ME-UNH/Portland Press Herald: Clinton+4, but Trump wins CD2 by 14%

[Ebowed]

Populations that are insular and homogeneous tend to be easily coerced into buying populist and bigoted campaigns.  People in ME-02 are probably concerned that their jobs will be stolen by refugees, which is charming, because it assumes that anybody would want to live there if they weren't already born there.

These people had their chance to prove that they knew better.  Instead, they re-elected Paul LePage.  The invisible hand of the free market will be guiding ME-02 with its entrepreneurial heroin dealers and blue collar job losses for years to come.

[Ebowed]

Also, [Inks] you, Ebowed.

Pretty simple, no?  Why would you vote for someone who repeatedly makes racist statements unless you lack exposure to people harmed by these comments?

As for elections having consequences, I should think that is a fairly uncontroversial sentiment.  Nobody is happy that rural Maine is suffering through difficult economic circumstances, and I would certainly propose they adopt an entirely different agenda to the one being enacted by their current government.  I'm not going to coddle a bunch of racists on a political forum because a few words are open to misinterpretation, or whatever is going on here.

[Ebowed]

Also, [Inks] you, Ebowed.

Pretty simple, no?  Why would you vote for someone who repeatedly makes racist statements unless you lack exposure to people harmed by these comments?

Well, for one thing, areas, especially spooky scary non-urban areas, with higher minority populations statistically tend (to a certain point) to have more conservative whites...

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Nobody is asking you to 'coddle' anybody.

Re point 1, that's generally due to a lack of integration, or in the South, longstanding cultural traditions. There is no question that the highest rates of xenophobia are in insular, lily white communities, as a lack of exposure can breed fear and ignorance.

As for coddling, what would the cavalcade of leftists jumping to the defense of racist voters suggest instead? I have to deal with racism and people making excuses for it everyday at work and I'm not going to be made to feel bad for an impolite post. I'm sorry if it offended you but I dislike your implication that I dislike these people or that I think they don't have valid interests. That doesn't mean I won't call out racism when I see it.

[Ebowed]

I think they have determined that it is a Trump blowout and that the 1 EV is unlikely to matter.  In any event, we'll know something is up if Clinton starts campaigning in Portland.  Note that Clinton has campaigned and run ads in NE-02, so they must be pretty sanguine about that one.

Portland is not in ME-2....

Yet Trump was campaigning there.

I dislike your implication that I dislike these people or that I think they don't have valid interests.

You certainly gave the impression that you did. ... It seemed like that was what you were doing, mainly because you were deploying a lot of the same tropes as IceSpear, who absolutely is doing that.

That's fair, and I was probably even conscious of that when I wrote the original post- it came with extra salt, to be sure- but that is not a complete picture, only part of it, and I was blowing off a bit of steam there, but I think we're largely on the same page.