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The best explanation I've heard is that this (almost) half of the US population doesn't care if it hurts a bit, as long as it hurts the other half of the US pop

The best explanation I've heard is that this (almost) half of the US population doesn't care if it hurts a bit, as long as it hurts the other half of the US population more.

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
Not half - but probably around 30%
- signalToNose 2y ago
  Most of politic seems to be about negotiating to keep a third of the population away from power. Because once they get in power they will trash almost anything in their path
lolinder 2y ago
No, that's not it. I'm writing this from rural America in deep Trump territory, and people here are already struggling and have been for years. From their perspective they've been left out of the benefits of the global economy—the big cities and the coasts might be better off, but the middle of the country wants to go back to when they had opportunities and jobs for working class Americans. They're almost certainly wrong about the medicine, but their diagnosis isn't far off: globalization has not helped them as much as it's hurt them. Cheaper goods don't make up for dying towns. Edit: Downvoting people who actually understand Trump voters and try to vocalize their needs and perspectives just silences the voices that could be used to shape a better platform for the Democrats next time. You won't win elections by fighting a straw man invented by your echo chamber.
- jajko 2y ago
  That's what populists do, everywhere including Europe - they take real issue and low-income & low-education folks (usually big overlap), tell then how they were wronged, play on their emotions, dumb down things to us-vs-them yada yada. But they never ever deliver any real solution. Never. What trump solved in first term? No wall, he was joke of the world for that. No middle east peace - fuck, he made the invasion to Israel by giving Jerusalem official israeli status. Palestinians lost all hope at that point (I know its way more complex than that, I know, but this was the trigger point to go full mental like a cornered animal). Afghanistan withdrawal? Thats his contracts with taliban which made US look so weak they were shooting ducks as you guys and rest of west literally ran away for your life. To make any successful long term massive changes, you need a steady leadership. trump is the opposite due to his mental & childhood issues, heck he is the epitome of instability. And so he drags whole world into same instability, changing global markets from bullish to bearish within a week, losing literally all friends and allies, globally. No, puttin' ain't your friend and never will be, he is a murderous sociopathic p.o.s. till his last breath. If simpler folks refuse to see all this and much more and connect those few dots, your idea of babysitting them and hald-holding in ever changing environment is laughable. Even in Europe you guys consider semi-communist we don't do that, we can't do that, its idiotic. This problem is not unique to US in any way and solution ain't what he wants to do. But its so nice to hear all that crap, "I will fix your woes", "the others are to blame for all your issues" and so on. Full on emotions, 0 rationality. Folks, even societies work like that, but get ready China will overtake you sooner than you would like. I kept thinking he is just a russian agent brainwashed in 80s during his visit to moscow (maybe deep hypnosis or something else), but it seems more and more he is doing massive favors to China actually, since russia is already insignificant globally. I don't mean some pesky tariffs, I mean whole world will realign around China, and he is giving it all to them for free. Bravo.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    There are only three ways to beat a populist: * Abolish democracy (only works preemptively, abolishing democracy while they're in charge would obviously not work). * Wait for them to die and hope they don't teach what they know to a successor. * Learn from them and speak to some fraction of their core even more persuasively than they do. You don't defeat a populist by simple virtue of being right.
- api 2y ago
  I don't necessarily agree with Bernie Sanders about the medicine either, but his diagnosis is correct: the Democratic Party abandoned middle America and the working class, so they abandoned it. America decided in the 1970s to liquidate its interior and its manufacturing base to make Wall Street rich from the labor arbitrage trade, and did so with the full throated support of both parties. I live in the outer suburbs of a middle American city. The idea that all Trump supporters are cult members is vastly overblown. There is some of that, but much of his support is exasperation. Rural and working class Americans have nothing to lose and nowhere to go but down. The choice is to vote for Trump or keep watching everyone commit suicide with fentanyl. They know Trump might be full of shit or might not have any real solutions, but they also know Democrats and mainstream Republicans will continue to sell them out. It's also important to understand that for the most part working class and small town Americans don't want welfare, which is the only thing the Democratic Party (possibly, maybe) offers them. They want jobs. They want to feel useful, to do useful things. Unless you are disabled, accepting welfare is disgraceful. I remember my mom (a lifelong Democrat BTW who hates Trump) feeling humiliated to use food stamps for a brief period when I was a kid. "These are for people who really need them. I don't need them." She worked as hard as she could to get off them. Americans want to do things. MAGA is as much anti-traditional-Republican as it is anti-Democrat. In fact I know a few Trump voters whose hatred for the likes of Bush II and the Cheneys is greater than for Democrats. It's a third political party that has taken over the corpse of the Republican party that Bush II destroyed. I didn't vote for Trump because I don't think he actually cares either, and I loathe the man in general. I also have two daughters, and his MAGA movement is full of people who cheer for pro-rape influencers like Andrew Tate or want to LARP the Handmaid's Tale. I can't vote for a movement that is openly allied with such people. Their performative scapegoating of LGBTQ people is gross too, and then there's the crazy autocrat ideologies lurking at the margins. Even if MAGA has some policy points I agree with, the movement is just too intellectually batty and personally disgusting to support. I see nobody on the US political stage that I actually like. I voted for Harris as a "holding pattern" vote in the hope that something better will appear in the future. It's better to stay with the bad option than to go for obviously worse options. If you look around the world "just shaking things up" with nothing better waiting in the wings usually results in a bad outcome. Successful major political shifts or revolutions require a superior alternative with better ideas.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  This is happening in other countries as well. It is often the internal periphery (former GDR, rural France etc., poorer parts of the EU) that votes for anti-system parties out of bitterness. The liberal elites are paying for their inability to keep the societal compact somewhat alive. If too many people don't have jobs and can't find a dentist, they will start a "voter disobedience". Of course the second order effects will be huge, but it is, in a sense, necessary development. A democratic country has to be able to keep a majority of its people reasonably satisfied and well-off.
  - timeon 2y ago
    This seems to me more like simplistic attempt to quickly find the reason. In my poorer corner of Europe we vote for these "anti-system" parties for more than decade. One could argue that they actually are the system. And somehow when in the US every other time "anti-system" sentiment gains the rule (often without popular majority) people see it as deep trend while when other side wins then no-one is saying that "people like globalists". Because I think that it is not really the cause in both cases.
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      I think it was already 20 years ago when a French sociologist whose name I have forgotten showed that the share of vote for the Front National clearly correlated with various negative economic variables, including "distance from the closest still functional railway station". FYI I don't believe in "THE REASON" or "THE CAUSE" and I am wary of people who reduce complex issues such as voting patterns to one single root cause, but to deny that economic hardship is a significant factor in anti-system vote seems to be wishful thinking to me. Show me a relatively rich neighbourhood or voting district (say, over 130 per cent of average national GDP) with above average anti-system vote share, anywhere in Europe. I don't think you will find it. People who have a lot to lose don't rock the boat.
- epistasis 2y ago
  That's a very very partial picture of it. There's a lot of hate about social change, people are terrified of trans people and that has been effectively turned into a culture war issue. Also your economic story doesn't hold water. The Biden administration successfully placed tons of factories all over the country with tax incentives for clean energy, but those factories could never trumpet what they were doing because hate for Democrats and for Biden and for clean energy is stronger than any desire for jobs. Similarly the destruction of the CHIPS act and its unpopularity in rural areas also shows that the economic opportunity aspect is just an excuse for the cultural hate that has been worked up. The best way to understand a Trump supporter that I have come to is a person that hates Democrats more than anything, and will do anything possible to bully them, including the economic destruction of the country. I have a lot of family like this, and for years I thought they were just joking or exaggerating about their hate, but the past year has shown me that they were earnest. It's not the 1990s anymore, this is a visceral culture war above all else.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > The Biden administration successfully placed tons of factories all over the country with tax incentives for clean energy, but those factories could never trumpet what they were doing because hate for Democrats and for Biden and for clean energy is stronger than any desire for jobs Nothing has changed here. It's doesn't matter what they've claimed they're doing, there are still no jobs here and working class Americans feel abandoned. The vast majority of Trump voters around here voted for him because of the economy. The trans stuff was seen as evidence that the Democrats were so wrapped up in first world problems held by a tiny minority that they didn't even notice that the majority of the country was actively struggling to make ends meet. It's not about the trans people, it's about the narrative that Trump shaped about how that related to these people's economic lives.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - ta988 2y ago
