Trump Supporter chants Jew-S-A at the press pen (user search)

I actually yelled at the people in the press pen in Tallahassee, but I just gave them the universal gesture while walking by Tongue

Wow, you really are an ass.

They're proud of being deplorable. Yet we're supposedly reaching when we call them Fascists...

You guys don't seem to realize that calling these people deplorables is only driving them out to the polls. You do realize that you, like your own candidate, are engineering your own downfall and are only succeeding in isolating yourselves from the broader public that you should be engaging.

Sanchez, respectably, I'm going to humor with you for a second and ask you how we might otherwise react to characters like, well, these folks.

Yes, you might post back with a video of Hillary or Bernie supporters somewhere saying similarly deplorable things, or retort that they're #NotAllLikeThat, but that would miss the point of the question. I believe you've made clear here the basic reason you supported and are supporting Trump is to stick it to your own party (and I would guess that your expectations for a Trump victory next week aren't that much better than mine at this point), but if these fine individuals are part of the "broader public" you are speaking of, then I'm genuinely curious to know how they, indeed, might be engaged. Putting aside the question of whether they should be.

The Trump revolt is basically 20-30 years of repressed anger boiling over. It's like a bad marriage disintegrating after the children go off to college. You might not like these people, and there a lot of bad eggs at the Trump rallies who aren't part of the opposition, but when you paint them as someone whose civic worthiness has to be questioned at all, you simply are alienating them.

If you want to engage them, I'd start by advising both parties to actually listen. Do what Trump has done and listen to Middle America. Do what Bernie Sanders did and go listen to coal miners and college students. Do what Rand Paul did and go into the inner cities that haven't seen a Republican candidate in decades. Don't take votes for granted, don't expect people to continue support the tired policies of both parties that hover between generic center-right/center-left, and don't tell them that if they disagree, they are "deplorable."

The reason Trump supporters are so enthusiastic is because there is a literal sense that this may be, at least for a few decades, a "last stand." The political system is risking alienating a sizable portion of the population for good. I'm not talking about Trump or Bernie or any individual. The system itself is writing off potential voters. Turnout is going to start declining in future elections after this one as more and more people begin to realize that the system is, and I don't mean this literally, "rigged." It is a helpless feeling, and it breeds resentment and fear.

Yeah. We understand that. Even Hillary said she did in her "Basket of Deplorables" speech. There are a lot of people out there who aren't getting their say or feel that their piece of the pie matters or whether or not they even have it. There has to be another way than to demonize those who they think are represented more yet are struggling just as badly! There is a way we can build houses without tearing down the houses of others. This is why Bernie's and even to small extend Rand's populism was so much better. They believed that we didn't have to ruin the lives of millions to "fix" the system. Then again, there are people who don't avail themselves to help. Just like there may be millions in big cities who for whatever reason can't get into a virtuous cycle that ends up with them reconciled to the community and to their own welfare, there are many people in places like West Virginia that can't do the same and probably for a lot of the same reasons that people in the big cities can't. They live in the past. They think that because they always had the same jobs, they should always be always be allowed to have that very job and that if they aren't allowed to have those jobs, then they are victims. The point I am trying to make is that I am pretty certain we should be able to live without a Government OK but that Government can give everyone a chance to get together and make our lives better and have a more direct role in how we turn out. That actually means that we take advantage of what we start. That might mean moving, going back to school, and going to see a therapist and even getting on Medicaid.

Folks (Trump-supporting and otherwise) are angry because elites have cavalierly imposed a Global Economy on their lives that has caused dislocation at the worst possible time. The solutions to the dislocation sound great when some millennial posts them, not fully comprehending the reality of the dislocated.

Many of the dislocated can't just move. They don't have the ability to afford housing in more prosperous urban locales. Even if they wanted to, they can keep a dumpy roof over their head in much of WV or KY (for example), and they at least have some networks of family there. But they can't just move; they will, undoubtedly, move to a more expensive locale, where there will be minimal family support.

Yes, there is retraining, but many of the folks receiving retraining have depleted their savings. They have to work somehow. The most lucrative jobs available through retraining often require a move and require the most lengthy training. Shorter term "retraining" leads to a crummier job.

Then, there's the issue of the discrimination these workers face. All of them face the discrimination that corporate employers engage in against the long-term unemployed. HR execs won't readily admit it, but if a person has been unemployed for 6 months or more, his resume' isn't going to get serious attention in all likelihood; they figure that if you were worth a crap, someone would have hired you already. Then, there's the issue of age discrimination. Most of the dislocated folks we are talking about are older workers; they face the discrimination of a youth-oriented HR culture that sees older workers as tired, injured, sick, tired, slower, and less oriented to current technology. HR execs don't give a flying cow turd about the experience of these folks, their maturity, and they certainly don't care about their need for a job.

And no one cares. There are economic incentives and PR incentives to hire racial minorities, ex-offenders, women, the disabled, but no incentives to hire these folks. They see themselves as being kicked to the curb when they are down, and after they did they're part of what they were told was expected of them in society. Millenials and Gen-Xers that run HR departments these days act as if the "Social Contract" never existed, and, to be fair, they aren't the ones that made that deal with those folks.

This is real world stuff.

That's not a valid reason to become a fascist though.

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