Democrats represent the rich working class GOP

[_subgenius]

Did you have any actual reason to think that the wealth of the Pelosi family was in any way illegitimate?

subs thinks that Trump forcing world leaders and their entourages to stay at a hotel owned by his business is completely legit, so how on earth would he ever be able to identify illegitimate activities? : D

Please provide proof of this "force".

[_subgenius]

Did you have any actual reason to think that the wealth of the Pelosi family was in any way illegitimate?

Being rich is in itself not a moral fault. But there are ways of getting rich that are.

None of this was an implied or literal point on my post or the OP...but you go girl!

[Guest]

Did you have any actual reason to think that the wealth of the Pelosi family was in any way illegitimate?

Being rich is in itself not a moral fault. But there are ways of getting rich that are.

None of this was an implied or literal point on my post or the OP...but you go girl!

You sarcastically noted, "Pelosi clearly earned all that cash from her years and years in the lucrative public service of government work." The implication being she didn't.

You then replied to the fact that her husband is a wealthy investor with, "oh, its just a coincidence, whew! thanks for clearing that up." The implication being her husband's wealth is tied to her public service (for example, he being paid for his access to his wife's time and power)

Now, one could explain your post above as really only applying to the last sentence in Chap's post. You certainly don't believe being rich is a moral fault, and haven't implied you believe that. But that would mean you were incompetent in posting by failing to isolate out the part of Chap's post to which you were directly replying. So, setting incompetence aside, are you asserting you have not and did not intend to imply the Pelosi family's wealth was gained in a way you view as illegitimate? And if so, is that to imply you don't view using access to government power as an illegitimate means of profiting off of public service? So, it's fair game for anyone who is elected to public office to find ways to profit from it? I mean, given you've clearly implied they gained their wealth through her service as an elected public official you must mean you've never implied doing so is an illegitimate means of getting wealthy.

[_EAllusion]

I especially liked the logic that went: Urban areas are showing the most economic success, urban areas are mostly Democratic, ergo Democrats are the party of the wealthy.

I didn’t think it was possible to hit a person in the head with a frying pan enough to make them that dumb.

[_honorentheos]

It's one way to skew the data to do as suggested. But the WSJ also looked at income, job type by voter affiliation, and that urban areas do represent greater economic generation than rural areas ergo Democrat-leaning districts are generally wealthier than rural, mostly red districts. Does that gloss over the fact there is significant poverty present in those urban areas, and many of those voters also vote Democrat giving the Democrat the broad and dominant voter base they enjoy in said districts? Sure. But the general gist of the OP deserves a more serious discussion that it has been given. There is a sifting of voters geographically that aligns with culture and economic opportunity. And some of the people being kept off the economic mobility bus are urban Democrat voters, too. Ajax may be off in his concerns about this, but that doesn't mean Democratic and progressive-minded voters shouldn't stop and consider what is going on.

[_EAllusion]

It's one way to skew the data to do as suggested. But the WSJ also looked at income, job type by voter affiliation, and that urban areas do represent greater economic generation than rural areas ergo Democrat-leaning districts are generally wealthier than rural, mostly red districts. Does that gloss over the fact there is significant poverty present in those urban areas, and many of those voters also vote Democrat giving the Democrat the broad and dominant voter base they enjoy in said districts? Sure. But the general gist of the OP deserves a more serious discussion that it has been given. There is a sifting of voters geographically that aligns with culture and economic opportunity. And some of the people being kept off the economic mobility bus are urban Democrat voters, too. Ajax may be off in his concerns about this, but that doesn't mean Democratic and progressive-minded voters shouldn't stop and consider what is going on.

The OP is openly misleading by using bad inferences lieu of readily available, direct data on the subject. It doesn’t begin to follow that because San Francisco is rich and Democratic that the rich themselves are Democratic.

