Why I think Trump won the rust belt in spite of being the terrible person he is

[karynnj]

(This was a post in response to a Boston Bean thread, http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2672636, that she encouraged me to post. I would love responses from people who are actually from those areas. My perspective is that of a senior citizen who left the area for college and never lived there again.)

I think he had two HUGE issues behind him - abortion, which he really did not have to say much about, and the scapegoating of TPP and other trade deals for economic changes really due to automation and globalization. These two issues work for the Reagan Democrats.

Voting is a constrained choice and many people who judged Trump unfavorably voted for him. What I think back to is the 2002 NJ Senate race. It became clear by late summer/early fall that Torricelli was corrupt. I know relatively little about the Republican who opposed him, Forrester, other than that he did graduate from the Princeton Theological Seminary and was an former Eagle Scout. (NYT oped - http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/26/opinion/new-jersey-s-dreadful-senate-race.html )

Like many Democrats, I was appalled that I was going to vote for someone I KNEW did not deserve to continue to be a Senator. I planned to vote for the control of the Senate, which though we did not get in 2002 - had Forrester won that seat, we would not have gained the majority in 2006. Based on just what I knew, it was very likely that Forrester was the more ethical, moral man. As it was, I did not have to make that vote as Torricelli stepped down and the wonderful Lautenberg replaced him on the ballot. I suspect that there were many Republicans who voted not so much for Trump, but for Republicans to head all the various parts of the Executive branch and to nominate Supreme Court Justices they wanted. They voted for their team.

Not to mention, there was a reason that Trump at least twice made Bill Clinton's past a high profile issue. Unfair as it is to Hillary Clinton, it was a way of pointing out that Democrats nominated Bill Clinton in 1992 knowing he had problems as well and he was renominated and reelected even as more stories emerged. This actually worked on two levels. 1) Bill Clinton (and many earlier Presidents) were good Presidents in spite of not being models of good behavior. 2) It "normalized" that issue for some - either Trump or Bill Clinton would be in the White House. I know this ignores that Bill Clinton was not running. He would still be in the White House.

I would argue that the Reagan Democrats, in those rust belt states, are not - like me - on EITHER team to the degree that any of us are. I suspect that because the tilt of the Supreme Court was in the balance, Trump may have won many votes - including in those states - because of abortion. Think back that this was a big issue in 2004, where it was clear that Rehnquist would be replaced. Had Kerry won, that would been a shift from the right to the left. The justices likely to be up in 2008 were from the liberal side - so Obama's appointments kept the court where it was. They blocked Obama from replacing Alito because they controlled the Senate. I suspect that this issue had more force this year and in 2004 because THEY saw they could lose something they believed in to their core for a long time.

Of course, we NOW, see that we could lose everything that was so hard won in the last 8 years. However, I suspect that until election day, we were rather lolled into complacency. While there was a large core of people who have supported HRC for several decades and were excited that she would soon win the Presidency, there were many who were voting for her to support the Democratic agenda continuing. This is not to knock HRC, it is true in ANY election.

A much younger friend of mine complained that we always have a harder time because so many Republicans are essentially one issue voters, while we complain about ANY nominee as not being for 100% of what we want. For instance, people perceiving themselves as religious, voting for the degenerate Trump to "save babies" - in their words.

I also think that it always is hard to win a third term for any party. The other side can usually get the votes of people who are unhappy or frustrated. Here, Trump dishonestly used the trade deal issue. It has always been the Republicans who had the most unified support for the deals - even if Bill Clinton signed the NAFTA agreement, negotiated by GHWB. This may have been the second most powerful issue for Trump. As a bonus, he was able to label HRC as dishonest in her opposition to TPP - using her statements while SoS before it was completely negotiated. (From my point of view, her opposition was political. She shifted when Bernie Sanders, who consistently ideologically is genuinely against the trade deals, was gaining support.) In essence, this was a "twofer" for Trump - place HRC on the wrong side of an issue for the Reagan Democrats - AND reinforce her negative as dishonest and untrustworthy - while knowing that the big business Republicans will not believe they can not control him. (On the latter, his cabinet choices show they were not wrong.)

For me, I HATED when both Sanders and HRC trashed TPP, which may be the most progressive trade deal yet written. I do think that Donald Trump will renegotiate it -- taking out the hard fought for (by the US) environmental and workers rights provisions -- and it likely will pass with mostly Republican votes. So, the Reagan Democrats will get a deal that actually IS worse for them.

