Hillary Clinton Showing Her True Colors?

[_Kishkumen]

If it was just about her association with Bill Clinton-style neo-liberalism, it's worth noting that Bill Clinton continues to be quite popular. It's hard to know if that's even a drawback.

Hillary was popular in some sense when she was Secretary of State. Bill is a charming personality and a magnetic speaker. I think this bland and vague idea of liking or not liking is inadequate for understanding the qualifications for the presidency. Much more important than liking is trusting.

[_Kishkumen]

When it comes to xenophobia, I think the evidence is largely in favor of xenophobia being a much better explanation of the shift of voters to Trump than "economic anxiety." In fact, I think "economic anxiety" was used a fig leaf by far too many people to cover for what was raw racial animus.

Yeah, I don't think you are reading my posts with enough care. Underlying racial animus and xenophobia are factors FOR EVERYONE. What I am saying is that circumstances impact how much this underlying animus or xenophobia manifests itself overtly. It is easy to judge people when their xenophobia comes to the surface. A religious mentality, even a post-religious mentality, is to judge the manifestation of xenophobia instead of seeking to understand the conditions under which general xenophobia, a near universal human trait, becomes hardened into racist attitudes and behaviors.

Too often the Democratic Party--probably in line with its Protestant cultural roots--is focused on the "sin" of racism, particularly when it is helpful for casting blame on people who voted the wrong way. One would think that all of these clever, rational, data-driven types would be too sophisticated for that. But data is collected by people, and its interpretation has a lot to do with the questions we ask. So, if you simply ask, "were the people who voted for Trump racist?," you are correctly cataloguing the symptoms of deeper problems. If all you want to do is explain why Trump voters are bad, wrong, and stupid, then congratulations, you found a useful data point.

But I do believe that economics, education, and other factors/stressors deeply impact the choice of solutions that people seek. Certain stressors push people to otherwise horrific solutions. It would be the height of historical blindness not to see the pattern of spiking of anti-Semitism as, in part, a byproduct of other stressors. Similarly in earlier eras with human sacrifice. The Romans buried people alive when they were wigged out. Yes, all of this is evil and unacceptable. But do we stop it by condemning it, or by identifying the circumstances in which it manifests and doing our best to head it off?

On most days I would look to the Democratic Party to embrace and pursue the idea of heading these problems off. In this case, however, Democrats seem more interested in blaming racist people for Clinton's loss. "You bad racist, you, you voted for Trump because you are a bad person."

[_EAllusion]

If it was just about her association with Bill Clinton-style neo-liberalism, it's worth noting that Bill Clinton continues to be quite popular. It's hard to know if that's even a drawback.

Hillary was popular in some sense when she was Secretary of State. Bill is a charming personality and a magnetic speaker. I think this bland and vague idea of liking or not liking is inadequate for understanding the qualifications for the presidency. Much more important than liking is trusting.

You know what drove down her favorables, besides the natural negative partisanship effect of running for president, was the coverage of the personal server scandal, right? It doesn't follow at all that it was specific policy issues you personally do not like her or Bill Clinton for. And even with all of that, it's possible that she blows the doors off Trump if not for Wikileaks + Comey in October. It's really hard to run the counterfactual.

It's not that you can't point to weaknesses in Clinton's candidacy. The fact that she's a woman is another big one. It's that it's harder to balance that against her strengths in comparison to other candidates and assign % of explanation for her loss to those issues rather than factors that exist outside of who she is or her control.

If she wins the nom in 2008, she's almost certainly president for 8 years. I'd even put a little money on her outperforming Obama in those general elections. And 2008 was more straightforwardly a time for economic populism than 2016. Does that mean she's a terrible candidate who shouldn't be run? I think it's that you're being too post hoc about it.

[_EAllusion]

Yeah, I don't think you are reading my posts with enough care. Underlying racial animus and xenophobia are factors FOR EVERYONE.

I don't think that's true at all. There is a range in the population of how much xenophobia and racial animus people harbor and how much that affects their voting decisions. This can be measured, and the measurements strongly point to there being a shift away from Democrats to Republicans in 2016 that correlates strongly with racial animus. In other words, the more likely you are to have racist opinions and vote Obama in 2012, the more likely you were to switch to Trump in 2016. I assume you've seen the data on this.

Clinton is just correct that Trump's ability to appeal to xenophobia was somewhat successful. And if you argue that economic anxiety preceded and inflamed the xenophobia, I think you have the causality reversed. People's xenophobic attitudes caused them to say they agree with Trump-esque postions such as increased protectionism, border walls, etc. Those are the shallow positions. People's views on NAFTA in polls are easily shifted around. The deep ones are the cultural identity politics. If you think white identity politics is completely irreversible and Democrats have no hope but to try and power through that by making the case that Democrats are better despite not overtly appealing to it, I just don't think that's correct. One solid reason to think that is that affinity for white identity politics gets smaller and smaller the younger you go in the electorate, even among white voters. It's not a static thing. Donald Trump is poorly regarded by everyone under the age of 50 and despised by anyone under 30 in part because his appeal to bigotry holds so little sway with them.

