Linky Second Tuesday After The First Monday In November

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

Related Post Roulette

69 Responses

  1. Murali says:

    D5: As the universe rips itself apart… dark beings from beyond the outer gates flood into our reality…Report

  2. LeeEsq says:

    P2, P3: Demographics are destiny was always a dumb idea. Even if true you need to wait until you can take power and by that time it might be too late to do what you want or the demographics you thought you had are non-existent. You should try to win elections with existing not future demographics. The Latino vote presents a good example of this. The Latinos were supposed to vote Democratic but nearly a third of them voter for Trump. There is no reason why this shouldn’t continue in the near future.

    G1: The Electoral College should just be abolished. Any situation where a candidate could receive the majority of the popular vote and not win the Presidency is not acceptable in the twenty-first century. It is too counter-majoritarian and un-democratic.

    I2: Corbyn is about to be thrashed in a general election. People do not want to vote for the Far Left anymore.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to LeeEsq says:

      I think demographics is destiny is a giant psych experiment to see if it’s possible to tell an entire demographic they will vote one way and have them do it (a wag the dog kinda thing).Report

      • It does seem to have played out that way in California. Trending that way in Arizona. Interestingly, other states without a Prop 187-like experience seem to exhibit different political behavior. Demographics may well be destiny, in other words, when one tribe uses a demographically different tribe as a political whipping boy. So if the entire nation gets a Prop 187-like experience under the Trump Administration, demographics may well be destiny after all — it’ll be a long, painful time to get there but the effect will last a generation or more.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Burt Likko says:

          Kinda. I think you have the right causality for the case of CA & Prop 187, but that has a motivator considerably greater than a simple narrative repeated over & over.Report

    • Doctor Jay in reply to LeeEsq says:

      I am mystified why there was no backlash against Trump’s remarks by Hispanic voters. I have no idea why that is. I don’t want to guess, either.

      That said, my math says that if a group gives you two-thirds of their votes, and that group is growing than the general population, that’s good news for your party.Report

      • notme in reply to Doctor Jay says:

        You mean Trump’s comments that illegals should be deported? It could be that Hispanics aren’t a monolith and or that some of them think he maybe right.Report

        • Doctor Jay in reply to notme says:

          Honestly @notme, this is beneath you. You are smart, that’s clear. I’m pretty sure that you know what I’m talking about. But for the sake of clarity I’ll repeat it.

          Of course it’s not the claim that illegal aliens should be deported. It’s the equation of Mexicans with rapists and murderers. You know, in the speech that launched his campaign? Are we ever going to have a conversation where you say things about how you think or feel, rather than lobbing grenades? I can tell you’re capable of it.Report

      • InMD in reply to Doctor Jay says:

        I’m not Hispanic but I would hazard a guess based on experience with relatives who immigrated here from Europe in the early 50s. There is such a thing as a flag waiving immigrant. They take a lot of pride in having done things the right way, and aggressively embrace their new nationality. From this perspective, it can be pretty easy to view those who did not follow the rules in both a very emotional and a very negative light.

        From their perspective the appeals to nationalism and respect for the rules may resonate sufficiently that they can overlook the racist overtones, especially if they’re far enough on the path to assimilation that they don’t hear the insults as directed at them. Anecdotal but a good friend of mine whose parents immigrated here legally from El Salvador has expressed conflicted but at times very negative attitudes towards individuals in the country illegally. Identity matters but it isn’t everything to everyone all the time.Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to InMD says:

          My experience as an immigration lawyer supports this. Immigrants or children of immigrants who took the long path and went through all the bureaucratic hoops you need to get citizenship can get resentful at immigrants who appear to be cutting the line.Report

          • InMD in reply to LeeEsq says:

            My mother and grandmother are themselves examples of the phenomenon.Report

          • Morat20 in reply to LeeEsq says:

            I suspect there’s a reason this is more prevalent in some states than others. Those immigrants along the border states (like Texas, Arizona, Nevada) are probably more aware that illegal immigrants look just like legal ones at a glance.