Economists have written about how the actual cause of lose of jobs in the rust belt were caused by technology (automation) and globalization - and was already happening before any trade deal was written. Even Jeremy Saks, who advised Bernie Sanders, actually supports trade deals as expanding the pie - arguing that you need to insure that some of the gains of the "winners"be taxed to support the "losers". In 1993, before NAFTA, you could already see in economic data that the yuppies (as the elites were labeled) were making more than their parents even dreamed of, while through the 1970s and 1980s, at least two thirds of the population found themselves slipping behind - even as they worked longer hours and most families found they needed both parents working, even as child care ate a considerable part of additional income.

I grew up in Northern Indiana - in the suburbs surrounding the steel mill towns. In my high school in a lower middle class town, about half of us went to college and half didn't. The state had a great program (the Hoosier scholarship) that paid some or all of the tuition at a state college - including the well regarded Purdue or Indiana University. This meant that if a student were reasonably smart (at least B average and SATs totalling 1000) , who wanted to go to college, could.

However, there were immediate rewards for those who did not go to college. The boys got jobs in the steel mills that were well paying. The girls either took a secretarial course for a year or immediately applied for clerical jobs usually in Chicago. I was in the wedding of a friend who took that path. I was a junior in college, while she was a well dressed, sophisticated secretary at a Chicago company. She was a grown up, while I was a late 60s college kid. One of my brother's best friends went straight to the mills and even a few years after my brother graduated Purdue in mechanical engineering, the friend was STILL out earning him. I went to a 20 year reunion - the two halfs were already two different worlds. For one, most of us had young kids, while they had teenagers.

Now, most of the steel mills are gone, taking those jobs with them. The idea that you could work in a steel mill and live even a lower middle class life is not realistic now. Most of the secretarial jobs that people like my friend took before marrying well enough to quit until that did not work out, are gone - many of those jobs lost to AUDIX which answers phones and "takes messages" and computers that led to very few people being needed to type letters or memos. These people are rust belt voters and Lake County has always been a Democratic stronghold. HRC did win the county, which also contains a large black population in Gary, East Chicago and Hammond, but by significantly less than Obama.

These jobs have been disappearing for decades. This means that many of my age cohort who stayed in the region, did not - as they might have expected when they took jobs straight out of school and worked hard to do them well - recently retire after working for their company for decades, with union negotiated defined benefit pensions to augment their social security. That was the experience of their fathers, so this was not something that was an unreasonable expectation back in 1968 when they left high school. Many likely had to look for and take jobs paying less in the past decades. For them, the giddiness of the late 1960s when they expected to do financially better than their parents hit reality years ago, but it probably does make them vulnerable to people who can demagogue and create a scapegoat for an economy that dashed their hopes. You can imagine how susceptible they would be to a slogan "make America great again".

Now consider that their kids, many of whom became adults in the early 1990s, as my kids entered elementary school, could not follow the path of their parents. Those paths were already collapsing.

We need to find the words and actions that let us communicate to these people. In reality, many things that Obama did actually helped them - especially ACA. We have to find a way to get them to see us clearly enough that the Republican wedge issues fall flat. I have no idea how to do this.

[MichMan]

1. I agree

I think that was a very good analysis. As you stated, it isn't very often that one party wins 3 straight terms; I can only remember it happening once in my lifetime (1988)

One other thing that needs to be mentioned was that many people were just sick & tired of having another Clinton or Bush as president. I think that was why Jeb failed so miserably in the primaries even though he was presumed to be the front runner at the beginning.

I spent most of my life in the Detroit suburbs, and what you stated about jobs was spot on to what I saw. I worked low paying jobs in my 20's while attending college at night, and while I did obtain an engineering degree, I have many friends that made very good livings working for the big 3 on the assembly lines making me often wonder if I made the right decision or not. In this area, blue collar jobs seem to be either for the "haves" ( GM, Ford, Chrysler) employees or the "have nots" (everyone else) Due to the high wages made by Big 3 employees, the car companies have outsourced nearly all of the parts production overseas to Mexico & China or to non union suppliers in the US. Much of the unionized supplier plants had to take drastic wage cuts or closed altogether as the auto manufacturers demanded major price decreases in the costs of parts.