      And for sure dismantling social security and all the safety nets including medicaid will help them feel welcomed again...
- masklinn 2y ago
  > Cheaper goods don't make up for dying towns. And so… they vote for the cheaper goods and killing their towns more? > the voices that could be used to shape a better platform for the Democrats next time. The Democratic platform has been around providing succour and training to rural areas for several election cycles, Clinton’s campaign included 30 billions in infrastructure, training, and redevelopment, as well as healthcare and pension safeguard for coal counties.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Don't you see how that platform is more patronizing than "I'll bring the jobs back home"? It's far more appealing to hear that your jobs were taken by cheap Chinese labor than to hear that your skills are out of date and you need training. It doesn't actually matter in this case who is right—as I said, they're wrong about the medicine—what matters is who understands the human beings who vote better. And Trump understood these people better than any member of the establishment in either party, which is why he was able to hijack one and defeat the other. Inventing stories about how half the country just wants the other half to hurt won't help win the midterms and the next presidency. We have to get past that and actually look at what Trump voters truly believe, then speak to them as real people, not strawmen.
    - masklinn 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - marcus0x62 2y ago
        Q.E.D
        masklinn 2y ago
        What's QED exactly? The comment I'm replying to is saying that > It doesn't actually matter in this case who is right because the only thing that's important is whose claim is attractive to the population being pandered to, and that > I'll bring the jobs back home is amazing despite being completely nonsensical. And the're probably right, mind. A lot of the responses seem to agree, just couching it in nicer terms (if barely). I guess putting it in plain terms is not acceptable. As is usually the case.
- simion314 2y ago
  How much is also the hate on LGBTQ and woke people? Just curious, I see in Romaia the rise of such fascist group that suck on Putin because he also wants the woke and LGBTQ dead and he is a Christian men that kills the assassinated the traitors in the name of God.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    The anti-woke grassroots rhetoric around here is more about how much of a waste of time it is when they should be focused on issues that matter to people's livelihood. It's not hate on LGBTQ so much as irritation that something that doesn't seem to matter (to them) is given so much emphasis while the working class struggles.
    - bavell 2y ago
      This is 100% correct based on all the trump voters I've spoken to.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      It’s… largely being given emphasis by ‘their’ side, though? Which side of the political divide spends all their time going on about trans people? I mean, it’s very much the right.
    - simion314 2y ago
      But is it given so much importance by the politicians? The reason I ask is that here in Romania the issue is completly fabircated by the social media and amplified by the algorithm. What I mean there was not a single law pro LGBTQ passed in Romania, the educational system is not teaching children about LGBTQ, there are no changes in schools or other places to unixes bathrooms, no forced or assisted transitioning programs. It is just media with conspiracies like the COVID vaccines makes you gay, 5G makes you gay, Bruxelles wants to make your children gay, Soros wants to make the children gay. There are also staged video with transexuals making a circus and shared on TikTok. So now we have a lot of idiots that actually thinks that we need to surrender to Putin so he can kill the traitors and the gays.
- tw04 2y ago
  >No, that's not it. I'm writing this from rural America in deep Trump territory, and people here are already struggling and have been for years. From their perspective they've been left out of the benefits of the global economy—the big cities and the coasts might be better off, but the middle of the country wants to go back to when they had opportunities and jobs for working class Americans. But they haven't, they're just completely uninformed about what they're getting. If you think ANY of the rural farming communities could continue to exist without significant federal subsidies, you're crazy. Ask a farmer whether globalization has helped him or not the next time China retaliates to a tarriff by refusing to import any US soybeans and you'll quickly discover that it has absolutely helped them. Globalization is less the cause of their issue, it's deregulation. Consolidation of manufacturing has killed plants in those small towns. Consolidation of groceries[1] has made it impossible for small-town grocery stores to survive on their own. Both can be traced back to Reaganomics. Are the Democrats at fault for not attempting to reverse any of that? Absolutely, but the answer isn't: we need someone who wants even more consolidation and to kill all international relations. [1]https://ilsr.org/articles/policy-shift-local-grocery/ https://ilsr.org/articles/policy-shift-local-grocery/
- itsanaccount 2y ago
  [flagged]
- titzer 2y ago
  Grew up in the midwest and still have a lot of ties there. You left out the absolutely gargantuan amount of right wing crazy propaganda that has all of them hating democrats and "The Left" and "socialists" to death. The most religious literally believe the Democrats are evil and want to destroy America. They've been harping on that for 40 years.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    There are always some fraction of nutjobs in any coalition, but in my part of the Midwest that is a tiny fraction of the voters. Most are just tired of change and tired of feeling left behind. To the extent that they're riled up by that rhetoric it's because it gives them a place to put their economic frustrations.
  - xedrac 2y ago
    In my experience, the average Trump voter is far more accepting than the average leftist, who will refuse to even engage with you if you think differently than they do.
    - ProcNetDev 2y ago
      This has not been my experience growing up in a rural America. Sure leftists might try to cancel you online. But I got my face punched multiple times for not preforming masculinity in a way that they found acceptable or for standing up for someone smaller and weaker.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  It's odd to me that you start your post with "No, that's not it", because I think that both your post and the one you are responding to are exactly correct. You state "the big cities and the coasts might be better off, but the middle of the country wants to go back to when they had opportunities and jobs for working class Americans. ...globalization has not helped them as much as it's hurt them. Cheaper goods don't make up for dying towns." I 100% agree with that. But I think that many folks are so enthralled with Trump because he was the first politician to really acknowledge this simmering rage, give it legitimacy, and say that it's all those woke, city-dwelling liberals fault. The GP comment says "The best explanation I've heard is that this (almost) half of the US population doesn't care if it hurts a bit, as long as it hurts the other half of the US population more", but that fits perfectly in with your explanation as well. A lot of Trump supporters are pissed as hell about the hollowing out of their communities, and they're looking to bring retribution for those they blame for their downfall (or the ones Trump has convinced them are responsible for their downfall). Heck, Trump even said it loudly and proudly, "I am your retribution."
- ambicapter 2y ago
  Saw an interesting article on zero-sum thinking as contingent on the idea that the pie stays fixed, thus ruling out the possibility of "lose a little now, but the pie grows overall so your share grows more to compensate" (the basis for friendly trade relations, basically). What I realized was that, for people who've been "left out of the benefits of the global economy", that picture makes total sense--the pie didn't grow, and in fact probably shrank for them. Thus, zero-sum thinking makes perfect rational sense. It's an accurate worldview, and anyone trumpeting "the pie will grow, you just need to give up a little more (in increased taxes or jobs shipped elsewhere)" in spite of the evidence that IT HASN'T, must be either a fool or outright lying to them. Anyways, for the first time I felt myself understanding a little bit how these voters may feel.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    It's actually a bit worse than that, from their perspective. What if they see it as someone telling them "sure, the pie will shrink for you, but for me and mine it will grow and I'll get a bigger share of it and you should take one for the team so I can prosper"... Who would go for that? If it were merely about the pie shrinking, maybe that's just inevitable, and reasonable people would have to concede that it must shrink. They feel as if there is an element of fraud in the proposals that are made. Rather than miscalculation, rather than misfortune.
    - LadyCailin 2y ago
      Their pie shrunk, because they have nothing of value to offer. And instead of buckling down and figuring out how to provide value and making things better for themselves, they have decided to ruin everything for everyone (themselves included!) Coal mining is dying, and it isn’t coming back, not because of some liberal agenda, but because renewable energy is a better business model. Car manufacturing has been automated and/or shipped overseas, because no one wants pay a premium for a shitty car, just because it was made by Americans. But, instead of focusing on spinning up solar panel production factories or cutting edge automation in automobile manufacturing or funding world class universities to reskill people in things the modern world needs, they’d rather double down on their protectionist agenda while blaming the liberals, despite it being 100% their own fault. Fucking over the liberals might make them feel smug, but the conservative position is worse, because now there isn’t the remote possibility that they can get government funding for all these “socialist agenda items”, never mind that it would actually help them. I’m not saying you’re defending their position, but I am saying that they need to get over themselves, because that’s the only way things get better for them. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying things don’t suck for them. I’m sorry for them that life is hard, and things change. It would certainly be nice if we could just do the things we’re used to and like forever without needing to adapt. But shit changes, and being mean to trans people or whatever just isn’t going to make their lives better, it’s only going to make every one else’s worse too. We rely on each other. We have no choice not to. So instead of being antisocial, they need to grow up and join the rest of us in the society we’re trying to have.
- Cornbilly 2y ago
