Trump to Congresswomen: Go back to your own country!

[_honorentheos]

To come full circle back to the OP, the truth is conservative lower- and middle-class Americans probably authentically feel their loyalty to the nation is something they hold in common with fewer and fewer people. "USA!" is a joke as a refrain among liberals associated with Trumpers and troglodytes. The more the right embraces their national identity, the more the left pushes it away.

One of the ideas Karl Marx put forward was that the labor classes would lose their national identity as their interests stopped being tied to the nation-state that was slave to the capitalists and their money. He envisioned a global uprising of the workers of the world who would come to realize that they had the power collectively to effect change and more in common with their exploited brothers and sisters abroad than they had with their enabling nations. It seems he got this exactly opposite from what happened instead. Today, it's the wealthy elite whose wealth is not tied to the means of capital but rather the fluid transfer of money in The Upside-Down economy who are bandying together and losing their national allegiances. Trump is a manifestation of this but hardly unusual. It's ironic that he has clothed himself in the colors and symbols of US patriotism and people believe it, all while his behavior is loyal to his money and those who enable him to protect or increase it.

I've asked before if others believe there are values that we, as Americans, share and which could serve as the focal point for bi-partisan compromise in the interest of those values over more narrow political aims. And that has generally been met with dismissal. I find that as depressing a condition as any possible. It implies that we can't agree on even the premise that America is worth preserving as an idea, let alone as a geography we collectively occupy. We seem to become loyal to our identify only when we feel we can wrest it away from people like Trump rather than live in the same space and debate our differences.

[_Res Ipsa]

In a democracy we are free to choose the economic solutions that we want.

I think a democracy should be permitted to choose who we allow into the country as well.

Of course we are. Have you forgotten how we turned away a ship full of Jews during WWII? Your problem is not that the US isn’t permitted to decide. Your problem is that you don’t have the votes to exclude all the brown people.

Your side had absolute control over the House for two years and couldn’t pass an immigration bill. You, personally, not getting what you want has nothing do to with what our democracy is “permitted” to do.

[_honorentheos]

Elections aren't won or lost by shifting people from one side or the other. Most often, they are won or lost by encouraging/discouraging participation as most people who say they are undecided aren't.

Giving people a sense the election is for something they either fear or don't support tends to affect how likely they are to show up.

Saying the narrative doesn't matter is arguing on the side of people who dismiss Russian influence in 2016.

This isn't a zero sum point. It seems we are locked in the trap that occurs when people have staked out a position and will defend it to the death. So, it behaves like a zero sum argument. But while whether or not we acknowledge the tactic for what it is matters, it doesn't preclude raising concerns about other messaging or concerns. It's simply part of what is going on in association with the story that arose around Trump's tweets and how it's being exploited.

I think the 2016 election contradicts your statement that swing voters don’t win elections. Trying to maximize votes by both turning out the base and persuading swing voters is what makes our presidential elections challenging. There are a couple groups of swing voters that I think Democrats ignore at their peril, the most important being the Obama voters who swung to Trump.

The 2016 election makes my point. The election was lost due to Obama voters not showing up to vote for Clinton. It's uncontroversial in poli-sci circles to acknowledge that voter turnout drives elections, and that 2016 was a reflection of this dynamic. Turnout in 2016 was less than 60% of the electorate, and a 20 year low. It wasn't that a block of swing voters for Obama mostly switched to Trump. Its that they decided they didn't like either candidate and stayed home.

ETA: Here's an article on this from Forbes from just after the election that includes a few key numbers to help illustrate the point:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribensha ... 8e4a2153ab

The story of Hillary Clinton’s defeat, then, is not the Trump Movement erupting in the ballots, nor the fable that some “Reagan Democrats” flipped again from Obama to Trump. The story is altogether different, and very simple: the Democratic base did not turn out to vote as it did for Obama. Those sure-Democrats who stayed home handed the election to Trump.

