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Mind you, I haven't voted for most winners. Check it out my past votes:
2000 - Al Gore. (lost) Dammit, Ben Franklin, propertyless college kids who are brainwashed by Lyndon B. Johnson's latter-day disciples shouldn't be handed Federal elections ballots. It's like trying to get your dog drunk - sure the results may be funny, but is that really best for the dog or for the world we live in?
2004 - John Kerry. (lost) Wow. Having graduated 'college' (liberal cadre mind-control sessions numbers 1 through 1,293) I became a ground level socialist-statist pro-plundocracy agitator who believed I was "on the right side of history."
2008 - Barak Hussein Obama. (won) I include the Hussein because of findable evidence that the President harbors secret Muslim beliefs. Yeah, I'm trotting that one out. Anyway, still deep in my now self-re-enforcing liberal post-cognitive mind stew, I believed that I was - wait for it - on the right side of history. Also, John McCain was too soft on child murder and claimed not to know how to run the economy. Senator, you are a decent human being but not what the job description of running for President calls for.
And so for a good year and a half after Obama won I was pretty excited. I figured it would be nifty. I was leery about the Affordable Care Act, but I figured, hey, I'll take it, warts and all. The economy will get better..... right?
Right?
Right?
(Michigan slogs through a one-state recession. Thanks, Jenny G.)
2012 - Willard Mitchell Samsonite Sasquatch Mittens Rutabegas-for-Breakfast He Fired Our Dads Willard Mitt Romney. (lost) (It's not just an Obama thing with the middle names.) My political awakening will be detailed soon, but I can give you the concise version. I owned property, had children, and had to keep a job in the private sector. Democrats' policies don't favor you when that's your situation.
2016 - Donald J. Trump. And here we find ourselves.
You and me both. I'm not going to join a no-Trump rally but this really could be the most divided America has ever been under ideological lines. Both sides are hardened and quite upset at each other. To think that somehow this is an ideological mandate is really short-sighted and I think Trump has a lot to prove to me and the people that are really really upset that he won. But the reason why he won is a group of rust-belt white people that turned out to vote for him was they want jobs. It's almost too simple as they've been screaming it for the past 20 years. These are always assumed to be Democrats and that to me is interesting.
ReplyDeleteIn a way I can't blame a blue-collar guy for voting for him. NAFTA and pretty much the decimation of the working class in America towards the globalized world, the people that really are unskilled labor can be shipped overseas. I think Trump has to prove to them that he's got this figured out in 4 years...or else we see someone else in the White House. For people that have a high school education and really not much more than that. Economists give the hard truth that these people need to have skills to be competitive on a worldwide scale or else this is what happens. Personally I agree, but these people really don't want to hear this because secondary school is expensive, time consuming, and difficult. Even more uncomfortable is that these jobs *if* they come back, it's going to be without benefits, a union, or at a wage that is much lower than it was in the 80s. You and me both Ben have heard the line "You used to be able to get a job in the plant for 25$/hr with a pension!" Trump and Congress Republicans have to figure something out and quickly (4 years!) for these people. Ideas like 'supply side economics' and 'reduce the taxes on the rich' to me at least (with a college education) seem insulting and I don't know if the blue-collar types will swallow this idea however my hunch is they won't. Call it class warfare, taxing success, whatever but when the rich get richer the poor get poorer. We'll see as I've been wrong before.
What Trump is exceptional at is he's a very good salesman. Rust belt people have been screaming what they want for a long time now in unison...We want jobs! We want jobs! Good for him to actually talking to them, and actually responding to what they want to hear. I'm curious to what is the solution because I don't know what I would tell them. This isn't easy at all, but America is used conquering the impossible. We've been to the moon, created the Internet (thanks to Al Gore! kidding!), and provide answers to complicated problems when others ignore them. When this bold idea comes across, to get ratified in a divided congress, and swallowed by the people is a big, big ask. If Trump is actually all style without substance would be absolutely insulting and we'd just be in the same position as we were before. Except with more rich person tax cuts, privatized medicare, and perhaps what you want Ben, no more funded Planned Parenthood. These are old ideas, and don't address if John gets a paycheck to proudly pay for his 2 kids, house in the suburbs, and a trip to Disneyworld.
If I can speak to the blue-collared people, and even speaking myself I'll say 'Time to step up to the plate, Trump, let's see what you got!"
Cameron thanks for posting and this is well thought out as always.
ReplyDeleteLet me pick up on "secondary school is difficult." Three insights:
1. OK, college/university can be tough, but for me the first two years were actually a lot more rigorous than the my upperclassman work. By the time I was into 300 level courses in my major, it was basically highly refined fluff. Didn't you notice that?
2. I honestly don't think that 90% of America's high schoolers should be faced with a choice between going to secondary education and picking pesticide-saturated lettuce 17 hours a day in 108 degree weather. I understand that the world is a terrible place but there has to be a place for skilled trades and a reasonably well-educated hardworking person to earn a living without competing with three billion workers from places without environmental or labor standards.
3. High school and indeed junior high should get much, much more focused on preparing kids for an immediate entry into the work force. I'm trotting it out: when my grandfather went through 8th grade what he got was basically today's 10th or 11th grade standard curriculum. In the first half of the twentieth century a high school diploma was a true mark of accomplishment, not just a bus pass to college./
Ok, and to comment on my comment.
ReplyDeleteMy big hopes are deregulation, a simplified tax structure, yes some deportations, especially of folks with a criminal record in addition to coming here illegally, and a stop to ACA and Common Core.
With all that, it is very unlikely that there will be many $25.00 an hour jobs with pensions and health care for high school graduates. Virtually none, in fact. America in many respects now lacks a social contract, and for reasons that are far more complex than Trump can solve, is unlikely to get it back in four years or even fourteen. (Maybe forty?) But for high school graduate to be able to go from even $30,000 a year on average to even $33,000 or $34,000 would bring some healing and opportunity.
Jim has this copy of The Economist laying around here, and the editors - who are the elite of the elite and what our college professors were trying to teach us to think and sound like - basically admitted to trading the U.S. working class for poverty alleviation in China, India and other places in Asia. (Vietnam to some extent? I understand that country now has a tiny middle class.) And after Brexit and especially now after Trump, they're basically like, "whoops, we should've shared more wealth with our domestic working class."
I'd like to think the pro-Trump rebellion - which it really was, Rust Belt people rebelling against their own leaders of both parties, the media, and education - was a way to verbalize and take action to alleviate frustrations about not being able to control our own economic destinies.