[feelix]

The thing that bothers me both about Brexit and Trump is that the mainstream narrative is that it's about closed borders, racism, misogyny, etc.

There is no evidence to suggest that the largest proportion of the voters for these things were motivated by that. One side loses, then they scream racist/bigot at the other side and then because it's the mainstream media those labels stick around. That does not help anyone and does indeed only widen the divide.

[somebehemoth]

Trump openly advocates closing the US border. He advocates racism against mexicans and muslims at least. He is misogynistic to the extreme. It is not a logical leap to assume people who voted for him hold the same ideals. In fact, by voting for such a candidate a voter provides all necessary evidence of their support.

Can you support your "no evidence" claim given the candidate Trump has openly said these things multiple times?

[sweetjesus]

PP said there was no evidence that the preponderance of the voters hold those views, and you respond with what PP called "the mainstream narrative", so you two aren't really talking about the same things; it's as if his comment is actually in response to yours, your comment was the "3. repeat, 1. lather" to his "2. rinse".

I think in your mind, if a candidate says things that egregious, nobody could vote for him who didn't agree, amirite? I don't think the middle sees it like that. These campaigns seem to be about people on the two ends of the bell curve yelling extremities about each other, and they can't seem to grasp that people in the middle are interested in the same topics but don't see everything as so black and white.

[Brendinooo]

It's anecdotal, but most people I know who voted for Mr. Trump did so because they disagreed with Sec. Clinton on matters of policy (SCOTUS was a big one) and/or character.

I voted third party, and those who disagreed with me doing so told me that voting for a candidate doesn't mean you align with all of the candidate's policies. I think most people in this camp knew of Trump's character issues, but thought that Clinton's character issues (corruption, e-mails) were more directly tangential to the office the two candidates were running for.

I don't doubt that racist folks voted for Trump because they identified with some of his rhetoric. But to label every Trump voter is unfair in the short term and may make them more likely to identify with the label in the long term.

[JBlue42]

Character matters though. I have close family members, in a battleground state, that abstained despite voting Republican their entire lives.

And, personally, I consider voting for a person, a person who's entire election has been based on personality and rhetoric, is endorsing their character.

Which is also the problem with the lack of enthusiasm you could hear in a lot of Hillary voters as well but people would still vote for her because it'd be an incremental step forward (on some things) instead of a big step back (on a lot).

[Brendinooo]

I don't disagree with you in terms of endorsing character. That's certainly a valid way to look at voting.

Remember when some people didn't vote for Bill Clinton because of the character issues in his personal life? Other people said that the stuff in private didn't matter if he was good at the job.

My perception was that in the case of Trump, those two arguments were the same but many of the people who said them flipped. I thought that was really interesting to watch.