[karynnj]

2. thanks for your reply

I was concerned with posting this because everything I knew was from my youth or from reading. I was a math/econ major at IU, who was hired for ability in math, but I have had a life long interest in economics as well.

I agree that there was Bush fatigue and I would guess that enough Republican voters did not want to defend the Bush heritage in all its complexity! I was shocked he did so badly as you would have thought that with 17 people running, the fact that he was clearly the party favorite should have made it hard for anyone else to get enough traction. Yet it was Trump who quickly got his roughly 30% behind him. It was stunning to see Bush get only about 2 % in Iowa and 11% in NH. Given that he expected to be the frontrunner, it had to be a shock that Rubio was stronger as a mainstream candidate and both Trump and Cruz put all the mainstream candidates to shame. In his victory, it is clear that what used to be the Republican party is gone. Note how few nominees are from past administrations.

[Little Star]

3. What used to be the Republican party is gone.........

I've never heard a truer statement.

[Midwestern Democrat]

5. I think part of Bush's problem was how long he had been out of office - and A LOT had changed during

the years he was out of office. Bush had won his last election in 2002 and left office in 2006 - basically, his entire time in elective office had been spent during the height of the "Republican Revolution" period of politics (which lasted from 1994 through 2006). A lot happened while he was away - the very temporary Democratic resurgence, the election of Barack Obama, and the "Tea Party Revolution" (which has defined our politics since 2010). I think Bush looked like a dated candidate who had been absent for too long during a very tumultuous period - he just wasn't "current".

[Jake Stern]

4. Reading this reminded me of some lines from the Billy Joel song "Allentown"

"Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place"

[ucrdem]

6. The problem is that on election eve, Clinton was up by 6, 5, and 4 points in WI, PA, and MI

respectively. In Wisconsin at least she'd never fallen behind Trump. Then poof, on election evening we're told that she lost all three states by under 1%, delivering just enough EC votes to catapult the GOP clown into office. Miraculous? Maybe but what I'd like to know is what became of the early, absentee and provisional ballots that could not possibly have been counted by the evening of Nov. 8.

[karynnj]

7. There were a few articles about the problems pollsters had in getting people to answer

I also saw an article pointing out that HRC DID get the percent in all three states that she had polled at the end, but Trump appeared to get most of the "undecided" vote, which was atypically high. This could be partly as the exit polls showed, Trump got the late deciding voters -- it also might be something that I was afraid of -- that a portion of the Trump voters were embarrassed to say they were going to vote for Trump. (I was afraid of it as I saw some DU posts calling out some pollsters who used automated computers rather than people to do the polls. The anger was partly because they gave Trump better results than he got with polls using people)

With WI, I have read that people in the state were asking for help. In addition, Russ Feingold was begging the DNC for help - which is very unusual given that he refused to take money in 2010. Like Clinton, he was at one point about 10 points ahead. In fact, of the pickup Senate seats, he was often considered the most likely. I suspect that Senator Johnson and the Republican allied PACs came in near the end and buried both of them.

With Michigan, it looks like the internal Clinton polls showed there could be a problem, which led to appearances being added at the last minute. It is possible that Clinton may have been too optimistic about PA - after all it was won easily by Obama twice and Kerry. However, Biden was born in Scranton - and in that area he was a favorite son. Teresa Heinz was loved in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area -- and Andre and Chris Heinz helped throughout the state. Although Clinton had a distant connection to PA, it was not as significant as these.

[ucrdem]

12. I can't argue with your feelings, but the lack of quantification

in your OP and reply above suggests to me that you're simply trying to justify your impressions of the Clintons, which CNN and the rest of the media are all too eager to help you do. However, the numbers suggest that your thoughts on the Nov. 8 election are incorrect. All the WI polls were wrong, and Trump, the candidate despised by his own party, leapt 7.6 points on Nov. 8 to claim a WI lead he'd never previously enjoyed?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/wi/wisconsin_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5976.html

That's very implausible. And you haven't answered my question of what happened to those early and provisional ballots, which in WI are accounted for nowhere in the state's official results, which were wrapped up 3 days after the election, despite pre-election headlines like this:

Latino Early Voters Set Milwaukee Record
Wednesday, November 2, 2016, 3:35pm
http://www.wpr.org/latino-early-voters-set-milwaukee-record