            I’m still not sure how the border patrol was doing inspections 120 miles from the nearest border in Texas, though. Seems a bit out of their jurisdiction.Report

  3. Kolohe says:

    R1: They revealed the results to the CBS (online only this season) show Big Brother contestants on Thursday afternoon, so after the Vice guy. It’s an amusing video.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcOysBXzPRQReport

  4. Damon says:

    [P3]: :After coming into contact, for just minutes each day, with two more Latinos than they would otherwise see or interact with, the riders, who were mostly white and liberal, were sharply more opposed to allowing more immigrants into the country and favored returning the children of illegal immigrants to their parents’ home country. It was a stark shift from their pre-experiment interviews, during which they expressed more neutral attitudes.: Reality trumps theory. It’s ok to allow more latinos in the country, but not around me. Tribalism and smugness rear their head again.

    [P5]: If the Trump folks are smart, practicality will prevent them from creating too much bloodshed, but a few strategic “killings” could be useful.

    [M1]: “In journalism, real authority starts with reporting. Knowing your stuff, mastering your beat, being right on the facts, digging under the surface of things, calling around to find out what happened, verifying what you heard.” Sadly, there’s a whole lot of this NOT going on. How many reporters actually have a working knowledge of the subject matter they report on? I see this frequently. I’d be content if journalists actually admitted their biases. It’s clear from their writing what they think. They should just fess up. Of course, inserting their own “opinions” on reporting is one thing they need to stop doing too.

    M2: “I hope its editors will think hard about the half of America the paper too seldom covers,” wrote Spayd.” But “flyover america” is filled with racists, homophobic blue collar ignorant rubes who think PF Changs is chinese food! They aren’t even aware of the latest art house movie! Anyone who’s seen both sides knew these guys were living in a bubble.

    [D3]: Yawn.Report

    • Doctor Jay in reply to Damon says:

      P3: And yet California, which has a very high Hispanic population, is strongly blue. And so is New Mexico these days.

      It is well understood that people resist change. So when Hispanics showing up is a new thing, they resist it. “People are talking Spanish in the same train car as me! That bugs me. They look different, they act different. I don’t know what’s going on!” When they are an everyday part of life, like they are with me, it stops being a big deal. It stops being “Hispanics” and starts being Rafa and Alejandra and Uriria (her husband says he thinks its a strange name!) and Marcos.Report

      • Damon in reply to Doctor Jay says:

        And yet most influential liberals live in very white areas. Odd.Report

        • Doctor Jay in reply to Damon says:

          What is your point? I can’t make it out.

          Cliven Bundy, hardly a liberal, doesn’t like the immigrant bashing. Because he lives with lots of Mexicans.Report

          • Damon in reply to Doctor Jay says:

            Your previous comment was spot on, but what I meant by my most recent comment was that there’s a lot of liberals advocating for diversity and integration and, by the very nature of where they live, they do not experience what they advocate. Coincidence? I think not. I’m curious why those folks aren’t more open to diversity. After all, they advocate it for others, why not themselves?Report

            • Doctor Jay in reply to Damon says:

              It sounds like you’re saying that liberals are racist too, and I’d agree with that. I hope you don’t think that this absolves anyone of working to reduce the impact that has on the culture and the people in the “out” group.

              As to your point about neighborhoods, that’s what we’re talking about when we say “structural racism”. You want to live somewhere that’s nicer, and has better schools, it ends up being a place that’s mostly white. That’s not why you wanted it, necessarily, but it is.

              So, there aren’t any Mexican-Americans living on my block. But there’s tons of them in my day, and in my life, and I think that’s good. There’s a Mexican-American business just down the block – they wholesale Mexican cheese. So that’s something.Report

              • Damon in reply to Doctor Jay says:

                Actually I’m saying all people are, to a degree, racist.

                I choose to live in one specific are of my state because it is close to roads and is cheaper than where I actually work. It’s rather diverse. BUT, everyone in my area, while racially/ethnic/religiously diverse, are NOT diverse economically. Tribalism matters, but manifests itself differently. Maybe those rich white liberals should just admit it. Then we could stop pointing out their hypocrisy.Report

              • Doctor Jay in reply to Damon says:

                I agree with the idea that all people are to some degree racist. I am a rich white liberal. So there you are. Can we start working together now to reduce the impact of racism on our lives? Because it hurts us. Not just the targets either, it hurts all of us.Report

              • Damon in reply to Doctor Jay says:

                You admitting it isn’t the same as all of them admitting it. When they do, THEN we can all move forward.Report

      • Morat20 in reply to Doctor Jay says:

        Texas, while still quite red, had a large shift more blue this election. I think HRC improved 6 points from Obama’s numbers.

