Reactions to the Trump Victory: A+
I am going to give scores to people based on how well they dealt with the shattering of their worldviews. Will Rahn of CBS News gets an A+. An excerpt:
So much for that. The audience for our glib analysis and contempt for much of the electorate, it turned out, was rather limited. This was particularly true when it came to voters, the ones who turned out by the millions to deliver not only a rebuke to the political system but also the people who cover it. Trump knew what he was doing when he invited his crowds to jeer and hiss the reporters covering him. They hate us, and have for some time.
And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.
It’s a profound failure of empathy in the service of endless posturing. There’s been some sympathy from the press, sure: the dispatches from “heroin country” that read like reports from colonial administrators checking in on the natives. But much of that starts from the assumption that Trump voters are backward, and that it’s our duty to catalogue and ultimately reverse that backwardness. What can we do to get these people to stop worshiping their false god and accept our gospel?
We diagnose them as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession. Journalists, at our worst, see ourselves as a priestly caste. We believe we not only have access to the indisputable facts, but also a greater truth, a system of beliefs divined from an advanced understanding of justice.
You’d think that Trump’s victory – the one we all discounted too far in advance – would lead to a certain newfound humility in the political press. But of course that’s not how it works. To us, speaking broadly, our diagnosis was still basically correct. The demons were just stronger than we realized.
This is all a “whitelash,” you see. Trump voters are racist and sexist, so there must be more racists and sexists than we realized. Tuesday night’s outcome was not alogic-driven rejection of a deeply flawed candidate named Clinton; no, it was a primal scream against fairness, equality, and progress. Let the new tantrums commence!
If I don’t get an A+ I’m rioting and seceding from this blog.
Well judging from her speech I rate Clinton a B-. Which is a whole hell of a lot better than most democrats. Or some of the regulars here!
Great article.
Absolutely!
Anyone who has a long drive and might be interested in Australian politics and the Trump reaction. It’s mixed in with local topics, Americans probably want to just skip over some parts.
http://media.whooshkaa.com/podcasts/937/episodes/1bf81e-2135-1011-06-pml-thur-seg-1-hold.mp3
I think Paul Murphy and his crew pretty much get it.
Rundown of exit-poll numbers taken from the NYT comparing the 2012 Romney support against the 2016 Trump support.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhUXSX3ZnpE
Turns out the supposedly “racist” white vote only shifted by 1% towards Trump (as compared with Romney) while all sorts of minority votes shifted in favour of Trump by much larger percentages. Also, the poorest people shifted by the largest amount towards Trump (presumably they think they will get jobs).
In other words the whole “White Supremacist” narrative is a load of garbage. What really happened is that the people who believed in 2008 that Obama would deliver his “Hope & Change” are now badly disillusioned and switched sides out of desperation. Trump didn’t win so much as President Obama + Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed and Trump stepped into the space left by that failure. Or to put that another way, the economy is bad, people are hurting and after 8 years of Democrats a lot of people want something different.
The question now for Trump is whether he can deliver for those people.
The people who shifted towards Hillary were the reasonably well to do college graduates, upper middle class, not hurting from globalization, etc. Economics drove the entire election, all the rest of that stuff was a distraction.
The commenatry seemed absurd to me, but I am watching from outside. He says Clinton’s main campaign issue was that she was a woman. I saw all three debates and she did not mention this once. I think there is some projection here on the part of the presenter.
Like this for example?
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clintons-history-talking-glass-ceilings/story?id=43255845
Or how about Hillary openly proud of playing the “gender card”, does it get more in your face than that?
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/hillary-clinton-campaign-2016-gender-card-mitch-mcconnell-120400
It was a factor, just not one of the main ones. Beware of confirmation bias.
Yes, Rahn’s essay gets an A+, but where was he a couple of weeks ago?
Bit over the top don’t you think? The same media gave Trump lot’s of attention. Ignored almost all of his lies and scandals and spent most of the time pursuing Hillary’s emails. At least that’s my impression from following this election as a non-American. The contempt the media has for the electorate is that it doesn’t do its job. They don’t bring news, they bring entertainment and seem to be terrified of alienating viewers by rightly calling them stupid and racist for supporting someone like Donald Trump given his past history. The media doesn’t treat its viewers as adults but as children.
“They don’t bring news, they bring entertainment and seem to be terrified of alienating viewers by rightly calling them stupid and racist for supporting someone like Donald Trump given his past history.”
Do you live in the US? I’m not sure how you could possibly get that impression if you live here. I’ve never seen a more concentrated attack on a candidate in my life. And holy smokes were they not afraid to call his supporters stupid and racist. That’s all they did for the past two years.
Seriously, google “Trump supporters are dumb and racist”. Take a look at the endless supply of articles and videos you find. The CBS writer isn’t a bit over the top, he’s spot on. It’s the same message people that don’t even like Trump, like Murphy, have been saying all along.
Yes. George Wallace got a more favorable press than Trump did.
I did exactly and and googled the term. The first page was full of you tube videos and blogs I had never heard of. The second page had Huff Post and finally a mainstream media article from the Guardian – not USA. It argued against the racist thing and said Trump was mostly about trade.
There are millions of articles, tweets, posts out there. It s impossible to establish the truth of any proposition by finding articles or posts that support your case, You could do that for almost anything. I don’t know the extent to which Trump supporters were called dumb and racist in the mainstream media, but that search failed to convince me that it was very much at all.