So where are all those early and provisional votes accounted for? Nowhere that I could find on WI's Election Commission site, which oddly enough, notes in a Dec. 22 memo that it might be a good idea to count them now, so they can see if their new photo-ID requirement had its intended effect:

Please remember to update the status of provisional ballots in WisVote. We need to account for the outcome of outstanding provisional ballots and there is a strong interest in attempting to evaluate the impact of the photo ID requirement on the number of provisional ballots and whether they were ultimately counted.

http://elections.wi.gov/node/4832

And how did all WI's precincts manage to wrap up their counts by Nov. 11?

http://elections.wi.gov/sites/default/files/County%20by%20County%20Report%20President%20of%20the%20United%20States%20Recount.pdf

http://wisconsinvote.org/results/president-general

The answer I'm afraid is related to the fact that a Republican state administration illegally sought to restrict early voting and disenfranchise WI voters via ID laws so unconstitutional they were struck down in July by a federal judge:

Judge strikes down Wisconsin voter ID, early voting laws

Madison — Finding that Republican lawmakers had discriminated against minorities, a federal judge Friday struck down parts of Wisconsin's voter ID law, limits on early voting and prohibitions on allowing people to vote early at multiple sites.

With the presidential election less than four months away, GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel said he plans to appeal the sweeping decision by U.S. District Court Judge James Peterson. Peterson also turned back other election laws Republicans have put in place in recent years.

"The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement, which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections, particularly in minority communities," U.S. District Judge James Peterson wrote.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2016/07/30/judge-strikes-down-wisconsin-voter-id-early-voting-laws/87803408/

And if the Walker administration was so eager to prevent early votes from being cast, what makes you think they made any effort to count the ones that were?

[karynnj]

13. I was responding to your post that also contained little substantiation

As to the claims - you can look at at any poll aggregation site and you will see that the % HRC got in each of the three states was better or equal to where she was in the late polls in all three states. The posts on some of the people on the ground seeing trouble in Michigan and Wisconsin were posted all over DU in the last two months.

Note that many of your claims are speculation. There is plenty of evidence that nationwide the Republicans have worked to make it harder to vote. This has affected elections since at least 2000 - and likely before that. This is something we should have addressed as soon as Obama was in. (Congress has committees and can do multiple things at the same time.) As it was, the Supreme Court made it worse.

I wanted Clinton to win even though there are candidates in other years I was more excited about that her. I think that the Comey stuff likely was a big factor. As to the polling, the NATIONAL polls at the very end showed that while she had been in the high single digits ahead when the first letter came out, she was only 2 to 3 points ahead in the last batch of polls. As bad as polling is, nationally this is pretty close to exactly how far ahead she was in the popular vote. Your post was based on all the polls being wrong - which is why I pointed out that the polls in those three states showed a lot of people still undecided.

[ucrdem]

16. My first post quantified, my second post substantiated. You haven't done either. nt

[karynnj]

17. Your real clear politics link actually would substantiate what I said

In Wisconsin, note that Clinton got very close to her average polling number - which was under 50%. Note that the last poll ened on 11/2 - 6 days before the election. This completely misses any impact of the last Comey letter, that while again confirming that she should not be indicted was not a story to have 2 days before the election.

The exit polls showed that people who decided late, went to Trump. Here it also looked like a large portion of the Johnson support in polls shifted - obviously to Trump. In most elections, third party candidates lose support when people actually vote. This even as HRC did get around the percent that she polled.

The other thing to consider is that the Feingold campaign was BEGGING for help. Two things were always true of Feingold. He runs a very grassroots intensive campaign and likely was more aware of the forces out there than the Clinton team AND Feingold asking the DNC for money and help is something he never did in the past. That makes his doing it this year a sign of just how concerned he was.

If you want, you can see the same things in the MI and PA links on real clear politics. (A convenient aggregater of polls - even if it leans right.)

[ucrdem]

19. So Trump gained 7.6 points and Feingold lost in Walker's state because Hillary?

How about those early and provisional votes and that vigorously obstructed recount? In view of what we know including the information I posted your thoughts strike me as unsubstantiated partisan spin no matter what the press might preach.

[karynnj]

20. I did not say Feingold lost because of HRC -- the point was that there was a wave against

the Democrats - all of them. As to partisan, I am partisan - a liberal Democrat, whose first vote was for McGovern, who I canvassed for.

