It basically proves that he’s wrong when he says the middle class is overwhelmingly and irretrievably Trumpified. There’s only a couple percentage points of difference above $50,000/yr, and no income bracket in the table is more than 50% for Trump. He’s right about the voter disenfranchisement and about poorer potential Clinton voters not voting, but I wouldn’t throw out the entire American middle class just yet.
I’ve seen this table I don’t know how many times, and I suspect that there are interaction factors in those middle and upper income brackets. I don’t see these groups as homogeneous at all. They don’t inhabit nearly the same social circles despite earning the same income.
Collins, the Republucan, was mostly in “active listener” mode. Reed put his foot in it, but at least he’s a Democrat – his peers have said all that and more on the record.
The whole thing reminds me of an episode of “The West Wing” where Jeb makes a comment about an opponent over a hot mic. He gets criticised for campaigning without an election called (something Trump gets away with in real life), but winds up ahead at the end. At the end he all but admits he knew the mic was hot to his press secretary.
Which makes me wonder if Collins knew her mic was hot. She showed some Republicans can be civil and professional with a Democrat, and Reed’s comments highlight how the government is not working without her having to say much. He even mentioned military paralysis, something that will twig a lot of right-wingers.
I’m not optimistic, but I’m hoping this is the spike that cracks open the solidarity in the Republican sector of the Senate.
They’re voter demographics from the presidential election. Incomes over $50,000 went majority TrumpGOP, incomes below $50,000 went majority Dem.
It’s from:
I never said that about the middle class; I said that about the white middle class. But, yes, I was being somewhat hyperbolic.
There are a substantial minority of white middle class voters who did not support the GOP. It’s a smaller minority than in just about any other demographic category, but they do exist. OTOH, aiming your strategy at the most Trumpified segment of society seems to me to be severely misguided.
The broader point I was aiming at, as usual, is the rejection of the idea that TrumpGOP or fascism in general is a threat that arises from the working class. It isn’t.
When the working class get revolutionary, they go communist. Fascism is a middle class pathology.
You don’t need to worry about the ignorant majority destroying civilisation from below. You do need to worry about the ignorant minority destroying it from above.
Yes, the middle class voters who voted for Trump travel in very different circles than those who didn’t. But giving up on them altogether sounds pointless.
Also, the less wealthy classes know what they have to do, but have been disenfranchised. There’s not a whole lot they can do to vote, if anything.
I couldn’t see the header in your extract, and I see most of the table is missing. Statistician hat on; please could you in future post links rather than selective extracts? Thank you.
Edit - Discours doesn’t want me replying to you again so I am extending this message.
First, your extract doesn’t include the headings. They are rather important. Am I expected to guess them? In most of the world, red = left and blue = right (and red is left (port) at sea too!) So without the context that they are Trump, Clinton and Other votes, it isn’t clear.
Second, there are not enough data to support your conclusion.
Income is not a simple variable; it is affected by social class, occupation, age and location. Your assumption seems to be that it is uniformly distributed by social class. Far from it.
If we take the under-$50000 group that will include a lot of students and graduates looking for professional jobs as well as people from the lower social classes. If we take the $50-100k band that will include a lot of older skilled workers and younger professionals. Then there’s the location effect; income distribution in SF or London, UK is very different from that in North Dakota or Lincolnshire, UK (Or, in fact, in Lincolnshire, Ill).
Age distribution is important; in the UK Michael Heseltine has drawn the attention of Conservatives to the fact that their support is mainly among the elderly but successive generations are less Conservative than was expected based on generational shift, pointing to an erosion of their voter base.
It would be all too easy for me to get into a generalised rant/seminar on the use and abuse of statistics, which I guess hardly anyone would want to read, but I will conclude by saying that having seen the actual table from which you extracted I agree with @LearnedCoward; you’ve tried to cherry pick data. I’m going to assume it’s innocent.
I don’t think that any of you can meaningfully change things with a vote so long as the GOP controls electoral administration in most of the states.
The primary threat to the Trump administration isn’t the electorate, it’s the GOP establishment. They won’t openly move unless they can turn the GOP base, which shows no sign of happening. Even if they do move, all that gives you is a more competent and more theocratic permanent fascist government.
The solution to Trump is not at the ballot box; it’s in the streets. Until a sufficient mass of people twig to that, the situation is going to continue getting worse.
I went and looked at the full chart in Wikipedia – I’d never seen it before either.
Another major axis is Christian vs non-Christian. Since 75% of Americans identify as Christians who go to services regularly (reminder: that is very different from pretty much all the other G20 nations, including Canada), that is a huge demographic.
Given what Trump’s like and given the teachings of mainstream Christianity, I’m not impressed. That seems hugely hypocritical to me.
I just felt the need to post that following Trump’s pronouncements on the unacceptability of transgender people in the military, a senior admiral of the Royal Navy has attacked his views and said that the British Armed Forces do not discriminate based on orientation or gender. One very small yay for us.
Edit - up to 3 admirals now. Mind you the Nelson approach has been going on since we’ll before Nelson.
He seems to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about other people’s genitals, and he assumes that everyone else does also.
I’ve never been in the military, so I’m speculating wildly here. But, when the shit hits the fan, are there really people who take time out in the middle of a shitstorm to worry who has a dick or who has a pussy? I would think that trained soldiers would have bigger fish to fry, but what do I know?
They cared back in the 90s, but it predictably became less of an issue the moment they started needing people to fill body bags. That’s why it’s hard to read this as anything but a cynical ploy to distract people from the Senate.