Economic anxiety is not why Trump was elected.

[Indy Texas]

Matt Yglesias gives the best succinct explanation of what I've been trying to say for the past two years:

Trump won because he could harness racial resentment, but he was able to harness racial resentment effectively because he explicitly rebuked Republican orthodoxy on trade and the social safety net, taking those issues off the table and making more room for racial/cultural resentment issues.

If he hadn't done that, the campaign would have been Hillary Clinton saying "Donald Trump doesn't care about working Americans and wants to roll Grandma's wheelchair off a cliff" and Donald Trump indignantly denying that was the case, much like the Obama-Romney campaign in 2012.

[Indy Texas]

Not every Trump voter was in a tough economic situation[/u] and even some that are are not opening to vote Democratic in 2020 but his fake brand of populism do explain swings towards him in places like the Iron Range and driftless area. So called left wingers need to stop shaming Trump voters, which only plays into the GOP's hands by keeping this country as culturally divided as it is today.

A thoughtful post.

The economically anxious that were most driven to Trump were those who were/are employed in fossil fuel industries, and in other industries that were specifically targeted by Obama-Era environmental regulations.  The energy boom in PA is one reason PA swung to Trump; energy workers in fracking industries were not at all certain that more Obama environmentalism in the form of HRC would lead to a reduction in THEIR jobs.

I'm certainly not down with all of Trump's environmental policies, and he seems to get his jollies in rolling THOSE policies back, but some of them were, IMO, not defensible.  Holding up the Keystone Pipeline was not defensible; that pipeline was going to be built by someone, so why not us?  Coal was/is a dying industry, but the Obama-Era policies toward coal miners (and, to some degree, toward oil and gas workers) came off as an assault against these workers' way of life.  And the attitude of many liberals was to view these WORKERS as scum, and not just the oil execs and mine owners.  

Would you be "economically anxious" if the Presidential candidate of one of the major parties (for many, the one they had ancestral allegiance to) said, from the stump, that she looked forward to seeing lots of coal miners out of work?  That statement, more than the "Deplorables" comment, was utter poison for Hillary, but it gave hardworking Americans in the fracking industry in PA (as well as the coal miners) just exactly what was in that sewer that passes for her soul.  She cared not one whit for these hardworking folks and loathed them for what they did.  I can imagine every fracking worker listening to her statement on coal miners and wonder what she had in store for me and my coworkers.  And before anyone moralizes about Trump's diseeased soul, my "hypocritical religiosity", and such other drivel, put yourself in the shoes of these coal miners, fracking workers, and oil field workers and imaging what their assessment of Hillary's spiritual condition might be.

That is a blatant lie. You are a liar.

While completely ignoring the fact that she wanted to retrain coal miners instead.

As Bill Maher once said, having to go down into a dark, toxic hole in the ground like your daddy and grandaddy isn't progress across generations. Hillary Clinton and other Democrats wanted to help retrain people so that they don't have to go back into the dark, toxic, hole in the ground. But liars like Fuzzy Bear would rather just make siht up or twist words around than actually acknowledge this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksIXqxpQNt0

I've replayed the tape and I'll partially back down on the "looking forward" part.  She did not explicitly say this, but her enthusiasm for eliminating coal jobs and coal mining is unrestrained.  She was bound and determined to put these folks out of their coal mining jobs.  And, again, what would the folks working in the Fracking industry say?

I'm 61 years old.  Many of the miners in question are 45 and up.  What can they be retrained for?  More importantly, where can they do this work?  Sure, they can come to Florida and be "retrained" for clean manufacturing jobs at $18/hour.  Will they be able to afford a $150,000 home (which is on the low end of the middle class)?  Will they be able to afford $1,200/month rent?  Assuming they could move out of state, sell their homes (assuming they own them and someone would pay "market value" for them), would they be able to support a family somewhere else on TWO (2) "retraining" incomes?  Perhaps in some parts of Florida, yes, but not in the places where industry is rising the fastest.  Is metro-Atlanta or the Research Triangle of NC any cheaper?

And once they do that, how much age discrimination will these folks face in the job market?  How about their pre-existing medical conditions; will they be a real turnoff to these employers?  Of course, they can be retrained for culinary; how many hours a week does a line cook at the Olive Garden or Outback get, and at what rate of pay?

Hillary Clinton told these people that she would offer them a "settled-for" life, with no guarantees of a job after the "retraining", no economic plan for how they'll get through the training period, no assurances that any of these folks could actually complete the training successfully, and no assurances that they would not have to leave communities that they were well-rooted in.  She gave them lip service, and it was as sweet as lip service gets from her, but it was a consolation prize at best, and something not all of them could have.  There's a reason Walmart is the largest employer in WV.

