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There are two larges groups of people who are voting for Trump regardless of anything he does (as he said: he could shoot people down on 5th avenue and these pe

by sulam 10y ago

There are two larges groups of people who are voting for Trump regardless of anything he does (as he said: he could shoot people down on 5th avenue and these people would still vote for him). The largest group of them are Republicans who will always vote Republican. My beef with these people is that I wish they were a little more loyal to our country's values than they were to their party, but fundamentally I've got no real problem with them. The second group are all white nationalists. They honestly believe that Obama is a Muslim, that Jews control the banks and media, that immigration is bad for the country, etc. These people I have no problem with blacklisting.

dragonwriter 10y ago
Those two groups overlap substantially (making the latter group a subset of the former was rather the point of Republican strategy beginning with Nixon's Southern Strategy, which exploited Johnson's support for civil rights legislation to try to peel that group off from the Democrats, who'd they'd supported since "White Nationalism" made a real go at having an actual nation; the Democrats have certainly lost them, but the Republicans haven't reliably captured all of them, though they've done a fair job of it.)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
debacle 10y ago
What percentage of the population do you think really identifies as white nationalist?
- sulam 10y ago
  Out of the 40% that support Trump, the numbers I've seen are that roughly 10% support his identity politics. They might not call themselves white nationalists, but they are attracted by someone "telling it like it is" with respect to immigrants, inner cities, etc. IOW, a very large part of Trump's core supporters are simply Republicans that will vote for him because he is at the top of the Republican ticket. They would also have voted for Rubio or even Kasich. They don't like a number of things he's said or done, but they will vote for the Republican before they vote for a Democrat (especially Hillary Clinton). The minority, though, are not really Republicans -- they are truly a right wing nationalist cohort that is very attuned to things like Trump's "David Duke who?" initial response to his endorsement. With respect to the other comment about Republicans reaching out to these people: the Southern strategy is a 50-yr old strategy that the Republican party has consciously and publicly tried to move away from in the last 8 years as demographics have made it less and less likely to deliver the Whitehouse. Yes these people have been loosely attached to the Republican party, but as the Republican party moves away from them, they've also moved away from it. The natural thing, if we didn't have a legally supported two-party system, would be for a Marie Le Pen style nationalist party to form behind Trump.

by sulam 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

Those two groups overlap substantially (making the latter group a subset of the former was rather the point of Republican strategy beginning with Nixon's Southern Strategy, which exploited Johnson's support for civil rights legislation to try to peel that group off from the Democrats, who'd they'd supported since "White Nationalism" made a real go at having an actual nation; the Democrats have certainly lost them, but the Republicans haven't reliably captured all of them, though they've done a fair job of it.)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

debacle 10y ago

What percentage of the population do you think really identifies as white nationalist?

sulam 10y ago
Out of the 40% that support Trump, the numbers I've seen are that roughly 10% support his identity politics. They might not call themselves white nationalists, but they are attracted by someone "telling it like it is" with respect to immigrants, inner cities, etc. IOW, a very large part of Trump's core supporters are simply Republicans that will vote for him because he is at the top of the Republican ticket. They would also have voted for Rubio or even Kasich. They don't like a number of things he's said or done, but they will vote for the Republican before they vote for a Democrat (especially Hillary Clinton). The minority, though, are not really Republicans -- they are truly a right wing nationalist cohort that is very attuned to things like Trump's "David Duke who?" initial response to his endorsement. With respect to the other comment about Republicans reaching out to these people: the Southern strategy is a 50-yr old strategy that the Republican party has consciously and publicly tried to move away from in the last 8 years as demographics have made it less and less likely to deliver the Whitehouse. Yes these people have been loosely attached to the Republican party, but as the Republican party moves away from them, they've also moved away from it. The natural thing, if we didn't have a legally supported two-party system, would be for a Marie Le Pen style nationalist party to form behind Trump.