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This anti-Hillary video, its legitimate. Its not being unfair. Clinton was stupid in this entire email issue.
But the reason the video and the allegations really hurt her, are simply because she is female. Male politicians do stupid things all the time, and they get caught, but it does not seem to stick. With a woman, the other side can play to sterotypes. They were able to whip up a huge amount of personal animosity, and this probably cost her about 80 electoral votes.
I say this also because I have been involved in trying to oust some local candidates, some being women, and my still trying not to cross that line into sexism.
And so no the center did not hold, someone like McCain, Romney, or Hillary Clinton of the DLC, was not elected. Instead a wacko who has never before been elected to anything has won.
Mr. Deuce, you misunderstand me. I would never give up on the US. I simply need to become transnational. Mexico has its own strengths and weaknesses. But I have long planned to be operating there. And I do anticipate things coming unglued in the US, rather like 1968, as a minimum. But maybe much more so.
democracynow.org
They have someone in NC who has admitted that they changed laws, "To make it harder for blacks to vote." Even with the gutting of the specific controls arising from the 1965 Voting Rights Act, such actions are still unlawful.
And then the one I find the most strange is PA. Usually when the counting starts the Republican starts out with a huge lead, then it shifts more and more to the Democrat. This time it went exactly the opposite way. Now there are plausible explanaitons, but I would like to hear them.
If it is decided that Trump did not win a majority of the electoral vote, then he cannot be installed as President. That Clinton conceded makes absolutely zero difference. People end their campaigns and then restart them. It is the voters who decide who wins, not the candidates.
Bing did call first Kansas for Clinton, and then after it flipped to Trump, they called Nebraska for Clinton. I was surprised.
This right wing hate media really blossomed in response to white anger over having a black man as President. The influence it has had is beyond measure.
Obama had carried Indiana. Clinton, a candidate to the right of Obama, and running against a buffoon, should have been able to get everything Obama had, plus more.
Thomas Frank is arguing that conservative moderate income voters are voting on the basis of cultural identity issues, and voting against their economic interests. So they vote for a prohibition on abortion and for prayer in schools, but what they get is lowering of high income taxes and increasing college costs.
amazon.com
Remember that during this country's years of greatest economic growth, Eisenhower - Kennedy, we had a very strong downward wealth transfer mechanism, top personal income tax rates exceeding 90%.
Like Thom Hartmann explains, in the earliest years of this country, a middle-class was created by the availability of cheap land. But by the late 1800's that was no more, and so you saw our country going the way most every society has, splitting into the very rich and the very poor.
And so in response to what was happening, you had the Granger Movement, and Teddy Roosevelt creating most of the federal regulatory agencies, and being a Trust Buster.
But then that Progressive Wing of the Republican Party died when Roosevelt split the party by running against Taft.
What recreated the middle-class was Franklin Roosevelt with progressive income tax, transferring wealth downwards. And this of course causes a huge economic expansion.
Like Hillary Clinton said, the economy grows from the middle outwards, meaning both up and down. She wanted to restore her husband's extra 2% tax on high incomes.
Actually the economy grows best from the very bottom, like with Food Stamps. Obama did a good job in preventing another Great Depression. The further down the money goes, the faster it recirculates.
But Clintion wants to get elected, and the poor are always looked at as a social menace, show she does not talk about them, she talks about the middle.
Now not everyone goes along with Thomas Frank, like Doug Henwood, and like:
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Most interesting. Where they take exception to Thomas Frank is that they say that these people are voting their "interests", because their interests are cultural and identity based, not economically based. As such, I am inclined to agree with them. But Frank's book is still important because it shows us how these interests work.
Now, I have not read this Arlie Russell Hochschild
democracynow.org
But she was trying to understand this Trump and ultra conservative phenomenon, and so she ended up I think in South West Louisiana, at an evangelical church. Why would a conservative Christian group ever support someone like Trump? Jimmy Carter and his Baptist Church in Plains Georgia would oppose everything about Trump.
So what she found is
- With this group in Louisiana, their government is run by the petrochemical industry. So while they see this industry as benevolent as it is a major employer, they see the government in only negative terms. So it is alot like the plantation economies the South is known for.
- And then I add that their religion is based on making professions and on social conformity. That religion exists everywhere in the country. But in the South that is the only kind of religion which has ever been popular. And of course this goes back to slavery.
So they see themselves as a persecuted minority, and then someone like Trump, though different from them, he is still their hero, as they see the government in only negative terms.
So she feels that Clinton should not have said "Basket of Deplorables". Rather, one has to look at the situation these people are living in, the only reality they have ever known.
See most of the rest of us see the greatest of America and all hopes and dreams as coming from the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement, and the Women's Movement. These were the defining times for people like myself, and like Bill and Hillary Clinton.
But for these evangelical conservative Trump supporters, that kind of stuff passed them by. So though we may disagree with them and see their voting patters as problematic, we should not hold this against them personally.
SJG