I haven't even begun here to address the issue of just how the "retrainees" would economically survive during the retraining period.  There is evidence, however, as to what their actual prospects are:  http://beltmag.com/appalachia-coding-bootcamps/

The WV coal miners heard what they needed to hear.

The PA fracking workers drew the right conclusion as to what that meant for them.

I would have been more charitable toward Hillary had she not made the "deplorables" comment, but that was the comment that, as far as I'm concerned, revealed her lack of empathy for these folks.  Obama was actually a bit empathic when he commented about "clinging to their guns and their religion"; Hillary wasn't empathic at all.  All she could see was herself being the Green Queen of America, and she had to promise SOMETHING to those who'd be devastated by the "greening".  

Fuzzy, their jobs are going to go away no matter what.

Look at this graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES1021210001

If Obama is to blame for net losses of coal jobs, why isn't Ronald Reagan also to blame? Or Bill Clinton?

Machines put more coal miners out of work over the past century than any "EPA bureaucrats" ever could, and will continue to do so.

The difference is that the Democratic Party believes people who are put out of work through no fault of their own (such as long-term technological changes) should be given help to find other work, and be guaranteed not to lose their health insurance or pensions.

Your party, the Republican Party, believes anyone who loses their job is a loser who didn't work hard enough and deserves nothing. They've offered them nothing except a false promise that as long as the rich coal mine stockholders can get their taxes cut as much as possible and as long as coal companies can dump as many tons of slurry into rivers and streams as they want, maybe they might get a job.

Mitch McConnell all but admitted that Republican policies won't bring miners' jobs back.

[Indy Texas]

This is what the future of coal mining looks like: an open pit somewhere in Wyoming with a bunch of self-driving trucks and excavators being operated remotely by a handful of people.

The kind of mining that is done in West Virginia and Kentucky is economically unsustainable and that way of life is going the way of the dodo, whether the people who live there like it or not.

Hillary Clinton tried to tell them hard truths and give them help preparing for them.

Donald Trump offered them feel-good lies.

They chose the high fructose corn syrup that will kill them over the bitter medicine that could have helped them.

[Indy Texas]

Would some form of UBI work for coal miners who have lost their jobs due to coal industry work? I’m normally staunchly opposed to this but for workers near retirement (where retraining them would be useless), it seems like the most viable solution.

Why would we give this to coal miners when we don't do it for anyone in any other industry?

From an economic perspective, it makes no sense to give coal miners a special carveout for this. From a political perspective, why should we help coal miners when they're just going to keep voting Republican anyway?

[Indy Texas]

This is what the future of coal mining looks like: an open pit somewhere in Wyoming with a bunch of self-driving trucks and excavators being operated remotely by a handful of people.

The kind of mining that is done in West Virginia and Kentucky is economically unsustainable and that way of life is going the way of the dodo, whether the people who live there like it or not.

Hillary Clinton tried to tell them hard truths and give them help preparing for them.

Donald Trump offered them feel-good lies.

They chose the high fructose corn syrup that will kill them over the bitter medicine that could have helped them.

Trump was offering them friendlier policies toward the industry they worked in.  He wasn't lying there.  How wise those policies were/are is another issue, but his policies would be better for THEIR jobs in the short run, and their choice was not rational.

Yes, these folks passed on Hillary's "Tough Love".  Here's a secret:  "Tough Love" is tough on the lover.  How tough were these policies on Hillary?  They were policies that benefitted educational establishments and "green" industries at the expense of coal miners who could not necessarily support themselves through the "training period" and were by no means certain to find a job where they lived.  Of course; they didn't feel the (tough) love!  They didn't see the love in being forced to move from the only place they've ever known for a place where their chances of (A) being employed in their "new career" or (B) just flat-out making ends meet at a below-modest level.   ("People Are Portable" was the unspoken theme of the Clinton campaign in WV in 2016.)

The coal miners are America's throwaway people.  They have every right to be bitter at America welcoming in foreigners at liberal rates while they're being thrown away as useless.  Bill Clinton used to say, "We don't have a person to waste!", but his spouse is bent on showing America otherwise.

You know, they don't have "COAL MINER" branded on their skin. They are human beings who are capable of performing other tasks.

When Blockbuster went out of business, we generally expected the people who used to rewind VHS tapes to go out and find something else to do. We didn't scream about them being THROWAWAY PEOPLE. When people could start buying plane tickets online, travel agents found other things to do.

I don't understand why you think coal miners in particular have some God-ordained right to never have to do any other job besides mine coal and should have the jobs "come to them" when the rest of us don't have that privilege.

