Saturday, November 12, 2016

Guess Who Got The USian Election Exactly Right...In July.

PetsMeatOr
TrumpVille


Back in July Michael Moore wrote a post on his website in which he managed to see something clearly that all the pundits and all the pols could not.

He called the coming federal election exactly right:

...I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million)...

{snip}

...From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class. Angry, embittered working (and nonworking) people who were lied to by the trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still try to talk a good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who’ll write them nice big check before leaving the room. What happened in the UK with Brexit is going to happen here. Elmer Gantry shows up looking like Boris Johnson and just says whatever shit he can make up to convince the masses that this is their chance! To stick to ALL of them, all who wrecked their American Dream! And now The Outsider, Donald Trump, has arrived to clean house! You don’t have to agree with him! You don’t even have to like him! He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the bastards who did this to you! SEND A MESSAGE! TRUMP IS YOUR MESSENGER!

And this is where the math comes in. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s 64. All Trump needs to do to win is to carry, as he’s expected to do, the swath of traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He doesn’t need Florida. He doesn’t need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is how it will happen in November...



After reading the entire piece I could see that Moore was really saying that Trump would win by bamboozling desperate folks with hope.

And that hope thing is important to remember, I think.

Because, despite the ugly things that have happened over the last 72 hours, Mr. Trump did not win because he had the support of the racists. After all, he always had them, just like every Republican nominee has had all the way back to Nixon's southern strategy.

Instead, Trump won because he offered a relatively small group of desperate people in rural and exurban areas of rust belt states a little hope mixed with the rage.

At worst false, and at best misguided hope, sure.

But that 'hope' thing is a very different message than the one that is pouring out of TeeVee screens and hate radio at the moment.

OK?


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SubHeader?.....This.

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8 comments:

Grant G said...

I disagree Ross K...

Media didn't ask Trump what jobs are coming back to America..

Pollsters told America that Clinton was going to win(BC NDP voters stayed home in 2013 because Dix had a 20 point lead..)

Trump is already backing down from going after Hillary(lock her up)

The Great Trumponian wall is not getting built..Rudy Guliani has advised against it

There will be no mass deportations and..

Mayors of Seattle, LA..New York have stated(just yesterday) that these cities and more will remain sanctuary cities no matter what..

In a interview on 60 minutes(airing Sunday)..Trump is now saying he is keeping much of Obama care...existing conditions, extended healthcare for kids living at home(to age 25) and more..

Donald Trump has put himself into the inescapable box..

http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.ca/2016/11/hollowed-souls-and-inescapable-box.html

Why didn't the media actually challenge Trump, ask how he was, when is he, what jobs..how will you deport millions..

In other words...get ready for extreme disappointment from Trump voters when he frails on near every election promise..

Cheers

Grant G said...

Furthermore....

Obama tried to make changes, he cwas blocked in Senate and Congress....Republicans had majority in those houses..

Trump has the Whitehouse....A majority in Senate and a majority in the Congress..

Trump can't blame, and or use the excuse for not doing anything because he was blocked..

Anonymous said...

SH @ Grant G:

Paul Ryan, and who knows how many other down ballot GOP candidates had their political lives resuscitated by Trump?

Trump has an insatiable hunger for approval, and his burgeoning basketeers offer more sustenance, and longevity, than the very stick up the arse Party that tried it's best to jettison him.

Grant G said...

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/new-york-los-angeles-pledge-remain-sanctuary-cities

RossK said...

The key is to look at the numbers...Specifically, which states won it for Trump and why.

Moore had it absolutely right.

And Clinton's pols had it so wrong that they didn't even bother with Wisconsin because they thought they had it in the bag...Furthermore, they only cottoned on to the Michigan 'problem' in the last days of the campaign.



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e.a.f. said...

Moore was very correct. It was also these people the polls did not reach. these are the people who had dropped out of the election cycles, the forgotten. well Trump remembered them and won with them.

However, once they realize Trump will not be able to return those jobs for them, that is when the real "entertainment" will start and it will not be a good thing. Trump gave them hope but will not be able to deliver. many of their jobs don't exist any more, tech change. You can't force corporations to bring the jobs back and many of the Republican politicians did not depend upon Trump to get elected. They raised their own money and their allegiance goes to those who gave them the money.

Republican senators and congress people will pass the legislation they want, but it won't be to the benefit of those in the rust belt. The de regulation the Republicans want only benefits corporations and the wealthy.

RossK said...

eaf--

Good point about them being the folks that the polls did not reach.

Apparently, while reaching out to/whipping up their hope and angst was a Trumpian strate(r)gy, Trump's wizards didn't know they were going to win all these states either, especially Wisconsin.

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Anonymous said...

SH:

Joan C. Williams, Harvard Business Review:

"My father-in-law grew up eating blood soup. He hated it, whether because of the taste or the humiliation, I never knew. His alcoholic father regularly drank up the family wage, and the family was often short on food money. They were evicted from apartment after apartment.

He dropped out of school in eighth grade to help support the family. Eventually he got a good, steady job he truly hated, as an inspector in a factory that made those machines that measure humidity levels in museums. He tried to open several businesses on the side but none worked, so he kept that job for 38 years. He rose from poverty to a middle-class life: the car, the house, two kids in Catholic school, the wife who worked only part-time. He worked incessantly. He had two jobs in addition to his full-time position, one doing yard work for a local magnate and another hauling trash to the dump.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he read The Wall Street Journal and voted Republican. He was a man before his time: a blue-collar white man who thought the union was a bunch of jokers who took your money and never gave you anything in return. Starting in 1970, many blue-collar whites followed his example. This week, their candidate won the presidency…"


"In 2010, while on a book tour for Reshaping the Work-Family Debate, I gave a talk about all of this at the Harvard Kennedy School. The woman who ran the speaker series, a major Democratic operative, liked my talk. “You are saying exactly what the Democrats need to hear,” she mused, “and they’ll never listen.” I hope now they will."

https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class