8 ms·

I think no one really knows what the different parties represent any more. Most people I know voted Republican were low-wage working people, where my highly pai

I think no one really knows what the different parties represent any more. Most people I know voted Republican were low-wage working people, where my highly paid educated friends voted Democrat. Isn't it supposed to be other way around? No wonder everyone is confused.

TechBro8615 6y ago
It’s pretty obvious from election maps and donor data that the democrats are now the party of coastal/urban elites, despite what they may advertise.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  This discounts tens of millions of Democrats living inland who are obscured by maps depending on the electoral college. It seems to me the pattern is that where population density increases the people tend to be more politically leftward-leaning.
  - ttesttom 6y ago
    There was an interesting chart from the economist today about that, which showed a strong correlation. The denser the area the more democratic. https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1326250981131169794?s=20 https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/132625098113116979...
- watwut 6y ago
  Majority of Americans lives on the coast and in cities. They can't be all elite.
- triceratops 6y ago
  You're saying the majority of voters this year were elite? That's a whole lotta elites...kinda waters down the definition no?
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > It’s pretty obvious from election maps and donor data that the democrats are now the party of coastal/urban elites Urban populations, sure. Not particularly coastal aside from the fact that there's more urban population on the coasts, as county-level maps show pretty clearly. “Elites” are more dubious. Sure, Democrats and Republicans (counting leaners) are closer to parity for voters with less than a college degree, with college grads and even moreso postgraduate degree holders strongly favoring Democrats. OTOH, Blacks, who are overwhelming not elites, overwhelming are (and even more overwhelming lean) Democratic, and the same is true predominantly (though less overwhelmingly) of Hispanics. So, yes, to the urban part, not particularly independently true of the “elite” or “coastal” part.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    What are we calling "urban" here? More than 80% of Americans live in urban areas. Are we using a circular definition of "urban" that means "big cities with a large Democrat majority"?
    - webmaven 6y ago
      > What are we calling "urban" here? More than 80% of Americans live in urban areas. Are we using a circular definition of "urban" that means "big cities with a large Democrat majority"? Urban mostly means "denser than suburban tracts of single-family homes".
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > What are we calling "urban" here? More than 80% of Americans live in urban areas. By the census definitions, which don't separate out suburban as a separate category, but encompass what would normally be thought of that way as part of urban. If you look at the urban core counties in the Pew list below and a by-county election map of the US, there's a pretty close correlation, visually at least. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/07/29/prior-to-covid-19-urban-core-counties-in-the-u-s-were-gaining-vitality-on-key-measures/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/07/29/prior-to-covid-19...
  - vorpalhex 6y ago
- tshaddox 6y ago
  What does "coastal/urban elites" mean? Just anyone who lives in a coastal or urban area? 80% of the American population lives in urban areas, and that's only going to increase when you include whatever your definition of "coastal" is. Where does the "elite" factor in?
  - orangecat 6y ago
    Where does the "elite" factor in? As a rough approximation, almost everyone in your social circles having a college degree.
    - tshaddox 6y ago
      A college degree sounds like a laughably low bar for being considered "elite." 27% of American adults have college degrees. In a state like Missouri which is presumably not considered a particularly liberal or Democratic or "elite" state, over 50% of adults have college degrees.
      - orangecat 6y ago
        From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_educational_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... I see 31% for the US and 28% for Missouri. Regardless, the key point is "almost everyone in your social circle".
        free_rms 6y ago
        Another key point is that 31 and 28 are well short of 51. What's the plan to get there?
        tshaddox 6y ago
        Oops, not sure where I found that Missouri figure, but it looks like you're right. Still, one quarter to one third of the population doesn't fit what I would remotely consider to be "elite." And why is "almost everyone in your social circle" relevant? I don't think people generally use the word "elite" to refer to the ability to make friends from among a specific third of the national population.
- TheCoelacanth 6y ago
  Please. A college degree and living in a big city does not make someone "elite". Actual elites skew strongly Republican.
- kaitai 6y ago
  I disagree with both you and the poster who talks about the high & low against the middle, though less with the other poster. I'm from flyover country, one of those three states that went Biden this year surrounded by a sea of red. You know, one of the three states that elected half the members of 'the squad'. Sure, California rich people can throw in a lot of money, but that's true for both Republican and Democratic parties. Don't dismiss our importance in the Democratic party. We turn up & do the work, including the work of talking with our 'red' neighbors and actually trying to work things out in this country. As for high & low vs middle, it just doesn't make sense to me. Lots of rich people supporting the Republicans -- lots, lots, lots. Lots of rich people supporting the Dems. Poor people split by race and geography. Middle class people split by race and geography. The split by geography and race is more significant than the split by income, in almost every presentation of data that I see.