  > Downvoting people who actually understand Trump voters and try to vocalize their needs and perspectives just silences the voices that could be used to shape a better platform for the Democrats next time. You won't win elections by fighting a straw man invented by your echo chamber. Living in Trump country doesn’t give you any extra credibility. I also live in “Trump Country” and say that the real reason is because they’re all goofs that fell into a personality cult due to the decline of US education and this country’s obsession with celebrity. Who is correct? Save the downvote victim complex for Reddit.
  - wruza 2y ago
    A real goof is the one selling an evening dress to a struggling man.
- meroes 2y ago
  Isn’t that wanting your cake and eating it too? Conservativism rejects progress and changes by definition, so these people purposefully didn’t adapt to changes since the rust belt occurred, and NOW they are so worse off and want blood in the water.
  - NeutralCrane 2y ago
    What changes should the Rust Belt have made that would have prevented the gutting of their communities when financiers and board rooms decided to ship their livelihoods to third world countries? There isn’t a “progress” switch to turn on. The current state of the Rust Belt isn’t because they are full of knuckle dragging idiots inferior to the coasts. It’s because they were dealt the economic equivalent of a traumatic brain injury, and have spent decades trying to recover. Meanwhile, the areas of the country that inflicted this injury on them are now trying to convince everyone that it was their own fault. I’m as disgusted by Trump as anyone, and would never vote for him. But I am from the Rust Belt and absolutely sympathize with the anger that would make someone want to burn the system down.
    - meroes 2y ago
      Half my family is from the south and I lived in Ohio for years. They could have stopped giving tithes to churches on every corner and giving away their land and resources at pennies to massive corporations that have no allegiance and invested in education and social programs for the long term instead or in addition. The Rust Belt and the South were WEALTHY economies don't ever forget it. You can see the remnants of that wealth in the slave quarters adjacent to every house in certain neighborhoods, the massive plantations, the rusting industrial areas. They HAD money to invest in the past for securing a better future.
- samcheng 2y ago
  I did read "Hillbilly Elegy" and come from a rust-belt city with rural family. I understand your perspective, but I don't think that explains most of Trump's actions. The (very valid!) critique of globalist profiteering you shared has been boiled down into something beyond economics and into tribalism. I blame decades of right-wing media dominance on cable TV and rural radio.
- newhotelowner 2y ago
  All my employees are Trump supporters and Trump got 75% of the vote in my county. They want the 70s-80s economy back, but they don't want to support unions. They think they deserve to receive government benefits. But others are moochers, and they don't deserve it. They think Trump is deporting criminal / drug cartel illegal immigrants. My state is red (State houses & governor have been conservatives for the last 30 years). Yet they blame all the issues on democrates. When my state signed the carry law, they thought Biden was the one who signed the law. If you are in the deep trump territory, listen to conservative/religious radio stations. You will know how much hate they are spreading against liberal, trans, gays, and immigrants.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > If you are in the deep trump territory, listen to conservative/religious radio stations. You will know how much hate they are spreading against liberal, trans, gays, and immigrants. You have to distinguish between the rhetoric being spread to hijack the economic woes and the actual root of the problem. All that stuff is designed to give people an outlet for their very real economic frustrations. It's not deep seated (yet), it's a tool to exploit them. The only reason why it's working is because these people have been ignored for too long by the establishment in both parties, and it's not too late to respond and adapt.
    - coryrc 2y ago
      Where were they when Bernie Sanders needed votes to be the Democratic nominee?
      - lolinder 2y ago
        Not voting in the Democratic primary because Trump had already shifted them to the Republican party.
- analog31 2y ago
  How big a role did race and religion play? I'm genuinely curious because the mainstream media won't talk about it, perhaps out of a sense of political correctness. But it seems odd that they're framing the election as a referendum on economics, when the Trump campaign didn't even float a coherent economic agenda. As I mentioned in another thread, the Republicans switched from "the immigrants are stealing your jobs" to "the immigrants are stealing your cats."
  - lolinder 2y ago
    It played a role in giving people an outlet to attach their anger to, the same as it did in 1930s Germany. But the economics came first and are still dominant in the majority of Trump voters I speak with. The vocal minority pushing the racism and anti-LGBT stuff are not representative.
    - Aloha 2y ago
      It's like you and I are reading from the same book! - If I just go off what I see online, most of the loudest anti-trans voices, and most of the racists, I'm more or less convinced have never met or gotten to know any trans people or any black people. It's a certain amount of willful ignorance on their part.
    - edflsafoiewq 2y ago
      Income is one of the weakest predictors of which way you voted. Race and religion are far stronger.
      - jpadkins 2y ago
        That's incorrect. Gender was a larger predictor in the last election (and then married status, interestingly enough). Trump gained in both black and latino voter share. https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latinos-black-voters-0f3fbda3362f3dcfe41aa6b858f22d12 https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latin...
        2y ago
- throw0101b 2y ago
  > Cheaper goods don't make up for dying towns. Manufacturing output in the US is at an all-time high: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Manufacturing_GDP_(nominal_and_real)_and_Manufacturing_Employment.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_St... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_St... Though it's (a) smaller share of GDP compared to the 'good old days' of the 1950-60s, and (b) does not need as many workers because of automation. This is true in a lot of industries: various seaports have never imported/exports more goods, but have fewer dockworkers than decades ago because of containerization and giant cranes. Though one problem is of 'concentrated loss': if a town/area was dependent on one factory (or industry), then it could be especially heavily hit because of that single point of failure.
- Aloha 2y ago
  You're more or less spot on. It doesn't matter that Republicans are slightly more to blame then Democrats in the thinning out of rural places - the folks who live there, IMO, see both parties as the same thing. They remember how their towns were when they were young, they had a bustling locally owned and operated main street full of commercial activity, they also often had a factory, or mill which provided good jobs too. Some of the parallel commenters here only think rural = farming, and thats not true. If you look at the Carolinas for example, there were textile and lumber mills - farming there is still more or less as healthy as its every been - but all of those other sources of employment which brought money in from outside of the community are gone. This story repeats itself in a bunch of places, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, and across the greater west too. This rot started well before Reagan though - it's something I've called "the 1971 problem". If you go on a road trip across rural America, you'll rarely see a locally funded building (aka, not a chain store), built after 1971-3 - with the notable exception to this being places with a military base, college, or some other government facility - and I think the causes are multiple here, post vietnam drawdown of forces, détente, the 1973 oil crisis, stagflation, the Nixon shock, then later the so-called peace dividend after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war. Globalization thru the 80's-90's just made all of these issues worse, and hollowed out manufacturing too - now all of this this effected cities too, to some extent, but as you mention, cities got benefits of globalization - more information economy jobs, greater wealth flowing in from the financialization of everything, which while didnt replace the jobs lost in manufacturing, did replace the wealth generated by it. (there are even more things I've not really touched on - like the steady decrease in local ownership of businesses, and the corresponding civic rot that kicks in when this happens) There is another issue I also want to touch on here - "jobs for regular people" - for a significant portion of the population, the best job they can hope for is a decent factory job, a job in the trades - or more likely today, a not so great service job. One of the reasons I want to onshore manufacturing is that we need those higher quality jobs to ensure the benefits of our economy are shared more broadly. I'm a proponent of tariffs as a way to solve this - not what Trump is doing which are penalty tariffs - but what I've called cost adjustment tariffs - tariffs that adjust the price of imported manufactured goods to the same level as if they were made here, where you price in labor differences overall regulatory burden, environmental and climate rules, and other factors - on a fundamental level, I feel it is immoral to export all the externalities from manufacturing to another country (pollution being the primary one I'm thinking of). While tariffs, even at some low level may result in slower GDP growth. People cannot eat or pay their rent with GDP - a more ideal answer (one I support) is UBI, but UBI doesn't appear to politically possible - and there is also value in being able to do work where you can see the fruits of your labor (both in the physical good you've made - and the pay check you get at the end of the week), for good or for bad, it gives you self worth and a feeling of purpose too. So I get why rural voters vote for Trump, and its because my side has failed to understand the economic pain that anyplace that isn't a tier 1/2/3 city has experienced over the last 50 years - and what their needs are for the future. In the end, I think Trump will fail them, and probably make everything else worse - but he's the horse that the American people who could be bothered to show up to vote picked (I'll note much to my consternation, that 3m less people voted in 2024 vs 2020).
- the_gastropod 2y ago