[Indy Texas]

I don't think it was entirely racial resentment, but also regional and intellectual resentment, that Trump effectively utilized. There was undoubtedly a 1920s-esque cultural dislocation feeling among "Middle Americans" that had never disappeared since the '20s but was in full force in 2016; fear of "coastal elites" and the "fake news media" was a driving force behind Trump's election, as was distrust in American universities and higher education. A recent poll of Republicans actually suggested that a majority of the GOP believes that going to college is a net negative for the country. This, plus the racial elements you mentioned, results in a very... "anxious" white rural working class. Trump stoked a feeling of discontent with popular culture and government and turned it into a cult following for himself, one that did not care for precision when it came to facts.

I'm not going to say that no poorer Trump voter was motivated by economic interest, even though I think such individuals were terribly misguided. To be fair, even though I think most of us could see through it, Trump promised lots of respectable positions regarding the social safety net, although it's clear he had absolutely no intention of sticking to those promises. The bigger reason I think some less financially well-off voters gravitated to the Trump, though, was simply discontent with the economy under a two-term Democratic administration, despite the economy being very strong for most of the country; there will forever be some Americans who don't feel the benefits of a strong economy and thus will seek whatever turnover is necessary to achieve those benefits for themselves.

But let's not forget that a majority of poor people in this country are not rural West Virginians, but rather the urban poor. Clinton handily won a majority of people in the lowest income bracket in 2016, and I'm getting a little tired of seeing pundits using the term "working class" to solely refer to the white rural poor, and of seeing pundits consider Trump as the supposed voice for all struggling poor people in this country.

Indeed. What's ironic is that the only way you could really give those people what they want - a guarantee that their "way of life" will be kept alive forever and they will always be at the head of the table in terms of their place in the national culture - is through a program of authoritarian communism.

(1) Nationalize the coal industry (and other "old school" industries like steel) so that it can be kept operating at full capacity even if it isn't profitable. Treat it as a jobs program - substitute labor for capital wherever possible so you are employing the maximum number of miners possible. Stack management and supervisory roles with political loyalists.

(2) Cut off foreign trade in the name of "self reliance" and have the government open and operate factories if it's not profitable for private firms to do so. As above, the goal isn't efficiency, innovation or producing good products; it's just to employ as many people as possible.

(3) Control the organs of mass culture and present the idealized "real Americans" as white European-American Christians. Encourage other groups to assimilate into this identity, not unlike the Russification that was encouraged in the Soviet Union. "Subversive" art that does not fit this standard will be ruthlessly suppressed.

(4) Use economic central planning to evenly allocate industries among cities and regions, without regard to logistics or efficiency. The goal is simply to ensure that no one ever has to move away from the city/town they were born in to find employment.

[Indy Texas]

Excellent counter-argument, I am convinced.

Not saying "economic anxiety" is a real thing. In fact, the only people who seem to put forward that theory, albeit in sarcastic terms, are idiots on this website and on Twitter.

I simply disagree, coming from the knowledge of someone who once supported Trump, that "white identity politics" or some other crap is why Trump won. In fact, this makes me close to throwing up every time because of its disgusting implications, blatant lies, and easiness in fooling those who refuse critical analysis.

But there's not point in arguing that here. Let the echo chamber be an echo chamber I guess

Right, which is why I said:

Arguing that white grievance and class politics was an animating, if not the animating, factor of Trump's campaign isn't an argument that all 62,984,828 people who voted for Trump are robe-wearing Klansmen. It's an argument that Trump resonated in a unique way with Republican voters (at least among people running for President and the "party elites") because he was so open to vocalizing resentment towards immigrants, minorities, other countries, progressive women, etc. in a way that the party hadn't been openly doing before. That doesn't mean that people didn't vote for Trump for other reasons as well, but to anyone who has paid any attention in the last four years it should be obvious that open grievance politics is Trump's game.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the Never Trump contingency of the Republican party can't swallow this argument because they think it's tantamount to personally accusing them of being racist. It's not -- I'm sure you guys have your own reasons for being Republican. But you come across as incredibly out of touch with the rest of your party when you try to fight the idea that most of your party's energy these days is being drawn from resentment.

Maybe it's something along the lines of us NeverTrumpers resenting hearing our family members, our friends, our teachers, our teammates, and more being called racist. I hate hearing that my family members are supposedly hateful people because they support Trump when these are not the values we were raised with; this is common for a strong majority of pro-Trump Americans. Do I agree with their support of him? No. But I'm not going to resort to inflammatory, blatantly false rhetoric because I disagree with them.

Anyway, that's my two cents, and that's all I'd like to say on the topic. There's a reason I don't respond to false claims of racism and discrimination often, but there's only so much I can take reading this garbage before I throw up.