Take Michigan for example. A state that Obama won in 2012 by 350,000 votes, Clinton lost by roughly 10,000. Why? She received 300,000 votes less than Obama did in 2012. Detroit and Wayne County should kick themselves because of the 595,253 votes they gave Obama in 2012, only 518,000 voted for Clinton in 2016. More than 75,000 Motown Obama voters did not bother to vote for Clinton. They did not become Trump voters – Trump received only 10,000 votes more than Romney did in this county. They simply stayed at home. If even a fraction of these lethargic Democrats had turned out to vote, Michigan would have stayed blue.

Wisconsin tells the same numbers story, even more dramatically. Trump got no new votes. He received exactly the same number of votes in America’s Dairyland as Romney did in 2012. Both received 1,409,000 votes. But Clinton again could not spark many Obama voters to turn out for her: she tallied 230,000 votes less than Obama did in 2012. This is how a 200,000-vote victory margin for Obama in the Badger State became a 30,000-vote defeat for Clinton.

This pattern is national. Clinton’s black voter turnout dropped more than 11 percent compared to 2012. The support for Clinton among active black voters was still exceedingly high (87 percent, versus 93 percent for Obama), but the big difference was the turnout. Almost two million black votes cast for Obama in 2012 did not turn out for Clinton. According to one plausible calculation, if in North Carolina blacks had turned out for Clinton as they had for Obama, she would have won the state. I saw a similar downtrend in my own eyes: I voted in a predominantly African American precinct in the south side of Chicago, and I can testify that the lines for early voting at the polling place were much shorter than they were in 2012.

Using your response to Bach as an example, if Pelosi had responded by talking about the process of what Trump was doing — arguing the attack was just a dishonest tactic — the question in the frame moves only from “Do these four horrible women represent what the Democratic Party stands for” to “Do these four horrible women really represent what the Democratic Party stands for or is this just a sleazy tactic by Trump.” The problem is, we’re still in Trump’s frame — we’re still talking about the four horrible women. Moreover, that response implicitly says that the squad is not representative of the party, leaving her with the Democrats in Disarray.

I suppose if one takes the "four horrible women" and keeps it then sure, that is keeping Trump's framing.

But saying that the conservative media is promoting and attempting to make four freshman congresswomen the face of the Democrat party in order to incite fear and leverage the election in a way they feel advantages Trump is breaking the frame.

In fact, I think you say that below.

Instead, Pelosi changed the framing completely. She responded by labeling the attacks as racist and unamerican. She was able to strongly defend the four as American citizens who should never be told to go back where you came from — that the right to dissent is a fundamental part of what it means to be American. She got to have the squad’s back without having to address their role in the party. And Trump, who always doubles down when criticized, performed true to form and walked into the “Send her back” debacle.

As a frame shift, it worked pretty well. Not brilliant. Not disastrous. Just a pretty good response to a pretty good move by Trump.

If you keep in mind what was being said, I think you inserted taking it as an acceptance of Trump's characterization of them as anything other than freshmen. I really think a reread of the thread would disavow the idea that was being presented at any point. The first Democrat responses all pointed out it was wrong to get distracted by Trump's outrageous behavior. You'll note that from my first post on there was acknowledgement of both sides of this: Pointing out that Trump was being racists, and not letting him reframe the Democrats. Perhaps that should be worth thinking about given the idea acknowledging the tactic kept getting the Trump-framing reinserted in the thread by someone...just saying.

And I will say here that comes from people getting yanked around by the nose as a reaction against Trump's obvious outrageous behavior which, by being reliably reactionary, IS a problem in that it accepts his framing.

[_Res Ipsa]

Your claim of some kind of universal consensus on the 2016 election is nonsense. As opposed to reactions right after the election, folks did some actual analysis with the numbers. https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politi ... 75484.html The study described at the link attributes 2/3 of Clinton’s loss to Obama to Trump switchers. The New York Times did an analysis and reached a similar result. So, turnout decides elections except when it doesn’t.