        Still like R+10, but a shift from R+16 to R+10 in four years, during a Presidential election that saw the GOP sweep the federal government? That’s got to be worrying Texas Republicans. (Especially as, to be blunt, they’ve gerrymandered the state as hard as they can. There’s no blood left to squeeze from that rock).Report

        • Will Truman in reply to Morat20 says:

          Notably, according to exit polls (using 2008 because 2012 is unavailable), the bulk of Clinton’s improvement came from… whites. Even if you account for changing state demographics. Actually, that’s not quite right since there was no actual improvement (Obama got 43.6% and Clinton got 43.4%, 26% both times among whites), but Trump faired poorly compared to McCain and that alone accounts for the difference. The improvements Clinton made among Latinos and Asian-Americans (mostly a product of demographic shift) were wiped out (two-fold) by her poor performance among African-Americans.

          Granted, Trump had a much better year nationally than McCain did, but Trump has some pretty specific vulnerabilities among whites that might not carry over to other candidates.Report

          • Morat20 in reply to Will Truman says:

            I don’t know about her performance numbers with AA in Texas, but I did notice that her numbers in the general were a revision to the pre-Obama mean, but not that much of a revision.

            About half the ground between the pre-Obama GOP numbers and the Obama numbers, basically.

            Texas might also be an outlier for other reasons — we’ve been under full GOP rule for quite some time now, but the blueing of the major cities has been having an effect, especially since we’ve had our Governor’s trying for the Presidential nod for the last 16 years. I think there’s some minor, but growing, fatigue about high-ranking Texas politicians playing national politics while Texas’ problems continue to worsen.

            For better or for worse, Texas was (and possibly still is) the cutting edge of GOP politics, going back to at least the mid-90s. Maybe Kansas has taken over that title now (which is something of an interesting thought — why did Brownback go full Laffer, but Texas has not?)Report

      • California and New Jersey go back and forth for being the “least rural” states in the country. Measured across entire metro areas, California’s cities and suburbs “out-density” most of the eastern urban states. At least in the US, regulation (and support for activist government) invariably follows density. The exception for high density metro areas in western states with largish populations is Arizona — because Maricopa County had enough flat not-federally-owned space around Phoenix to enable eastern coastal-plain style metro-area sprawl. Maricopa County is largely built out and will now start densifying — and turn blue in the process.

        I have long said that if Texas adds another 12M people — which would bring it up to California’s current population — the state will have either (a) adopted California-style taxes and regulation or (b) become totally unlivable.Report

        • Morat20 in reply to Michael Cain says:

          I have long said that if Texas adds another 12M people — which would bring it up to California’s current population — the state will have either (a) adopted California-style taxes and regulation or (b) become totally unlivable.

          We’ve spent 20+ years fighting over just funding our schools. We may be back under judicial oversight again.

          I didn’t actually find out if Houston’s ballot referendum to stop paying into the Robin Hood plan passed or not…

          Texas’ funding structure is already straining at the seams.Report

        • Autolukos in reply to Michael Cain says:

          Why not both?Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to Doctor Jay says:

        ” And yet California, which has a very high Hispanic population, is strongly blue. ”

        Actually, the way state voting works, only 25% of the population actually is needed to determine whether it’s blue or red.

        So if half the people in the counties that have half the population vote Democrat, then the state is blue, no matter what the other 75% of the people think.Report

        • Doctor Jay in reply to DensityDuck says:

          I don’t understand this point at all. It sounds like a complaint about gerrymandering or something similar. But there are many, many statewide offices, where gerrymandering doesn’t mean anything. All of these offices have been won by Democrats by large margins. The top two vote-getters in the Senate primary this year were both Democrats. Together, they got 58.8% in the primary.Report

  5. Kolohe says:

    D4: remember when people complained about Obama taking too many vacations? Those were the days.Report

  6. P2 [“no Latino vote”]: That article is on the right track.* I’d push it even a little further. Advocates for “immigration reform” seem to assume that all (or a large majority) Latinos will automatically jump in to support such reform. There are two problems with that (implicit) assumption. First, like anyone else, they probably have complicated views on immigration. And of course some Latinos have been in the country for generations. Not that there’s not a there, there: the most vocal immigration restrictionists tend to equate “illegal immigrant” with “people who look like illegal immigrants.”