It is the case that the upper middle class is becoming more Democratic while the working class is less so. This is reflected in changing regional voting behavior around the suburbs and is a principal driver of it. That said, the latter still has a sizable Democrat lean. White people are not the only members of the working class and racial minorities in the working class are ludicrously Democratic in their voting behavior. This is enough to keep that demographic Democratic. Meanwhile, the actual wealthy -a tiny, tiny fraction of society - remain overwhelmingly Republican. Republican policy aims, especially unpopular economic ones, significantly benefit the wealthy. The wealthy in turn support the party both in terms of votes and donations. That’s why it is necessary to have whole Congressional districts act as a nonsensical proxy for who “the wealthy” are.

[_honorentheos]

There's no argument that part of the analysis and argument in the OP is based on voter districts that, were that the only focus, would be deceptive. The WSJ article behind the Breitbart article takes on multiple facets of the shift. Again, there are interesting and important shifts taking place that go beyond the simple urban/rural divide even if the deeper entrenchment of that divide is a worthy subject in and of itself.

I'm sure it's not news to most posters on this board that the demographics of US elections v. geography of states represented in the electoral college means Democrats will almost inevitably win the popular vote while the Presidency will be in play because of what we're discussing here. Like the graphic shows, other than a few counties in Arizona, Utah, Texas, the South and California there aren't many counties in the US with larger populations who reliably vote Republican. It's the big swath of little red dots through the middle that is the difference maker.


Population


Combined with Voting Behavior

[_Brackite]

Trump, who decisively won the election, took home electoral college votes from the heartland of the U.S., winning states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia, the very communities that had been devastated by the Washington, DC, free trade apparatus of the last three decades.

I wouldn't compare West Virginia with Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. West Virginia has been won by every GOP Nominee going back to 2000. Trump won WV in 2016 by as much as 42 percentage points. Link

Trump's win of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin we're all by less than one percentage point. Bush 43 got more votes from Michigan and Wisconsin than Trump back in 2004. During the 2018 midterms, Democrats won all of the Senate and Governor races from PA, MI and WI. Senator Casey of PA won his re-election bid by as much as 13.1%. Link

[_EAllusion]

There's no argument that part of the analysis and argument in the OP is based on voter districts that, were that the only focus, would be deceptive. The WSJ article behind the Breitbart article takes on multiple facets of the shift.

There isn't a shift of "the wealthy" to Democrats. What there is a shift among is professional, educated classes to Democrats that are offset by working class voters shifting towards Republicans. The shift among the working class is almost entirely located in whites, and even more specifically, older whites.

This is an interesting story to follow and learn about, but it's not the story that Brietbart wants to tell you. Briebart instead wants to reinforce the popular argument in the alt-right that Republicans are "the worker's party" now whereas Democrats are the party of rich elitists. It's right there in the the title Ajax adopts for the thread title. In doing so, it provides data that is misleading in support of that thesis. For that argument, it's notable that working class people actually support Democrats by a substantial margin. Maybe in the world of Brietbart minorities don't count, but they do when understanding voting behavior of Americans. It's even more notable that the rich, in fact, support Republicans in overwhelmingly high numbers. They only have a few votes, so it doesn't matter a lot for elections in those terms, but the wealthy also overwhelmingly prefer to direct their donations towards the Republican party and allied groups. That does matter for elections.

Yes, dentists are increasingly likely to vote Democrat. Yes, the most economically successful areas of the country are liberal and increasingly so. That doesn't tell you what the owners of the bulk of capital in the US prefer. Those people in the really big houses in those wealthy cities? On average, they still like the Republican party by a lot.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

The irony of this OP is that a damned optometrist working in a comfy office, doing comfy work while admitting he’s ripping off tax payers by charging exorbitant fees, taking socialized monies, parasitically leeching off the collective backs of the American tax payer, has the audacity to bitch about Pelosi. Perhaps, if he gets his way, we can get back on the gold standard and he can negotiate with each patient a fair and agreed upon price of two silver pieces smithed by a local bank free from the constraints of the federal reserve.

- Doc