  > people who actually understand Trump voters and try to vocalize their needs and perspectives just silences the voices We’ve been falling over ourselves trying to understand these poor misunderstood Trump voters for nearly 10 years now. We’ve all heard these rationalizations many times before.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  This is supported by the research: There are committed bigots in the Republican voter base. They’re suburban and rural-rich. The rural poor Republican voters largely are, at least hypothetically (if you can get through their media bubbles) reachable by the right economic message. They’re not in it for the racism or what have you. That’s the suburban republicans.
  - arbitrary_name 2y ago
    Do you have evidence for this? It flies in the face of every piece of evidence i have come across, anecdotal or otherwise.
    - nebula8804 2y ago
      Redneck has labor roots, people like Michael Moore explain this in his documentary Fahrenheit 11/9. People have forgotten this history. The term "redneck" has multiple origins, but one significant historical source comes from coal miners in West Virginia during the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921. Union coal miners wore red bandanas around their necks as a symbol of solidarity and collective action during their struggle against mine owners who exploited their labor. This protest, known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, was one of the largest labor uprisings in U.S. history, and the red bandanas they wore earned them the nickname "rednecks." This was beautifully expressed in the West Virginia teachers strike a few years back: https://youtu.be/JEjU-X57Wrc?t=4313 https://youtu.be/JEjU-X57Wrc?t=4313
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - nebula8804 2y ago
    Oh you hit the nail on the head! I know these people! I live in their town! A lot of MAGA is not poor, they are actually upper middle class(If I recall correctly one of the Jan 6 people even arrived to do her revolt using a private jet? I might be misremembering that) I can't ever understand why they have so much hate and bile in them? I'm guessing its just fear of losing what they do have? I don't really know.
- analog31 2y ago
  I know I responded to you once already, but the other thing I wonder is if globalization is really the issue here. There's also an inherent productivity gap between densely and sparsely populated areas. Had industrial jobs not moved to China, they would have moved to the cities. When people do build factories, which they still do, they build them in or around the cities, not in the country, despite having to pay more for land, labor, and regulatory compliance. If they do locate in the country, they choose a town that has a university and a hospital.
  - nradov 2y ago
    That's not really as true any more. The plastics and chemicals industry is growing rapidly in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and those factories tend to be sited based on easy access to natural gas supplies rather than proximity to cities.
- deeg 2y ago
  But what is Trump saying/doing that's addressing their concerns? Cutting taxes for the rich? Tariffs? Renaming the Gulf of Mexico? Killing trans/gay rights? The closest is his anti immigrant rhetoric but my guess is that this will largely hurt farmers (although maybe they know better than I do). How is any of this helping fly over country?
- lostdog 2y ago
  The saddest part is that Biden's infrastructure, manufacturing, and chips work would benefit them a ton. They cannot see cause and effect, and in the end they will get hurt the most.
rectang 2y ago
Playing only zero-sum games. A positive sum outcome, where both of us benefit, is inconceivable!
- NekkoDroid 2y ago
  Not even a zero-sum game, just straight up "everyone has to lose, but I have to lose less", a negative sum game I guess.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  Take a step back and consider how hardened the divide is between “the two sides”. It should have never come that far, how are you gonna keep national unity in a situation like that!? Are there other first world countries that are that divided?
  - randomNumber7 2y ago
    US is probably worse cause no social system, but germany for example also feels divided. Half of the population benefits from the status quo while the other suffers. It is hard to tell whose fault it is, if this question even matters.
    - eternauta3k 2y ago
      How is Germany divided?
      - wombatpm 2y ago
        Did you see the areas that voted far right? Lots of overlap with firmer East Germany
        generic92034 2y ago
        That would not be a split in halves, by any means, though. East Germany accounts for about 15% of the population, last I looked. Also, the far-right AfD got about 20% of the votes in the recent election. That is also not a split in halves.
baby_souffle 2y ago
This is precisely correct. Briefly, the parts of the map that voted for Trump are largely known as flyover country. To oversimplify things, the people in this area have been neglected and talked down to by some portion of the political apparatus as far back as they can remember. In some cases, the vote for Trump wasn't meant to be anything more than punitive. To get a rise out of the politically aligned groups that can afford to fly over and - literally - look down on.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  Farm subsidies and other special programs have been flowing to "flyover country" at an enhanced rate for almost a century (for about as long as the government has done things like that) as a result of the constitutional rule that says each state gets two senators regardless of population. The trade war is presently creating an economic crisis for those farmers, who primarily sell their crops outside the US.
- brookst 2y ago
  Kind of true but also kind of victim-blaming. Part of the reason many people consider those areas “flyovers” is that minorities, women, gays, nerds, really lots of people, can expect to get treated very badly in those areas. Now, maybe there’s an obligation to turn the other cheek, reach out, and try to educate people in flyovers. But it is far too reductive to act like the blame points one way here and it’s just snobby elites who have abandoned these populations.
  - epistasis 2y ago
    I think this is where "flyover" talk is so useless. Look at Minneapolis, and Minnesota in general. Wealthy, hugely diverse, amazingly Red rural areas and unbelievably Blue urban areas. It's a lot like California, honestly.
  - arrobbiato 2y ago
    I spend a lot of time in the “flyover” areas, and this is simply not true at all. Maybe it was long ago, but we are no longer living in that age. It seems like the media want to portray middle America as some kind of medieval redneck nightmare thunderdome, for reasons I cannot fathom.
bennettnate5 2y ago
You mean (almost) a quarter of the population--only 47% of Republicans actually support funding Ukraine less [1]. There are plenty on both sides that disapprove of the foreign policy decisions of the current administration. I've seen these "people in party x categorically do y" comments a whole lot more recently, and it really feels like a net negative to political discourse. Based on the source I pointed to earlier, there seems to be a plurality of support for at least continuing aid to Ukraine, with only 30% believing we're sending too much. Us vs them mentality won't help people recognize and voice disapproval of decisions within their own party that they don't agree with; we need to concede that people may vote a candidate for a narrow set of reasons (thanks to the two-party system) and have political discourse that encourages disagreeing with certain of your own party's views. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/14/americans-views-of-the-war-in-ukraine-continue-to-differ-by-party/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/14/americans...
- KerrAvon 2y ago
  That data is outdated. That support has eroded since then, and will continue to erode now that Trump has stopped equivocating (lying) about his position on Ukraine. Hate to break it to you, but people in the GOP will support anything Trump tells them to. The right wing political ecosystem is a closed system and it’s driven from the top down, and they’ll believe anything they’re told, so long as the entire ecosystem is reinforcing it. They spent 60 years building this system; it works really well now. And it’s the reason the country is now being dismantled, and the reason there’s nothing anyone can do about it. This system was the cracks in the foundation and Trump was the nitroglycerin. There is nothing like this on the Democratic side of the fence. There’s no centralization of opinion, and there’s no media ecosystem whatsoever. The so-called “mainstream media” is now all owned by right-wing or at best center-right billionaires, so Democrats can’t actually push a message even if they could get it together, because they don’t have any microphones. There were attempts at a Democratic media ecosystem, all of them sabotaged by centrists who didn’t want progressives to gain power. Because “better things aren’t possible” wasn’t a winning message and people on both sides of the political fence generally prefer progressive policies (until you associated them with the Democrats, then GOP support plunges.) But it would threaten people like Nancy Pelosi whose power and personal fortune derive from doing massive favors for defense contractors.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
My mental model is that it will hurt the S&P500 but benefit the working class.
- epistasis 2y ago
  How do you see some sort of benefit for the working class? Has Trump, Musk, or literally anyone associated with this administration ever made any move towards that? Trump in particular is famous for not paying people.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
    Tariffs are an inefficiency that lowers profits and raises the cost of goods but they also create manufacturing jobs which benefit the working class. That's my mental model- I'm not an economist. I also strongly disagree with the tariffs on Canada and Mexico and almost all of the current policy decisions. There might be a method to the tariffs madness though is all that I'm saying.
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      Take that thought further. Say we put a tariff on socks. And Hanes opens a sock factory in the US. Is a few hundred sock jobs going to help the millions who aren’t making socks? Does working in the sock factory pay enough to buy computers and cars and other higher margin goods? Generally speaking, for broad tariffs, the answer is “No”.
      - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
        Tariffs could mean a few hundred sock jobs but also cotton jobs, nylon jobs, rubber jobs, dye jobs, etc. All more expensive than importing but supports local economies. Again, I'm not an economist, and tariffs are not a panacea, but they are also not useless.
peder 2y ago
Holy strawman, batman.
the_gastropod 2y ago
There’s certainly no shortage of MAGA folk whose primary motivations are “owning the libs”. But I think there’s plenty of people who just truly believed in the nonsense Trump was selling.
bmitc 2y ago
But that isn't what has happened or is happening.
yodsanklai 2y ago
> as long as it hurts the other half of the US population more. if it was only half of the US population they want to hurt, it's also the rest of world, even the environment.