- wcarron 6y ago
  Oh yeah, all those "coastal/urban elites" from New Mexico, Arizona, and Minnesota.
smabie 6y ago
anecdotally, knowing some very rich people, they mostly voted for trump in 2016. Pretty much every single one voted for Biden or declined to vote this year. I voted for myself and have been getting a lot of shit for it for some reason.
- jojobas 6y ago
  Very rich people can pretty much be ignored as there are under 1% of them anywhere you look.
  - smabie 6y ago
    You can say that about a lot of interest groups
    - jojobas 6y ago
      And you'll be right, unless all these SIGs are somehow similarly aligned.
- username90 6y ago
  Perhaps you made the same mistake as pollsters and your friends voted for Trump and just don't want to admit it?
- rkuykendall-com 6y ago
  I respect voting for yourself over voting third party. If you're going to vote for someone who can't win, at least make it the person you agree with the most.
bryanlarsen 6y ago
People 2020 said that in 2016, yet the average income of Trump voters was higher than Clinton voters. It'll be interesting to see if that changes in 2020. Although there is something to what you say; the income gap between Republican and Democratic voters did narrow substantially in 2016.
- vlovich123 6y ago
  If the 1% class leans strongly right wing, the average income doesn’t really tell you much about the highly paid middle class (or even “lower paid” upper class) as incomes are not normally distributed & you’ve got significant skew (1 billion will make more difference on the mean than $0).
  - vlovich123 6y ago
    Not sure why I'm being downvoted. Look at dragonwriter's post where he explains more clearly why averages are meaningless in this discussion.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > People 2020 said that in 2016, yet the average income of Trump voters was higher than Clinton voters. One person with $100 million income has a higher average income than 999 people with a $100K annual income. Averages aren't particularly useful here.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    There aren't many people with $100 million income. Most billionaires don't have income that high -- there is a much higher wealth disparity than there is income disparity. So while I'd rather the media reported the median income than the median income, it's the number we have and hopefully it's a useful approximation.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > There aren't many people with $100 million income Sure, but there's also a couple with over an order of magnitude more. > So while I'd rather the media reported the median income than the median income, it's the number we have and hopefully it's a useful approximation. It's not a useful approximation of anything, and we have a lot more detailed information that “average income of voters of one side vs. the other" on the relationship between income and voting / party preference. And it tells a more complicated story (e.g., in 2016, Clinton won significantly among those with income of $150K+ and under $30K, was nearly even among those with $100-150K and $50-75K, lost significantly among those with $74-100K and $30-50K.) https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/30/a-voter-data-resource-detailed-demographic-tables-about-verified-voters-in-2016-2018/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/30/a-voter-dat...
watwut 6y ago
Statistically it seems that he did well in higher paid groups. But also, he did better among people without college degree and badly among young with college degree. So in some ways your acquitances are not that odd. Voters cluster, they are not randomly distributed.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
It's a multi-faceted reason as to why this is, but the most recent phenomenon I think has most to do with it: voting one way simply to piss off the other side.
throwaway38153 6y ago
The current arrangement is high and low vs the middle, or HLvM for short. The left is composed of two factions, not one. The left is the high within society aligned with the low in society to destroy the middle in society. [1] When the power of the upper class is not secure, or somehow threatened by a middle class, the upper class forms an alliance with the lower classes. Today, you see the highly capitalized media powers (like Big Tech and primary media corporations) and other "woke" corporations forming an "alliance of the fringes" with historically marginalized groups, against the more traditionalist middle class. In the past, Kings would form an alliance with peasants to fend off nobles. Bertrand de Jouvenel described this dynamic early in the 20th century, but it's a common refrain throughout history. Neoabsolutism is a modern framework for understanding this dynamic. [1] https://neoabsolutism.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/high-low-versus-the-middle/ https://neoabsolutism.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/high-low-vers...
