Friday, November 04, 2016

"Leftover people" might bring Trump to victory

Or you can call them "deplorables."

From a Boston Globe op-ed by Mike Stopa.
If Trump should win on Tuesday, however, the message will not be merely that a majority of Americans sought to change failing Obama-era policies. For Democrats, an equally critical issue will be that many working-class men and women — who, arguably, once made up their core constituency — will be among those voting for change.

These working-class voters have heard Trump say that he will bring mining back to coal country, whereas Clinton more highly prioritizes climate change. They have heard Trump tell Ford executives that he will slap a 35-percent tariff on cars imported from factories moved to Mexico, while Clinton prioritizes the health of the corporations (and the donations of CEOs) more than the resurrection of American industry. They have heard Trump talk "extreme vetting," while Clinton calls for a 500 percent increase in Syrian refugees. And they know that the refugees are coming to their towns and not to Montgomery County or Westchester or Bel Air.

The NASCAR-loving, country music-listening, culturally conservative working class doesn’t exist just in the Rust Belt or the South. It also exists in Massachusetts. These are the people whose salaries have ebbed as the 1 percent has prospered. These are, in the late novelist Carson McCullers's words, the "leftover people." They know, as The New York Times recently trumpeted, that the rich this year are voting for Hillary Clinton. They know they are not. And they might just win.
The rich are voting for Clinton because she is a crony-socialist.

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