Most Trump Supporters are Normal People-A Shock to No-one But Atlas& Sec Clinton

[Young Conservative]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://nypost.com/2016/08/22/stumped-by-trumps-success-take-a-drive-outside-us-cities/


I Concur. The Trump supporters I know, including myself and my family, are not crazy. They're educated. They're doctors, lawyers, or used to work in manufacturing. Theyre cops, they're veterans, or they're school teachers. These are normal people. Please, for the sake of our country, treat them with respect and stop generalizing us as a "basket of deplorable." We are people too. We care about america. Secretary Clinton Clearly couldn't think less of us and apparently the same can be said of many of you. Let's change that.

[Southern Delegate matthew27]

Liberterians that want to abolish most of the government, alt right and white nationalist aren't normal people. Sorry.

[Erich Maria Remarque]

Get back in your basket

[‼realJohnEwards‼]

Did these people actually read the other half of Clinton's quote?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[swf541]

As someone in one of those types of areas, normal in these areas doesnt mean they arent racist, sexist etc.  Or they fall into the other category that she described.  There is a real feeling of abandonment in some areas that Trump loves to prey upon.

[Virginiá]

Did these people actually read the other half of Clinton's quote?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

No one was ever going to pay any attention to this, which is partly why she shouldn't have said it. It doesn't matter if she says "but the other half", because the only thing the media will talk about is the deplorables.

On the other hand, if she did this on purpose just to suck up media time and knew it wouldn't hurt her much, then hats off to her. Chances are we'll never know what the deal with it was.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Did these people actually read the other half of Clinton's quote?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

No one was ever going to pay any attention to this, which is partly why she shouldn't have said it. It doesn't matter if she says "but the other half", because the only thing the media will talk about is the deplorables.

On the other hand, if she did this on purpose just to suck up media time and knew it wouldn't hurt her much, then hats off to her. Chances are we'll never know what the deal with it was.

     It's sound byte politics. Having your words honestly evaluated should be a reasonable expectation, but it's not going to happen. Such is politics.

[DrScholl]

When you have people out in the streets shouting racial slurs and death threats, people are going to view that as abnormal. The loudest most hateful supporters are going to be how the public defines any candidate's supporters.

[‼realJohnEwards‼]

Did these people actually read the other half of Clinton's quote?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

No one was ever going to pay any attention to this, which is partly why she shouldn't have said it. It doesn't matter if she says "but the other half", because the only thing the media will talk about is the deplorables.

On the other hand, if she did this on purpose just to suck up media time and knew it wouldn't hurt her much, then hats off to her. Chances are we'll never know what the deal with it was.

Yeah, but you'd think that the media held themselves to a higher standard... Oh wait, it's the New York Post. My mistake.

[ProudModerate2]

..... The Trump supporters I know, including myself and my family, are not crazy. They're educated. They're doctors, lawyers, or used to work in manufacturing. Theyre cops, they're veterans, or they're school teachers. These are normal people. Please, for the sake of our country, treat them with respect and stop generalizing us as a "basket of deplorable." We are people too. We care about america. Secretary Clinton Clearly couldn't think less of us and apparently the same can be said of many of you. Let's change that.

Are you just playing stupid to what was actually said by Hillary, or are you trolling ?
The "deplorables" comment was directed to trump supporters who support or feed on hatred, racism, sexism and/or bigotry. I have news for you .... these people are not "normal."
It makes no difference if they are "doctors, lawyers, cops, veterans or school teachers." It also doesn't make a difference if these people have white skin or black skin.
Grow up !

[Podgy the Bear]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://nypost.com/2016/08/22/stumped-by-trumps-success-take-a-drive-outside-us-cities/


I Concur. The Trump supporters I know, including myself and my family, are not crazy. They're educated. They're doctors, lawyers, or used to work in manufacturing. Theyre cops, they're veterans, or they're school teachers. These are normal people. Please, for the sake of our country, treat them with respect and stop generalizing us as a "basket of deplorable." We are people too. We care about america. Secretary Clinton Clearly couldn't think less of us and apparently the same can be said of many of you. Let's change that.

Right.  And most Hillary supporters are sensible people who are not godless anti-American Communists.    And would you believe it--like me, some Hillary supporters are actually Christian!

I would be happy to see everyone change the rhetoric and focus on the issues at hand.  So let's see what happens.

[history nerd]

Some, I assume, are good people.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://nypost.com/2016/08/22/stumped-by-trumps-success-take-a-drive-outside-us-cities/


I Concur. The Trump supporters I know, including myself and my family, are not crazy. They're educated. They're doctors, lawyers, or used to work in manufacturing. Theyre cops, they're veterans, or they're school teachers. These are normal people. Please, for the sake of our country, treat them with respect and stop generalizing us as a "basket of deplorable." We are people too. We care about america. Secretary Clinton Clearly couldn't think less of us and apparently the same can be said of many of you. Let's change that.