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  I'm always finding commonality between Roman history and current events (perhaps because Roman history is the only history I read). For example, last night I was reading one of Cicero's speeches against Catiline, and in the preface for the speech the modern author giving context writes: "To these men and his other supporters, Catiline offered the policy they longed for - cancellation of debts. It was precisely the policy to win him the support of the desperate from all ranks of society - and one that no respectable politician was prepared to offer" Catiline has supporters both from the upper classes, where they had borrowed too much money and fallen into debt, and from the lower classes where they didn't have enough money in the first place, as well as dispossessed former soldiers. It makes me think of some left contingents today where they are supported alike by upper-middle class children who have become burdened by inescapable student loan debt and lower class people who were just always burdened by poverty.
- Damorian 6y ago
  Piggybacking onto this, since it looks like something the hivemind may disagree with and isn't sourced in your link, breaking down by family income, between $30,000-$150,000 is majority lean rep, outside those bounds is majority lean dem. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/09/13/2016-party-identification-detailed-tables/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/09/13/2016-party-i...
throwaway32849 6y ago
> Most people I know voted Republican were low-wage working people, where my highly paid educated friends voted Democrat Biden actively courted high-earning, educated voters with his free college and student loan forgiveness policies, which amount to a wealth transfer to people who already have higher lifetime average earnings and are at a competitive advantage in the employment marketplace. Not very progressive: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/opinion/student-debt-forgiveness-college-democrats.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/opinion/student-debt-forg... He also pledged to fund it by raising corporate income taxes, which will reduce the profitability (and therefore, the value) of all publicly traded companies in the US, which means anyone with a 401(k) or IRA will indirectly be paying for this, even if they don't have student loan debt or a college degree at all.
- throwaway32849 6y ago
  I'm not sure why this was downvoted. The degree divide is growing as an electorate bifurcator, with the GOP fast becoming the party of the college-less: > https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/1027/As-college-grads-flee-the-GOP-political-diploma-divide-grows https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/1027/As-college-... And as I pointed out, it's not solely for the reasons college-educated progressives are eager to suggest ("ignorant, uneducated people vote republican"). Student loan forgiveness is a flatly a regressive policy, amounting to a handout to people who are already economically advantaged. > https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/09/student-loan-forgiveness-could-become-a-reality-with-biden-in-office-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/09/student-loan-forgiveness-cou... > Biden laid out a narrower plan, saying he would forgive $10,000 in student debt for all borrowers, and the rest of the debt for those who attended public colleges or historically Black colleges and universities and earn less than $125,000 a year. Imagine being a non-college educated voter earning $60-70k a year, and reading that people earning upto $125k a year will get a handout.
  - throwaway32848 6y ago
    Nothing I said was false, inflammatory, or off-topic, and yet these comments got massacred with disagreement downvotes (I assume by people with student loan debt who want a handout). The downvoting and flagging on this site is out of control.
y-c-o-m-b 6y ago
I think exit polls (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-president.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/...) - which again could be wildly inaccurate especially due to their small size - showed people making over 6 figures were mostly voting for Trump.
- x87678r 6y ago
  yup looks like I'm wrong.
isabelc 6y ago
>Most people I know voted Republican were low-wage working people Because Republicans put more money back in the pockets of low wage workers with kids. Most people don't have the luxury of voting along idealistic lines, they vote based on finances out of necessity. Low-wage workers with children were those most hurt by the Obama's ACA Mandate penalty tax, piled on top of not being able to afford health insurance. Republicans removed that ACA penalty plus doubled the child tax credit. People who afford health insurance are out of touch with this segment of people.
- meroes 6y ago
  At least we got something useful out of the ACA rather than just tax cuts for the wealthy and political points. "All taxpayer income groups with incomes of $75,000 and under — that’s about 65 percent of taxpayers — will face a higher tax rate in 2027 than in 2019." "People with incomes between $10,000 and $30,000 — nearly one-quarter of Americans — are among those scheduled to pay a higher average tax rate in 2021 than in years before the tax “cut” was passed. The C.B.O. and Joint Committee estimated that those with an income of $20,000 to $30,000 would owe an extra $365 next year " Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/republicans-biden-taxes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/republicans-biden... It's a NYT Opinion piece by a Nobel recipient.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  Isn't it a core Republican talking point that the Democrats secure support from low-wage people with generous handouts? This seems like another example of the OPs point about the world being upside down.
  - tick_tock_tick 6y ago
    "Handouts" are viewed very differently then taxes by the general public. One is the government giving out free stuff the other is them taking YOUR money.
    - dodobirdlord 6y ago