The best explanation I've heard is that this (almost) half of the US population doesn't care if it hurts a bit, as long as it hurts the other half of the US population more.

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago

Not half - but probably around 30%

signalToNose 2y ago
Most of politic seems to be about negotiating to keep a third of the population away from power. Because once they get in power they will trash almost anything in their path

lolinder 2y ago

No, that's not it. I'm writing this from rural America in deep Trump territory, and people here are already struggling and have been for years. From their perspective they've been left out of the benefits of the global economy—the big cities and the coasts might be better off, but the middle of the country wants to go back to when they had opportunities and jobs for working class Americans. They're almost certainly wrong about the medicine, but their diagnosis isn't far off: globalization has not helped them as much as it's hurt them. Cheaper goods don't make up for dying towns. Edit: Downvoting people who actually understand Trump voters and try to vocalize their needs and perspectives just silences the voices that could be used to shape a better platform for the Democrats next time. You won't win elections by fighting a straw man invented by your echo chamber.

jajko 2y ago
That's what populists do, everywhere including Europe - they take real issue and low-income & low-education folks (usually big overlap), tell then how they were wronged, play on their emotions, dumb down things to us-vs-them yada yada. But they never ever deliver any real solution. Never. What trump solved in first term? No wall, he was joke of the world for that. No middle east peace - fuck, he made the invasion to Israel by giving Jerusalem official israeli status. Palestinians lost all hope at that point (I know its way more complex than that, I know, but this was the trigger point to go full mental like a cornered animal). Afghanistan withdrawal? Thats his contracts with taliban which made US look so weak they were shooting ducks as you guys and rest of west literally ran away for your life. To make any successful long term massive changes, you need a steady leadership. trump is the opposite due to his mental & childhood issues, heck he is the epitome of instability. And so he drags whole world into same instability, changing global markets from bullish to bearish within a week, losing literally all friends and allies, globally. No, puttin' ain't your friend and never will be, he is a murderous sociopathic p.o.s. till his last breath. If simpler folks refuse to see all this and much more and connect those few dots, your idea of babysitting them and hald-holding in ever changing environment is laughable. Even in Europe you guys consider semi-communist we don't do that, we can't do that, its idiotic. This problem is not unique to US in any way and solution ain't what he wants to do. But its so nice to hear all that crap, "I will fix your woes", "the others are to blame for all your issues" and so on. Full on emotions, 0 rationality. Folks, even societies work like that, but get ready China will overtake you sooner than you would like. I kept thinking he is just a russian agent brainwashed in 80s during his visit to moscow (maybe deep hypnosis or something else), but it seems more and more he is doing massive favors to China actually, since russia is already insignificant globally. I don't mean some pesky tariffs, I mean whole world will realign around China, and he is giving it all to them for free. Bravo.
- lolinder 2y ago
  There are only three ways to beat a populist: * Abolish democracy (only works preemptively, abolishing democracy while they're in charge would obviously not work). * Wait for them to die and hope they don't teach what they know to a successor. * Learn from them and speak to some fraction of their core even more persuasively than they do. You don't defeat a populist by simple virtue of being right.
api 2y ago
I don't necessarily agree with Bernie Sanders about the medicine either, but his diagnosis is correct: the Democratic Party abandoned middle America and the working class, so they abandoned it. America decided in the 1970s to liquidate its interior and its manufacturing base to make Wall Street rich from the labor arbitrage trade, and did so with the full throated support of both parties. I live in the outer suburbs of a middle American city. The idea that all Trump supporters are cult members is vastly overblown. There is some of that, but much of his support is exasperation. Rural and working class Americans have nothing to lose and nowhere to go but down. The choice is to vote for Trump or keep watching everyone commit suicide with fentanyl. They know Trump might be full of shit or might not have any real solutions, but they also know Democrats and mainstream Republicans will continue to sell them out. It's also important to understand that for the most part working class and small town Americans don't want welfare, which is the only thing the Democratic Party (possibly, maybe) offers them. They want jobs. They want to feel useful, to do useful things. Unless you are disabled, accepting welfare is disgraceful. I remember my mom (a lifelong Democrat BTW who hates Trump) feeling humiliated to use food stamps for a brief period when I was a kid. "These are for people who really need them. I don't need them." She worked as hard as she could to get off them. Americans want to do things. MAGA is as much anti-traditional-Republican as it is anti-Democrat. In fact I know a few Trump voters whose hatred for the likes of Bush II and the Cheneys is greater than for Democrats. It's a third political party that has taken over the corpse of the Republican party that Bush II destroyed. I didn't vote for Trump because I don't think he actually cares either, and I loathe the man in general. I also have two daughters, and his MAGA movement is full of people who cheer for pro-rape influencers like Andrew Tate or want to LARP the Handmaid's Tale. I can't vote for a movement that is openly allied with such people. Their performative scapegoating of LGBTQ people is gross too, and then there's the crazy autocrat ideologies lurking at the margins. Even if MAGA has some policy points I agree with, the movement is just too intellectually batty and personally disgusting to support. I see nobody on the US political stage that I actually like. I voted for Harris as a "holding pattern" vote in the hope that something better will appear in the future. It's better to stay with the bad option than to go for obviously worse options. If you look around the world "just shaking things up" with nothing better waiting in the wings usually results in a bad outcome. Successful major political shifts or revolutions require a superior alternative with better ideas.
inglor_cz 2y ago
This is happening in other countries as well. It is often the internal periphery (former GDR, rural France etc., poorer parts of the EU) that votes for anti-system parties out of bitterness. The liberal elites are paying for their inability to keep the societal compact somewhat alive. If too many people don't have jobs and can't find a dentist, they will start a "voter disobedience". Of course the second order effects will be huge, but it is, in a sense, necessary development. A democratic country has to be able to keep a majority of its people reasonably satisfied and well-off.
- timeon 2y ago
  This seems to me more like simplistic attempt to quickly find the reason. In my poorer corner of Europe we vote for these "anti-system" parties for more than decade. One could argue that they actually are the system. And somehow when in the US every other time "anti-system" sentiment gains the rule (often without popular majority) people see it as deep trend while when other side wins then no-one is saying that "people like globalists". Because I think that it is not really the cause in both cases.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    I think it was already 20 years ago when a French sociologist whose name I have forgotten showed that the share of vote for the Front National clearly correlated with various negative economic variables, including "distance from the closest still functional railway station". FYI I don't believe in "THE REASON" or "THE CAUSE" and I am wary of people who reduce complex issues such as voting patterns to one single root cause, but to deny that economic hardship is a significant factor in anti-system vote seems to be wishful thinking to me. Show me a relatively rich neighbourhood or voting district (say, over 130 per cent of average national GDP) with above average anti-system vote share, anywhere in Europe. I don't think you will find it. People who have a lot to lose don't rock the boat.
epistasis 2y ago
That's a very very partial picture of it. There's a lot of hate about social change, people are terrified of trans people and that has been effectively turned into a culture war issue. Also your economic story doesn't hold water. The Biden administration successfully placed tons of factories all over the country with tax incentives for clean energy, but those factories could never trumpet what they were doing because hate for Democrats and for Biden and for clean energy is stronger than any desire for jobs. Similarly the destruction of the CHIPS act and its unpopularity in rural areas also shows that the economic opportunity aspect is just an excuse for the cultural hate that has been worked up. The best way to understand a Trump supporter that I have come to is a person that hates Democrats more than anything, and will do anything possible to bully them, including the economic destruction of the country. I have a lot of family like this, and for years I thought they were just joking or exaggerating about their hate, but the past year has shown me that they were earnest. It's not the 1990s anymore, this is a visceral culture war above all else.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > The Biden administration successfully placed tons of factories all over the country with tax incentives for clean energy, but those factories could never trumpet what they were doing because hate for Democrats and for Biden and for clean energy is stronger than any desire for jobs Nothing has changed here. It's doesn't matter what they've claimed they're doing, there are still no jobs here and working class Americans feel abandoned. The vast majority of Trump voters around here voted for him because of the economy. The trans stuff was seen as evidence that the Democrats were so wrapped up in first world problems held by a tiny minority that they didn't even notice that the majority of the country was actively struggling to make ends meet. It's not about the trans people, it's about the narrative that Trump shaped about how that related to these people's economic lives.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ta988 2y ago
    And for sure dismantling social security and all the safety nets including medicaid will help them feel welcomed again...
masklinn 2y ago
> Cheaper goods don't make up for dying towns. And so… they vote for the cheaper goods and killing their towns more? > the voices that could be used to shape a better platform for the Democrats next time. The Democratic platform has been around providing succour and training to rural areas for several election cycles, Clinton’s campaign included 30 billions in infrastructure, training, and redevelopment, as well as healthcare and pension safeguard for coal counties.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Don't you see how that platform is more patronizing than "I'll bring the jobs back home"? It's far more appealing to hear that your jobs were taken by cheap Chinese labor than to hear that your skills are out of date and you need training. It doesn't actually matter in this case who is right—as I said, they're wrong about the medicine—what matters is who understands the human beings who vote better. And Trump understood these people better than any member of the establishment in either party, which is why he was able to hijack one and defeat the other. Inventing stories about how half the country just wants the other half to hurt won't help win the midterms and the next presidency. We have to get past that and actually look at what Trump voters truly believe, then speak to them as real people, not strawmen.
