[stephancoral]

"X is why Trump got elected" is just lazy shorthand for "displays politics or social tendencies I don't like". Did Trump really get elected because of an over-abundance of online articles writing about whiteness and cultural identity? I highly doubt it. There are so much more obvious factors: a weak opponent, easily exploitable economic anxiety, being the "Change" candidate in a charged election. The parent's comment was lazy kneejerk thinking and the fact that I'm here defending a rebuttal to such triteness is indicative of the perverseness of modern civic 'discourse'

[killjoywashere]

> Did Trump really get elected because of an over-abundance of ... writing about whiteness and cultural identity?

Yes, most emphatically. The white bread bowl of the Midwest is sick of driving 15 year old rusted out trucks and being told they need to support affirmative action, hearing all about how blacks were enslaved, Indians were driven off their lands and slaughtered. That guy driving to the Ford plant in his 15 year old rusted pick-up didn't do any of that. He doesn't see the connection between what happened then and why he should give more today. He's just sick of being told he's privileged.

Because he sure doesn't feel privileged. I know, I know, he probably got out of a speeding ticket somewhere, got the last chicken nuggets, the family practice doc hooked him up with another month of oxycontin, didn't have to pay sales tax at the gun store, whatever, yes, I'm sure he enjoyed moments of white privilege and didn't notice, but that's the nature of white privilege, isn't it? "Whitewashing" is quite pejorative, isn't it?

That subtext in all these 'we whitewashed X' articles, baked into magazines, newspapers, textbooks, has become a core unifying principle of the voters who elected Trump. Nationalism is cultural. Bannon is first and foremost a nationalist and speaks often of culture. Sessions was denied a federal court bench because of his history of racist statements. But he sure loves his country. Both of which probably helped him get elected to the Senate in Alabama. Do you suggest that Trump would have made it without Sessions, Miller (Sessions' former aide), and Bannon spoon feeding him a semi-coherent agenda?

The ugly currents of racism in America aren't going away any time soon. Racism's staying power comes from its paleolithic, evolutionary roots: other is danger. The concept of racism is about as close to the limbic system as civilization gets. And Trump and crew leveraged it to gain power and will continue to leverage it for at least the next 4 years.

Look, I'm a white guy in SoCal, I actually surf, but I grew up in Kansas and Nebraska, and I've lived all over. Man, there are a huge differences between life there and life here. And I'd argue that a lot of the East Coast, especially south of the Mason-Dixon line, is even worse.

But if anyone thinks another lashing is what the penitent need right now, just take a freaking pause. The 63% of America that's white is getting a little weary of it and the lesser minds in that 63% are voting en bloc for raving lunatics. It's not just Trump. It's the whole Republican ticket.

I grew up with this people. The left needs to find an agenda that includes the white guys in pickups who have been eating a baloney sandwiches and potato chips for lunch every day for the last 20 years and, if they're lucky, hope to continue eating baloney sandwiches for the next 30 years. They dream of sending their kids to college too.

[specialist]

Wholly agree with your meta analysis.

Here's my take, overgeneralizing:

Trump did worse than Romney, even factoring in the small bump from the haters (sexists, racists).

And those unwilling to vote for Trump defected to Johnson (4m in 2016 vs 1.5m in 2012) or Stein.

Clinton did MUCH worse than Obama.

Those unwilling to vote for Clinton stayed home.

Look. Democrats have to pitch a perfect game to win. Anything less is a loss. But whaddya gonna do?

Everyone I know thought Clinton had Florida. But didn't. We can kibitz over white work class in WI MI PN, or the addicts in WV KY that went Trump.

What I want to know, learn is what magic sauce Obama had that Clinton didn't which roused infrequent voters to show up.

It's the difference between fighting for pennies (Trump) and fighting for whole dollars (Obama).

[killjoywashere]

> is what magic sauce Obama had that Clinton didn't

1) the Congressional districts hadn't been redrawn yet (the 2018 and 2020 elections, and the Census, will be critical).

2) the outgoing president was Republican (strongest predictor of a party winning the presidency? The other party having the presidency).

3) Obama had a populist appeal too, but more because he is an eloquent orator. Remember his Ebenezer Baptist Church Address? (here: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobama/baracko...)

4) Clinton came with wayyyy too much baggage. America has plenty of strong young progressives. They need to take the reins.

5) Debbie Wasserman-Schultz calling balls strikes.

6) Russia, with or without collusion.

[pluma]

> Racism's staying power comes from its paleolithic, evolutionary roots: other is danger.

Yes, but Americans seem exceptionally racist from an outside perspective, too. Not necessarily in the "people with a different skin color are inferior" sense but definitely in the "race is a meaningful way to group people and talk about interactions between groups of people".

To Americans race matters a lot (probably more so to "non-whites" than "whites"). Elsewhere (though of course not _everywhere_ else) it's just trivia: "Oh, you look different, where are you from originally?".

[everybodyknows]

Chinese attitudes on race, from people who are paid to write objectively:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13750623

[pluma]

Maybe I should have prefixed that with "relative to other Western countries".

[stephancoral]

You've provided literally zero evidence for your assertion besides anecedata and some rhetoric plus pulling out one (one) statistic to make an empty point (if you did some digging you'd see a good portion of the 63% that voted for Trump voted for Obama too). Cool.

[killjoywashere]

Well, please, go ahead do some digging. Here, I'll get you started: https://www.google.com/#q=how+many+obama+voters+voted+for+tr...

Feel free to choose your sources. Now, that said, it would be somewhat disingenuous to quote many numbers about who switched from Obama to Trump, since we use an Australian ballot system, and exit polls can't track individual behaviour longitudinally. I'm sure some people switched sides.

Also, you're on an internet forum. It's not like you have some inalienable right to random people on the internet providing you a fully researched dossier on the 2016 election outcomes in the next hour. Professionals will spend years parsing the results. Take a deep breath.

Here's a fun exercise: who do you think I am?

[unethical_ban]

You didn't cite anything in your comments, either.

[falsestprophet]

It's 77% if you count people of Spanish origin as European which you should because they are.

[killjoywashere]

I had a good friend who was Spanish. His grandmother was so proud of him for being a Naval Officer. Then he married a Mexican girl and all his pictures disappeared from grandma's house.

Are you sure you're not conflating "Spanish" with "Hispanic"? As I recall, the two major systems for profiling ethnicity in America include "Latino" or "Hispanic" but definitely don't break out "Spanish".

[falsestprophet]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hispanic_and_Latino_Amer...