Anyone actively supporting a willfully ignorant, xenophobic, volatile reality tv character, who openly plans to act like a Third World tyrant, for the office of President of the United States is, ipso facto, insane.

[Erc]

Some are hateful, some have been trapped in the anti-Hillary echo chamber for 20 years, some are dumb, and some are naive.

You can be wrong without being deplorable, of course.  Though none of those categories really leap out to me as "folks I care to associate with."

It's a different story, of course, for the 80-90% of Republican elected officials who support Trump to get the votes from all four categories of Trump supporters.  That's just a straight up deal with the devil.  We live in a representative democracy for a reason; it's their job to know better, and it's high time they all lost theirs.

[‼realJohnEwards‼]

Some are hateful, some have been trapped in the anti-Hillary echo chamber for 20 years, some are dumb, and some are naive.

You can be wrong without being deplorable, of course.  Though none of those categories really leap out to me as "folks I care to associate with."

It's a different story, of course, for the 80-90% of Republican elected officials who support Trump to get the votes from all four categories of Trump supporters.  That's just a straight up deal with the devil.  We live in a representative democracy for a reason; it's their job to know better, and it's high time they all lost theirs.

Stop trying to act as if there are no well-intentioned Trump supporters. They are not all stupid, they are not all naive, they are not all "trapped" in echo-chambers. In fact, most (future) Trump voters who I know would take offense to these statements, and rightly so. Many of them simply dislike Clinton's personality; I disagree with them on that, and to be honest I don't see what's wrong with having a "bad" personality if you're fundamentally experienced and intelligent enough to do the job, but whatever, I have no grounds for attacking their values in a President. Others find Trump's policies more attractive (relatively speaking), and I have no right to judge this either, as long as it is based on pure opinion and not outright falsehood. On the other hand, there is certainly a racist/sexist/Islamophobic wing of the GOP, which has been completely behind him since day 1, and these are the people who we should be attacking, and calling out for the bigots they are. However, making blanket statements about Trump leaners (as you have, and as Hillary, as she said, did) is not the right path to take. There are intelligent, well-meaning people who side with Trump, and not all of them have been misinformed; likewise, there are uneducated, misinformed Clinton voters, who just happen to believe (as I do) that her (comparatively) progressive policies are the best ways to aid the middle and lower classes, and just as many Trump voters believe in his (or, at least, that current policies are a failure). This is what Clinton is trying to say, and that is why the full quote is incredibly important; Clinton is saying that, in these people's minds, Washington has built a system in which they (or others) have slipped through the cracks, or which simply did not care for them in the first place, and that we need to have compassion for them and assure them that we are looking out for them. Whether or not she actually cares about them is a topic for debate (I personally believe that she does, but YMMV), but taken at face value, this is a call for us to understand our differences, and work towards a common goal, without the voices of those bigots (who may not be half of Trump's base, but who are certainly a part of it) ringing in our ears.

[Xing]

Yes, most of us know that there are plenty of nice, "normal", well-meaning Trump supporters. I just believe that they're making a grave mistake, and are being misled about Trump's "ability" to lead this country, as well as how "dishonest" Hillary is.

[Erc]

Some are hateful, some have been trapped in the anti-Hillary echo chamber for 20 years, some are dumb, and some are naive.

You can be wrong without being deplorable, of course.  Though none of those categories really leap out to me as "folks I care to associate with."

It's a different story, of course, for the 80-90% of Republican elected officials who support Trump to get the votes from all four categories of Trump supporters.  That's just a straight up deal with the devil.  We live in a representative democracy for a reason; it's their job to know better, and it's high time they all lost theirs.

Stop trying to act as if there are no well-intentioned Trump supporters. They are not all stupid, they are not all naive, they are not all "trapped" in echo-chambers. In fact, most (future) Trump voters who I know would take offense to these statements, and rightly so. Many of them simply dislike Clinton's personality; I disagree with them on that, and to be honest I don't see what's wrong with having a "bad" personality if you're fundamentally experienced and intelligent enough to do the job, but whatever, I have no grounds for attacking their values in a President. Others find Trump's policies more attractive (relatively speaking), and I have no right to judge this either, as long as it is based on pure opinion and not outright falsehood. On the other hand, there is certainly a racist/sexist/Islamophobic wing of the GOP, which has been completely behind him since day 1, and these are the people who we should be attacking, and calling out for the bigots they are. However, making blanket statements about Trump leaners (as you have, and as Hillary, as she said, did) is not the right path to take. There are intelligent, well-meaning people who side with Trump, and not all of them have been misinformed; likewise, there are uneducated, misinformed Clinton voters, who just happen to believe (as I do) that her (comparatively) progressive policies are the best ways to aid the middle and lower classes, and just as many Trump voters believe in his (or, at least, that current policies are a failure). This is what Clinton is trying to say, and that is why the full quote is incredibly important; Clinton is saying that, in these people's minds, Washington has built a system in which they (or others) have slipped through the cracks, or which simply did not care for them in the first place, and that we need to have compassion for them and assure them that we are looking out for them. Whether or not she actually cares about them is a topic for debate (I personally believe that she does, but YMMV), but taken at face value, this is a call for us to understand our differences, and work towards a common goal, without the voices of those bigots (who may not be half of Trump's base, but who are certainly a part of it) ringing in our ears.

