Comments

1
What good would my sympathy do them anyhow?

Its obvious as a matter of practical politics that if the cost of pursuing these voters is the betrayal or rejection of the urban constituencies that form the core of the Democratic Party, then that cost is too high. People want to talk as if these are votes the Democrats simply left on the table out of neglect but that's wrong - the would have been a price to pay for picking them up.

And further, those White Rural Voters who pulled the lever for Trump couldn't have pulled off the win without all those well educated, white collar, "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" who also pulled the lever for Trump in the suburbs of Milwaukee and Philadelphia. These are voters who should have known better.
2
As usual, good writing, Charles. I wonder, though, was the picture taken in "Rural America" or on Capitol Hill, or Ballard, or Queen Anne, or,,,,somewhere else in the um, er, 66% white (Seattle) "Urban ar·chi·pel·a·go" thing a ma jiggy?
3
Ah, remember the good old days when tabloid rags like The National Enquirer and its ilk merely splattered good-natured fake news headlines like "Clintons Adopt Alien Orphan!"? Now, they're trying to outdo Breitbart - so sad.
4
Let's let the "shot self in foot" narrative materialize before it happens.

I could probably cut and paste a million blog posts and comments from 2008, and simply replace the name "Obama" with "Trump" and no one would be the wiser.

Although I share the concern and fear of most Americans in regards to Trump's election, the response of the left media (including The Stranger) has been pretty pathetic - reenacting almost every type of deplorable behavior we demonized the right over for the last 20 years, and then trying to say "well, NOW it's different". C'mon now.
5
@3 maybe a rag, but powerful, just ask John Edwards,,,,
7
@5:

Meh, that sort of falls into the "even a broken clock is right twice a day" basket.

@6:

I'm guessing white racists have always been part of their core demographic, but yeah, they just never thought to pander to that particular aspect of their personalities before now.
8
Hey, wanna win the next Presidential election? Yeah, me too.

The swing states weren't lost because tons and tons of rural white racists emerged from the woodwork. They were lost because turnout was flat or down from the Democrats demographics.

All this bellyaching about rural whites is a distraction. There are votes sitting out their in the Rust Belt (even from rural whites) who are sick and tired of centrist, ineffectual Democrats. In the urban cores of the mid-West the Democratic Party has had corruption problems and in the rural areas it hasn't made an appreciable difference in people's lives (and when it does it does a terrible job messaging it.) And please don't mention Obamacare, because being forced to pay a monthly insurance bill for a plan you can't afford to actually use sucks.
9
Well, there is the matter of actually winning elections, which is something we want to do, right? So maybe we should blame working class whites and still figure out a way to convince them to vote for our candidates in the future? Just a thought. In the end of the day, your blame game isn't going to net us electoral victories.
10
My impression of a lot of liberals and progressives is the result of the election was so unthinkable to them that they simply have not been able to concentrate on the ground game or figure out how to go forward. The slog writers are driving themselves to distraction over who cost the Democrats the election. We need to be ready to oppose Trump and win future elections.
11
"What the mind of most rural white Americans looks like."

It is this kind of knee-jerk racist, hateful and factually wrong statement that is largely responsible for the ascendency of Trump. The perception that those on the left (and by extension Clinton voters) are just as hateful and racist as those on the right is a big reason many voted for Trump.

Shame on you, Charles.
12
Even most dipshits know the Inquirer is trash, but I did recently catch Inside Edition for the first time in probably a decade and think, "holy shit, this is America."
13
*thought
14
An awful lot of rural whites voted for Obama in the previous two elections, but they voted for Trump this time.
16
Just found out I'll be getting an $8,000 a year tax cut. Trying to decide between a vacation in Italy with the family or saving for a down payment for a weekend home on the Hood Canal.

Any suggestions?
17
What @8 said.

Democrat voters are, by and large, a bunch of short-sighted, self-centered, apathetic fuckers. The republican base comes out and votes for their shitty candidates every election, rain or shine, no matter how awful said candidate is. Democrats, on the other hand, get their panties in a knot if their candidate doesn't support every.single.fucking.miniscule position they're currently in love with, and then stubbornly refuse to vote in a show of useless, limp-dicked "protest."