But by voting for Trump, they were tacitly saying that overt racism does not bother them. Is that really so much better?

[Indy Texas]

Stop.

It's true though.

Literally every interaction I've had with Trump supporters is the same. It's anecdotal, sure, but I've dealt with many, my family is made up of many, and they all seem to be a carbon copy of one another.

They hate immigrants, full stop. They try to play coy by saying they love legal immigrants, but that facade falls apart when they try to interact with someone who can't speak English. I've seen it happen over and over.

People who immigrate to the United States should speak English. Why is this considered offensive?

Because you are forcefully tearing a culture away from people, which is no different than genocide. America is an enormous country, and we have plenty of room for people to self segregate into a group based on shared values including language. This is - or should be - the beauty of America. We need to prevent contamination of the pieces that make the whole and that includes many languages.

I (as a child of immigrants myself) do think it is valuable for immigrants to learn the language of the country, though. Not because it appeases bigoted nativists but because it does genuinely make their lives easier, especially if they don’t live in a place with a large and active expat community from their homeland.

Immigration should not be a burden on taxpayers in the say that, say, the safety net is.  It's one thing to have social welfare benefits for American citizens; it's quite another to have these benefits for non-citizens, and especially for folks who are not legally in America.  And while many of the memes on Facebook and such that talk about "Illegal Aliens getting welfare" are false, they DO impact our safety net when they go to a public hospital ER or a public psychiatric unit.  Their children DO go to school here, and that adds to the education budget.  

The issue with English is simple.  Americans should not be forced to learn Spanish simply because a large percentage of its new immigrants are Spanish-speakers that don't wish to learn English.  This is a different issue than in Ellis Island years because the Ellis Island immigrants came from diverse places across the sea, while current Hispanic immigrants from Mexico come from next door.  The idea of forsaking their homeland and becoming American doesn't apply in the way it does for someone from Europe or Asia.  

Many folks are resentful of having a greater need to learn a foreign language.  They are resentful about having to provide bi-lingual services at their businesses, and they resent (in some areas) how NOT being bi-lingual puts them at a disadvantage for some jobs.  This wasn't the case prior to 1965, when immigration was based on quotas designed to ensure that the ethnic makeup of America didn't radically change.

These changes have been great for industry; they now have a base of low-wage non-unionized workers for their businesses (in the case of much of the Hispanic immigrants).  They have been good for the immigrants, who do enjoy a higher standard of living in America than they did in their country of origin.  But has it been good for American citizens that we have had large influxes of immigrants from other places who are, culturally, quite different, and whose legitimate needs have placed a burden on American taxpayers?

The American citizens who ask these sorts of questions never really get a straight answer.  They get lectures about how in diversity there is strength, without really showing how that principle applies to their situation (let alone demonstrating how it is actually true).  And, yes, they get the xenophobic reactions to evaluate, but they also get to be called xenophobes just for asking the question of "How is this good for the folks who have been citizens of this country for their whole lives?"  When they see "diversity" in other parts of the world, they see it not as part of the richness of those nations, but as a problem that needs to be overcome or managed.  Greeks and Turks on Cyprus.  Flemish and Walloons in Belgium.  The problems of unassimilated Muslims in much of old Europe.  Hindus and Muslims in India.  The world has not become the Melting Pot America tries to be.

If folks want to know the cause of much of the "anger" surrounding this issue, it is simple; folks are angry because they have to bear the costs of these non-citizens to some degree, they don't get an honest answer as to why this is either right or good for them from their government, they get lectures on diversity that range from political correctness to indoctrination, and they experience their intelligence being insulted on a number of levels.  And the ILLEGAL immigrants make that worse.  When their kids mess up, they go to jail.  When their tag light is out, they get a costly ticket from Officer Friendly, often after being pulled over with a request to search their car.  When folks crash the border, however, they seem to get to stay endlessly, without consequence.  The illegal addition to their home will come down faster than an illegal alien will be deported, even if the illegal addition to one's home is safe and functional.  

Perhaps someone here will be able to explain why immigration in the manner that we have now is good for me and for my family (as well as for my country) without mentioning how good it is for the immigrants.  

You forget that illegal immigrants are taxpayers themselves. They pay sales taxes. They pay property taxes. They have payroll and income taxes deducted from their paychecks using fake SSNs. (And unlike Americans of their income level, they will likely not get all or more of that money back because they likely do not file returns for fear of being found out.)

Explain how immigration is hurting you and your family. What is there that you want to do that you can't do because of immigrants? You want to go work in a slaughterhouse in rural Iowa for $8 an hour? Go up there and have a blast! You probably won't last as long at it as your immigrant coworkers, in no small part because you know you have better things to do and have been given tremendous opportunities in life to do them.