Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Last week, I took a Lyft out to meet my family at a restaurant, and got to talking about the election with the driver, who was African American. He was talking about voting Stein or Johnson because Hillary just didn't ring his bell. He thought she was a lousy speaker, and wanted someone who could speak like Obama and motivate people. So I went trying to find some issues to ring his bell, on top of the Trump is scary stuff, which he agreed with but wasn't going to change his mind.
I talked a bit about women's issues and went back to the Beijing speech and told him he should look at it because it was a great speech on Women's issues.
And he said, and this is the part that made me dejected, that he really just couldn't care about women's issues, it wasn't something he could relate to. I guess I really shouldn't expect a higher moral standard and more empathy from African American men than White men, but I do.
Fucking depressing conversation.
Who knows, maybe Hillary calling out Trump's deplorables moved him a little.
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I don't see how Trump overcomes the demographics. He needs to get something like 85% of white male votes to pull this off, and that's just not happening. The tightening we're seeing right now is embellished because the networks want a close race.
That said, Hillary's Achilles Heel is her lack of a compelling message. The country wants radical change, and she's slow-and-steady. I know people want to find more complex reasons for her failure to open up a massive and insurmountable lead, but the explanation is just that simple and boring. She's more of the same, and a lot of people think that's simply intolerable.
Don't try figuring it out. I've asked numerous ardent GOP friends, "Why are you so incensed by a moderate? The people on the right ought to be pleased with her. She's closer to a classic Republican than the current Republican, who's a fucking populist! It's the Left who have a true complaint here." They offer in reply some claptrap about her dishonesty, and then get to the real reason they're so against her - "We can't have another four years of Obama. The country won't survive it. Trump is nuts, but he'll blow things up, and undo much of what Obama's done."
Nevermind that Obama really hasn't done all that much. Nevermind that Trump isn't going to change anything in a manner that these people desire (well, except for giving the Archie Bunker voters "law 'n order").
The economic problems in this country being largely terminal, I suspect for a lot of people, this vote is a referendum on the timing of what we all know is coming. We're heading into a period of upheaval and social unrest. Do you vote to hold it together for a little while longer - keep the fabric from coming apart entirely so that we have a long series of soft landings and slowly turn into a sort of gilded Brazil? Or do we put a madman in the office and increase the likelihood of an accelerated, convulsive period of governmental and societal disruption and "creative destruction"?
Isn't that kind of always the question... A variant of the old economic debate of whether to go Von Mises or Keynes?
I'd vote for a creative, smart candidate who'd "blow it all up," and get on with a short, nasty form of the intense pain we all know is coming. But Trump is a fool, and I fear he'd only create a police state.
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