
We know historically AAs vote predominately Dem.

There wasn’t a significant shift in voting patterns in 2016 with the exception of the turnout rate, which very easily could have been because Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton represent two of the worst candidates in U.S. history and nothing more.

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Believe whatever you want, the point is the intent of the message is not the same as its effectiveness. Voters have all kinds of biases, and there’s all kinds of reasons not to vote for Trump, but that’s largely irrelevant to analyzing the intent of the message he’s putting forth.

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Agreed. Cause and effect is not clear here.

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The ‘white anger’ ‘white-lash’ bullshit is just that, bullshit. And racist bullshit at that. There is no way, no possible way for Trump to have won with out a large number of the population who voted for Obama previously, to have voted for Trump.

This was not a ‘white’ revolution. I don’t know all the factors that went into a Trump win, but I know much of it was driven by a very distinct hatred of HRC. Not because she was a woman, but because she was a stupid clueless bitch nobody likes. So your choices at the ballot were slim. Trump, Hillary or none of the above. Since none of the above was not going to win, it was going to be Trump or Hillary. And Hillary had every advantage possible, including leading all the polls until election day. She had 2 presidents campaigning for her, every celebrity, money to burn, and with all that, she still lost. At least part of what gave Trump the win, was Hillary herself.

Apparently, Hillary’s new book is so bad, so vindicating to the right that Newt Gingrich offered to throw her a signing party…lol

315

Now that I am at a computer:

"The Obama-Trump voter

Who are these voters who picked the nation’s current president twice and now its president-elect, who rocketed to political prominence questioning Obama’s legitimacy?

On average, the counties that voted for Obama twice and then flipped to support Trump were 81 percent white. Obama strongholds that supported Clinton were just 55 percent white.

Of the counties that split their vote in 2008 and 2012, Trump’s were 86 percent white and Clinton’s were 71 percent white."

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"Many Democrats have a shorthand explanation for Clinton’s defeat: Her base didn’t turn out, Donald Trump’s did and the difference was too much to overcome.

But new information shows that Clinton had a much bigger problem with voters who had supported President Barack Obama in 2012 but backed Trump four years later.

Those Obama-Trump voters, in fact, effectively accounted for more than two-thirds of the reason Clinton lost, according to Matt Canter, a senior vice president of the Democratic political firm Global Strategy Group. In his group’s analysis, about 70 percent of Clinton’s failure to reach Obama’s vote total in 2012 was because she lost these voters."

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Sure, I’ve read a lot. Enough to know that there are lots of theories out there concerning why Trump won.

You sure about that? The largest proportion of new illegal immigrants are visa-overstays:

And the largest proportion of overstays come from Europe, with Canada tied for second:

Despite this, Trump ran on a strategy centered on building a wall along our southern border. You don’t think that strategy was designed not so much as a rational response to illegal immigration–that wall will have to be >35K feet high to stop visa-overstayers from getting into the country–but as a dog-whistle to white-identity anxiety? C’mon man.

OK, thanks for playing. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

So, you’re not willing to say that, if the black working-class vote had broken Trump’s way, you wouldn’t be pointing to that fact as evidence Trump’s message wasn’t directed at the white working class? That you would wave it away and declare ‘ultimately, how AAs voted is completely irrelevant’? Interesting.

Thanks for that thoughtful contribution to the thread.

That link was posted well upthread.

I am tempted to respond by saying:
How they ultimately voted is completely irrelevant to the issue of whether or not the message was “to them” to not. The intent of the message is not the same as its effectiveness. Voters have all kinds of biases, and there’s all kinds of reasons not to vote for Trump, but that’s largely irrelevant to analyzing the intent of the message he’s putting forth.

But instead, I will say: Good point.