TechBro8615 6y ago

It’s pretty obvious from election maps and donor data that the democrats are now the party of coastal/urban elites, despite what they may advertise.

paulryanrogers 6y ago
This discounts tens of millions of Democrats living inland who are obscured by maps depending on the electoral college. It seems to me the pattern is that where population density increases the people tend to be more politically leftward-leaning.
- ttesttom 6y ago
  There was an interesting chart from the economist today about that, which showed a strong correlation. The denser the area the more democratic. https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/1326250981131169794?s=20 https://twitter.com/gelliottmorris/status/132625098113116979...
watwut 6y ago
Majority of Americans lives on the coast and in cities. They can't be all elite.
triceratops 6y ago
You're saying the majority of voters this year were elite? That's a whole lotta elites...kinda waters down the definition no?
dragonwriter 6y ago
> It’s pretty obvious from election maps and donor data that the democrats are now the party of coastal/urban elites Urban populations, sure. Not particularly coastal aside from the fact that there's more urban population on the coasts, as county-level maps show pretty clearly. “Elites” are more dubious. Sure, Democrats and Republicans (counting leaners) are closer to parity for voters with less than a college degree, with college grads and even moreso postgraduate degree holders strongly favoring Democrats. OTOH, Blacks, who are overwhelming not elites, overwhelming are (and even more overwhelming lean) Democratic, and the same is true predominantly (though less overwhelmingly) of Hispanics. So, yes, to the urban part, not particularly independently true of the “elite” or “coastal” part.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  What are we calling "urban" here? More than 80% of Americans live in urban areas. Are we using a circular definition of "urban" that means "big cities with a large Democrat majority"?
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > What are we calling "urban" here? More than 80% of Americans live in urban areas. Are we using a circular definition of "urban" that means "big cities with a large Democrat majority"? Urban mostly means "denser than suburban tracts of single-family homes".
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > What are we calling "urban" here? More than 80% of Americans live in urban areas. By the census definitions, which don't separate out suburban as a separate category, but encompass what would normally be thought of that way as part of urban. If you look at the urban core counties in the Pew list below and a by-county election map of the US, there's a pretty close correlation, visually at least. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/07/29/prior-to-covid-19-urban-core-counties-in-the-u-s-were-gaining-vitality-on-key-measures/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/07/29/prior-to-covid-19...
- vorpalhex 6y ago
tshaddox 6y ago
What does "coastal/urban elites" mean? Just anyone who lives in a coastal or urban area? 80% of the American population lives in urban areas, and that's only going to increase when you include whatever your definition of "coastal" is. Where does the "elite" factor in?
- orangecat 6y ago
  Where does the "elite" factor in? As a rough approximation, almost everyone in your social circles having a college degree.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    A college degree sounds like a laughably low bar for being considered "elite." 27% of American adults have college degrees. In a state like Missouri which is presumably not considered a particularly liberal or Democratic or "elite" state, over 50% of adults have college degrees.
    - orangecat 6y ago
      From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_educational_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... I see 31% for the US and 28% for Missouri. Regardless, the key point is "almost everyone in your social circle".
      - free_rms 6y ago
        Another key point is that 31 and 28 are well short of 51. What's the plan to get there?
      - tshaddox 6y ago
        Oops, not sure where I found that Missouri figure, but it looks like you're right. Still, one quarter to one third of the population doesn't fit what I would remotely consider to be "elite." And why is "almost everyone in your social circle" relevant? I don't think people generally use the word "elite" to refer to the ability to make friends from among a specific third of the national population.
TheCoelacanth 6y ago
Please. A college degree and living in a big city does not make someone "elite". Actual elites skew strongly Republican.
kaitai 6y ago
I disagree with both you and the poster who talks about the high & low against the middle, though less with the other poster. I'm from flyover country, one of those three states that went Biden this year surrounded by a sea of red. You know, one of the three states that elected half the members of 'the squad'. Sure, California rich people can throw in a lot of money, but that's true for both Republican and Democratic parties. Don't dismiss our importance in the Democratic party. We turn up & do the work, including the work of talking with our 'red' neighbors and actually trying to work things out in this country. As for high & low vs middle, it just doesn't make sense to me. Lots of rich people supporting the Republicans -- lots, lots, lots. Lots of rich people supporting the Dems. Poor people split by race and geography. Middle class people split by race and geography. The split by geography and race is more significant than the split by income, in almost every presentation of data that I see.
wcarron 6y ago
Oh yeah, all those "coastal/urban elites" from New Mexico, Arizona, and Minnesota.