  - masklinn 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - marcus0x62 2y ago
      Q.E.D
      - masklinn 2y ago
        What's QED exactly? The comment I'm replying to is saying that > It doesn't actually matter in this case who is right because the only thing that's important is whose claim is attractive to the population being pandered to, and that > I'll bring the jobs back home is amazing despite being completely nonsensical. And the're probably right, mind. A lot of the responses seem to agree, just couching it in nicer terms (if barely). I guess putting it in plain terms is not acceptable. As is usually the case.
simion314 2y ago
How much is also the hate on LGBTQ and woke people? Just curious, I see in Romaia the rise of such fascist group that suck on Putin because he also wants the woke and LGBTQ dead and he is a Christian men that kills the assassinated the traitors in the name of God.
- lolinder 2y ago
  The anti-woke grassroots rhetoric around here is more about how much of a waste of time it is when they should be focused on issues that matter to people's livelihood. It's not hate on LGBTQ so much as irritation that something that doesn't seem to matter (to them) is given so much emphasis while the working class struggles.
  - bavell 2y ago
    This is 100% correct based on all the trump voters I've spoken to.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    It’s… largely being given emphasis by ‘their’ side, though? Which side of the political divide spends all their time going on about trans people? I mean, it’s very much the right.
  - simion314 2y ago
    But is it given so much importance by the politicians? The reason I ask is that here in Romania the issue is completly fabircated by the social media and amplified by the algorithm. What I mean there was not a single law pro LGBTQ passed in Romania, the educational system is not teaching children about LGBTQ, there are no changes in schools or other places to unixes bathrooms, no forced or assisted transitioning programs. It is just media with conspiracies like the COVID vaccines makes you gay, 5G makes you gay, Bruxelles wants to make your children gay, Soros wants to make the children gay. There are also staged video with transexuals making a circus and shared on TikTok. So now we have a lot of idiots that actually thinks that we need to surrender to Putin so he can kill the traitors and the gays.
tw04 2y ago
>No, that's not it. I'm writing this from rural America in deep Trump territory, and people here are already struggling and have been for years. From their perspective they've been left out of the benefits of the global economy—the big cities and the coasts might be better off, but the middle of the country wants to go back to when they had opportunities and jobs for working class Americans. But they haven't, they're just completely uninformed about what they're getting. If you think ANY of the rural farming communities could continue to exist without significant federal subsidies, you're crazy. Ask a farmer whether globalization has helped him or not the next time China retaliates to a tarriff by refusing to import any US soybeans and you'll quickly discover that it has absolutely helped them. Globalization is less the cause of their issue, it's deregulation. Consolidation of manufacturing has killed plants in those small towns. Consolidation of groceries[1] has made it impossible for small-town grocery stores to survive on their own. Both can be traced back to Reaganomics. Are the Democrats at fault for not attempting to reverse any of that? Absolutely, but the answer isn't: we need someone who wants even more consolidation and to kill all international relations. [1]https://ilsr.org/articles/policy-shift-local-grocery/ https://ilsr.org/articles/policy-shift-local-grocery/
itsanaccount 2y ago
[flagged]
titzer 2y ago
Grew up in the midwest and still have a lot of ties there. You left out the absolutely gargantuan amount of right wing crazy propaganda that has all of them hating democrats and "The Left" and "socialists" to death. The most religious literally believe the Democrats are evil and want to destroy America. They've been harping on that for 40 years.
- lolinder 2y ago
  There are always some fraction of nutjobs in any coalition, but in my part of the Midwest that is a tiny fraction of the voters. Most are just tired of change and tired of feeling left behind. To the extent that they're riled up by that rhetoric it's because it gives them a place to put their economic frustrations.
- xedrac 2y ago
  In my experience, the average Trump voter is far more accepting than the average leftist, who will refuse to even engage with you if you think differently than they do.
  - ProcNetDev 2y ago
    This has not been my experience growing up in a rural America. Sure leftists might try to cancel you online. But I got my face punched multiple times for not preforming masculinity in a way that they found acceptable or for standing up for someone smaller and weaker.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
It's odd to me that you start your post with "No, that's not it", because I think that both your post and the one you are responding to are exactly correct. You state "the big cities and the coasts might be better off, but the middle of the country wants to go back to when they had opportunities and jobs for working class Americans. ...globalization has not helped them as much as it's hurt them. Cheaper goods don't make up for dying towns." I 100% agree with that. But I think that many folks are so enthralled with Trump because he was the first politician to really acknowledge this simmering rage, give it legitimacy, and say that it's all those woke, city-dwelling liberals fault. The GP comment says "The best explanation I've heard is that this (almost) half of the US population doesn't care if it hurts a bit, as long as it hurts the other half of the US population more", but that fits perfectly in with your explanation as well. A lot of Trump supporters are pissed as hell about the hollowing out of their communities, and they're looking to bring retribution for those they blame for their downfall (or the ones Trump has convinced them are responsible for their downfall). Heck, Trump even said it loudly and proudly, "I am your retribution."
ambicapter 2y ago
Saw an interesting article on zero-sum thinking as contingent on the idea that the pie stays fixed, thus ruling out the possibility of "lose a little now, but the pie grows overall so your share grows more to compensate" (the basis for friendly trade relations, basically). What I realized was that, for people who've been "left out of the benefits of the global economy", that picture makes total sense--the pie didn't grow, and in fact probably shrank for them. Thus, zero-sum thinking makes perfect rational sense. It's an accurate worldview, and anyone trumpeting "the pie will grow, you just need to give up a little more (in increased taxes or jobs shipped elsewhere)" in spite of the evidence that IT HASN'T, must be either a fool or outright lying to them. Anyways, for the first time I felt myself understanding a little bit how these voters may feel.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  It's actually a bit worse than that, from their perspective. What if they see it as someone telling them "sure, the pie will shrink for you, but for me and mine it will grow and I'll get a bigger share of it and you should take one for the team so I can prosper"... Who would go for that? If it were merely about the pie shrinking, maybe that's just inevitable, and reasonable people would have to concede that it must shrink. They feel as if there is an element of fraud in the proposals that are made. Rather than miscalculation, rather than misfortune.
  - LadyCailin 2y ago
    Their pie shrunk, because they have nothing of value to offer. And instead of buckling down and figuring out how to provide value and making things better for themselves, they have decided to ruin everything for everyone (themselves included!) Coal mining is dying, and it isn’t coming back, not because of some liberal agenda, but because renewable energy is a better business model. Car manufacturing has been automated and/or shipped overseas, because no one wants pay a premium for a shitty car, just because it was made by Americans. But, instead of focusing on spinning up solar panel production factories or cutting edge automation in automobile manufacturing or funding world class universities to reskill people in things the modern world needs, they’d rather double down on their protectionist agenda while blaming the liberals, despite it being 100% their own fault. Fucking over the liberals might make them feel smug, but the conservative position is worse, because now there isn’t the remote possibility that they can get government funding for all these “socialist agenda items”, never mind that it would actually help them. I’m not saying you’re defending their position, but I am saying that they need to get over themselves, because that’s the only way things get better for them. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying things don’t suck for them. I’m sorry for them that life is hard, and things change. It would certainly be nice if we could just do the things we’re used to and like forever without needing to adapt. But shit changes, and being mean to trans people or whatever just isn’t going to make their lives better, it’s only going to make every one else’s worse too. We rely on each other. We have no choice not to. So instead of being antisocial, they need to grow up and join the rest of us in the society we’re trying to have.
Cornbilly 2y ago
> Downvoting people who actually understand Trump voters and try to vocalize their needs and perspectives just silences the voices that could be used to shape a better platform for the Democrats next time. You won't win elections by fighting a straw man invented by your echo chamber. Living in Trump country doesn’t give you any extra credibility. I also live in “Trump Country” and say that the real reason is because they’re all goofs that fell into a personality cult due to the decline of US education and this country’s obsession with celebrity. Who is correct? Save the downvote victim complex for Reddit.
- wruza 2y ago
  A real goof is the one selling an evening dress to a struggling man.
meroes 2y ago
Isn’t that wanting your cake and eating it too? Conservativism rejects progress and changes by definition, so these people purposefully didn’t adapt to changes since the rust belt occurred, and NOW they are so worse off and want blood in the water.
- NeutralCrane 2y ago
  What changes should the Rust Belt have made that would have prevented the gutting of their communities when financiers and board rooms decided to ship their livelihoods to third world countries? There isn’t a “progress” switch to turn on. The current state of the Rust Belt isn’t because they are full of knuckle dragging idiots inferior to the coasts. It’s because they were dealt the economic equivalent of a traumatic brain injury, and have spent decades trying to recover. Meanwhile, the areas of the country that inflicted this injury on them are now trying to convince everyone that it was their own fault. I’m as disgusted by Trump as anyone, and would never vote for him. But I am from the Rust Belt and absolutely sympathize with the anger that would make someone want to burn the system down.
  - meroes 2y ago
    Half my family is from the south and I lived in Ohio for years. They could have stopped giving tithes to churches on every corner and giving away their land and resources at pennies to massive corporations that have no allegiance and invested in education and social programs for the long term instead or in addition. The Rust Belt and the South were WEALTHY economies don't ever forget it. You can see the remnants of that wealth in the slave quarters adjacent to every house in certain neighborhoods, the massive plantations, the rusting industrial areas. They HAD money to invest in the past for securing a better future.
