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Here's Nate Silver today trying to explain trump: > America hasn’t put its demons — including racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny — behind it. White people stil

Here's Nate Silver today trying to explain trump: > America hasn’t put its demons — including racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny — behind it. White people still make up the vast majority of the electorate, particularly when considering their share of the Electoral College, and their votes usually determine the winner. By intentionally continuing to attempt to associate support for trump with a litany of unacceptable -isms that are the guilty burden of being white (men), he exposed the attitude that people are revolting against.

berdario 10y ago
So you're saying that it's perfectly normal for a non-racist person to support a candidate who openly argued for deporting huge swaths of honest workers and enforce by law racial and religious discrimination?
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  I'm saying that if you believe you can so trivially comprehend and dismiss the emotional state of tens of millions of people who until today you possibly didn't even want to admit exist, you're fooling yourself badly.
  - asdfasdfa11112 10y ago
    To add on, part of the galvanizing force that created the political block (those tens of millions) was they don't like GP's exact attitude! People really, really, really, don't like it when you deny or trivialize their experience. I think it was the final straw that led to the Trump victory.
  - sirtaj 10y ago
    Whatever the emotional state, in the end they supported the candidate openly espousing racist and misogynist opinions, and is on the record saying he sexually assaults women. Maybe the people who voted for him aren't themselves racists and misogynists, but they sure as hell didn't think that stuff was important enough not to vote for him.
    - dummkopf99 10y ago
      They didn't. He won. Deal with it.
      - sirtaj 10y ago
        A content-free comment.
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      > is on the record saying he sexually assaults women This is a good thing to touch on, because it very handily demonstrates an area where differing opinions became a crux upon which the election turned. Trump was "on the record" joking around in a manner that, despite Clintonian assertion otherwise, is not at all uncommon, amongst men and women. It is, also despite assertion, not universally accepted that offensive words are equivalent to harmful actions. For instance, although I did not vote for Trump, I will never accept this precept as valid. The racism and sexism are sort of victims of their own overuse. I've said, unto exhaustion, that fighting sexism with sexism and racism with racism is equivalent to fighting a fire with fuel, but political beliefs state that racism against whites and sexism against males is justified and therefore non-existent, so it gets deployed rampantly. This election is one obvious result.
      - sirtaj 10y ago
        > The racism and sexism are sort of victims of their own overuse. Or possibly there's just a lot of it around.
- bzbarsky 10y ago
  The problem with this argument as stated is that it has a hard time accounting for the millions of Hispanic voters who voted for Trump... unless you think they are actually self-hating anti-Hispanic racists or something. (Yes, I know more hispanics voted for Clinton than for Trump, but the split was nowhere close to 100-0. It wasn't even close to the 88-12 or so that African-American voters split for Clinton.)
  - deadringerr 10y ago
    The Hispanic population is still overwhelmingly Catholic[0]. There will always be sway when abortion is on the table. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/upshot/even-as-hispanics-lift-catholicism-theyre-leaving-it.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/upshot/even-as-hispanics-l...
    - bzbarsky 10y ago
      Sure. And there are other reasons they might have voted for Trump too. I'm just saying that clearly people can vote for him without endorsing his position on some particular issue, even one that cuts very close to them. The parent of my comment was saying that this was abnormal, whereas it is (sadly, perhaps?) quite common in voting.
      - deadringerr 10y ago
        Right, I was supporting your argument by providing one historically consistent potential reason for endorsement from that segment of the population.
    - bzbarsky 10y ago
      One other thing: Trump got about the same fraction of the Latino vote as Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008, to within exit poll survey error. The actual cited number for him is between those for McCain and Romney. See http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/hillary-clinton-wins-latino-vote-but-falls-below-2012-support-for-obama/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/hillary-clin... So apparently he's no more abnormal than McCain and Romney were, to those voters. Or at least they felt their other options this time were a lot worse. Or something. It's hard to draw a hard conclusion from the numbers here.
- djrogers 10y ago
  Unless we manage to create a parallel universe where the 11-15 million illegal immigrants are Canadian instead of Mexican, to test against, I don't think you can definitively state that support for enforcement of immigration law constitutes racism. I don't think a person who's construction job was taken away by an under-the-table worker really cares what color the other person's skin is, the milk and bread he can't afford now leaves the same hole in his pantry. Same thing for software development offshoring - is it racist for those out-of-work Disney engineers to want their jobs back?