It sucks. But hey! The bright side is that maybe Trump will fuck everyone's lives up enough that the democrat base will suddenly wake up and get up off their collective, lazy, self-serving asses and vote some democrats in in the next couple elections. Which would be good. Though it'll all be for naught since, being the same democrat base they are, will abandon their leaders in the same shitty way for the same shitty reasons.

And the small number of republican voters, unchanged for years, will dutifully come out and get their shitty, shitty representatives elected again.

And the cycle will repeat itself endlessly.
18
@16 Take your meds!
19
Yes to #8 and 17. Pissing people off rarely work in selling your cause. White people stuck in urban nirvana are often from somewhere else I've noticed. Some even still stink of the country.

NYT chose Leesburg, VA for one of the photos in the article. Why? Leesburg is in Loudoun County, a DC bedroom community, and it's rich. Median annual household income is >$110,00. So that's weird.

Anyway, if jobs, even crappy service jobs, are what make people happy to vote for the candidates you like Charles, maybe you should suggest local Democratic reps think about bringing pork back to fix those pokey rural roads and bridges, expand internet service to rural area so rural hicks are connected to NYT and you. Doing this will bring jobs. Why not have call centers in the US, in rural areas, instead of overseas speaking with Stephanie with a truly lovely Bollywood accent. People like it when they call to complain about cable service bill or credit card theft if they are speaking to someone on this side of the Pacific. This way those poor, rural whites (hopefully blacks and browns too) get jobs and you can call them up and yell at them with your phone bill problem. Win-win.
20
Yeah, because I bet tabloid rags don't sell at all in any liberal coastal city, and the entire market is rural white rubes. Hmm, "white media outlet." What color is most of the staff in charge of this paper Mudede? What color is most of your audience?

My only question: Is Mudede a gibbering moron like he presents himself in these articles, or is he a genius for fooling Keck into giving him an actual paycheck for producing meaningless garbage?
21
As it so happens, I am one of those rural whites from the rust belt with a shitty job and no appreciable future that you were discussing. I live in western Pennsylvania and know all about regional racism - hell, the town I grew up in is still like a slow-motion klan rally. Thing is, I voted for Hillary, and so did just about everybody else I know. We feel very betrayed by our trump-voting neighbors too, but we also have this feeling that I got very strongly when I read this article, and that is: what about the FBI? What about Russia? Why aren't the people still currently in power investigating this so they can disqualify the results? Why are rich liberals - which, compared to us is most of you - DOING something? Do you really think that we have a shot at doing anything about it when we work minimum wage service jobs? If all of the better set are whiners like you, Charles, then we aren't just fucked - some of us might even deserve that fucking.
22
But all of these articles about whites who have been left behind in the rural areas are trying to make us shift important political resources to an area of American life that is now irredeemable. They are, in short, trying to make us waste our time.


You are 100% correct about this.

As a liberal white voter living in rural/exurban America, I am not about to feel sorry for these people - so much of their vote was nothing to do with job loss and everything to do with giving the finger not just minorities but also to liberals and technocrats - experts - out of the kind of class resentment they're so fond of blaming us for. Honestly, Trump's policies will only hasten the demise of these voters and their regions, weakening their power (in the house and EC at least), so "fine by me". Enjoy your heaping pile of dung.
23
@22. Right so this is how you get revenge? Talk about class resentment. You are applying it. You are happy to see men, women and children die early, live in poverty and in poor health. That's your fix is it? That's living up to some kind of urban, progressive greatness.

You need to get outside your bubble. Take a drive through Toppenish, down toward the Tri-state, you'll find a broad mix of people. Latinos, American Indians, and whites. If you visit rural south, you'll find more blacks and Latinos. It might be harder to find people to suit your ideals because it's the country. You'll find more sagebrush in eastern Washington than people so you might have to work harder, but they are there. Decent and genuinely kind people. People who farm, pick our crops - even the organic ones, raise livestocks, grow grapes and make our wine. That laptop or smartphone you are tapping away is powered by electricity generated by many different types of power plants, built and maintained by people living in rural areas.