samcheng 2y ago
I did read "Hillbilly Elegy" and come from a rust-belt city with rural family. I understand your perspective, but I don't think that explains most of Trump's actions. The (very valid!) critique of globalist profiteering you shared has been boiled down into something beyond economics and into tribalism. I blame decades of right-wing media dominance on cable TV and rural radio.
newhotelowner 2y ago
All my employees are Trump supporters and Trump got 75% of the vote in my county. They want the 70s-80s economy back, but they don't want to support unions. They think they deserve to receive government benefits. But others are moochers, and they don't deserve it. They think Trump is deporting criminal / drug cartel illegal immigrants. My state is red (State houses & governor have been conservatives for the last 30 years). Yet they blame all the issues on democrates. When my state signed the carry law, they thought Biden was the one who signed the law. If you are in the deep trump territory, listen to conservative/religious radio stations. You will know how much hate they are spreading against liberal, trans, gays, and immigrants.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > If you are in the deep trump territory, listen to conservative/religious radio stations. You will know how much hate they are spreading against liberal, trans, gays, and immigrants. You have to distinguish between the rhetoric being spread to hijack the economic woes and the actual root of the problem. All that stuff is designed to give people an outlet for their very real economic frustrations. It's not deep seated (yet), it's a tool to exploit them. The only reason why it's working is because these people have been ignored for too long by the establishment in both parties, and it's not too late to respond and adapt.
  - coryrc 2y ago
    Where were they when Bernie Sanders needed votes to be the Democratic nominee?
    - lolinder 2y ago
      Not voting in the Democratic primary because Trump had already shifted them to the Republican party.
analog31 2y ago
How big a role did race and religion play? I'm genuinely curious because the mainstream media won't talk about it, perhaps out of a sense of political correctness. But it seems odd that they're framing the election as a referendum on economics, when the Trump campaign didn't even float a coherent economic agenda. As I mentioned in another thread, the Republicans switched from "the immigrants are stealing your jobs" to "the immigrants are stealing your cats."
- lolinder 2y ago
  It played a role in giving people an outlet to attach their anger to, the same as it did in 1930s Germany. But the economics came first and are still dominant in the majority of Trump voters I speak with. The vocal minority pushing the racism and anti-LGBT stuff are not representative.
  - Aloha 2y ago
    It's like you and I are reading from the same book! - If I just go off what I see online, most of the loudest anti-trans voices, and most of the racists, I'm more or less convinced have never met or gotten to know any trans people or any black people. It's a certain amount of willful ignorance on their part.
  - edflsafoiewq 2y ago
    Income is one of the weakest predictors of which way you voted. Race and religion are far stronger.
    - jpadkins 2y ago
      That's incorrect. Gender was a larger predictor in the last election (and then married status, interestingly enough). Trump gained in both black and latino voter share. https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latinos-black-voters-0f3fbda3362f3dcfe41aa6b858f22d12 https://apnews.com/article/election-harris-trump-women-latin...
      - 2y ago
throw0101b 2y ago
> Cheaper goods don't make up for dying towns. Manufacturing output in the US is at an all-time high: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Manufacturing_GDP_(nominal_and_real)_and_Manufacturing_Employment.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_St... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_St... Though it's (a) smaller share of GDP compared to the 'good old days' of the 1950-60s, and (b) does not need as many workers because of automation. This is true in a lot of industries: various seaports have never imported/exports more goods, but have fewer dockworkers than decades ago because of containerization and giant cranes. Though one problem is of 'concentrated loss': if a town/area was dependent on one factory (or industry), then it could be especially heavily hit because of that single point of failure.
Aloha 2y ago
You're more or less spot on. It doesn't matter that Republicans are slightly more to blame then Democrats in the thinning out of rural places - the folks who live there, IMO, see both parties as the same thing. They remember how their towns were when they were young, they had a bustling locally owned and operated main street full of commercial activity, they also often had a factory, or mill which provided good jobs too. Some of the parallel commenters here only think rural = farming, and thats not true. If you look at the Carolinas for example, there were textile and lumber mills - farming there is still more or less as healthy as its every been - but all of those other sources of employment which brought money in from outside of the community are gone. This story repeats itself in a bunch of places, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, and across the greater west too. This rot started well before Reagan though - it's something I've called "the 1971 problem". If you go on a road trip across rural America, you'll rarely see a locally funded building (aka, not a chain store), built after 1971-3 - with the notable exception to this being places with a military base, college, or some other government facility - and I think the causes are multiple here, post vietnam drawdown of forces, détente, the 1973 oil crisis, stagflation, the Nixon shock, then later the so-called peace dividend after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war. Globalization thru the 80's-90's just made all of these issues worse, and hollowed out manufacturing too - now all of this this effected cities too, to some extent, but as you mention, cities got benefits of globalization - more information economy jobs, greater wealth flowing in from the financialization of everything, which while didnt replace the jobs lost in manufacturing, did replace the wealth generated by it. (there are even more things I've not really touched on - like the steady decrease in local ownership of businesses, and the corresponding civic rot that kicks in when this happens) There is another issue I also want to touch on here - "jobs for regular people" - for a significant portion of the population, the best job they can hope for is a decent factory job, a job in the trades - or more likely today, a not so great service job. One of the reasons I want to onshore manufacturing is that we need those higher quality jobs to ensure the benefits of our economy are shared more broadly. I'm a proponent of tariffs as a way to solve this - not what Trump is doing which are penalty tariffs - but what I've called cost adjustment tariffs - tariffs that adjust the price of imported manufactured goods to the same level as if they were made here, where you price in labor differences overall regulatory burden, environmental and climate rules, and other factors - on a fundamental level, I feel it is immoral to export all the externalities from manufacturing to another country (pollution being the primary one I'm thinking of). While tariffs, even at some low level may result in slower GDP growth. People cannot eat or pay their rent with GDP - a more ideal answer (one I support) is UBI, but UBI doesn't appear to politically possible - and there is also value in being able to do work where you can see the fruits of your labor (both in the physical good you've made - and the pay check you get at the end of the week), for good or for bad, it gives you self worth and a feeling of purpose too. So I get why rural voters vote for Trump, and its because my side has failed to understand the economic pain that anyplace that isn't a tier 1/2/3 city has experienced over the last 50 years - and what their needs are for the future. In the end, I think Trump will fail them, and probably make everything else worse - but he's the horse that the American people who could be bothered to show up to vote picked (I'll note much to my consternation, that 3m less people voted in 2024 vs 2020).
the_gastropod 2y ago
> people who actually understand Trump voters and try to vocalize their needs and perspectives just silences the voices We’ve been falling over ourselves trying to understand these poor misunderstood Trump voters for nearly 10 years now. We’ve all heard these rationalizations many times before.
alabastervlog 2y ago
This is supported by the research: There are committed bigots in the Republican voter base. They’re suburban and rural-rich. The rural poor Republican voters largely are, at least hypothetically (if you can get through their media bubbles) reachable by the right economic message. They’re not in it for the racism or what have you. That’s the suburban republicans.
- arbitrary_name 2y ago
  Do you have evidence for this? It flies in the face of every piece of evidence i have come across, anecdotal or otherwise.
  - nebula8804 2y ago
    Redneck has labor roots, people like Michael Moore explain this in his documentary Fahrenheit 11/9. People have forgotten this history. The term "redneck" has multiple origins, but one significant historical source comes from coal miners in West Virginia during the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921. Union coal miners wore red bandanas around their necks as a symbol of solidarity and collective action during their struggle against mine owners who exploited their labor. This protest, known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, was one of the largest labor uprisings in U.S. history, and the red bandanas they wore earned them the nickname "rednecks." This was beautifully expressed in the West Virginia teachers strike a few years back: https://youtu.be/JEjU-X57Wrc?t=4313 https://youtu.be/JEjU-X57Wrc?t=4313
- deleted 2y ago
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- nebula8804 2y ago
  Oh you hit the nail on the head! I know these people! I live in their town! A lot of MAGA is not poor, they are actually upper middle class(If I recall correctly one of the Jan 6 people even arrived to do her revolt using a private jet? I might be misremembering that) I can't ever understand why they have so much hate and bile in them? I'm guessing its just fear of losing what they do have? I don't really know.
analog31 2y ago
I know I responded to you once already, but the other thing I wonder is if globalization is really the issue here. There's also an inherent productivity gap between densely and sparsely populated areas. Had industrial jobs not moved to China, they would have moved to the cities. When people do build factories, which they still do, they build them in or around the cities, not in the country, despite having to pay more for land, labor, and regulatory compliance. If they do locate in the country, they choose a town that has a university and a hospital.
- nradov 2y ago
  That's not really as true any more. The plastics and chemicals industry is growing rapidly in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and those factories tend to be sited based on easy access to natural gas supplies rather than proximity to cities.
deeg 2y ago
But what is Trump saying/doing that's addressing their concerns? Cutting taxes for the rich? Tariffs? Renaming the Gulf of Mexico? Killing trans/gay rights? The closest is his anti immigrant rhetoric but my guess is that this will largely hurt farmers (although maybe they know better than I do). How is any of this helping fly over country?
lostdog 2y ago
The saddest part is that Biden's infrastructure, manufacturing, and chips work would benefit them a ton. They cannot see cause and effect, and in the end they will get hurt the most.

