Voter 'Whitelash'

[Joe Guy]

I can't find this video of Van Johnson on YouTube, so there it is.

I've seen Van a lot on CNN this election cycle. I don't think I'd ever seen or heard him before now but I don't watch CNN that much. He has made a lot of good points about this election and about Trump and Clinton, but the idea of Voter 'Whitelash' is not only stupid but he is doing the same thing he has bashed Trump for doing, which is creating conflicts and turning people against one another.

And he doesn't know what to tell his children? Give me a break. Try telling them that we've got to work together on focus on the positive and try to improve things rather than blaming someone else for all of our problems.

Better yet, give up your children for adoption and go to your corner and whine...

[Bicycle Bill]

It IS a fair term.  Once all this shakes out and settles down, I imagine we'll find that it was the middle-aged, non-college educated, white male bloc who felt threatened by the gains being made by blacks, women, and other minorities — the same group that had been marching in lockstep with Trump all through the campaign — who somehow took enough time from their guns, beers, pick'm-up trucks, and Confederate flags to tip the scales in his favor.

-"BB"-

[Long Run]

These are the same voters who helped Reagan win handily and made the difference for Bush 43, twice. They didn't show up for Romney in 2012 ("the missing white voters"), but Trump got them back. The term is not accurate since these are regular R voters.

[Big RR]

While I think the racists are in the group, BB, I also think there are a number of people who are felling that they are constantly on the losing end. they see a big recovery being touted and yet they are working longer hours for less and less. Now why they chose to vote for a self proclaimed billionaire (who profited mightily from this) or think he really cares about them is beyond me, but no one said they thought it through.

[Lord Jim]

Joe I'm puzzled...

I can't find this video of Van Johnson on YouTube, so there it is.

I've seen Van a lot on CNN this election cycle.

I don't see Van Johnson anywhere in that video...




And I'm really confused as to how a guy who's been dead for eight years could be doing political commentary on CNN...

(Though I guess it really isn't that surprising...Wolfe Blitzer died at least that long ago, and he still hosts his own show...)

[Joe Guy]

Joe I'm puzzled...

I can't find this video of Van Johnson on YouTube, so there it is.

I've seen Van a lot on CNN this election cycle.

I don't see Van Johnson anywhere in that video...

Oops! You're right.... On the other hand, Johnson, Jones... same thing.

(that explains why when I searched YouTube all I got was videos of white actors)

[datsunaholic]

I've spent a good deal of the last 2 weeks trying to understand why many of my friends supported Trump. Most, but not all, are White, and the vast majority (but not all) are male.

I've had a lot of trouble in doing so. Quite a few are so anti-Democrat that it wouldn't have mattered who either party put up, they weren't going to vote for the Democrats. I don't know the real number, but I suspect that there is about 30-40% of the voting public that vote that way, all the time, for each party, which makes up 60-80% of the voting public anyway. That leaves only 20-40% out there to make a difference one way or another.

I mean, I tried to see just how bad, evil, etc a candidate the Republicans could have put up to see when they would have voted for Hillary, and it was pretty unanimous- they couldn't. I guess I kind of fell into a similar boat, as I couldn't see the Democrats putting up someone so vile that I would have voted for Trump. Which made it hard for me to actually really understand why someone, especially my dear female friend who is currently celebrating Trump's election as one of her "best Birthday presents ever" could overlook the blatant misogyny, racism, etc. The only explanation is that she simply doesn't believe it, that it's all made up by the Liberal media, and I guess the fact that she, like most of my Conservative friends, get all their news from Fox News.

One of the biggest assholes I know and can't avoid had a pretty spot on explanation, even if it was utterly insane. He said he didn't really like Trump, but he could never vote for Monica Lewinsky's Boyfriend's wife, and Donald Trump is an arrogant asshole, but so is (the person making this claim) so he's a lot like him so he got his vote. He also echoed the common belief that since Trump is a billionaire, he can't be bought by the special interests.

Another is a person who worked as a health care administrator for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and is a long-time Republican Party member. He volunteered in the 2000 and later elections to be a vote counter, to "stop the Liberals from cheating the election", and truly believes that the voter rolls are full of illegal (liberal) voters. He believes Hillary should be in prison for treason, a common thread I heard. But why, as someone who worked for the BIA, is he such a staunch Republican? Well, he thought the Fedreal Government were handing out too much money to the Indians who just drank and smoked and popped out kids, and they should have just been left to fend for themselves, drink themselves to death, and they'd be gone. He's a (barely) closeted racist, which makes it hard for me to get along with him sometimes.