[_honorentheos]

Your claim of some kind of universal consensus on the 2016 election is nonsense. As opposed to reactions right after the election, folks did some actual analysis with the numbers. https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politi ... 75484.html The study described at the link attributes 2/3 of Clinton’s loss to Obama to Trump switchers. The New York Times did an analysis and reached a similar result. So, turnout decides elections except when it doesn’t.

That's a fair point. In looking at the data, it seems that demographics breakdown along racial lines. Around 9 million former Obama voters, primarily white and working class, voted for Trump while around 7 million black Obama voters stayed home and didn't vote for anyone. Any mix from both groups in the few critical states who had voted for Hillary where 10,000 votes decided the election would have swung the victory to Hillary. So, if I acknowledge that key voting blocks swung for Trump that affected the outcome is it fair to acknowledge that voter turnout also swung the election for Trump?

[_Jersey Girl]

What the hell did someone already post about this?

The crowd chants
Trump disavows the chant
Now Trump disavows his own criticism of the chant

"Those are incredible people. They are incredible patriots. But I'm unhappy when a congresswoman goes and says, 'I'm going to be the president's nightmare.'"

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... spartanntp

Incredible patriots? Did he mean to say incredible parrots?

Here's my chant.

Vote him out. Vote him out. Vote him out.

[_canpakes]

Honor, from two of your posts :

We have an entrenching, wealth-accumulating elite with diminished ties to any particular national identify that for all intents and purposes should be recognized by most in the US as working against the average American's ability be equitably compensated for their intelligence and work, and participate in the benefits of growing economic wealth.

... and ...

It's ironic that (Trump) has clothed himself in the colors and symbols of US patriotism and people believe it, all while his behavior is loyal to his money and those who enable him to protect or increase it.

Absolutely correct.

[_canpakes]

What the hell did someone already post about this?

The crowd chants
Trump disavows the chant
Now Trump disavows his own criticism of the chant.

So the President has a ‘tactic’. Maybe it’s time to turn the same tactic back against him, by driving home the picture of a xenophobic Trump and his angry band of racist, chanting parrots as the face of the Republican Party of 2020.

Is that what America wants to have representing itself before the world - and our children - for 4 more years?

[_Jersey Girl]

What the hell did someone already post about this?

The crowd chants
Trump disavows the chant
Now Trump disavows his own criticism of the chant.

So the President has a ‘tactic’. Maybe it’s time to turn the same tactic back against him, by driving home the picture of a xenophobic Trump and his angry band of racist, chanting parrots as the face of the Republican Party of 2020.

Is that what America wants to have representing itself before the world - and our children - for 4 more years?

God I hope not.

[_Res Ipsa]

Your claim of some kind of universal consensus on the 2016 election is nonsense. As opposed to reactions right after the election, folks did some actual analysis with the numbers. https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politi ... 75484.html The study described at the link attributes 2/3 of Clinton’s loss to Obama to Trump switchers. The New York Times did an analysis and reached a similar result. So, turnout decides elections except when it doesn’t.

That's a fair point. In looking at the data, it seems that demographics breakdown along racial lines. Around 9 million former Obama voters, primarily white and working class, voted for Trump while around 7 million black Obama voters stayed home and didn't vote for anyone. Any mix from both groups in the few critical states who had voted for Hillary where 10,000 votes decided the election would have swung the victory to Hillary. So, if I acknowledge that key voting blocks swung for Trump that affected the outcome is it fair to acknowledge that voter turnout also swung the election for Trump?

When I think I need to acknowledge something, I acknowledge it. I don’t need to negotiate over it. As I never claimed that turnout doesn’t win elections, I feel no need to acknowledge what you propose. All I wanted to do was rebut certain factual claims you asserted, and I think I’ve done that.

If you want to revise your prior claims in light of new evidence, that’s your call.