Summary
“It’s simple, really. We liked the way things were four years ago,” said Samuel Negron, a Pennsylvania state constable and member of the large Puerto Rican community in the city of Allentown.
Donald Trump achieved a decisive victory over Kamala Harris, capturing key demographics that traditionally supported Democrats. He gained substantial support from white working-class voters, saw a 14-point increase among Latino voters, and performed better than expected with younger voters, especially men.
Economic concerns, particularly inflation, were central to Trump’s appeal, with voters across states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin favoring his promises of lower prices and stricter immigration policies.
Harris struggled to retain support in diverse and working-class areas, as voters blamed Democrats for economic hardships.
Y’all can be furious with this guy if you want, but he’s probably the most important person to be listening to. The block that determines elections has always been the sizable mass of extremely low information voters who don’t have any strong political affiliations and vote mainly because of some vague sense of civic duty.
They aren’t interested in economic and foreign policy debates. They don’t care about intangibles like democratic norms and the rule of law. They don’t want to hear your class analysis or how qualified you are to give it. The only question they’re considering is “Has life been going well for me and the people in my community that I care about?” That’s it. It’s a vibe check.
Good vibes? Vote for those in power. Bad vibes? Vote against those in power.
This is the voter you need to convince if you want to win.
If this was the 1920s you’d have a point. Hell, the 1950s, 60’s even.
It’s 2024. There’s a huge mass of information in every square inch of the world now. There’s no excuse for being so goddamned stupid.
Listen to that fucking garbage. “Democratic lies” “We realised things were better then”. That’s right wing media copypasta if there ever was any.
Absolute fucking shitheaded moron fuck who’s screwed us all to ingratiate himself with nazis.
Like I said, be mad if you want. Doesn’t change anything. His vote still counts the same as mine and everybody else’s. You still live in a world where you need that guy to be on your side. You can either shout at the wind that the world isn’t the way you think it should be or figure out how to improve the world that is actually in front of you.
Guy isn’t trying to ingratiate himself with anybody. He just told you what he was trying to do—make the world better for himself and his family. In particular, he wants to spend less on groceries. Low information voters might not be able to connect the dots between supreme court nominations, monetary policy, and broad economic trends, but they will unfailingly notice they’re spending 20% more on groceries than they did four years ago. You want to point out that it’s not the Democrats fault inflation ballooned out of control? I’m right there with you. I voted that way in Pennsylvania. That guy doesn’t care. He voted the other way because he wants cheaper groceries and as far as he can tell, Democrats didn’t get it done. Calling him a moron and Nazi ally isn’t going to change that.
I fish a lot. I fish with blue collar types and run in circles with fishing guides. I know a fishing guide who spends 8-12 hours per day on the water, something like 200 days per year with clients and many others just scouting so he can put clients on more fish. He has a part time retail job for the days he’s not fishing. He doesn’t doom scroll all day, and probably only gets a few minutes to scroll Instagram or Twitter in the evening before he goes to sleep because he’s up before sunrise driving to spots and loading his raft/gear into the water and pulling everything out to wash it in the evening. Sometimes he drives over an hour to fish, sometimes he stays overnight in certain areas. He doesn’t really read the news, he only interacts with a handful of other fishing guides and fishermen, he works two jobs, and that’s it.
I also fish with another guy in construction management. He’s on site most days, probably doom scrolls a little bit. He’s a relatively smart guy, savvy on niche musical genres and other really weird technical topics, but not educated at all and never graduated college. He’s kinda engaged but not really, and he does pretty well to filter all the political stuff out so he can focus on things that he’s interested in.
Harris proposed absolutely nothing for either of them. No tax proposals that would help them, no improvements to their health insurance (though both are probably through the ACA), no job/industry prospects, no financial assurances, just…nothing. All they heard were abortion, democracy, and “not Trump.” Neither of them even like Trump, and they find MAGA cringey AF, but they both said almost exactly the same thing to me at some point over the past few months:
“I mean, I’m fucked either way, so it really doesn’t matter.”
And you know what? They’re absolutely right. They are. Trump’s the only one who even tries to speak to their concerns, and for many people that’s enough.
We gotta figure out how to capture the moron vote to win? This all just makes me want to quit. Those idiots are going to get what they deserve.
Most people are morons, so yeah, we do.
Given that the people won’t accept the necessary complex solutions to complex problems due to the intential destruction of our publoc education system both to keep them ignorant and controllable and to not pay for them, and want simple answers that don’t exist without deception, all there is is subsistence until collapse, and start over after all that pain without the artificial restrictions held up by both parties to keep the wealthy wealthy and the poor poor.
This place is nothing but a slavery trap, keeping people ignorant by design and dependent on the scraps of the capitalists. I hope climate change forces the collapse and this slavery trap doesn’t limp along for more generations born to suffer needlessly for the masters.