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You should, because we’re not talking about the effectiveness of Hillary’s message here - we’re looking at how actual votes came down, which tells us something important about the whole “racist voters” theory. In key counties - where the Blue Wall was held up, the ones that delivered the Electoral College to Trump and made him president - Obama voters swung to Trump. These Obama-Trump voters obviously did not vote with a racist bent, having previously voted for a black man - they were Democrat or Democratic-leaners who saw something they liked about Trump more than the Democrat being offered.

This is why Trump won. Not gaseous theories about everyone is a racist until they prove they aren’t and that they really voted en masse to protest Obama’s blackness. Nope. Mad, ignored Democrats looking for someone to speak to working class economic anxieties.

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Maybe, maybe not, but it doesn’t help your case either way. Intent stands alone, and the follow up is “hey, it worked, they voted for him!” or “he tried, and it didn’t work!”. Either way, the intent hasn’t changed.

Under your logic, I can throw a pass to receiver in the end zone and he can drop it every time, and you’re entitled to say “well, that’s proof TB didn’t intend to throw a touchdown pass to the receiver.” Absurd.

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Slow ya roll, brah. This is not why Trump won. Lots of factors were in play, so let’s not over-simplify things by pointing to one phenomenon (in this case, the Obama-Trump voter) and declare ‘this is why he won.’ Even your article points out that if AA turnout in FL and MI had been at 2012 levels, HRC would have won despite the ‘Blue Wall turncoats.’

Your predilection for mocking and caricaturing Coates is puzzling, and frankly beneath you. You may disagree with him, but he brings both a scholarly attitude and erudition to bear in his arguments. I’m not sure why you feel so strong a need to ridicule him.

Well, at least you’re honest about your double standard.

We have no access to intent, and never will. As observers, all we can do is try to infer intent from what happened. That is what this discussion has been about–a clashing of inferences concerning intent.

Indeed, your example is absurd. Watch any football game, and you will see instances in which the QB throws the ball into the end zone with absolutely no intent of scoring a TD. (He’s throwing it away, usually to avoid a sack.) Now, it’s true, we don’t have direct access to intent in such circumstances. But based on nothing more than what transpired during the play, there will be 100% agreement among observers regarding what the intent was. The point being, observables can allow us to infer intent with a great deal of confidence. (All that said, I’ll be the first to admit that inferring intent re an electoral candidate is not nearly as easy or straightforward as inferring the intent of a QB.)

On the other hand, if you wish to stake out the position that such inferences of intent are “absurd” because “intent stands alone,” it’s all yours.

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This is getting hard to read. Of course there were many factors - it’s a national election. When I say “it’s the reason”, I mean it in the same sense as the headlines do - “it’s the primary reason that differentiate it from previous elections”. Most people understand that without the need for the tedious footnoting of “hang on, it wasn’t the sole, 100%, lone, solitary cause”. You don’t, for some reason.

Proof of intent can be buttressed by the completion of its aim, but absence of completion of its aim isn’t proof there was no intent - it’s easier, for example, to prove that someone intended to defraud someone if a someone was actually defrauded. But even in the absence of a person actually being defrauded, the intent can still be there, and it doesn’t disprove intent just because no one was defrauded.

I never argued otherwise, but you willfully ignore evidence that produces strong inferences of the common sense explanation in favor of a speculative one. We’ll never be mind readers, all we can do is look at the facts and the data, and logically infer. But when presented with data that produces strong inferences of the “economic anxiety, Democrat switcheroo in favor of Trump”, you shrug and say “meh, incomplete data, it doesn’t say what anyone’s intent was.” Theories you like - such as Coates’ theory, supported by no such strong inferences - get all the benefit of the doubt.

That’s confirmation bias in action.

Swing and a miss on the analogy - I said, by your logic, the lack of completion is proof of no intent at all, meaning no one can infer intent based on the fact that the pass wasn’t completed. Which was your point re: Trump’s intent - one can have no basis to believe Trump was intending his message to be trans-ethnic by virtue of the fact that blacks didn’t vote for him. The receiver (PoC) didn’t catch the pass (message), so that’s proof he (Trump) didn’t intend to throw it to them.

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