Some are my former UN Navy colleagues. They're all over the board for reasons, though most are quite the gun lovers, and spent the morning posting on Facebook pictured of their guns, and saying "their babies are safe". Look, I like guns just fine. In fact, if I had the money I'd probably have an AR-15 too, because regardless of the stigma, it's actually a quite pleasant gun to shoot for target practice. But I didn't see that as a huge argument, but for some folks it's the ONLY argument.

Some, it's because of job security. They blame the unions and liberals for the jobs going away; blame minimum wages for driving prices up, blame Obamacare for driving Medical Insurance prices up (and blame it for their company dropping or reducing their former coverage plans, which isn't entirely untrue), blame illegal immigrants from taking their jobs. I kind of feel the opposite, that deregulation and poorly-negotiated "free trade" agreements with countries of far lower standard of living, and corporate America itself for those problems. I mean, I lost my job 2 1/2 years ago and STILL haven't found one- over 60 applicatiions, two call backs, one interview (and rejected on the spot because I'd been unemployed for over 2 years so my skillset was considered obsolete). I lost my job to downsizing and "globalization", but that company was full of H1B visa employees. Hundreds of US Citizen applicants, but nope, they can't find anyone "qualified" so they hired H1B folks. Never mind the fact that they were cheaper, no, that wasn't the reason at all (sarcasm). That's the thing. My truck-driver friend bemoans all the Mexicans taking over the trucking jobs because they'll take less pay. Duh- and you still shop at Walmart? THAT's why your truck driving job disappeared. That's why the American factory jobs disappeared. All because you wanted lower prices.

But it comes down to blame, you'll always blame the other side. And this time, enough of those that blame the liberals showed up to vote and put their new figurehead in the White House. Whereas the liberals utterly failed to get their folks roused up enough to show up. I know plenty of Liberals who, once Bernie was gone from the picture, basically said screw it, I'm not voting.

Hell, I almost voted 3rd party. I did that my 1st 3 presidential elections. But then it came down to who was actually qualified, and that was my decision. So my track record falls to 1 in 7, and the 1 only happened because I voted for the incumbent that year.

I've rambled on enough. Seeing my conservative friends gloating and my liberal friends calling for a revolution is making me sick to my stomach.

[Burning Petard]

Go back to Hillary's fund raiser and the 'basket of deplorables' quote. Then consider the rest of her remark about the other half of Trump supporters, the second basket. I believe this group is real and her observation about their grievances, and the failure of the establishment of either party to take their needs as real and worthy of attention. I think she was right and that is the source of the Donald's success in this election.

snailgate

[Bicycle Bill]

The view from Lake Wobegon:

So he won.  The nation takes a deep breath.  Raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out, and a severely learning-disabled man with a real character problem will be president.  We are so exhausted from thinking about this election, millions of people will take up leaf-raking and garage cleaning with intense pleasure.  We liberal elitists are wrecks.  The Trumpers had a whale of a good time, waving their signs, jeering at the media, beating up protesters, chanting “Lock her up” — we elitists just stood and clapped.  Nobody chanted “Stronger Together.”  It just doesn’t chant.

The Trumpers never expected their guy to actually win the thing, and that’s their problem now.  They wanted only to whoop and yell, boo at the H-word, wear profane T-shirts, maybe grab a crotch or two, jump in the RV with a couple of six-packs and go out and shoot some spotted owls.  It was pleasure enough for them just to know that they were driving us wild with dismay — by “us,” I mean librarians, children’s authors, yoga practitioners, Unitarians, bird-watchers, people who make their own pasta, opera-goers, the grammar police, people who keep books on their shelves, that bunch.  The Trumpers exulted in knowing we were tearing our hair out.  They had our number, like a bratty kid who knows exactly how to make you grit your teeth and froth at the mouth.

Alas for the Trump voters, the disasters he will bring on this country will fall more heavily on them than anyone else.  The uneducated white males who elected him are the vulnerable ones, and they will not like what happens next.

To all the patronizing B.S. we’ve read about Trump expressing the white working-class’s displacement and loss of the American Dream, I say, “Feh!” — go put your head under cold water.  Resentment is no excuse for bald-faced stupidity.  America is still the land where the waitress’s kids can grow up to become physicists and novelists and pediatricians, but it helps a lot if the waitress and her husband encourage good habits and the ambition to use your God-given talents and the kids aren’t plugged into electronics day and night.  Whooping it up for the candidate of cruelty and ignorance does less than nothing for your kids.