smabie 6y ago

anecdotally, knowing some very rich people, they mostly voted for trump in 2016. Pretty much every single one voted for Biden or declined to vote this year. I voted for myself and have been getting a lot of shit for it for some reason.

jojobas 6y ago
Very rich people can pretty much be ignored as there are under 1% of them anywhere you look.
- smabie 6y ago
  You can say that about a lot of interest groups
  - jojobas 6y ago
    And you'll be right, unless all these SIGs are somehow similarly aligned.
username90 6y ago
Perhaps you made the same mistake as pollsters and your friends voted for Trump and just don't want to admit it?
rkuykendall-com 6y ago
I respect voting for yourself over voting third party. If you're going to vote for someone who can't win, at least make it the person you agree with the most.

bryanlarsen 6y ago

People 2020 said that in 2016, yet the average income of Trump voters was higher than Clinton voters. It'll be interesting to see if that changes in 2020. Although there is something to what you say; the income gap between Republican and Democratic voters did narrow substantially in 2016.

vlovich123 6y ago
If the 1% class leans strongly right wing, the average income doesn’t really tell you much about the highly paid middle class (or even “lower paid” upper class) as incomes are not normally distributed & you’ve got significant skew (1 billion will make more difference on the mean than $0).
- vlovich123 6y ago
  Not sure why I'm being downvoted. Look at dragonwriter's post where he explains more clearly why averages are meaningless in this discussion.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> People 2020 said that in 2016, yet the average income of Trump voters was higher than Clinton voters. One person with $100 million income has a higher average income than 999 people with a $100K annual income. Averages aren't particularly useful here.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  There aren't many people with $100 million income. Most billionaires don't have income that high -- there is a much higher wealth disparity than there is income disparity. So while I'd rather the media reported the median income than the median income, it's the number we have and hopefully it's a useful approximation.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > There aren't many people with $100 million income Sure, but there's also a couple with over an order of magnitude more. > So while I'd rather the media reported the median income than the median income, it's the number we have and hopefully it's a useful approximation. It's not a useful approximation of anything, and we have a lot more detailed information that “average income of voters of one side vs. the other" on the relationship between income and voting / party preference. And it tells a more complicated story (e.g., in 2016, Clinton won significantly among those with income of $150K+ and under $30K, was nearly even among those with $100-150K and $50-75K, lost significantly among those with $74-100K and $30-50K.) https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/30/a-voter-data-resource-detailed-demographic-tables-about-verified-voters-in-2016-2018/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/30/a-voter-dat...

watwut 6y ago

Statistically it seems that he did well in higher paid groups. But also, he did better among people without college degree and badly among young with college degree. So in some ways your acquitances are not that odd. Voters cluster, they are not randomly distributed.

Dirlewanger 6y ago

It's a multi-faceted reason as to why this is, but the most recent phenomenon I think has most to do with it: voting one way simply to piss off the other side.

throwaway38153 6y ago

The current arrangement is high and low vs the middle, or HLvM for short. The left is composed of two factions, not one. The left is the high within society aligned with the low in society to destroy the middle in society. [1] When the power of the upper class is not secure, or somehow threatened by a middle class, the upper class forms an alliance with the lower classes. Today, you see the highly capitalized media powers (like Big Tech and primary media corporations) and other "woke" corporations forming an "alliance of the fringes" with historically marginalized groups, against the more traditionalist middle class. In the past, Kings would form an alliance with peasants to fend off nobles. Bertrand de Jouvenel described this dynamic early in the 20th century, but it's a common refrain throughout history. Neoabsolutism is a modern framework for understanding this dynamic. [1] https://neoabsolutism.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/high-low-versus-the-middle/ https://neoabsolutism.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/high-low-vers...

