IceSpear was right!

[Landslide Lyndon]

Here is a VERY illuminating twitter thread about rural whites and why they stopped voting Democratic.
Hint: it ain't economic anxiety

https://twitter.com/diannaeanderson/status/1069257383702974465

https://twitter.com/diannaeanderson/status/1069259435208396800

https://twitter.com/diannaeanderson/status/1069260773589868544

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

We really do need to move on from the WWC. This is only going to get worse. I don't like the "economically moderate" suburbanites we're getting in exchange but our base of urban voters and minorities is progressive enough to keep the ball rolling on Medicare For All, ect.

[Sumner 1868]

Dianna needs to check her white privilege.

[Hindsight was 2020]

We really do need to move on from the WWC. This is only going to get worse. I don't like the "economically moderate" suburbanites we're getting in exchange but our base of urban voters and minorities is progressive enough to keep the ball rolling on Medicare For All, ect.

I’d like to point out that these “moderates” in the suburbs came out for bleeding heart Beto and Gillum

[Comrade Funk]

Wrong. TYT says we need to disregard the suburbs for declining rural white areas. Does a trade of Virginia, Colorado, and Nevada for let's say....West Virginia and Kentucky sound fair Republicans?

Bernie/Ojeda 2020

#MakeLoundounCountyRepublicanAgain

Bernie probably would've won in 2016, which is why I supported him, but his strategy for 2018 was an absolute failure.

[Pericles]

Were they Obama-Trump voters? Plenty of rural voters were gone long before Obama, it's the small slice that defected afterwards that should get the most interest, the solid Republican majority is not worth the constant focus.

[Sumner 1868]

Were they Obama-Trump voters? Plenty of rural voters were gone long before Obama, it's the small slice that defected afterwards that should get the most interest, the solid Republican majority is not worth the constant focus.

On the contrary. Clinton losing Wisconsin has something to do with West Virginia! Some random neoliberal lesbian on Twitter even said so!

[Landslide Lyndon]

Were they Obama-Trump voters? Plenty of rural voters were gone long before Obama, it's the small slice that defected afterwards that should get the most interest, the solid Republican majority is not worth the constant focus.

On the contrary. Clinton losing Wisconsin has something to do with West Virginia! Some random neoliberal lesbian on Twitter even said so!

Says the guy who until ten minutes ago thought Mahaska County was a Marvel character.

[ON Progressive]

We really do need to move on from the WWC. This is only going to get worse. I don't like the "economically moderate" suburbanites we're getting in exchange but our base of urban voters and minorities is progressive enough to keep the ball rolling on Medicare For All, ect.

There's zero evidence these suburbanites are actually "economically moderate". That's just media framing and incorrect perception.  Studies have shown Romney-Clinton voters to be more liberal on economics than Obama-Trump voters, with far less racial resentment.

In any case, we saw candidates that weren't hiding being progressive like Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke do really well in those "moderate suburbs." Both of them made big gains on even Hillary's gains in those areas.

[Sumner 1868]

Were they Obama-Trump voters? Plenty of rural voters were gone long before Obama, it's the small slice that defected afterwards that should get the most interest, the solid Republican majority is not worth the constant focus.

On the contrary. Clinton losing Wisconsin has something to do with West Virginia! Some random neoliberal lesbian on Twitter even said so!

Says the guy who until ten minutes ago thought Mahaska County was a Marvel character.

How do you feel about your queen losing to a TV star?

[Shadows]

Based on random tweet of some random person ?

How much more stupid is this going to get ??

[Landslide Lyndon]

Based on random tweet of some random person ?

How much more stupid is this going to get ??

That random person has talked to thousands of rural whites.
But I guess a random guy from India (or Seattle) has a much better insight on how these people are thinking.

[Famous Mortimer]

Will suburbanites remain "economically moderate" when they have to be taxed at ever increasing rates to pay for ever increasing services for ever increasing populations of economic migrants who largely don't pull their own weight?

[Sumner 1868]

Based on random tweet of some random person ?

How much more stupid is this going to get ??

Neoliberal Democrats can only win primaries through dog-whistle smear campaigns like this. See 2016 for an example. They are warming up for Iowa and New Hampshire.

[OneJ]

I’d like to point out that the one likely sexist voter might’ve ignored the fact that their state elected Joni Ernst (and two years later would eventually vote for Kim Reynolds).

[YE]

It saddens me that too many people seem too far gone even in some Dem strongholds but the tweets in the OP are stupid, partially this.

https://twitter.com/diannaeanderson/status/1069260773589868544

When did Bernie Sanders say Dems need to abandon the LQBT community?

FTR, the two counties referenced above aren't even ancestrally D BTW.

I'll never understand why so much of Twitter is personally bothered by Bernie's rural outreach though. How does it affect them in terms of policy?

[ON Progressive]

Based on random tweet of some random person ?

How much more stupid is this going to get ??

We also have boatloads of studies backing up these tweet threads. Contrary to what people like My Immortal think, these voters voted for Trump entirely on things like racism. I'll use this one study as an example, though there's lots of others:

Vote Switching in the 2016 Election: How Racial and Immigration Attitudes, Not Economics,  Explain Shifts in White Voting

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Calthrina950]

The white working class vote will probably be 90% Republican by the middle of the century.

[Famous Mortimer]

Racism is motivated by economics. If Hispanic individuals were generally able to support themselves without making the government redistribute other (mostly white) people's money to them, people would think a lot less negatively of Hispanics. Of course, if Hispanic individuals were generally able to support themselves without welfare, they wouldn't immigrate to the United States in the first place.

No, I am not saying every Hispanic is an economic burden but a lot of them are, at a much higher rate than white people.

