Obama: maybe I was "10 or 20 years too early"

[mvd10]

I don't really think globalism is what drove Trump voters. The myth of the poor rural Trump-voting coal miner who lives in a village in West Virgnia where everybody is unemployed and on opioids needs to die. 70% of Trump voters made more than $50k and about 90% of Trump voters voted for Romney, who (except for some anti-China remarks) was extremely pro-trade. A lot of Trump voters who went anti-trade probably were pro-trade in 2015 since Republicans used to be more pro-trade than Democrats a couple of years ago. Immigration and the fear of losing 'their country' (changing cultural values) is what really drove them, and of course there are a lot of people who are just too partisan to vote Democrat. It's quite funny to see how left-wing journalists go to poor places in WV to see what drives Trump voters while they don't bother to stay in their own leafy and wealthy suburb to ask their Republican neighbour (who probably voted for Trump) why on earth someone with a college or postgraduate degree (42% Trump) and an income above $200k (48% Trump) voted for the demagogue when the alternative wasn't far-left by any means. Honestly, that looks like a more interesting question to me. Trump brought in some new voters who didn't vote for Romney, but the main reason he won is that he somehow managed to get 90% of the (mainly wealthy) Republicans who bitterly opposed him during the primaries to vote for him, even though he's a complete demagogue who wasn't even trustworthy on economic and/or social issues (though I guess he hasn't disappointed them).

Oh, and lol @ Obama the cosmopolitan globalist. He made the same sh**tty populist proposals on NAFTA in 2008 and he dragged his feet way too long with TPP (TTIP failing was Europe's mistake though). Major Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs donated 75% of their presidential campaign donations to Obama in 2008 (and 25% to McCain) but in 2012 85% of their donations went to Romney (and only 15% to Obama). I think that says something.

[mvd10]

I guess I retract parts of my previous post with this post .

Look at Obama's coalition in 2008. Obama did better in wealthy suburbs without big demographical changes than Hillary and unlike Hillary Obama actually won or tied wealthy voters. While Obama won a lot of voters who didn't vote for Hillary, Obama's core support reflected Hillary's support in 2016. For a Democrat Obama had unprecedented support among postgraduates and wealthy voters and he won places that hadn't voted Democratic since 1964. He wasn't going to govern as a left-wing populist, a lot of his voters didn't even want him to do that. Obama 2008 might have been the gateway drug for the upscale Republicans who didn't vote for Trump. I strongly suspect many Romney-Clinton voters voted for Obama in 2008 (and outside of Appalachia where coal played a huge issue many Obama-Trump voters probably voted for Bush). Bush vs Gore in 2000 and Obama vs McCain in 2008 really were the first precursors to what happened in 2016 (wealthier people trending massively D and 'the creative class' being the core Democratic constituency), 2004 and 2012 look like (temporary?) reversions to the mean (with the exception of coal county I suppose) once you ignore demographic changes.

Obama still managed to disappoint Wall Street enough to make sure 85% of Wall Street donations went to Romney btw, so it's not like he governed like a total DLC Democrat.