Trump: Not a "Conservative" but an "Anti-Progressive"

[Beet]

I really doubt 20% of Black boys would have voted for Trump? Gen Z will be a bigger scapegoat than millennials

I remember canvassing in late August and a whole class of black kids walked by me, and a group of the boys started talking the election when they saw my voter registration pad. One of them shouted, into the air as if to no one in particular, "Who should be president?" For a moment, there was silence, a pregnant pause that hung in the air like a coin that has been tossed but not yet landed. Then another boy yelled "Trump." A simple word that pierced the brief silence. These were all black boys. The strange thing is, I understood it. The kid yelled Trump not because he had any investment in the Republican party, but because Trump was a wave maker, a showman, a meme. And the meme always comes to mind first. Kids are like that... their minds are free and open, untainted by past associations or loyalties or knowledge about what they should believe given which side they are on and how they should interpret things. They grasp at the first thing available, and Trump as a cultural phenomenon was available. Hence, "Trump." Whereas Clinton was never a cultural phenomenon except as a villain; as a harbinger of the establishment. To choose Clinton a teen needs to go through the mental steps... I am a Democrat, and the Democrats nominated Clinton, therefore I should stay with my side and pick Clinton. The Democrats would have done far better among the young with Bernie Sanders, just as Melenchon did best among the youth in France.

[Beet]

In minority cultures there is a lot of toxic masculinity that does not get called out. Minority females are dealing with both racism and sexism, and they often prefer to focus on the racism, so sexism from minority males tends to go less challenged. Secondly, minority females are aware that minority males are also struggling with racism, so they will let more stuff slide than they otherwise would. Third, minority females know that whites tend to be more punitive about sexism when the perpetrator is a minority male, so they are more hesitant to expose the minority male to those charges. As I suspected, Trump's gain among Hispanics was almost entirely driven by the men. Among Hispanic women he did as bad as Mitt Romney.

[Beet]

Look, at the moment neither party respects everyone, although the Democrats are closer. The Republican party has those flaws which HagridOfTheDeep pointed out, and he is right on that. The Democratic party--or in any case, the coastal elements of it-- disrespects the white working class, especially coal miners, as Fuzzy pointed out. The common fault of both is that they base politics on identity, rather than values. In reality, both are the same. And when anyone challenges that, or calls for a higher politics, they are immediately shot down with cynicism. The result is a race to the bottom in social and political mores.

[Beet]

In retrospect, the 2014 midterms were a canary in the coalmine for the problems with the Democratic party. The Democratic candidate for Senate in Iowa, was caught insulting Iowa farmers in the most demeaning terms, while Democratic party officials in Kansas -- a Republican friendly state in any year -- were caught trashing towns within their own state with contempt. A far cry from the days of Howard Dean and the 50-state strategy.

In 2016, Hillary's "deplorables" comment was, in my personal experience, the most popular out of all the things she said among the Democratic base. The day after her comment, a friend of mine who had passionately supported Bernie Sanders, and spent most of August bashing the Clinton Foundation for being a corrupt racketeering operation, and HATED Hillary Clinton, e-mailed me to say that Hillary was right about the deplorables. Several times I heard, "You know, Hillary was right about the deplorables." Once, a local Democratic office in Pennsylvania where I was volunteering brought in some speakers and one said, to effect, that Trump supporters really were deplorable, and that got one of the biggest cheers in the whole office. Even now, whenever Trump does something horrible, left- leaning commentators online are quick to call others who defend him "deplorable." (now in this last case I believe it is a bit different, as these are online trolls/bots/or keyboard warriors)

The Democrats need to do better. Unfortunately, a lot of Democrats took from Trump's win a rebuke of Michelle Obama's "When they go low, we go High," but this is not right. This is only an example of the notion that being surrounded by thieves will turn an honest man into a thief, whereas being surrounded by honest men who expect and enforce the same will turn a thief honest.

[Beet]

It has been pretty obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of political philosophy and history that Trump and his base aren't Conservative. They aren't trying to conserve anything; they're past that point because they no longer believe the institutions are in their hands. Since the institutions and positions of power they once held no longer belong to them, they're determined to undermine, overthrow, or "restore" them to their previous state - under the dominance of White Christian heterosexual men.

Trump is more or less using this real reactionary element in American society for his personal benefit.

Um, this is all what "conservative" means in America today. The "True Conservatives" you talk about don't exist in the United States today, no more than "True Communists" exist in 21st Century China. If conservatives didn't wants to be marinated in Trumpstink, then they ought not have spent decades encouraging exactly what he supports. Trump is discrediting the name of conservatism for a generation (if not more), and that is absolutely something conservatives have earned, fair and square.

Yeah, the claim that Trump isnt' a conservative has always struck me as strange. These people's idea of a True Conservative is a tiny Washington elite... the Hillgoose and RINO Tom types. Trump is a conservative, albeit a dangerously erratic one.