I appreciate you trying to be nuanced, and I appreciate that Hillary is (for obvious reasons) trying to be nuanced.

I also don't disagree with you that there are many well-intentioned Trump supporters.  Many people honestly think that Trump would be better for the country than Clinton, and I wouldn't think to deny that they do.

If this were a normal year, with normal candidates, the sort of reasoning you're advocating would make perfect sense.  Reasonable people can disagree on politics; that's why we have politics.  If you thought that Romney would have made a better President than Obama because of his policies or because of his temperament, that's perfectly reasonable.  Heck, I voted for McCain in 2008.

But it's not a normal year, and Trump is not a normal candidate.  Trump has made it abundantly clear that he has no policies, so if you think his "policies" are better than Clinton's, you're cherrypicking Trump's statements to be what you want to hear.  If you think that he's being deliberately obtuse policy-wise in some sort of "secret plan to win the war in Vietnam" fashion, you're giving him too much credit.  If you think that his "policies" are just going to be bog-standard Republican ones because the GOP leaders can control him, you're willfully naive.

In terms of temperament, it's obvious from Trump's demeanor over the past year that he has the worse one for the Presidency.  If it comes down to more nebulous matters of "personality," well, that's a matter of taste.  To be frank, it's poor taste or you're just straight sexist, but whatever.  Perhaps you shouldn't be choosing the President of the United States because you like their personality better.

In the end, if you're voting Trump over Clinton, you believe that Hillary Clinton is going to be a worse President than an irrational, bigoted, unpredictable, unintelligent egomaniac.  I guess you could view "unpredictable" as an upside, as there is then a non-zero chance that Trump would be a good President, and I'll acknowledge this.  But you've got to compare that very bad bet to the sure thing that's Hillary Clinton.  Obviously, reasonable people can think that Hillary could be a bad President, but we're pretty sure we know what we're getting with her, and she won't be abysmal (unless you believe every single hit piece written about her in the last 20 years).

Of course, if you're truly desperate, perhaps a really bad bet is better than a sure loss.  If the Mafia's going to kill you unless you repay the loan, you start thinking about putting all your remaining money on the 15-to-1 bet at the racetrack.  If things are that bad, maybe burning down everything could be an improvement.  But that's not true for most Trump supporters, and even if it were, burning everything down and starting over isn't exactly how you do things in a constitutional democracy.  The stakes are too high for the rest of us.

This is, of course, too mean.  More than at any other time in recent memory, people are defined by their political identities.  They're a Republican, or they're a Democrat, or they're independent but conservative, or what have you.  And if you're a Republican, who's been hearing Republican narratives about how Hillary is the Antichrist for 24 years, it's obviously tough to walk that back and vote for her.  It's certainly a lot easier to cherrypick facts that make it seem like Trump would be an okay, or even good President, and certainly better than Hillary, especially when they fit so well, and you have Republican-leaning outlets assembling the narratives for you.  

Trying to walk that back, address the facts dispassionately, and unravel that cognitive dissonance is hard.  It's really hard!  I don't want to dismiss that fact.  It's super hard for us as humans, when our brains are wired not to do that.  And that (along with the truly desperate) is who the well-intentioned Trump voters are.  Folks who have assembled a reasonable-sounding story of how Trump would be better than Clinton.  Of course, it's not supported by any facts, and if you tug any thread of it it should come apart, but that's how partisanship works.  "Dumb" may not be the best word to describe these voters (and it certainly isn't helpful; screeds like this are exactly how *not* to deal with cognitive dissonance), but "willfully ignorant" may be closer to the mark, and not altogether too different in meaning.  When someone like Trump appears on the scene to shake things up, you should probably take that as a sign to reexamine some of your assumptions after your party nominates him.