You know why I rebut these arguments. Not because they are nasty and dumb. You are just a mirror image of those fascists you love to hate. Your methods kill and destroy people just so you can win.

24
@8, 17 - This is how Trump won the election with thin, tiny margins.

And this is the guy that did it. (After hiring Cambridge Analytica, that is.)
25
@21 - "Why are[n't] rich liberals - which, compared to us is most of you - DOING something?"

They are doing something. I've seen more organizing and self-educating going on in the past 5 weeks amongst generally apolitical types than I've seen in activist communities I've been a part of in the past.

The thing is, effective action is 95% organizing, and 5% visible action. So it takes awhile to see the effects. Also, successful non-violent campaigns take about 3 years to succeed.

Also also, we're up against an absolutely enormous machine. The US is the empire. It doesn't look or feel like the empire when you work a shitty 9-7 job, but the entire rest of the world always knows who the US president is, always. And who's running for president-- while most of us can't name any other world leaders. This empire is big. Ships of this size take time to turn.
26
@23 - I'm not happy to see them die, but they keep choosing their own demise. They keep choosing it over and over and over and over again. I feel for the thousands of innocent people who are undoubtedly going to be harmed by those selfish and deplorable voters, but I have absolutely no sympathy for those who voted for their own hellish future. I'd rather spend my emotions and resources on the people who actually deserve it, not the ones who are fucking themselves over time and again.

Also - I grew up in Spokane as a poor Republican (we voted out the sitting Speaker of the House in the 90s because Rush Limbaugh!) and I understand the mindset because I grew up in it. Again, I have no sympathy for these assholes.
27
@23,

How many times do you have to feed a dog that bites your hand before you stop feeding it?

These are people who "urban progressives" keep trying to help, over and over, who flat out state they don't want any help, who ridicule the people who try to help them, and who loudly and proudly vote in people who tell them they will destroy them.

They're hitting the self-destruct button. I don't want to go down in flames with them.
28
If I could read an article written in faux-psychological language about why Trump got more Black and Latino votes than Romney I'd be soooooooo happy...

Charles why are always so god damn Eurocentric?
29
@28 Wow, black support of GOP candidate went from 6 to 8%. Practically a landslide.
30
I didn't interpret the NYT article in question quite as Charles did. Seemed more statistical and sociological in intent rather than playing on my proggy white sympathies, though no doubt there are plenty of MSM pieces with that goal in mind.

It's entirely true, though, that the hillbillies are beyond help, and it's a total waste of time to even try anymore. Actually, it was a waste of time decades ago. By the 1980s, rural folks mostly stopped moving for work. They've been firmly rooted in their depressed towns for a long time now (I'm originally from one myself), and it shows, oh how it shows.

Much of what the Republican Party and its voters represent is a last-ditch, desperate attempt at preserving a dying way of life -- all the way from fossil fuel fatcats extracting wealth from the bowels of the earth, to groups of bubbas trading racist jokes while fishing at their local reservoir. Their impending mortality doesn't make them any less dangerous, though. They'd rather take the planet down with them than allow their sworn enemies to take control. After all, they've already reserved their place in Heaven.