ALittleLight 6y ago
I'm always finding commonality between Roman history and current events (perhaps because Roman history is the only history I read). For example, last night I was reading one of Cicero's speeches against Catiline, and in the preface for the speech the modern author giving context writes: "To these men and his other supporters, Catiline offered the policy they longed for - cancellation of debts. It was precisely the policy to win him the support of the desperate from all ranks of society - and one that no respectable politician was prepared to offer" Catiline has supporters both from the upper classes, where they had borrowed too much money and fallen into debt, and from the lower classes where they didn't have enough money in the first place, as well as dispossessed former soldiers. It makes me think of some left contingents today where they are supported alike by upper-middle class children who have become burdened by inescapable student loan debt and lower class people who were just always burdened by poverty.
Damorian 6y ago
Piggybacking onto this, since it looks like something the hivemind may disagree with and isn't sourced in your link, breaking down by family income, between $30,000-$150,000 is majority lean rep, outside those bounds is majority lean dem. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/09/13/2016-party-identification-detailed-tables/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/09/13/2016-party-i...

throwaway32849 6y ago

> Most people I know voted Republican were low-wage working people, where my highly paid educated friends voted Democrat Biden actively courted high-earning, educated voters with his free college and student loan forgiveness policies, which amount to a wealth transfer to people who already have higher lifetime average earnings and are at a competitive advantage in the employment marketplace. Not very progressive: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/opinion/student-debt-forgiveness-college-democrats.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/opinion/student-debt-forg... He also pledged to fund it by raising corporate income taxes, which will reduce the profitability (and therefore, the value) of all publicly traded companies in the US, which means anyone with a 401(k) or IRA will indirectly be paying for this, even if they don't have student loan debt or a college degree at all.

throwaway32849 6y ago
I'm not sure why this was downvoted. The degree divide is growing as an electorate bifurcator, with the GOP fast becoming the party of the college-less: > https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/1027/As-college-grads-flee-the-GOP-political-diploma-divide-grows https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/1027/As-college-... And as I pointed out, it's not solely for the reasons college-educated progressives are eager to suggest ("ignorant, uneducated people vote republican"). Student loan forgiveness is a flatly a regressive policy, amounting to a handout to people who are already economically advantaged. > https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/09/student-loan-forgiveness-could-become-a-reality-with-biden-in-office-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/09/student-loan-forgiveness-cou... > Biden laid out a narrower plan, saying he would forgive $10,000 in student debt for all borrowers, and the rest of the debt for those who attended public colleges or historically Black colleges and universities and earn less than $125,000 a year. Imagine being a non-college educated voter earning $60-70k a year, and reading that people earning upto $125k a year will get a handout.
- throwaway32848 6y ago
  Nothing I said was false, inflammatory, or off-topic, and yet these comments got massacred with disagreement downvotes (I assume by people with student loan debt who want a handout). The downvoting and flagging on this site is out of control.

y-c-o-m-b 6y ago

I think exit polls (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-president.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/...) - which again could be wildly inaccurate especially due to their small size - showed people making over 6 figures were mostly voting for Trump.

x87678r 6y ago
yup looks like I'm wrong.

isabelc 6y ago

>Most people I know voted Republican were low-wage working people Because Republicans put more money back in the pockets of low wage workers with kids. Most people don't have the luxury of voting along idealistic lines, they vote based on finances out of necessity. Low-wage workers with children were those most hurt by the Obama's ACA Mandate penalty tax, piled on top of not being able to afford health insurance. Republicans removed that ACA penalty plus doubled the child tax credit. People who afford health insurance are out of touch with this segment of people.

meroes 6y ago
At least we got something useful out of the ACA rather than just tax cuts for the wealthy and political points. "All taxpayer income groups with incomes of $75,000 and under — that’s about 65 percent of taxpayers — will face a higher tax rate in 2027 than in 2019." "People with incomes between $10,000 and $30,000 — nearly one-quarter of Americans — are among those scheduled to pay a higher average tax rate in 2021 than in years before the tax “cut” was passed. The C.B.O. and Joint Committee estimated that those with an income of $20,000 to $30,000 would owe an extra $365 next year " Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/republicans-biden-taxes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/31/opinion/republicans-biden... It's a NYT Opinion piece by a Nobel recipient.
dodobirdlord 6y ago
Isn't it a core Republican talking point that the Democrats secure support from low-wage people with generous handouts? This seems like another example of the OPs point about the world being upside down.
- tick_tock_tick 6y ago
  "Handouts" are viewed very differently then taxes by the general public. One is the government giving out free stuff the other is them taking YOUR money.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago