For any tiresome liberal who still says "we need to understand the Trump voters"

[136or142]

https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte/status/873223539737997312

Basically, people who make the “reach out” argument imagine conservatives as mental children and liberals as the only real adults.  We don’t ask children to understand adults, because they are immature. We ask adults to understand children, however.  That’s what I hear when I hear endless pressure on liberals, but not conservatives, to “reach out”. That conservatives are children.  And while I think of Trump voters as selfish, racist, and small-minded, at least I do them the favor of treating them like f-ing adults.

And the article
 Lack of Empathy Is Not the Problem
Progressives want education, health care, and housing for everyone. And we’re the close-minded ones?
By Katha Pollitt
https://www.thenation.com/article/liberal-elites-are-not-the-problem/

Excerpt from the article:
 But here’s my question: Who is telling the Tea Partiers and Trump voters to empathize with the rest of us? Why is it all one way? Hochschild’s subjects have plenty of demeaning preconceptions about liberals and blue-staters—that distant land of hippies, feminazis, and freeloaders of all kinds.

Nor do they seem to have much interest in climbing the empathy wall, given that they voted for a racist misogynist who wants to throw 11 million people out of the country and ban people from our shores on the basis of religion (as he keeps admitting on Twitter, even as his administration argues in court that Islam has nothing to do with it). Furthermore, they are the ones who won, despite having almost 3 million fewer votes. Thanks to the founding fathers, red-staters have outsize power in both the Senate and the Electoral College, and with great power comes great responsibility.

So shouldn’t they be trying to figure out the strange polyglot population they now dominate from their strongholds in the South and Midwest? What about their stereotypes? How respectful or empathetic is the belief of millions of Trump voters, as established in polls and surveys, that women are more privileged than men, that increasing racial diversity in America is bad for the country, that the travel ban is necessary for national security? How realistic is the conviction, widespread among Trump supporters, that Hillary Clinton is a murderer, President Obama is a Kenyan communist and secret Muslim, and the plain-red cups that Starbucks uses at Christmastime are an insult to Christians?

One of Hochschild’s subjects complains that “liberal commentators” refer to people like him as a “redneck.” I’ve listened to liberal commentators for decades and have never heard one use this word. But say it happened once or twice. “Feminazi” went straight from Rush Limbaugh’s mouth to general parlance. One of Hochschild’s most charming subjects, a gospel singer and preacher’s wife, uses it like a normal word. Equating women who want their rights with the genocidal murder of millions? How is that not a vile insult?

[136or142]

Common sense dictates that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. Whether or not you agree we deserve such respect, it would certainly be more persuasive than labeling all of us as deplorable bigoted rubes. But, please feel free to keep on making the same mistakes that cost liberals their traditional base to begin with.

Right, but you have no problem with conservatives voting for a sexist, bigot who routinely insulted and villified women and minorities because he didn't refer to anybody as 'deplorable'?

The thing is, I'm not trying to win your vote.

[136or142]

I stopped reading at "https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte".

Yet you still felt the need to reply.  Thanks for your worthless contribution.

[136or142]

I stopped reading at "https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte".

Yet you still felt the need to reply.  Thanks for your worthless contribution.

what kind of response are you looking for?  surrender to your mighty wisdom?

Mostly comments from liberals agreeing or disagreeing about the need to 'understand Trump voters.'

That was the reference to 'still' in my topic. If you recall right after the election there were all sorts of commentators who went to heavy Trump voting counties who thought some brilliant insights might be gained from speaking to these people.

I also thought the point of the author, that conservatives may or may not need a better understanding of liberals hasn't been fully explored.

Finally, I agree with the tweets from Amanda Marcotte.  One of the most popular of the self flagelating liberals on twitter is a jerk named Chris Arnade.  (70,500 followers) and she is absolutely correct about him.  He is a former bond trader who knows travels rural Trump counties and speaks to the people there and makes his living selling photographs of them (and the towns.)  His comments go from 'liberal need to understand the dislike these people have in being condescended to by coastal elites' to, when asked why they shouldn't lose their health care coverage under Obamacare since they voted Republican or essentially 'they know not what they do.'

So, that was why I liked Amanda Marcotte's comment that at least she treats them like adults.

I would have thought it was pretty clear those were the sorts of responses I was looking for.

[136or142]

Common sense dictates that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. Whether or not you agree we deserve such respect, it would certainly be more persuasive than labeling all of us as deplorable bigoted rubes. But, please feel free to keep on making the same mistakes that cost liberals their traditional base to begin with.

Right, but you have no problem with conservatives voting for a sexist, bigot who routinely insulted and villified women and minorities because he didn't refer to anybody as 'deplorable'?

The thing is, I'm not trying to win your vote.

You are going to have to win some fraction of Trump voters' votes if you want an electoral victory.

I would certainly give the same advice to conservatives if counseling them on how to persuade members of the other side, but given that they won most recently, they seem less in need of such advice.

Not necessarily.  Winning back the votes of the holier than thou left wingers who voted for Dr Jill Stein and then getting out the people who voted for President Obama but didn't vote in 2016 would likely produce a comfortable victory.  Then there are also the voters who will be 18 in the next election, and the indications are that most young people are horrified that Donald Trump is President. Finally, thousands of Trump voters are literally killing themselves every year.

Then, when I wrote "I'm not trying to win your vote,"  I meant that literally.  I'm not a Democratic Party strategist or organizer.  It's not my job to try to reason with the idiot Trump voters.

[136or142]

Yeah, it is annoying how some liberals treat Trump voters as if they are morons who don't understand what they voted for. They aren't clueless rubes, who need to be shown the light. A lot of them know exactly what they voted for.

I don't necessarily agree with that.  I think a lot of them are morons.  They're just morons who are also adults.

That the base Trump voter also voted for their Republican Congressional Representative, many of whom have completely different ideas, at least on the economy, than the economic 'vision' that Trump spoke about in his stump speech most of the time, shows to me these people genuinely don't have a clue.

The point is though is that jerks like Chris Arnade can't have it both ways. Either these people are responsible adults who don't deserve to be condescended to by 'coastal elites' and they deserve to get what they voted for, like losing their health care coverage, or they're irresponsible morons who should, in fact, be treated with, if not condescension, then certainly with paternalism.

[136or142]

"I don't empathize with Trump voters, therefore this is my opinion of them, which is evidence of why we shouldn't empathize with Trump voters"

So, please tell me why I should emphasize with Trump voters.

[136or142]

Lol this entire thread is just made to insult Trump voters.

See, the thing is Democrats will never understand Trump voters.  Every issue a Trump voter gives as justification is just turned into "YOU'RE RACIST" or "YOU'RE SEXIST" or "YOU'RE SELFISH" when the exact opposite is true.  Democrats have become so out-of-touch so many Americans that there is no way they could possibly understand reasons behind voting.  It was never about "minority growth threatening the white majority" or "suppressing women" or whatever.  It's about economic growth, strengthening our border (no, not the wall; many Trump voters don't believe there will be a wall), and a variety of other issues.

If you genuinely believe that Trump had a program for economic growth, you're the exact sort of moron I'm referring to.  Trump had idiotic promises that somehow getting out of free trade agreements would bring back millions of manufacturing jobs.  It was a complete bill of goods.

[136or142]

"I don't empathize with Trump voters, therefore this is my opinion of them, which is evidence of why we shouldn't empathize with Trump voters"

So, please tell me why I should emphasize with Trump voters.

Because, at the end of the day, we are all Americans.

1.I'm actually not American.

2.I see no evidence that you or any other Trump voter ever tries to emphasize with non Trump voters.

[136or142]

Your disgusting attitude is somehow even worse than the condecenscion from liberals and why I may never vote for a Democrat at the presidential level again. It's an attitude I refuse to put up with. Congratulations....

1. don't know what attitude you're referring to.

2.If you base your vote for President on the comments of a handful of people on discussion boards, you're more worthless than anybody else here could be.

3.Aren't you a rather pathetic snow flake.  Maybe you should hide in your safe space rather than going to message boards.

[136or142]

Lol this entire thread is just made to insult Trump voters.

See, the thing is Democrats will never understand Trump voters.  Every issue a Trump voter gives as justification is just turned into "YOU'RE RACIST" or "YOU'RE SEXIST" or "YOU'RE SELFISH" when the exact opposite is true.  Democrats have become so out-of-touch so many Americans that there is no way they could possibly understand reasons behind voting.  It was never about "minority growth threatening the white majority" or "suppressing women" or whatever.  It's about economic growth, strengthening our border (no, not the wall; many Trump voters don't believe there will be a wall), and a variety of other issues.

If you genuinely believe that Trump had a program for economic growth, you're the exact sort of moron I'm referring to.  Trump had idiotic promises that somehow getting out of free trade agreements would bring back millions of manufacturing jobs.  It was a complete bill of goods.

Lower individual taxes, lower corporate taxes, getting our of only UNFAIR free trade agreements (TPP), renegotiating unfair trade agreements (NAFTA), lower federal spending, etc.  You could maybe even shove in the infrastructure plan as a way to give some more Americans jobs (obviously that wouldn't solve unemployment).  There was a plan and there still is a plan.  There's a reason people refer to fiscal conservatism as fiscal responsibility, which opposes the "tax all, spend all" mentality

1.Donald Trump on the campaign trail generally promised to increase spending on many things, including infrastructure.  So, the 'lower federal spending' was not one of Trump's promises.  Though it wouldn't surprise me if after listing all the things he'd increase spending on, that he then said "and we're going to reduce the amount that the government spends.'

What specifically makes NAFTA (or TPP) 'unfair.'?  Please cite the specific chapter.

2.Taxing and spending is what governments do.  Modern Republican policy is not fiscal conservatism but rather cut taxes and pay for it by increasing the deficit.  Obviously there are some Republicans who genuinely cut spending to match the tax cuts, but we got a sense of how well that worked in Louisiana and Kansas.