That is the origin of anti-Hispanic sentiment.

That's where there isn't similar hostility towards Asians, because they generally support themselves.

[Sumner 1868]

I don't really care why Drumpf won (and nobody will ever have a coherent explanation for why he did). Any hope for a relatively positive political future requires the Clinton crowd being marginalized and eventually irrelevant.

[Horus]

Will suburbanites remain "economically moderate" when they have to be taxed at ever increasing rates to pay for ever increasing services for ever increasing populations of economic migrants who largely don't pull their own weight?

Why do you make every single thread about this? It's very neurotic.

[YE]

We really do need to move on from the WWC. This is only going to get worse. I don't like the "economically moderate" suburbanites we're getting in exchange but our base of urban voters and minorities is progressive enough to keep the ball rolling on Medicare For All, ect.

There's zero evidence these suburbanites are actually "economically moderate". That's just media framing and incorrect perception.  Studies have shown Romney-Clinton voters to be more liberal on economics than Obama-Trump voters, with far less racial resentment.

In any case, we saw candidates that weren't hiding being progressive like Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke do really well in those "moderate suburbs." Both of them made big gains on even Hillary's gains in those areas.

Okay this puts me in a position to make a point I haven't fully made on here since the election.

If I were to list people who would be the most likely to benefit from left wing fiscal policies, the suburbs would be towards the bottom of the list. But, 2018 made clear that our partisan divide is cultural rather than policy based (it somewhat has been since 1980 but prior to that the divide was less intense and more importantly less secular; it's escalated more the past cycle or two) which is why the bolded paragraph is true. There's not much the Democrats can really do about it either. With our politics so cultural, I don't expect anything but gridlock for the forseeable future. At this point, Dems are best off focusing on being progressive without catering to a specific region, waiting for the dam to break, where the Dems would take advantage of the contrast between them and the GOP.

With that said, I don't think it's productive to just sit there and call Republicans racist. There's obvious truth to it but shaming people into voting for you since the other sides mean comments is not a winning strategy. Credit to the Dems for avoiding this in 2018 though.

[Famous Mortimer]

Will suburbanites remain "economically moderate" when they have to be taxed at ever increasing rates to pay for ever increasing services for ever increasing populations of economic migrants who largely don't pull their own weight?

Why do you make every single thread about this? It's very neurotic.

This is a thread about why Trump was elected lol

[Adam Griffin]

I could say a lot about this, but I guess I'll just keep it simple.

So, for example, anybody who has spent considerable time in field in predominantly-Latino and/or nascent immigrant communities will tell you that you can't just pop in and start generating the kinds of meaningful interactions that'll produce votes. There's an element of community and trust that must be there long-term to generate the kinds of conversations that get beyond the superficial and the groupthink.

The same can definitely be said about rural communities, especially when it's an urban LGBT organizer who's flown in for 4 months to work in hostile territory and who may or may not even know how to effectively communicate with these voters.

[Tartarus Sauce]

We really do need to move on from the WWC. This is only going to get worse. I don't like the "economically moderate" suburbanites we're getting in exchange but our base of urban voters and minorities is progressive enough to keep the ball rolling on Medicare For All, ect.

There's zero evidence these suburbanites are actually "economically moderate". That's just media framing and incorrect perception.  Studies have shown Romney-Clinton voters to be more liberal on economics than Obama-Trump voters, with far less racial resentment.

In any case, we saw candidates that weren't hiding being progressive like Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke do really well in those "moderate suburbs." Both of them made big gains on even Hillary's gains in those areas.

Okay this puts me in a position to make a point I haven't fully made on here since the election.

If I were to list people who would be the most likely to benefit from left wing fiscal policies, the suburbs would be towards the bottom of the list. But, 2018 made clear that our partisan divide is cultural rather than policy based (it somewhat has been since 1980 but prior to that the divide was less intense and more importantly less secular; it's escalated more the past cycle or two) which is why the bolded paragraph is true. There's not much the Democrats can really do about it either. With our politics so cultural, I don't expect anything but gridlock for the forseeable future. At this point, Dems are best off focusing on being progressive without catering to a specific region, waiting for the dam to break, where the Dems would take advantage of the contrast between them and the GOP.

With that said, I don't think it's productive to just sit there and call Republicans racist. There's obvious truth to it but shaming people into voting for you since the other sides mean comments is not a winning strategy. Credit to the Dems for avoiding this in 2018 though.

Shaming people for racism may not exactly be a winning strategy, but codding voters with racist views would constitute a moral abdication. A lot of populist left-wingers think that we need to wholly focus on economic issues and like to join right-wing calls for "abandoning identity politics." This is a two-fold mistake. First of all, if you aren't willing to call out people for supporting racist policies, you will end up inherently coddling their racist views. New Deal Democrats had no problems doing this for several decades when they ignored race issues to avoid alienating white Southern labor. Some people are displeased with the fact that economics is no longer the center of politics and how much the partisanship has come to revolve around identity and cultural issues. That leads into point number two; these people stopped voting Democratic due to cultural grievances and racial anxiety. Boatloads of studies support this conclusion, and ignoring the fact that these voters have high degrees of racial resentment is foolish.

They're angry at an "urban elite" they feel ignores them and suffer anxiety over the country's changing racial demographics. That's why they vote Republican, not for practical economic reasons; the Democratic economic agenda would be far more helpful for them objectively speaking. They just don't care because it's not their main concern, they're motivated by far more psychological abstractions that lead to a sense that America is changing, that they're becoming strangers in their own country. Yes, globalization and all of its attendant effects have played a role in this, but in order to maximize success with these types of people, the Democrats would actually have to emulate Republicans on cultural and social issues, and that's simply a no-go.