    Second, not all “reform” is created equal. Any reform that has (or had) a hope of passing would would include restrictive and permissive features. Building a wall is “reform,,” but we needn’t go that far: we’d probably see a ratcheting up of some sort of employment verification system at the least. And permissive deals, like amnesty, probably are 1) once in a generation things that a supporter of freer immigration can’t count on for the future; and 2) come with strings attached and require an investment in legal fees that make the policy not quite what it’s cracked up to be.

    *…except for its too dismissive “To begin with, there is a definite current of conservatism present among some immigrant families. A strong ‘I got mine, so forget you’ ideology that helps explain a more robust turnout for Trump among Latinos than pundits expected.”Report

    • I think this is all quite accurate. Though like the GOP I underestimated the backlash greatly, even at the time I thought they were way too quick to assume “We need to Hispanic vote, so immigration reform it is!”

      At the time, I thought that you didn’t need to work for amnesty necessarily (though it wouldn’t hurt) you needed to stop calling them terrible things.

      Since then, I’ve discovered that they didn’t need to work for amnesty (and it blew up the party) and you didn’t even necessarily need to stop calling them terrible things.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Will Truman says:

        Why would that surprise? Politicians say terrible things about white people and other white people cheer. Granted, they generally preface the insult with an indicator of which subgroup they are insulting, but people are flexible. If a person wants to, they can very easily decide they are not covered by the insult, and even agree with it, because othering is a game the whole species can play.Report

        • Aaron David in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

          I would say that the trap is that, if I feel that the message in a given situation means X, that must mean that everyone feels that the message means X. This simply isn’t true. The Hispanic community is large and very diverse. What a given message means to the various members of said community will likewise be very diverse. To think otherwise, in fact to assume otherwise based on your own opinions, is the height of hubris.Report

  7. Saul Degraw says:

    We have been discussing the Harvard Business Review article on the WWC at LGM. Another commentor pointed out something interesting but mass incarceration and law and order works as a jobs program for rural whites.

    We build prisons in heavily white rural areas. Rural whites get to build the prisons and staff them. They also benefit from usually being police officers and boarder patrol. So mass incarceration and deportation is a jobs program.

    This puts the left and libertarians in a hard spot.Report

    • Autolukos in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Libertarians are fine; we dislike jobs programs as much as we dislike prisons.Report

    • notme in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Is there anything from stopping minorities from becoming cops, ICE agents, or COs?Report

    • Autolukos in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      More seriously: this is close to Corbyn wanting to keep submarines on patrol without missiles, because otherwise the bases would close and put people out of work. Prisons do not exist to give people jobs, and decisions about prisons should not be based on maintaining the current level of employment in prisons. I expect that the average LGM commenter can understand why making prison policy for the benefit of private prison companies is bad; I would hope that they could understand why the same is true of making prison policy for the benefit of prison guards (and if they don’t, I recommend they look into California’s prison policies and the role of the CCPOA in expanding incarceration).Report

  8. Saul Degraw says:

    An observation on news. A woman I know from college is from small town Ohio and so is her husband. Her husband’s family is so big that they make up a good percentage of his small town. The local paper once ran a listicle on “You know you are from X” and one item was “You went to high school with someone named Y.” Y being the husband’s last name.

    Husband and wife moved to the Bay Area and are good liberals. The husband posted something from Boing Boing on FB. Boing Boing marveled that Trump mocking the disabled reporter did not end his Presidential chances.

    The thread mainly consisted of liberals saying same generally. However, there was one guy who said that the tape was edited to make Trump look bad and liberals were the real dupes for falling for it.

    That’s quite a bit of cognitive dissonance. I don’t know how to handle it. Since my heart is darker, I wonder how many people see Trump’s cruelty as a feature and not a bug and whether liberals are just too Pollyanna.Report

    • If the guy is saying that it was a mischaracterization or whatever, that shows that he feels the need to deny it. So that’s something.

