media narrative that Dems lost 'working class whites' is BS. the split was the ol' rural vs urban

[Bill USA]

I kept hearing M$M talking heads saying that the Dems lost the working class whites - Hillary's fault - but the split was the same old rural vs urban voters. It's the same old story we've seen for decades. Rural people swallow GOP Bullshit, Hillary demonization and xenophobia, while urban voters are sophisticated enough to laugh at GOP propaganda. IT's been this way for decades .. as long as I can remember.


How the Election Revealed the Divide Between City and Country
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/clinton-trump-city-country-divide/507902/

Trump’s victory was an empire-strikes-back moment for all the places and voters that feel left behind in an increasingly diverse, post-industrial, and urbanized America. Squeezing bigger margins from smaller places, Trump overcame a tide of resistance in the largest metropolitan areas that allowed Clinton to carry the national popular vote, but not the decisive Electoral College.

This election thus carved a divide between cities and non-metropolitan areas as stark as American politics has produced since the years just before and after 1920. That year marked a turning point: It was the first time the Census recorded that more people lived in urban than non-urban areas. That tangible sense of shifting influence triggered a series of political and social conflicts between big cities teeming with immigrants, many of them Catholic, and small towns and rural communities that remained far more homogeneously, white, native-born, and Protestant.

This year, Hillary Clinton pushed that model just past the breaking point. Pending final results, she now leads in 88 of the nation’s 100 largest counties (including D.C.). Suffering a slight decline in African American support, Clinton did not quite match Obama’s vote margins in some crucial metropolitan areas, particularly Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia.

But overall, she delivered a dominant performance in most urban centers and many affluent white-collar suburbs. She held Trump to less than one-fourth of the vote in such mega-counties as Manhattan, Cook (Chicago), and Los Angeles; expanded on Obama’s margins in growing Sunbelt cities such as Miami, Charlotte, and Houston; and utterly routed Trump in thriving new economy centers like Austin, Silicon Valley, and Seattle. At latest tally, Clinton won the nation’s 100 largest counties by fully 12.6 million votes—an historic lead certain to widen with many more West Coast ballots yet to count.


Of the Country's 100 Largest Counties, These 25 Provided the Greatest Democratic Margin of Victory (please go to link to see chart of largest counties vote split between Clinton and Putin's Pet (it's a In-line frame which references some proprietary software that builds a chart using data from a proprietary data-base) not a picture.]-Bill USA)

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[NoGoodNamesLeft]

1. As someone who comes from a rural area I find this offensive

The REAL issue for rural voters is that they don't give a flying fart what people in urban areas do as long as people RESPECT their rural lifestyle. Rural people HUNT for food and it's IMPORTANT to them so they can feed their families. Rural areas have FEW jobs to the point that people with college degrees have to compete for a damn job flipping burgers at McDonalds. The economy FUCKING MATTERS. It's not all about a 100% focus on LGBT rights, being able to legally get high for the fun of it but more and more every election it becomes more and more about ONLY these things while completely neglecting those rural people who have no jobs and have to go on welfare to survive when all they want to do is work and provide for their families. Keep demonizing those rural voters who are NOT opposed to all those other values liberal urbanites care about and keep right on LOSING.

Getting so SICK of this shit...seriously.

And before there is a virtual pig pile on me for speaking the goddamned TRUTH...

NO ONE IS SAYING those other issues don't matter. I am saying OTHER SHIT MATTERS TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hellofromreddit]

2. Agreed. I know a pretty even split of rural and urban folks.

They're all normal. No monsters or cartoon villains to be found.

[Bill USA]

3. my freinds & relatives who live in rural areas would be offended by your characterization of rural

residents as pre-industrial revolution people.

"Rural people HUNT for food and it's IMPORTANT to them so they can feed their families."

........ LOL. My such melodrama! I think there are very very few rural people who get the main portion of their food from hunting. IT isn't 1830 anymore. Now, that (saying rural people go out hunting for all their food) could offend many rurally located people.