And if you're just trying to understand what happened, you have to understand how white identity politics played a role in Trumpish politics' relative success. This is especially true since it is on-going. The GOP playbook for the upcoming elections is already known to be to try and inflame "NFL players kneeling during the athem" and "MS-13 sanctuaries" style cultural war issues for reasons that aren't even a little bit subtle. If you don't know what game they're playing, you can't hope to interact with it.

[_Kishkumen]

You know what drove down her favorables, besides the natural negative partisanship effect of running for president, was the coverage of the personal server scandal, right? It doesn't follow at all that it was specific policy issues you personally do not like her or Bill Clinton for. And even with all of that, it's possible that she blows the doors off Trump if not for Wikileaks + Comey in October. It's really hard to run the counterfactual.

Yes, the coverage of the server scandal played on the distrust of Hillary, which had already been well established long ago. And, yes, that has nothing to do with specific policies. And I wish you would cease attributing personal dislike to me. You're beginning to piss me off. Now, that is a clear expression of dislike of something.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I think the election of Trump really is just the culmination of years of attacks on the integrity of government by the Right. The Conservative vision of shrinking government to a size that will make it "safe" from cronyism is the economic equivalent of bloodletting. The cure is far worse than the disease. Prosperous societies need not less government (or necessarily more government) but effective government. Trump, ironically, is the very worst nightmare scenario the Right has feared about government they've been worrying about for decades. They'll never admit it, though. They can't admit it.

- Doc

[_Kishkumen]

And if you argue that economic anxiety preceded and inflamed the xenophobia, I think you have the causality reversed.

No, you insist on attributing to me such an argument, which I have explicitly disavowed. I believe that xenophobia is part of the human condition. I agree with you that people are more or less predisposed to it. But I think you are misinterpreting the significance of the racists shifting to Trump from Obama. After all, they shifted from Obama. So, certainly in different circumstances people who were more racist could overcome their racism in order to vote Obama. Should we praise people who voted Obama for not being racist (or suppressing their racism) or criticize the same people for being racist when they voted for Trump? Perhaps it is the case that racism is a contributing factor but not the sole factor. If we know it is possible for racists and misogynists to vote for a black man or a woman, what do we learn by focusing on the racism as the cause of their voting habits? Not much. So if a racist could potentially vote for Obama or Trump, then we need to be more concerned with how to get racists to vote for an Obama or a Clinton without pandering to their racism. Clearly it is possible. Clearly Clinton failed. But it is really useless to whine about the racists voting for Trump, or to promote the overly simplistic argument that it is the primary reason Trump won.

And, before you reiterate other accusations regarding my views, I have never advocated pandering to racism. On the other hand, the insufferable virtue-signaling on the Left is extremely off-putting, so much so that I really do believe people get fed up with it and walk away from the Democrats. In recent years it has reached peak levels. It is no longer enough to agree with some liberals or vote "the right way"; increasingly it is becoming the Left's version of putting a Jesus fish on your car or mumbling about "those people." It's to the point where I generally recuse myself from political conversations with certain liberal friends for fear that I would show too much independence of thought, leading them to be convinced I am a secret misogynist or fascist, merely because I refuse to buy into any fashionable position because it is the right way to think. And this is when I agree with them 90% of the time.

[_EAllusion]

. But I think you are misinterpreting the significance of the racists shifting to Trump from Obama. After all, they shifted from Obama. So, certainly in different circumstances people who were more racist could overcome their racism in order to vote Obama.

What made them shift, primarily, is they had a more overtly racist candidate to vote for in comparison to Romney or McCain. Trump's great strength as a candidate is his bull in a chinashop style makes subtext just text. That's about Trump, not Clinton. It's voting for something, not against something else. Things might've been a little better primed for that to happen thanks to 8 years of Obama priming racial animus. That's hard to know, but it isn't at all hard to know that Trump ran more directly on white identity politics than Romney or McCain did. That's been part of the Republican playbook for a while, but Trump was much more open about it than usual. It's not baffling that he got people more attracted to white identity politics in his camp as a result. For example, the reason that Trump scored relatively high on measures of his truthfulness in polling, especially among whites, despite him being the most obvious pathological liar ever is that many people think that Trump's bigoted comments are what what people all know deep down, but are too afraid or cowed to say out loud. So he's a brave truth-teller.

Trump ran a fairly bigoted campaign and got people especially prone to bigotry to vote for him in larger than usual numbers and almost certainly inflamed latent bigotry in others. I don't understand why this is not worthwhile to focus on. Some people argue this isn't true, but they're wrong.

Perhaps it is the case that racism is a contributing factor but not the sole factor.

Of course. I don't think we disagree much on that. Where the disagreement seems to be is in how much we think this mattered and whether it is appropriate or politically expedient to talk about.