- djrogers 10y ago
  Unless we manage to create a parallel universe where the 11-15 million illegal immigrants are Canadian instead of Mexican, to test against, I don't think you can definitively state that support for enforcement of immigration law constitutes racism. I don't think a person who's construction job was taken away by an under-the-table worker really cares what color the other person's skin is, the milk and bread he can't afford now leaves the same hole in his pantry. Same thing for software development offshoring - is it racist for those out-of-work Disney engineers to want their jobs back?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ant6n 10y ago
It appears many people are embracing these unacceptable-isms. How is it then bad to call them our on it?
- FeepingCreature 10y ago
  It should not be a surprise if they're embracing it if they've been tarred with it for decades. This is a cycle.
  - linkregister 10y ago
    The overt reasoning of the most prominent Southern Democratic legislators was that the civil rights focus of the greater Democratic party was the primary reason for their flight into the American Independent and Republican parties. I assert that it is probably no longer a factor for the majority of Republican voters. I think this is the source of the narrative, rightly or wrongly. I don't see any evidence it had anything to do with the Reagan or Bush presidencies. In my lifetime I didn't see the uptick in overt white supremacy until President Obama took office. I think it is a combination of cyclical liberal excuses and some legitimate labelling.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  It appears to be the accepted narrative, but it's the explanation coming from people who were caught completely flat-footed. What's the evidence that the narrative isn't a bunch of overwrought bullshit?
- asdfasdfa11112 10y ago
  "Calling people out" is not a technique to help people grow. It's ridiculing them after applying a label from a distance. The more people insist it was racists and sexists behind the vote, the more they miss the point. Part of the Trump vote was reacting sharply to the labeling + ridicule technique. There are other options. Learn more about why they feel the way they do, understand them. These are (most of our) countrymen, fellow humans at the very least. Education, understanding, compassion. Not ridicule.
serge2k 10y ago
I think this is misleading. Certainly he's evidence of those things, but I don't think he won because of it. His message appealed to people in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Yes, it's pretty sad that people were willing to vote for him despite the racism, sexism, and general demeanor. Did many really vote for that, or did they vote to get out of NAFTA and introduce protectionism under the idea that they might get some of their former glory back. They hear MAGA and think back to when Detroit had the highest average income in the country. When Flint didn't have poison in the water. It's about you first, others second. It's a powerful message, one that people who don't support trump seemed to fail to recognize under all the absolutely horrible awful things constantly coming at us. Compare that to Hillary basically saying "meh, they'll vote for me". How much extra effort would it have taken to keep those 3 states democrat.
- gohrt 10y ago
  Why do you think Hillary didn't campaign in swing states?
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
    Arrogance?
  - serge2k 10y ago
    Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan have been democrat in 5-6 straight elections.
gohrt 10y ago
Today we learned that racists and sexists are rebelling against ... being disliked for being racist and sexist. Yes, I supposed we could fix that by not complaining about them being racist and sexist.
- malz 10y ago
  That's exactly the railing against "political correctness" that got so much attention. "Not PC" is code for "freedom to believe and say hateful things about other groups of people."
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    Do you truthfully believe that you can trivialize and dismiss something you seemingly don't understand and be correct at the same time? That doesn't speak well for the strength of logic underlying your opinions. No attempt at political correctness will ever impact the freedom to believe anything at all, hateful, loving, or totally rational. That freedom is fundamental to being human. It is not granted by any organization and cannot be revoked using any known mechanism, no matter what your opinion on those thoughts. We don't need code to believe and express that we are free to say hateful things. Even those on the left believe they are free to say hateful things about people on the right. They've simply fooled themselves into believing that feeling justified about that hate means that they aren't being hateful. Here's a spoiler alert for being human: everyone feels that exact same justification. It is literally meaningless.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  No, you've missed the lesson entirely in your zeal to appear clever and correct. That's fine, I'm sure you won't enjoy the trump presidency so the punishment is sort of built-in
551199 10y ago
Nate Silver has been wrong in everything he has predicted about Trump. Again its not about ism although they play a part. Its about establishment vs anti-establishment. Hillary Clinton was the candidate of international finance and military complex.