      I don’t think it’s especially hard to talk yourself into believing something like that. Especially when Trump’s critics (everyone from #NeverTrump to the media to the left) really did mischaracterize things he said and did. You just figure that’s probably another case of it. This also ties into my comment a while back about the media having a problem if people believe they’re strongly pro-Hillary: A lot of people assume mischaracterization.

      Combine that with Trump’s penchant for producing a stream of legitimate awfulness where legitimate criticisms can seem tedious after a while, I fear Trump criticism in the media is going to be a problem in the Trump presidency, and I can’t think of any solution for it. (Other than “don’t mischaracterize” but I’m not sure that helps at this point.)

      But really, Donald Trump’s approval ratings are low. So it’s not like he won because he’s popular. He won because there were two unpopular candidates and people who didn’t like either of them broke Trump’s way. So it wasn’t that the criticisms didn’t penetrate so much as they didn’t dictate.Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      As lawyers, you and I have firsthand familiarity with the phenomenon of people almost immediately and non-consciously deciding on a particular result, and then reverse-engineering their reasoning — discarding contrary facts or even manufacturing supporting facts despite the absence of evidence — so that they can justify the result they wanted all along. We labor long and hard to either avoid or encourage jurors behaving this way. Sometimes I wonder whether our labors have any persuasive effect at all because this unconscious rationalization process is very, very powerful.

      Why should political behavior be any different in that respect than juror behavior?Report

      • Michael Drew in reply to Burt Likko says:

        This is why I think blaming media coverage of emails in particular is misguided. If it hadn’t been emails, it would have been something. For voters as well as media.

        You could argue that too many in the media were doing that backfilling-justification thing. That’s a flat-out accusation of media bias against Clinton. Perhaps that’s what there was. But another possibility is that the media can detect what stories there was an appetite for, and political media consumers (voters) had an appetite for [EMAILS] (or whatever else it might have been). And the media just rushed to meet it.

        If it hadn’t been emails, it would have been something. Because people had made their minds up about her.

        But maybe they’d been brainwashed to do that. By the media.Report

  9. Jaybird says:

    And important polls were wrong in a consistent direction.

    Once is happenstance.
    Twice is coincidence.

    Honestly, could you think of a worse time for legacy media to be hitting a tipping point with regards to credibility?
    More than that, how much of a bind is this: let’s say that legacy media decides to say “okay, we need to get back to basics, report on the things that need reporting, sunlight is the best disinfectant, we’re going to do this people!”… how does that present to the people who are under the impression that legacy media is the propaganda arm of a particular world view? How does it present to people who “see both sides” on the issue?Report

  10. Saul Degraw says:

    Here is a “fun” little story about an NYPD officer who decided to go against department regulations and cover his face and plate identification.

    http://www.villagevoice.com/news/nypd-in-trumps-nyc-we-can-hide-our-faces-and-our-badges-9335042

    This is one of my worries about something that could be close to a “right-wing coup”. Many blue city mayors, councils, and state level politicians are vowing to protect minorities in the age of Trump. However, I worry that law enforcement do not see themselves as representing the communities where they work but more broadly as a force of “order”. Order being defined by how the law enforcement officers themselves like it.Report

  11. PD Shaw says:

    R3: I think what those electoral maps of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are simply showing are two things:

    1) Suburban Republicans did not come-out to vote for Trump as they would for a conventional Republican, some probably voted for Clinton or a third-party, but not to the extent she wished. And they voted for the Republican Senator.

    2) “Rural” Democratic areas either increased their vote for Republicans, or switched.

    a) In places like Scranton and Green Bay, previously large Democratic party advantages were lost and became toss-ups. Here, “rural” means medium-sized cities outside of the largest 100 or so metropolitan areas.

    b) Also the last Democratic truly-rural bastion outside of New England — the driftless area of Illinois/Iowa/Wisconsin/Minnesota switched. White ethnics (Norwegian, Czech, Danish, Polish, Swedish, and Swiss) live in this area, and made even Minnesota a battleground state.

    I think group 1 reverts in a non-Trump environment, and group 2 is undetermined. If there is no reversion or conversion of group 2, then outside of Illinois, the Midwest becomes red.Report

  12. Will Truman says:

    Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Will Truman says:

      Interesting. Most of these voters would have been Bernie voters. I don’t think it makes sense to go from Bernie to Trump though but life is chaos.

      http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/11/dissecting-the-youth-vote/507416/

      According to this Clinton won the youth vote in Michigan barely and in Nevada significantly. Trump and Clinton tied for the youth vote in Iowa but Clinton won more 18-24 year olds and Trump won more 25-29 year olds.