For the rest of us (i.e., those willing and able to adapt to the modern world), we have no choice but to organize, resist, and model how to live in a way that's increasingly harmonious and equitable with our neighbors and Ma Nature. Be alert for the occasional bubba who's willing to convert to the reality-based community, but do not otherwise waste your precious time or energy on them. One cannot draw blood from a turnip.
31
So how do people feel if you swap out rural for urban to describe the poor who have been poor for generations? Are they beyond help too? We should just let them wallow in their own "dung" since it's like drawing "blood from a turnip"? (I did get more than one emergency call in the middle of the night over people peeing "blood" after eating beets.)
32
@31, it has little to do with being poor, though that's fairly often the end result. It's about a hardened ideology and absolute refusal to entertain a contrarian idea. It's about a resolute desire to return to an imagined past. It's a bundle (basket?) of racism, misogyny, casual violence, revanchism, neo-feudalism, and, as we now see, neo-fascism. And it has nothing to do with excluding said hillbillies from the social safety net, aside from when they opt to exclude themselves on a local level. It's a matter, instead, of giving up trying to convince them of anything, or trying to win them over. Politically, they're a lost cause.
33
@32, you last post just described the tone in this post.
That's my point. It's wrong to demonize blacks and browns as thugs, violent, and worthless. It's wrong to equate Muslims with terrorists. Why do people do it? Because it lets people treat those they hate as if their lives don't matter. That they are a drain on society. That they are worthless. People demonized those they hate because it masks their bigotry. It justifies their belief and actions.

That's why it's scary to see where people are going with this. When people start to internalize this kind of stuff, it has real consequence. It will allow those who are easily persuaded to act out based on hateful stereotypes.

This is beyond normal anger and frustration.
34
For context, @33, these people I'm criticizing are *my* people. I went to school with them in Appalachia. I'm related to them. I left them 27 years ago as a straight white guy with a twang in his voice, because I could see there was no future there. You may call it self-loathing if you like, as that's probably partly true, but it's not the same as demonizing "the other." I know them intimately and, yes, I know their demons. I wish it were different.
35
I'm a democrat and articles like this are exactly why we lost the election. Zero facts and all opinion about how the world *should* be. Beautiful irony is that this article is essentially the same type of vapid tabloid fluff the author criticizes, just for elitist dems instead of the stupid toothless white voters the author condescendingly alludes to.

People need to be really careful reading and writing these kinds of divisive pieces (on both sides) bc they don't really advance the conversation, just help someone who is already vehemently on one side feel safer in their echo chamber instead of actually presenting facts in hopes of letting the reader come to an informed conclusion on their end.
36
I think you people (@23 et. al.) are arguing over canards. Putting up 'Straw hillbillies' if you will.
I don't think it's the case that "urban progressives" have been doing everything they can to help the rural poor, but "oh, the rural poor just keep hurting themselves by voting GOP!"
Remember, Bill Clinton shredded the social safety net. Voting in Dems is no guarantor of "help"... sure, they tend to be better. But it only goes so far.

The fact is everyone is being manipulated and fucked over by the political-&-wealthy class & as a whole. The reason Trump had enough of a chance that various machinations (targeted FB ads, russian meddling, gerrymandered GOP vote suppression) were able to shoehorn his 'win' is because people are fed up with the rich & the politicos as a whole, and Trump represented the best chance to put a stick in their eye. Sure, it is a shitty, racist stick, but it was the only one available.

Trump voters, in that way, have more in common with Occupy than they do with the KKK. Build that bridge. Tie those interests together, and recognize that this has been Class Warfare all along, only we've been led to believe there are no classes in America. (Or at least there is "class mobility", which if that was ever true, is much less now.)

Shitty, racist stick that he is, Trump was ultimately the latest, unbelievable salvo in the class war. Don't forget, Trump is friends with the Clintons, so it's not like there was any real choice but to select another one of Them to fuck the rest of us over. It's just the flavor of the fucking that you "get" to choose: direct or two-faced.

The reality is that de-industrialization or no, the class warfare has been to ensure that the poor can't get up out of the mud (eg. two jobs, low wages), and the middle class is saddled with personal debt (student loans, mortgages) so that no one has the inclination or extra time to put up any serious resistance.

The rich/politicians learned their lessons after the revolts surrounding the Vietnam war... if the young & idealistic have enough time on their hands, they will put up stiff resistance. Better to keep everyone under the thumb (w debt) so that they are less likely to get in the way of the geopolitical games going on.

So no, blaming the rural poor for their own situation is sliiightly naïve, and misses the point that the situation is structural. Just like the urban homeless are in fact economic refugees, the rural poor, too, are so much cannon fodder in the class war that's been underway since Reagan.

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