We are all Slave now.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

I asked how Trump "rationally" advances the "losers'" interests.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You have to focus on their perception. These people have a mixed bag of goals. Some are xenophobes, some racists, some pining for a nation they think existed in the 50s. And some just want opportunity, they "want their jobs back" (South Park inflection).

It's their perception of what Trump would bring that matters, not what he actually provided.

Dude. You -- *you* -- just said they were rational in thinking Trump advances their interests. I asked how, and immediately you walk away from saying they're rational. If it's their perception, not what he actually does, then we are just talking about psychology, not about material conditions.

I think a solid slice of Trump voters are indeed simply and solely economic voters. They think the President can bring those jobs back. And many others have, as Krugman notes in the excellent article you cited in another post, allowed anger about the economy to transform into anger at "others." This is a common psychological behavior. People need to personalize, to find a human target to blame. It allows for easier cathartic release.

Aaaannnd here's the same trick again. At the start of the paragraph, Trump voters are "solely economic," but by the end of the paragraph they are showing the common psychological behavior of scapegoating. Make. Up. Your. Mind.

I think the demographics are tricky. I remain confident the majority of Trump voters are lumped around that median, which is not affluent.

Rather than arguing more about how you are wrong about who is affluent, fun as that is, the point you were making was about inequality, not affluence. If (*if*) Trump voters are lumped around the median, then they are not the people in the country who, in objective terms, have an acute concern with inequality.

I also don't think they rate themselves versus those below (except in terms of crying about not receiving transfers). "Affluent" is my word, and perhaps I should not have chosen it. Perhaps the better descriptive is, "stuck in the middle," and a shrinking middle at that.

"Stuck" is a good word. Trump's voters, by and large, are in parts of the country whose economic prospects are not great. It's a word that gets at expectations rather than current state.

It's not that "not everyone has done well." It's that roughly half the nation has not done well. Fifty two percent of people own stocks. Forty eight percent did not enjoy the run-up since 2008. That's a lot of folks who missed the party.

The people who have most missed the party DO NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP. Trump voters have done better than non-Trump voters. If you are trying to explain why Trump voters vote for Trump you need an explanation that also explains why other voters don't vote for Trump. Lots of folks have missed the party, but lots of those folks didn't vote for Trump.

But putting that aside, you need to reckon with this consideration: That the seriously poor vote Democrat does not mean the better off Trump voter is doing well. I don't think he is. As I think I said to Adder before, the Trump voter, I suspect, is king of the slag heap, highest paid in a hollowing middle class.

OK

That's a really excellent question. My reason for that conclusion comes from actually meeting with lots of poor Trump voters. I've run into lots of Trump voters in the past few years. Some were friends who ran funds, some were small businessmen, and some were middle class, or even quite poor. (I'd like to think I hit a broad group of them.) The poor ones were fascinating. They always had that same gripe, "the banks got a bailout, the rich get richer, and I got shit." That was the same thing I heard after the 2008 crisis.

That is a real gripe, one Obama was not sufficiently attuned to.

Unfairness sticks in people's psyches.... I suspect Trump voters viewed Hillary as in the bag for the banks and corporations and so voted against her. Democratic voters are a bit less naive. They know the new boss is the old boss and I think decided, "Whoever's in charge isn;t going to do much for me, but I think I'll take the new boss who doesn't want to deport me, and will give me cheaper health care!"

I just find it hard to believe that many people voted for Trump because they thought he would be tougher on banks and corporations. Among other things, if that was what was driving them, they don't seem to have abandoned him since then as he has shown his true colors.

Perhaps I hang with strange folks, but my quite affluent friends voted D last time around. The people I know who have a billion supported Trump, but they worked in fossil fuels. (And they donated to both sides, as those sorts do.)

My affluent friends vote D too. But it's very clear that income and voting R are directly correlated.

[quote] I think that's breaking down a bit. There's a good economic reason to vote D. They tend to preside over better markets. Rs give you the tax decrease, which is nice, but you always thing, "What'll this cost me later?" Or, "What long term gain am I wrecking for a few bucks now?"

Again, it's not about the actual. It's about the perceived. We're trying to get into the mind of the voter.

OK. So let's just stop talking about "inequality," and talk about what is in the mind of voters.

An R populist who desires to deport you has blown the cost/benefit for a minority voter so badly that no economic promise can justify voting for him.

True, but a dodge. If you can vote, you really don't need to worry about deportation.

Anyway, this question is moot, because we're now both clear that you are talking about psychology, not raw economic conditions. Voters in similar economic conditions vote differently because of their own ethnic perspective.

I ... think there's a perverse deification of wealth at work here. No matter how hopeless their futures might be, a lot of R voters cling to the belief that they can hit it big. There's something laudable about that delusion. People should never give up and desire that their government alone make their lives better. But it's still quite perverse because, even though they know the guy down the ladder isn't harming them, and the guy up the ladder is actually the one blocking their ascension, they choose to step on the guy below. Shit rolls downhill, right?

For Trump voters, that's how they want it. A majority of the country voted for something else.

I don't know how you concluded I didn't think that.

Because you said left-wing populism is a future threat, and you're not pretending the Democratic Party is populist. Because, uh, it isn't. It's a big tent, and some of the people in it are populists, but right now the populism in the US is right-wing. You don't seriously dispute that, do you?

Really? Did you listen to Bernie? You're aware he rose by beating the crap out of Hillary's traditional party platform, not Trump, right? I mean... srsly?

And then she beat him.

There has been a left-center divide among Democrats for a long, long time, and the center usually holds.

It doesn't explain all of it, but it does explain a lot of it. I remain absolutely convinced that if we had a sudden boom for some unknown reason, and the Trump voters suddenly found themselves accruing all sorts of gains, and saw a bright future for themselves, populism would vanish. Most men can be bought. They have little in terms of principle, and are most concerned with comfort.

If you're right handed and you flip a coin, the fact that you flipped it with your right hand doesn't explain that it comes up heads half the time. The majority of people who voted in 2016 lived in the same economy with the Trump voters and voted for something else.

Apportion blame across all responsible parties to the percentage of liability they own. For instance, the 2008 crisis was 25% banks' fault, 25% borrowers' fault, 25% the fed's fault, and 25% the govt's fault (Bush used a housing bubble to replace the hole left after the tech bubble burst).

Yes. That is what I am saying.

You don't pick one bad actor of many and attack that actor as though the whole thing was its fault. That's what I see when people "take sides."

Those people suck. I hate them too. They should be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

They choose to fixate on one group and give others a pass by omission. This creates a false story about what happened.

I try to read books that don't do this.

BTW, am reading Lord Jim right now, and something about Conrad reminded me of you.