I am absolutely not denying that there was a nationwide effort to making voting more difficult -- ie voter suppression. I think that a wholesale effort to clean up, modernize and fix how we vote needs to happen. It is embarrassing that we are worse than other developed countries.

The NATIONAL polls show that Trump gained as the election neared. The state polls ended while things were still moving. From your same site, the national polls, which had HRC 5 to 6 points ahead when the state polling ended -- shifted to 2 or 3 points -- which is where the popular vote ended. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html

[ucrdem]

21. Nationally Clinton won by 2+ points. So there goes that meme. nt

[karynnj]

22. You completely missed the point.

To simplify:

The NATIONAL polls continued up to the elections. They ended up with HRC 2 to 3 points ahead -- exactly where she ended up! She ad been 5 to 6 points ahead AT THE POINT WI POLLS ENDED. This was a pretty significant shift, occurring in most polls - this is likely the basis of Clinton blaming Comey.

The WI showed her significantly ahead when the polls ended.

My point, nationally, there was a slide in HRC's numbers in the week before the election. We do not know what the numbers would have been in WI had they polled that last week. That and the fact that the late decider's from exit polls went rather heavily for Trump is why I do not think that this is de facto proof that there was cheating.

[ucrdem]

23. I get your point. It seems you're blaming the results of GOP cheating on the Clintons.

You're saying that Trump's unexplained 7.6% leap in WI can be accounted for by the Clintons' flaws and scandals. I'm saying that's ridiculous and that it's manifestly clear that Hillary won both the primary and the general elections, and that had the votes been counted honestly in WI, PA and MI, she would have won in the EC.

[karynnj]

24. Where do get that I am blaming the Clintons at all?

Hillary Clinton blamed the Comey letter.

[ucrdem]

25. I read your OP.

[brush]

31. You're spot on. The election was absolutely stolen.

All these long analyses steer clear of even mentioning the elephant in the room (make America white . . . er, ah . . . great again) while they go on and on about how and why white working class voters abandoned the Democratic Party and voted for trump — exactly 80,000 of them in 3 states, just enough to swing the EC votes to trump.

Come on people, open your eyes and stop pinching your nose. Something smells.

It's suspicious as hell. Votes were manipulated, and in Detroit and Flint, Michigan, mostly likely in other places too, 75,000 votes weren't even counted. And you know votes from those two cities with large AA populations were for Clinton, the first major party female nominee (this issue is the twin elephant in the room — racism/misogyny).

The election results stink like crazy.

How repugs cheat and how to stop them should be the subject of these long analyses, not a speculative supposition of a huge trend of WWC voters to the repugs when it was really an obviously calculated and precise flipping of 80k votes out of millions to give trump EC votes needed to "win".

[JI7]

8. the thing is they Voted for him in the Primary. They did have a choice and they chose him among

other republicans.

[think]

9. The over whelming majority of Democrats in the House were against the TPP. The unions

and environmental groups were against the TPP.

The majority of House Republicans supported the TPP.

[karynnj]

10. Exactly

This is why HRC pretty much had to shift her position to against it in the primary. However this put her in the position where Trump quoted her comments as SoS and a comment made in a GS speech as leaked by Wikileaks.

My point is that this was an issue used against her '- even though I will be shocked if a new deal is not quickly done by Trump and passed with mostly Republican votes.

[Tatiana]

11. Stunningly brilliant analysis.

I agree with nearly all of it. I'll just highlight what stands out to me:

A) Abortion - The Rust Belt is not that far from the Bible Belt. A significant portion of these voters regularly attend church and consider themselves pro-life/anti-abortion. I think it has been established that Hillary really didn't have good outreach to the evangelical and faith-based communities -- certainly not in the way that Obama did. What these people heard was a very vigorous defense of abortion rights from Hillary. For those on the fence, this may have clinched it.