We liberal elitists are now completely in the clear.  The government is in Republican hands.  Let them deal with him.  Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers, and let the Republicans build the wall and carry on the trade war with China and deport the undocumented and deal with opioids, and we Democrats can go for a long, brisk walk and smell the roses.

I like Republicans.  I used to spend Sunday afternoons with a bunch of them, drinking Scotch and soda and trying to care about NFL football.  It was fun.  I tried to think like them.  (Life is what you make it.  People are people.  When the going gets tough, tough noogies.)  But I came back to liberal elitism.

Don’t be cruel.  Elvis said it, and it’s true.  We all experienced cruelty back in our playground days — boys who beat up on the timid, girls who made fun of the homely and naive — and most of us, to our shame, went along with it, afraid to defend the victims lest we become one of them.  But by your 20s, you should be done with cruelty.  Mr. Trump was the cruelest candidate since George Wallace.  How he won on fear and bile is for political pathologists to study.  The country is already tired of his noise, even his own voters.  He is likely to become the most intensely disliked president since Herbert Hoover.  His children will carry the burden of his name.  He will never be happy in his own skin.  But the damage he will do to our country — who knows?  His supporters voted for change, and boy, are they going to get it.

Back to real life.  I went up to my home town the other day and ran into my gym teacher, Stan Nelson, looking good at 96.  He commanded a landing craft at Normandy on June 6, 1944, and never said a word about it back then, just made us do chin-ups whether we wanted to or not.  I saw my biology teacher Lyle Bradley, a Marine pilot in the Korean War, still going bird-watching in his 90s.  I was not a good student then, but I am studying both of them now.  They have seen it all and are still optimistic.  The past year of politics has taught us absolutely nothing.  Zilch.  Zero. Nada.  The future is scary.  Let the uneducated have their day.  I am now going to pay more attention to teachers.

....by Garrison Keillor, author and radio personality // https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

-"BB"-

[datsunaholic]

I so badly disagree with the "uneducated" part of that essay, because that's part of what really turned off blue-collar Americans on Hillary.

10 of my friends and or colleagues that voted for Trump:

A 63 year old auto parts distributorship salesperson
A 28 year old auto parts regional manager
A 55 year old industrial refrigeration technician
A 22 year old cosmetology student
A 73 year old retired Bureau of Indian Affairs administrator
A 62 year old finish carpenter
A 40 year old heavy equipment operator
A 41 year old recently retired military veteran (4 years Navy, 4 years Marine Corps, 14 years US Army)
A 43 year old welder
A 38 year old city water meter reader
(all but one are white, and all but one are male)

10 of my friends and/or colleagues that voted for Clinton:

A 60 year old Museum director
A 52 year old High School band teacher
A 42 year old actress
A 43 year old Improv actor and comedy instructor
A 51 year old Administrative Fundraiser
A 63 year old auto shop underwriter
A 40 year old web site designer
A 55 year old customer relations manager
A 63 year old retired aircraft machinist
A 62 year old Real Estate executive
(all are white, but it's 5/5 on gender)

Those are just ones I know by either having talked with them or by their social media posts.
Other than that shows my acquaintances average a lot older than me in general (and most are pretty blue collar), it does show quite the divide. It also shows to me how the Democrats have somewhat abandoned trying to be a voice for the blue-collar, nonunion industrial workers- the very workers who see their jobs disappearing. While the Republicans have done noting to help them keep their jobs, they TALK as if they want to help- keep the jobs here with tax breaks, etc. The Democrats, but more the eco-liberals, talk about putting more and more restrictions, rules, etc on those industries so they end up going overseas where there isn't any oversight. That's why the Blue-Collar Americans are so against the Democratic party right now. It's all a matter of perception- it does no good to promise "higher wages" as the Democrats try to push, when the jobs don't exist anymore.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Garrison Keillor

What an ass. His opinon of the working class white male (and their wives) is exactly why Trump won.
I was going to go down the list but every word is hateful and arrogant.
Yes, the dissappearing middle class white male overwhelmingly voted for trump. So What?
Every other demographic gets applauds for sticking up for themselves and voting for the candidate they think will help them the most.
Blacks overwhelmingly voted for Obama. How did that turn out for them?
Why shouldn't the hard working white male (and his SO) go with someone who might help them especially when the system as it has been has let them rot on the vine.

Again
What an ass.

Go take you micro brew vacation, and take your kids with you. Or check them into rehab as I see more children of "liberal elites" in the 12 step rooms than any other demographic.

[wesw]

I have heard van jones say that he wanted to overthrow our present form of govt.

can t find it on the google tho...., surprise surprise.....

next time someone on the left says something outrageous, try to find it on the google..., good luck