I have a friend who lives in a rural area (near a pretty good sized town). He's a farmer and he doesn't hunt for his food. He buys it at a market just like large urban area people do. Rural located people aren't living in log cabins. They have towns with retail stores and markets. I have relatives who are rurally located but they live close to a town where they have jobs and can buy food at a market. (They prefer this to living in a large metro area with all the traffic and more time spent driving back and forth to work) When referring to urban areas, I think of larger urban areas, say larger than 250,000 people, although this is obviously pretty subjective.

"Rural areas have FEW jobs to the point that people with college degrees have to compete for a damn job flipping burgers at McDonalds."

"rural people who have no jobs and have to go on welfare to survive when all they want to do is work and provide for their families."

You described the same problem college graduates (often those with degrees in fine arts or social sciences) in large urban areas have too. This largely is a result of the Trickle Down economics of Cheney's regency. When President Obama and Democrats proposed a bill to keep the Trickle Down Deregulation disaster from becoming the Great Depression II, they could only get 3 Republicans to vote for it. After that, President Obama and the Dems proposed many jobs bills which would have stimulated the economy and increased job creation faster than what we have seen. But the GOP filibustered or poison pilled these bills to death. The result has been a recovery that was much slower that it needed to be. But the GOP's plan was to make sure Obama was a one term president. Accordingly the broke their own records for filibustering and undermined the recovery we could have had.

[font size="3"]Oh please, cool it with the violin -- nobody is demonizing rural voters. But the GOP's tactics of whipping up xenophobia (blacks as "welfare queens" (but not corporations with their tax breaks, LOL)) and attacking anything that Democrats propose to help with wages for working people or worker safety regulations or health care (for all working people, urban or rural) [font color="red"]goes over much better with rural populations than with those in large urban centers[/font] (But, I guess the GOP will have to come up with another fear mongering tactic now that Trump has a bromance going with Putin. I wish I could laugh). [/font]

see:
Natural Born Job Killers: Republicans Obstruct over 4.2 million jobs

Natural Born Job Killers: Republicans Are Set to Kill 1 Million More Jobs in 2014

[font size="+1"] Democrats have been devoting their efforts to help working people (without the melodrama), urban and rural, since the First Great Depression. Here's a good piece written a few years ago about what people can thank the Democratic Party for:[/font]

[font size="4"]Day in the Life of a Joe Six-Pack Republican[/font]

[font size="3"]Joe gets up at 6:00 AM to prepare his morning coffee. He fills his pot full of good clean drinking water because some liberal fought for minimum water quality standards. He takes his daily medication with his first swallow of coffee. His medications are safe to take because some liberal fought to insure their safety and work as advertised.

All but $10.00 of his medications are paid for by his employers medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs this day. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

Joe takes his morning shower reaching for his shampoo; His bottle is properly labeled with every ingredient and the amount of its contents because some liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some tree hugging liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government subsidized ride to work; it saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees. You see, some liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day; he has a good job with excellent pay, medicals benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

(MORE)[/font]

Source: http://tvnewslies.org/html/day_in_the_life_of_joe_middle-.html

[font size="3"]I appreciate your compassion for working people[/font] (urban or rural). You will be glad to know that Democrats have been fighting Republican con-men for about a century trying to make this a better world for working people.

[NoGoodNamesLeft]

4. Many small towns in the rust belt don't have many markets left

And your response to my HONESTY is a perfect example of what is meant by elitism. Many people here are pissed off that these desperately hurting people in rural areas didn't care about others enough to not vote for Trump yet I see very few people here who give a single shit about them. It's no wonder why they flipped.






http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randy-fox/ghosts-of-brownsvilles-young-lovers_b_1392177.html

[Bill USA]

8. your implying that my comnt 3 was NOT honest is typical RW argument by invective & implied moral

.. superiority.

As I said before, the Democratic party's fight over the last century was for a better deal for working people whether they live in urban settings or rural. Trying to accuse Democrats of not caring about working people, wherever they live, is a typical right wing disinformation technique. One which you have demonstrated RWers never get tired of pounding the drum for.

I can show pictures of closed up storefronts from just about every large city in the country. THe GOP have managed to con rural people for generations. Although they are good at conning working people in cities too, they do seem to be more successful in more rural areas.

the pictures you pasted from the HuffPo article are from Brownsville, Pa .. a huge 20 miles from Pittsburgh!