B) Normalizing a Corrupt Individual - YES! Fantastic point, that I haven't seen anyone else point out. We ALL do this. I voted for Rod Blagojevich... TWICE. The second time, I pretty much knew the deal. BUT, even though I thought Topinka (the Republican opponent) was probably a better person ethically, I just couldn't vote to concede executive power of my state (Illinois) to the Republicans. I reasoned the legislature would provide a "check" on Blago's excesses. Perhaps those that voted for Trump are counting on the McCains and Grahams and even Cruzes and Rubios to "check" Trump. However, what they will find is that a loose canon is a loose canon that never cedes power and can only be forced out at great cost.

c) Economic Decline - Much has been made of the white working class. However, Trump, the RACIST, outperformed Romney in 2012 with Black, Asian, and Latino voters. So, yes, whites voted for Trump, but that doesn't tell the whole story. I'm surrounded by Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Kentucky. I see a lot more minorities (specifically Latino and Asian) whenever I visit, especially in Missouri, Iowa, and Indiana. This is anecdotal, but those people have also suffered during the recovery. Many small businesses I patronized have closed up shop (restaurants, bakeries, small construction and craftsman work), with no replacement. On my last trip to Detroit, though it is on an upswing, my heart still ached because it is nothing like that place I used to visit with my dad in the 80s. There are parts of it that look just empty and devastated. Historical and architecturally significant structures have been left to rot and ruin. To these people, it sounds ridiculous to say the economy has recovered and the unemployment rate is low. They've lost jobs, businesses, homes, vehicles, and educational opportunity. To these people, the retort by some Democrats that "America is already great!" is enraging. It's not great for a lot of people in the Rust Belt. The message shouldn't have been "America is already great!" We should have been acknowledging that America isn't that great for many, but we will improve the lives of those who have yet to experience relief from the Great Recession.

My only minor quibble is with the difficulty of one party winning a third term. Ordinarily that would carry some weight. But given the Republican opponent, this election was totally winnable. It should have been won. Trump's campaign staff had their finger on the pulse of the people and the Clinton campaign showed that they were out of touch. Any number of decisions by the campaign could have led to a win (and possible assistance to down-ballot candidates) including adding Sanders to the ticket. I don't believe in blaming the voters. It is the job of the candidate to educate and persuade the voter. "Visit my website" doesn't cut it. You need to explain to voters why they should vote for YOU. And... you need to say it in a soundbite.

[LeftInTX]

15. On abortion:

In the 3rd debate, Trump got Hillary on late-term abortion. Hillary should have shot back about Trump's previous support of it. She should have simply accuse him of lying about his current position.

[karynnj]

18. I felt sorry for her on that question

She really should have pointed out that NO doctor would perform an abortion when the baby is viable -- and the gestational age for that has shifted with medical technology. A friend, who has a son whose wife recently had a baby born prematurely at 25 weeks, told us that 23 in now the absolute point where they could survive. I had always heard 26 weeks. The baby, fortunately, is doing very very well.

Hillary had made the point that late term abortion was because a woman's health was in trouble or that there was something terribly wrong. However, her counter to Trump's outrageous accusation that this meant she was for aborting full term babies should have been a n angry correction noting that his contention - re stated as aborting babies 3 to 4 days before birth was despicable, not her position and something NO doctor would agree to do. This should have been explicitly and angrily called out as a RW lie.

[geek tragedy]

14. the nativist/nationalist/xenophobic fervor festers where people feel as if

they have no say in the future of their own communities, since that fate is determined not by local events, or statewide actions, or even national decisions, but by global events and forces over which they have literally zero say.

That breeds despair and hopelessness, which in turn lead to reckless and angry behavior.

[no_hypocrisy]

26. As far as abortion goes, Trump had them at his over-the-top remark to Chris Matthews

that women (patients) would have to be punished for having an abortion.

Not just the doctor, but the mother who murdered her baby in utero. To jail. A felon. A convict. Maybe even capital punishment for killing her baby, who knows?

That's how you get votes without really trying in communities of conservative Christians and fundamentalists.

After that remark, it really didn't matter what Trump said or didn't say.

He had them at "hello".

[Eliot Rosewater]

27. It is not that complicated

He "won" by preventing over 100,000 minority voters from voting in those 3 states alone and allowing the Russians to hack the DNC and likely the voting machines.

[The_Casual_Observer]

28. I listened to the various interviews with those voters

By in large they were simple minded folks that had been heavily influenced by fox news and so on. They were misinformed about the issues and biased against Hillary for all the usual reasons.

[ucrdem]

29. Keep in mind that media presentations are mediated.

In other words don't believe the horseshit you see on CNN, or much of it. Basically we had an electorate that looked a lot like 1992, minus Perot, meaning Hillary had to do better than Bill to take it. She did, but the GOP did even better at cheating.

[Joe941]

30. This is exactly why Bernie should have been the nominee.