berdario 10y ago

So you're saying that it's perfectly normal for a non-racist person to support a candidate who openly argued for deporting huge swaths of honest workers and enforce by law racial and religious discrimination?

oldmanjay 10y ago
I'm saying that if you believe you can so trivially comprehend and dismiss the emotional state of tens of millions of people who until today you possibly didn't even want to admit exist, you're fooling yourself badly.
- asdfasdfa11112 10y ago
  To add on, part of the galvanizing force that created the political block (those tens of millions) was they don't like GP's exact attitude! People really, really, really, don't like it when you deny or trivialize their experience. I think it was the final straw that led to the Trump victory.
- sirtaj 10y ago
  Whatever the emotional state, in the end they supported the candidate openly espousing racist and misogynist opinions, and is on the record saying he sexually assaults women. Maybe the people who voted for him aren't themselves racists and misogynists, but they sure as hell didn't think that stuff was important enough not to vote for him.
  - dummkopf99 10y ago
    They didn't. He won. Deal with it.
    - sirtaj 10y ago
      A content-free comment.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    > is on the record saying he sexually assaults women This is a good thing to touch on, because it very handily demonstrates an area where differing opinions became a crux upon which the election turned. Trump was "on the record" joking around in a manner that, despite Clintonian assertion otherwise, is not at all uncommon, amongst men and women. It is, also despite assertion, not universally accepted that offensive words are equivalent to harmful actions. For instance, although I did not vote for Trump, I will never accept this precept as valid. The racism and sexism are sort of victims of their own overuse. I've said, unto exhaustion, that fighting sexism with sexism and racism with racism is equivalent to fighting a fire with fuel, but political beliefs state that racism against whites and sexism against males is justified and therefore non-existent, so it gets deployed rampantly. This election is one obvious result.
    - sirtaj 10y ago
      > The racism and sexism are sort of victims of their own overuse. Or possibly there's just a lot of it around.
bzbarsky 10y ago
The problem with this argument as stated is that it has a hard time accounting for the millions of Hispanic voters who voted for Trump... unless you think they are actually self-hating anti-Hispanic racists or something. (Yes, I know more hispanics voted for Clinton than for Trump, but the split was nowhere close to 100-0. It wasn't even close to the 88-12 or so that African-American voters split for Clinton.)
- deadringerr 10y ago
  The Hispanic population is still overwhelmingly Catholic[0]. There will always be sway when abortion is on the table. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/upshot/even-as-hispanics-lift-catholicism-theyre-leaving-it.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/upshot/even-as-hispanics-l...
  - bzbarsky 10y ago
    Sure. And there are other reasons they might have voted for Trump too. I'm just saying that clearly people can vote for him without endorsing his position on some particular issue, even one that cuts very close to them. The parent of my comment was saying that this was abnormal, whereas it is (sadly, perhaps?) quite common in voting.
    - deadringerr 10y ago
      Right, I was supporting your argument by providing one historically consistent potential reason for endorsement from that segment of the population.
  - bzbarsky 10y ago
    One other thing: Trump got about the same fraction of the Latino vote as Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008, to within exit poll survey error. The actual cited number for him is between those for McCain and Romney. See http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/hillary-clinton-wins-latino-vote-but-falls-below-2012-support-for-obama/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/hillary-clin... So apparently he's no more abnormal than McCain and Romney were, to those voters. Or at least they felt their other options this time were a lot worse. Or something. It's hard to draw a hard conclusion from the numbers here.
djrogers 10y ago
Unless we manage to create a parallel universe where the 11-15 million illegal immigrants are Canadian instead of Mexican, to test against, I don't think you can definitively state that support for enforcement of immigration law constitutes racism. I don't think a person who's construction job was taken away by an under-the-table worker really cares what color the other person's skin is, the milk and bread he can't afford now leaves the same hole in his pantry. Same thing for software development offshoring - is it racist for those out-of-work Disney engineers to want their jobs back?
djrogers 10y ago
Unless we manage to create a parallel universe where the 11-15 million illegal immigrants are Canadian instead of Mexican, to test against, I don't think you can definitively state that support for enforcement of immigration law constitutes racism. I don't think a person who's construction job was taken away by an under-the-table worker really cares what color the other person's skin is, the milk and bread he can't afford now leaves the same hole in his pantry. Same thing for software development offshoring - is it racist for those out-of-work Disney engineers to want their jobs back?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

ant6n 10y ago

It appears many people are embracing these unacceptable-isms. How is it then bad to call them our on it?