There's one other thing I want to stress here.  Trump's bigotry and xenophobia aren't actually the major problem here--though it is deplorable that they have been the only real constant of his campaign, and obviously it has attracted wide swaths of the deplorable supporters Clinton talked about in her speech.  In a two-party system, at this point in the race, bigotry isn't necessarily disqualifying by itself.  We've had plenty of bigoted Presidents in the past, of course.  What is disqualifying is that he is a crazy man *and* a bigot.  I think many of us are glad that in 1912 Wilson (a bigot) beat Roosevelt (by that point, a crazy man).  Even then, people could have reasonably voted for any of the three candidates (as bigotry is bad, and there are tactical and temperamental reasons not to vote Taft).  But in 2016 we have Taft vs. a more racist Roosevelt (or Taft vs. William Randolph Hearst, or Taft vs. Ben Tillman, if you prefer), and the choice is clear.

[pho]

Most of the Trump supporters are ok—they are mostly just middle aged whites who are tired of being blamed for everything. I don't like it either, but it's not worth starting World War III over.

[Mallow]

Some are hateful, some have been trapped in the anti-Hillary echo chamber for 20 years, some are dumb, and some are naive.

You can be wrong without being deplorable, of course.  Though none of those categories really leap out to me as "folks I care to associate with."

It's a different story, of course, for the 80-90% of Republican elected officials who support Trump to get the votes from all four categories of Trump supporters.  That's just a straight up deal with the devil.  We live in a representative democracy for a reason; it's their job to know better, and it's high time they all lost theirs.

Stop trying to act as if there are no well-intentioned Trump supporters. They are not all stupid, they are not all naive, they are not all "trapped" in echo-chambers. In fact, most (future) Trump voters who I know would take offense to these statements, and rightly so. Many of them simply dislike Clinton's personality; I disagree with them on that, and to be honest I don't see what's wrong with having a "bad" personality if you're fundamentally experienced and intelligent enough to do the job, but whatever, I have no grounds for attacking their values in a President. Others find Trump's policies more attractive (relatively speaking), and I have no right to judge this either, as long as it is based on pure opinion and not outright falsehood. On the other hand, there is certainly a racist/sexist/Islamophobic wing of the GOP, which has been completely behind him since day 1, and these are the people who we should be attacking, and calling out for the bigots they are. However, making blanket statements about Trump leaners (as you have, and as Hillary, as she said, did) is not the right path to take. There are intelligent, well-meaning people who side with Trump, and not all of them have been misinformed; likewise, there are uneducated, misinformed Clinton voters, who just happen to believe (as I do) that her (comparatively) progressive policies are the best ways to aid the middle and lower classes, and just as many Trump voters believe in his (or, at least, that current policies are a failure). This is what Clinton is trying to say, and that is why the full quote is incredibly important; Clinton is saying that, in these people's minds, Washington has built a system in which they (or others) have slipped through the cracks, or which simply did not care for them in the first place, and that we need to have compassion for them and assure them that we are looking out for them. Whether or not she actually cares about them is a topic for debate (I personally believe that she does, but YMMV), but taken at face value, this is a call for us to understand our differences, and work towards a common goal, without the voices of those bigots (who may not be half of Trump's base, but who are certainly a part of it) ringing in our ears.

I appreciate you trying to be nuanced, and I appreciate that Hillary is (for obvious reasons) trying to be nuanced.

I also don't disagree with you that there are many well-intentioned Trump supporters.  Many people honestly think that Trump would be better for the country than Clinton, and I wouldn't think to deny that they do.

If this were a normal year, with normal candidates, the sort of reasoning you're advocating would make perfect sense.  Reasonable people can disagree on politics; that's why we have politics.  If you thought that Romney would have made a better President than Obama because of his policies or because of his temperament, that's perfectly reasonable.  Heck, I voted for McCain in 2008.

But it's not a normal year, and Trump is not a normal candidate.  Trump has made it abundantly clear that he has no policies, so if you think his "policies" are better than Clinton's, you're cherrypicking Trump's statements to be what you want to hear.  If you think that he's being deliberately obtuse policy-wise in some sort of "secret plan to win the war in Vietnam" fashion, you're giving him too much credit.  If you think that his "policies" are just going to be bog-standard Republican ones because the GOP leaders can control him, you're willfully naive.
*snip*

Well-said.

I had to do some soul searching of my own a few months back--I asked myself, if Trump was exactly the same, but was the Democratic nominee rather than the Republican nominee, would I support him for president? It's admittedly a tough question to answer honestly, since that's not the universe we live in, but I am fairly confident that in that universe, I would be voting for a non-Democratic presidential candidate for the first time. Because of that, I have a difficult time disassociating a vote for Trump with a deeply negative character flaw... be it willful ignorance, petty misanthropy, or something worse.

[Erich Maria Remarque]

Most of the Trump supporters are ok—they are mostly just middle aged whites who are tired of being blamed for everything...

and seeking for revenge

[Roemerista]

I do not know what terrible thing happened in your life that made you think Trump is okay.

But you have my pity.