rectang 2y ago

Playing only zero-sum games. A positive sum outcome, where both of us benefit, is inconceivable!

NekkoDroid 2y ago
Not even a zero-sum game, just straight up "everyone has to lose, but I have to lose less", a negative sum game I guess.
barbazoo 2y ago
Take a step back and consider how hardened the divide is between “the two sides”. It should have never come that far, how are you gonna keep national unity in a situation like that!? Are there other first world countries that are that divided?
- randomNumber7 2y ago
  US is probably worse cause no social system, but germany for example also feels divided. Half of the population benefits from the status quo while the other suffers. It is hard to tell whose fault it is, if this question even matters.
  - eternauta3k 2y ago
    How is Germany divided?
    - wombatpm 2y ago
      Did you see the areas that voted far right? Lots of overlap with firmer East Germany
      - generic92034 2y ago
        That would not be a split in halves, by any means, though. East Germany accounts for about 15% of the population, last I looked. Also, the far-right AfD got about 20% of the votes in the recent election. That is also not a split in halves.

baby_souffle 2y ago

This is precisely correct. Briefly, the parts of the map that voted for Trump are largely known as flyover country. To oversimplify things, the people in this area have been neglected and talked down to by some portion of the political apparatus as far back as they can remember. In some cases, the vote for Trump wasn't meant to be anything more than punitive. To get a rise out of the politically aligned groups that can afford to fly over and - literally - look down on.

whatshisface 2y ago
Farm subsidies and other special programs have been flowing to "flyover country" at an enhanced rate for almost a century (for about as long as the government has done things like that) as a result of the constitutional rule that says each state gets two senators regardless of population. The trade war is presently creating an economic crisis for those farmers, who primarily sell their crops outside the US.
brookst 2y ago
Kind of true but also kind of victim-blaming. Part of the reason many people consider those areas “flyovers” is that minorities, women, gays, nerds, really lots of people, can expect to get treated very badly in those areas. Now, maybe there’s an obligation to turn the other cheek, reach out, and try to educate people in flyovers. But it is far too reductive to act like the blame points one way here and it’s just snobby elites who have abandoned these populations.
- epistasis 2y ago
  I think this is where "flyover" talk is so useless. Look at Minneapolis, and Minnesota in general. Wealthy, hugely diverse, amazingly Red rural areas and unbelievably Blue urban areas. It's a lot like California, honestly.
- arrobbiato 2y ago
  I spend a lot of time in the “flyover” areas, and this is simply not true at all. Maybe it was long ago, but we are no longer living in that age. It seems like the media want to portray middle America as some kind of medieval redneck nightmare thunderdome, for reasons I cannot fathom.

bennettnate5 2y ago

You mean (almost) a quarter of the population--only 47% of Republicans actually support funding Ukraine less [1]. There are plenty on both sides that disapprove of the foreign policy decisions of the current administration. I've seen these "people in party x categorically do y" comments a whole lot more recently, and it really feels like a net negative to political discourse. Based on the source I pointed to earlier, there seems to be a plurality of support for at least continuing aid to Ukraine, with only 30% believing we're sending too much. Us vs them mentality won't help people recognize and voice disapproval of decisions within their own party that they don't agree with; we need to concede that people may vote a candidate for a narrow set of reasons (thanks to the two-party system) and have political discourse that encourages disagreeing with certain of your own party's views. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/14/americans-views-of-the-war-in-ukraine-continue-to-differ-by-party/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/14/americans...

KerrAvon 2y ago
That data is outdated. That support has eroded since then, and will continue to erode now that Trump has stopped equivocating (lying) about his position on Ukraine. Hate to break it to you, but people in the GOP will support anything Trump tells them to. The right wing political ecosystem is a closed system and it’s driven from the top down, and they’ll believe anything they’re told, so long as the entire ecosystem is reinforcing it. They spent 60 years building this system; it works really well now. And it’s the reason the country is now being dismantled, and the reason there’s nothing anyone can do about it. This system was the cracks in the foundation and Trump was the nitroglycerin. There is nothing like this on the Democratic side of the fence. There’s no centralization of opinion, and there’s no media ecosystem whatsoever. The so-called “mainstream media” is now all owned by right-wing or at best center-right billionaires, so Democrats can’t actually push a message even if they could get it together, because they don’t have any microphones. There were attempts at a Democratic media ecosystem, all of them sabotaged by centrists who didn’t want progressives to gain power. Because “better things aren’t possible” wasn’t a winning message and people on both sides of the political fence generally prefer progressive policies (until you associated them with the Democrats, then GOP support plunges.) But it would threaten people like Nancy Pelosi whose power and personal fortune derive from doing massive favors for defense contractors.

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

My mental model is that it will hurt the S&P500 but benefit the working class.

epistasis 2y ago
How do you see some sort of benefit for the working class? Has Trump, Musk, or literally anyone associated with this administration ever made any move towards that? Trump in particular is famous for not paying people.
- deleted 2y ago
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- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  Tariffs are an inefficiency that lowers profits and raises the cost of goods but they also create manufacturing jobs which benefit the working class. That's my mental model- I'm not an economist. I also strongly disagree with the tariffs on Canada and Mexico and almost all of the current policy decisions. There might be a method to the tariffs madness though is all that I'm saying.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    Take that thought further. Say we put a tariff on socks. And Hanes opens a sock factory in the US. Is a few hundred sock jobs going to help the millions who aren’t making socks? Does working in the sock factory pay enough to buy computers and cars and other higher margin goods? Generally speaking, for broad tariffs, the answer is “No”.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
      Tariffs could mean a few hundred sock jobs but also cotton jobs, nylon jobs, rubber jobs, dye jobs, etc. All more expensive than importing but supports local economies. Again, I'm not an economist, and tariffs are not a panacea, but they are also not useless.

peder 2y ago

Holy strawman, batman.

the_gastropod 2y ago

There’s certainly no shortage of MAGA folk whose primary motivations are “owning the libs”. But I think there’s plenty of people who just truly believed in the nonsense Trump was selling.

bmitc 2y ago

But that isn't what has happened or is happening.

yodsanklai 2y ago

> as long as it hurts the other half of the US population more. if it was only half of the US population they want to hurt, it's also the rest of world, even the environment.