FeepingCreature 10y ago
It should not be a surprise if they're embracing it if they've been tarred with it for decades. This is a cycle.
- linkregister 10y ago
  The overt reasoning of the most prominent Southern Democratic legislators was that the civil rights focus of the greater Democratic party was the primary reason for their flight into the American Independent and Republican parties. I assert that it is probably no longer a factor for the majority of Republican voters. I think this is the source of the narrative, rightly or wrongly. I don't see any evidence it had anything to do with the Reagan or Bush presidencies. In my lifetime I didn't see the uptick in overt white supremacy until President Obama took office. I think it is a combination of cyclical liberal excuses and some legitimate labelling.
oldmanjay 10y ago
It appears to be the accepted narrative, but it's the explanation coming from people who were caught completely flat-footed. What's the evidence that the narrative isn't a bunch of overwrought bullshit?
asdfasdfa11112 10y ago
"Calling people out" is not a technique to help people grow. It's ridiculing them after applying a label from a distance. The more people insist it was racists and sexists behind the vote, the more they miss the point. Part of the Trump vote was reacting sharply to the labeling + ridicule technique. There are other options. Learn more about why they feel the way they do, understand them. These are (most of our) countrymen, fellow humans at the very least. Education, understanding, compassion. Not ridicule.

serge2k 10y ago

I think this is misleading. Certainly he's evidence of those things, but I don't think he won because of it. His message appealed to people in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Yes, it's pretty sad that people were willing to vote for him despite the racism, sexism, and general demeanor. Did many really vote for that, or did they vote to get out of NAFTA and introduce protectionism under the idea that they might get some of their former glory back. They hear MAGA and think back to when Detroit had the highest average income in the country. When Flint didn't have poison in the water. It's about you first, others second. It's a powerful message, one that people who don't support trump seemed to fail to recognize under all the absolutely horrible awful things constantly coming at us. Compare that to Hillary basically saying "meh, they'll vote for me". How much extra effort would it have taken to keep those 3 states democrat.

gohrt 10y ago
Why do you think Hillary didn't campaign in swing states?
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  Arrogance?
- serge2k 10y ago
  Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan have been democrat in 5-6 straight elections.

gohrt 10y ago

Today we learned that racists and sexists are rebelling against ... being disliked for being racist and sexist. Yes, I supposed we could fix that by not complaining about them being racist and sexist.

malz 10y ago
That's exactly the railing against "political correctness" that got so much attention. "Not PC" is code for "freedom to believe and say hateful things about other groups of people."
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  Do you truthfully believe that you can trivialize and dismiss something you seemingly don't understand and be correct at the same time? That doesn't speak well for the strength of logic underlying your opinions. No attempt at political correctness will ever impact the freedom to believe anything at all, hateful, loving, or totally rational. That freedom is fundamental to being human. It is not granted by any organization and cannot be revoked using any known mechanism, no matter what your opinion on those thoughts. We don't need code to believe and express that we are free to say hateful things. Even those on the left believe they are free to say hateful things about people on the right. They've simply fooled themselves into believing that feeling justified about that hate means that they aren't being hateful. Here's a spoiler alert for being human: everyone feels that exact same justification. It is literally meaningless.
oldmanjay 10y ago
No, you've missed the lesson entirely in your zeal to appear clever and correct. That's fine, I'm sure you won't enjoy the trump presidency so the punishment is sort of built-in

551199 10y ago

Nate Silver has been wrong in everything he has predicted about Trump. Again its not about ism although they play a part. Its about establishment vs anti-establishment. Hillary Clinton was the candidate of international finance and military complex.