Yeah, I’m convinced you’re a blind party loyalist, so I have no interest in trying to convince you.
So let me get this straight. You didn’t pay attention during the campaign. You did a perfunctory google. That satisfies you, case closed. Dan is right about you.
Dan: “Seriously, google “Trump supporters are dumb and racist”. Take a look at the endless supply of articles and videos you find.”
Harold (replying to Dan): “I did exactly and and googled the term. The first page was full of you tube videos and blogs I had never heard of.”
Craw “So let me get this straight. You didn’t pay attention during the campaign. You did a perfunctory google. That satisfies you, case closed. Dan is right about you.”
Please Craw, look back on the conversation
I did Harold. I found this. ” I don’t know the extent to which Trump supporters were called dumb and racist in the mainstream media, but that search failed to convince me that it was very much at all.”
So my summary sounds accurate to me: you didn’t pay attention when it was happening, and did a perfunctory google. Then I found this from Dan. ” I’m convinced you’re a blind party loyalist”. So I still think he’s right about you.
You asked me to double check, I did.
Craw, everyone was asked by Dan to do a perfunctory google search, which he assured us would convince us that Trump was called dumb and racist by the media to a large extent. As I expected from a perfunctory google search it no such thing, but I could not be sure of that unless I had actually done the search. Since it only took a few minutes I thought it worth a go. For you to use this as evince that I did not pay attention then used the google search as the basis for my evidence is absurd, but increasingly I am coming to expect that when Trump is mentioned.
For the record, my response about the google search is confined to the fact that I did not find the search suggested by Dan to be good evidence for the proposal put forward by Dan. Had Dan not suggested the search in the first place I would not have gone about it that way.
Harold
My conclusion that you didn’t pay attention at the time is because because you didn’t notice what was obvious. I guess for example you never heard of the basket of deplorables speech for a start, and much, much more.
As for perfunctory. You got back millions of rows, and decided that meant nothing, and didn’t bother to narrow to media sites. You sound like a guy easy to convince of anything that favors Democrats
I am not in the USA so it is impossible for me to know how it played over there. Dan’s search offered to enlighten me, but only offered a list of one sided views from bloggers, and the mainstream media that was represented did not support what he said.
I am viewing this from the outside. I have expressed no particular loyalty for Hillary Clinton and have no record at all of supporting the Democratic Party, so blind party loyalist is a bit off the mark.
It apparantly seems obvious to Dan that the media was one sided and against Trump. That may be the case. I don’t know. And I still don’t know after the google search he suggested.
What is revealing is that when I say the search failed to convince me of Dan’s premise I am accused of being a blind party loyalist. This is revealing because it shows that you and Dan can only think that the reason someone is unconvinced by your arguments is because they are a blind party loyalist
Harold, I based my view of you on all the different conversations we have had. I don’t think you’re a bad guy, but the evidence, IMO, supports you being a team blue guy.
Harold, well from what you just admitted, “paid no attention” might have been a bit unfair but was exactly right as far as the substance goes. You have no data, just an firm opinion. Which is exactly what Dan said.
Craw, you might have a point if I had said anything about the media in the USA, but all I said was that Dan’s suggested search failed to convince me. If I google “clinton emails” I get 94 million hits, many on the first page from mainstream media. I cannot possibly tell form these searches if the media was biased.
YAWN. Another non-American giving an ignorant opinion. As Dan says, Google will work well for you.
Here is compilation of the MSM being super gentle with Trump. It’s almost like they were vying for cabinet positions.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MbFEU_Ivqqw
I disagree. The media basically ignored the emails, wikileaks and anything else and focused on creating a false narrative on Trump as being a racist, sexist, rapist. Stephan Molenux did a great series of videos documenting the media this election cycle that shows this.
http://www.untruthaboutdonaldtrump.com/
There are three videos with sources below them.
Bob, 2 more A+’s
this is becoming a classic (Johnathan Pie, leftist British journalist): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs
And here’s John Pilger (socialist British RT reporter): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Ho8OrBzig
There was a similar article on Vox back in April http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism
I think similar themes have been pointed out also by Chris Arnade (there’s a few different pieces out there plus tweets, but here’s one example: https://medium.com/@Chris_arnade/divided-by-meaning-1ab510759ee7#.hom4yddsg
Scott Alexander (as usual) also had some great comments a while ago here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-johnson-or-stein/
I particularly liked this quote:
“When I talk to Trump supporters, it’s not usually about doubting climate change, or thinking Trump will take the conservative movement in the right direction, or even immigration. It’s about the feeling that a group of arrogant, intolerant, sanctimonious elites have seized control of a lot of national culture and are using it mostly to spread falsehood and belittle anybody different than them. And Trump is both uniquely separate from these elites and uniquely repugnant to them – which makes him look pretty good to everyone else.”
I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised how much this view has taken hold
“the contempt the media has for the electorate is that it doesn’t do its job”. Perfect!
Radical leftists are attacking the host of the daily show for calling for “peaceful” protests.
Haha, silly normal liberals. Don’t you know Marx derided the idealists for not willing to envelope themselves in revolutionary PRAXIS?
I don’t know why they are mad. Clearly the problem is they didn’t vote hard enough. Vote harder next time.
https://media.giphy.com/media/3o6Ztc2IVtYTH4lN16/giphy.gif
My basic view of the election.