A good way to understand the appeal of Donald Trump is to talk to the people who voted for him. One of the most interesting ways to approach that is to talk to voters and counties that flipped, long voting for Democratic Party candidates until suddenly in 2016, they didn't. That's the background for Trump's Democrats, a book that looks at three communities that turned to Trumpism after having been solidly blue basically forever.Professor Stephanie Muravchik and Jon A. Shields of Claremont McKenna College have written a fascinating book explores why Trump clicked with these voters and why many of the very things that turned so many of us off about him were the very things they found so appealing. We discussed machine politics, political bosses, honor cultures, localism, and what it means to identify strongly with a narrowly circumscribed place. The story that emerges is a good deal more complex and nuanced than the easy tales we sometimes tell ourselves about us and them.
Fascinating and sad...as the world spins ever more out of control, people look for strong leadership which has been conflated to mean authoritarian populism. Sadly, the leaders they turn to are the very ones who embroiled us in a sea of oligarchs, massive student debt, widespread white collar crime, consolidation of wealth, etc. It's as though someone started a massive fire which burned down half the town, then slapped on a fireman's suit and people ran to the new savior, somehow forgetting instantly that he was the originator of their desperate situation.
This was an eye-opener and more than a little depressing. As long as people think they can get goodies from politicians, we'll deal with bad government. Democrats have practiced this at the national level for almost 100 years, but now even Republicans are running away from small government.
OK, I only listened to a few bits and pieces, but the condescention is just dripping from all three.
I am a 66-year-old lifelong progressive Democrat who has worked over the decades as a volunteer on multiple Democratic campaigns, and I just voted straight Republican in the California open primary.
Why? Because the Democrats have sadly become just as illiberal and anti-science (I have a STEM PhD so science matters to me) as the Republicans. For example, the Democrats are all-in with the Equality Act, that would allow any man to declare himself to be a woman and then enter any women-only space, place, organization, or event, a clear violation of the liberal right to free association. A recent poll showed that the public is 2-to-1 against "trans" women in women's sports (with 15% undecided), but does that matter to Democrats? Not at all. (And "trans" must always be in quotes, because as a matter of long-settled science, it is physically impossible to "transition" the sex of a mammal from male to female or vice versa. Yet Democrats insist we all pretend that isn't true.) Happily there are some organizations coming from the left that are fighting this, like the Women's Liberation Front, but Democrats ignore them.
So, I now believe liberalism is dead in the US for the forseeable future, and that the only question is whether we will be ruled by woke totalitarians or christianist fascists. And given that binary choice, I will take the christianist fascists any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
Fascinating and sad...as the world spins ever more out of control, people look for strong leadership which has been conflated to mean authoritarian populism. Sadly, the leaders they turn to are the very ones who embroiled us in a sea of oligarchs, massive student debt, widespread white collar crime, consolidation of wealth, etc. It's as though someone started a massive fire which burned down half the town, then slapped on a fireman's suit and people ran to the new savior, somehow forgetting instantly that he was the originator of their desperate situation.
This was an eye-opener and more than a little depressing. As long as people think they can get goodies from politicians, we'll deal with bad government. Democrats have practiced this at the national level for almost 100 years, but now even Republicans are running away from small government.
OK, I only listened to a few bits and pieces, but the condescention is just dripping from all three.
I am a 66-year-old lifelong progressive Democrat who has worked over the decades as a volunteer on multiple Democratic campaigns, and I just voted straight Republican in the California open primary.
Why? Because the Democrats have sadly become just as illiberal and anti-science (I have a STEM PhD so science matters to me) as the Republicans. For example, the Democrats are all-in with the Equality Act, that would allow any man to declare himself to be a woman and then enter any women-only space, place, organization, or event, a clear violation of the liberal right to free association. A recent poll showed that the public is 2-to-1 against "trans" women in women's sports (with 15% undecided), but does that matter to Democrats? Not at all. (And "trans" must always be in quotes, because as a matter of long-settled science, it is physically impossible to "transition" the sex of a mammal from male to female or vice versa. Yet Democrats insist we all pretend that isn't true.) Happily there are some organizations coming from the left that are fighting this, like the Women's Liberation Front, but Democrats ignore them.
So, I now believe liberalism is dead in the US for the forseeable future, and that the only question is whether we will be ruled by woke totalitarians or christianist fascists. And given that binary choice, I will take the christianist fascists any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.