      Clinton also won the youth vote in New Hampshire.Report

      • Jesse Ewiak in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        If I remember polling, Romney won white millenials in 2012 too.

        The shift Left among the young is largely a change of the young being far less white, not any shift among the white population.Report

        • Is young Minnesota and young Wisconsin more white than middle-aged and old Minnesota and Wisconsin?

          Or is it a matter of Minnesotans who vote at young ages being more likely to be white?Report

          • Michael Drew in reply to Will Truman says:

            I think it’s that.

            But also in my experience, young white Minnesota is a bit more conservative (judging by cultural meta-indicators) than is young white Wisconsin. In the country proper I’m sure it’s largely the same, but the culture of the Twin Cities has more of a rural-facing element to it than in my experience urban Wisconsin does. More people live in the Twin Cities but have (or have parents who have) land in outlying areas, think of nothing as fondly as being able to get there and be in The Woods etc., than I ever saw in Madison or Milwaukee (though that;s there, too). The hipstery parts of the Twin Cities really are SUPER liberal (maybe moreso than Madison’s hippie parts), but the Twin Cities have an element of the frontier mentality to them that you don’t feel as much in Wisconsin cities. In my experience.

            I may be smoking a funny substance on this, I admit.Report

  13. Jaybird says:

    There’s apparently a Pepsi boycott going on right now, among Trumpistas.

    It’s apparently based on stuff that the CEO said but I’m not finding anything that actually tells me what she said. Trumpists are screaming about her being anti-Trump, Clintonistas are screaming about Freeze Peach, but I’m not finding a description of what was actually said.

    The stock price seems to be all over in the last 8 hours, though.

    You’d think that they’d have learned from GrubhubReport

    • Jesse Ewiak in reply to Jaybird says:

      Change from 1D to 5D and 1M. The changes you’re seeing are normal volatility during a trading day.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

      @jaybird

      Nothing to add to the Pepsi story but during the Bush II years a company called Manhattan Mini-Storage put up a lot of super-liberal ads. One advertisement was of a green plastic solider and the green plastic solider saying “My owner’s ma wants me away until there is a lot less fighting” or some such. There were also digs against admin officials.

      Another said “your closest is so narrow it makes Cheney look liberal.”

      I wonder what they have planned for the Trump years.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        Cater to your audience. I imagine that they found that business boomed under this campaign.

        My criticism is not “can you believe that these people are criticizing President-Elect Trump in his Pre-Nobel Prize days?” but “man… you’d think that people would learn to not shit where they ate.”Report

    • fillyjonk in reply to Jaybird says:

      Oh boy that’s going to make my upcoming travel on Amtrak fun, in the “community seating” diner, if anyone has a fit over “Is Pepsi okay?” (For reasons other than the “Ick! PEPSI!?!” that are usually given).

      I dunno. I tend to roll my eyes over any attempt on that scale to make the personal political. (I dislike most sodas and so am a conscientious objector in the Cola Wars.)Report

  14. Saul Degraw says:

    The New Republic argues we should blame Trump’s victory on college educated whites:

    https://newrepublic.com/article/138754/blame-trumps-victory-college-educated-whites-not-working-class

    “Clinton’s strategy made sense. Trump’s negatives among this group, which normally leans Republican (Romney won them by six points), were pretty high in polling. What’s more, these people hadn’t suffered under Obama; they’d thrived. The kind of change Trump was espousing wasn’t supposed to connect with this group. A massive Gallup study in August revealed that the typical Trump supporter has “not been disproportionately affected by foreign trade or immigration. The results suggest that his supporters, on average, do not have lower incomes than other Americans, nor are they more likely to be unemployed.”

    Perhaps, then, these Trump voters are the most deplorable of them all. They’re not suffering or desperate, and have no concrete reason to hate the status quo or to feel like they are in decline. They understand that Trump is manifestly unprepared to be president, have heard his many lies and insults, yet voted for him anyway. And without them, Trump wouldn’t have won. The media ought to focus on their motivations, too—and reporters won’t even have to fly to Youngstown to find them.”Report