[_Kishkumen]

What made them shift, primarily, is they had a more overtly racist candidate to vote for in comparison to Romney or McCain. Trump's great strength as a candidate is his bull in a chinashop style makes subtext just text. That's about Trump, not Clinton. It's voting for something, not against something else. Things might've been a little better primed for that to happen thanks to 8 years of Obama priming racial animus. That's hard to know, but it isn't at all hard to know that Trump ran more directly on white identity politics than Romney or McCain did. That's been part of the Republican playbook for a while, but Trump was much more open about it than usual. It's not baffling that he got people more attracted to white identity politics in his camp as a result.

I don’t see anything here that is all that convincing. You are telling me that people who voted for a black guy (good on them) over two white guys suddenly discovered their inner racist and refused to vote for a white woman because they just ate up that old time racism.

On its face that is completely preposterous.

Of course. I don't think we disagree much on that. Where the disagreement seems to be is in how much we think this mattered and whether it is appropriate or politically expedient to talk about.

I think it matters that there is an upsurge in white nationalism. Where I differ is in the identification of this as the decisive development that secured Trump’s victory. We should be talking about it, but for quite different reasons than revisiting Trump’s victory. God I hate writing that phrase.

[_honorentheos]

There was an interesting article in The Atlantic recently that covered multiple threads going on in this forum. It almost made me wonder if the author was a participant here, actually. He being an editor at the National Review, Reihan Salam hardly fits the profile of any of our resident conservatives. Of course, it real just means there is something in the current zeitgeist that we are all tapping into but that said, it makes for another perspective on the bigger picture question of just what it is that Clinton represents in the post-election Democratic party:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... on/555563/

Over the past 40 or so years, the U.S. has been fragmenting into two parallel societies, which I’ll call Trickle-Down America and Stagnant America. Each one looks upon the other with suspicion and hostility. Trickle-Down America is the America of our biggest metropolitan areas, and it is defined by comparatively high levels of density, diversity, and economic inequality. Importantly, the richest people in Trickle-Down America are typically white, while the service-sector workers who enable them to work longer hours are disproportionately brown and black. Stagnant America can be found in rural regions, small cities and towns, and outer suburbs across the country. This America is largely white and relatively equal, though it too is scarred by poverty, particularly among Hispanics and blacks. America’s most and least educated workers are concentrated in Trickle-Down America, while Stagnant America is home to most of America’s working- and middle-class white voters.

...

One important thing to keep in mind is that Trickle-Down America is, overall, characterized by more stringent land-use limits than Stagnant America. These limits have raised housing costs in affluent coastal regions, which has redounded to the benefit of incumbent homeowners. Yet high housing costs have deterred inward domestic migration while driving out large numbers of working-and middle-class residents.

At the same time, these regions have been a magnet for international migrants, many of whom find themselves living in dangerously crowded conditions. In effect, one could say that Trickle-Down America has been swapping out one working class, consisting of established Americans with voting rights, who’ve come to expect a rising standard of living, with another, increasingly dominated by newcomers. Openness to immigration is Exhibit A in the case for Trickle-Down America’s moral superiority, so it’s worth a careful examination.

The great appeal of newcomers as workers is that they often have somewhat lower expectations when it comes to their living conditions and terms of employment. This is especially true of low-skill immigrants, who greatly increase their incomes by moving to the U.S., even when they find themselves at the bottom of the U.S. household income distribution. Yet the political influence of the newcomer working class is muted as compared to the established working class, as low-income immigrants tend to naturalize at low levels, in part because many are so poor that the cost of naturalization is daunting, and naturalized citizens vote at lower rates than the native-born. Needless to say, unauthorized immigrants have even less influence. The relative powerlessness of Trickle-Down America’s foreign-born workers is a big part of what’s made its cosmopolitan cities so attractive to high-skill professionals. Because low-skill immigrant workers are willing to work for such low wages, they lower the cost to skilled professionals of outsourcing various household tasks, and so they make it easier for these skilled professionals to work longer hours.

...

What might the future hold? Recently, Andrew Romano and Garance Franke-Ruta of Yahoo News offered a vivid portrait of anti-gentrification radicalism. They point to anger and disaffection among “poorer, nonwhite millennials who tend to live in major cities,” and the soaring poverty rate among those with no more than a high school education. “Ultimately,” Romano and Franke-Ruta warn, “the fight over gentrification is what the fight over income inequality in America looks like up close today: a clash between the economic forces transforming our cities and a young, diverse, debt-saddled generation that is losing faith in capitalism itself.”

...

Nevertheless, Clinton’s paean to Trickle-Down America is a sign of the times. Just as the rising industrialists of the 1900s produced the Social Darwinist intellectuals, we now have a new class of thinkers keen to explain why the rich and the good are one and the same, though they’re now more likely—shrewdly—to categorize themselves as a species of progressive. History doesn’t exactly repeat itself, but it rhymes.