When the Democrats fight for better working conditions and wages and for an economy that creates jobs they are always fighting the GOP. The GOP has promoted legislation which facilitated consolidation of companies. Consolidating corporations eliminate jobs for little benefits in efficiency (which is the argument for consolidation you usually hear). Consolidation often has more to do with weakening unions - and lowering wages and decreasing workers abilities to negotiate with some parity with the corporate owners. The GOP has peddled "right to work" (for less than a living wage) more successfully in many of the areas we would call more rural or at least not large metropolitan areas.

If you are concerned for jobs for people - with a living wage - don't expect any help from the GOP. The Democrats have been fighting for that objective - for working people where-ever they live, rural or large cities for over a century.

Conning working people whether rural or urban, into voting for the GOP is a long standing practice of the Guardians of Plutocracy.
Be sure to thank the GOP for the great Trickle Down - Deregulation disaster of 2008-2009 which wiped out millions of jobs.

[kcr]

5. I'd love it if you explain why those rural people who need that welfare

vote for politicians who gut welfare. That doesn't seem to fit in your screed, does it? How many exclamation points would that get? Oh, and do you think there are no members of the GLBT community that live in rural areas?????????????? I guess they're just screwed, huh.

[NoGoodNamesLeft]

6. Go ahead and completely ignore the point since it's always a suffering competition

Who cares if those poor kids in rural areas don't have enough food to eat or warm clothes that fit them as long as the liberal elites in the city can smoke weed and congratulate themselves on how awesome and wise they are compared to everyone else.

Most rural people I know actually support LGBT rights and mostly all the same things liberals do other than guns matter to them and they just want a goddamned job. But hey...they're not important and their needs are insignificant...and THAT is exactly why they voted for Trump...but keep right on bashing them so you can keep right on losing. The east and west coast do NOT have enough electoral votes to win, so alienating middle America is STUPID.

[True_Blue]

11. Liberal elite is an old right wing stereotype for Democrats

It's been around for as long as I can remember and I'm pretty old.

[Bill USA]

14. I couldn't find an email for Brownstein but he has a twitter account..url provided

https://twitter.com/ronbrownstein?lang=en


... A little tip: you might want to leave out the 'screed' characterization of an argument that seems reasonably presented, along with the attitude ... if you are interested in getting an answer from him, that is.

I don't think Brownstein is likely to respond to gratuitous criticism.

[kcr]

15. Someone who thinks it's cool to post personal information

is lecturing me on attitude?

[Bill USA]

16. help me out here: please identify "personal information" in my comnt 14.

Last edited Mon Jan 2, 2017, 05:59 PM - Edit history (1)

more attitude. I wasn't lecturing you. I was trying to give you a tip, if you were really interested in getting Brownstein to answer you.

[Bill USA]

18. I never saw your self deleted and probably amusingly adolescent remark. So Sorrrrrryyyy...LOL

[DanTex]

12. "...100% focus on LGBT rights, being able to legally get high for the fun..."

If that's what you got out of Hillary's campaign, then you really weren't paying attention. Do rural voters not care about healthcare? Minimum wage?

Beyond that, I don't see why rural voters should care less about LGBT rights than urban voters, given that there are just as many people born gay in one area as another.

[Cha]

7. The m$m still pimping for drumpf

[geek tragedy]

9. There's more than rural and urban.

Small cities, small towns, suburbs, exurbs. We

[EffieBlack]

10. Lots of black folk live in rural areas, too - where do they fit in to this scenario?

Not too many black folk fell for GOP bullshit. Why's that?

[treestar]

13. True, though I think Orange's election

was a fluke.

They lost seats in the House and Senate.

The vagaries of the electoral college caused this "win." Pennsylvania isn't more rural now than it was in 2008, presumably.

It is like a miracle, if you look at it from their side, that Orange Hitler won the EC. I remember we felt confident because his electoral college path was so tough. How the blue states went red for the Presidency, just by a hair, was huge luck on his part.

I think the theory it brought out white racists who normally don't vote has some good arguments for it. Orange Hitler energizing them in a way Mittens of Mc5planes could not could have been a factor.