For any tiresome liberal who still says "we need to understand the Trump voters"

[136or142]

https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte/status/873223539737997312

Basically, people who make the “reach out” argument imagine conservatives as mental children and liberals as the only real adults.  We don’t ask children to understand adults, because they are immature. We ask adults to understand children, however.  That’s what I hear when I hear endless pressure on liberals, but not conservatives, to “reach out”. That conservatives are children.  And while I think of Trump voters as selfish, racist, and small-minded, at least I do them the favor of treating them like f-ing adults.

And the article
 Lack of Empathy Is Not the Problem
Progressives want education, health care, and housing for everyone. And we’re the close-minded ones?
By Katha Pollitt
https://www.thenation.com/article/liberal-elites-are-not-the-problem/

Excerpt from the article:
 But here’s my question: Who is telling the Tea Partiers and Trump voters to empathize with the rest of us? Why is it all one way? Hochschild’s subjects have plenty of demeaning preconceptions about liberals and blue-staters—that distant land of hippies, feminazis, and freeloaders of all kinds.

Nor do they seem to have much interest in climbing the empathy wall, given that they voted for a racist misogynist who wants to throw 11 million people out of the country and ban people from our shores on the basis of religion (as he keeps admitting on Twitter, even as his administration argues in court that Islam has nothing to do with it). Furthermore, they are the ones who won, despite having almost 3 million fewer votes. Thanks to the founding fathers, red-staters have outsize power in both the Senate and the Electoral College, and with great power comes great responsibility.

So shouldn’t they be trying to figure out the strange polyglot population they now dominate from their strongholds in the South and Midwest? What about their stereotypes? How respectful or empathetic is the belief of millions of Trump voters, as established in polls and surveys, that women are more privileged than men, that increasing racial diversity in America is bad for the country, that the travel ban is necessary for national security? How realistic is the conviction, widespread among Trump supporters, that Hillary Clinton is a murderer, President Obama is a Kenyan communist and secret Muslim, and the plain-red cups that Starbucks uses at Christmastime are an insult to Christians?

One of Hochschild’s subjects complains that “liberal commentators” refer to people like him as a “redneck.” I’ve listened to liberal commentators for decades and have never heard one use this word. But say it happened once or twice. “Feminazi” went straight from Rush Limbaugh’s mouth to general parlance. One of Hochschild’s most charming subjects, a gospel singer and preacher’s wife, uses it like a normal word. Equating women who want their rights with the genocidal murder of millions? How is that not a vile insult?

[Hindsight was 2020]

Honestly because we know they will never meet us on this conservatives are stubborn an refuse to change aka why they are conservatives so the demand is on liberals to be the adults

[mencken]

Common sense dictates that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. Whether or not you agree we deserve such respect, it would certainly be more persuasive than labeling all of us as deplorable bigoted rubes. But, please feel free to keep on making the same mistakes that cost liberals their traditional base to begin with.

[136or142]

Common sense dictates that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. Whether or not you agree we deserve such respect, it would certainly be more persuasive than labeling all of us as deplorable bigoted rubes. But, please feel free to keep on making the same mistakes that cost liberals their traditional base to begin with.

Right, but you have no problem with conservatives voting for a sexist, bigot who routinely insulted and villified women and minorities because he didn't refer to anybody as 'deplorable'?

The thing is, I'm not trying to win your vote.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Common sense dictates that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. Whether or not you agree we deserve such respect, it would certainly be more persuasive than labeling all of us as deplorable bigoted rubes. But, please feel free to keep on making the same mistakes that cost liberals their traditional base to begin with.

As OP said that is a two way street an it's hard to give respect to people who's argunebts normally involve the word "libtard"

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

I stopped reading at "https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte".

[136or142]

I stopped reading at "https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte".

Yet you still felt the need to reply.  Thanks for your worthless contribution.

[dead0man]

I stopped reading at "https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte".

Yet you still felt the need to reply.  Thanks for your worthless contribution.

what kind of response are you looking for?  surrender to your mighty wisdom?

[mencken]

Common sense dictates that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. Whether or not you agree we deserve such respect, it would certainly be more persuasive than labeling all of us as deplorable bigoted rubes. But, please feel free to keep on making the same mistakes that cost liberals their traditional base to begin with.

Right, but you have no problem with conservatives voting for a sexist, bigot who routinely insulted and villified women and minorities because he didn't refer to anybody as 'deplorable'?

The thing is, I'm not trying to win your vote.

You are going to have to win some fraction of Trump voters' votes if you want an electoral victory.

I would certainly give the same advice to conservatives if counseling them on how to persuade members of the other side, but given that they won most recently, they seem less in need of such advice.

[136or142]

I stopped reading at "https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte".

Yet you still felt the need to reply.  Thanks for your worthless contribution.

what kind of response are you looking for?  surrender to your mighty wisdom?

Mostly comments from liberals agreeing or disagreeing about the need to 'understand Trump voters.'

That was the reference to 'still' in my topic. If you recall right after the election there were all sorts of commentators who went to heavy Trump voting counties who thought some brilliant insights might be gained from speaking to these people.

I also thought the point of the author, that conservatives may or may not need a better understanding of liberals hasn't been fully explored.

Finally, I agree with the tweets from Amanda Marcotte.  One of the most popular of the self flagelating liberals on twitter is a jerk named Chris Arnade.  (70,500 followers) and she is absolutely correct about him.  He is a former bond trader who knows travels rural Trump counties and speaks to the people there and makes his living selling photographs of them (and the towns.)  His comments go from 'liberal need to understand the dislike these people have in being condescended to by coastal elites' to, when asked why they shouldn't lose their health care coverage under Obamacare since they voted Republican or essentially 'they know not what they do.'

So, that was why I liked Amanda Marcotte's comment that at least she treats them like adults.

I would have thought it was pretty clear those were the sorts of responses I was looking for.

[Yank2133]

Yeah, it is annoying how some liberals treat Trump voters as if they are morons who don't understand what they voted for. They aren't clueless rubes, who need to be shown the light. A lot of them know exactly what they voted for.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Common sense dictates that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. Whether or not you agree we deserve such respect, it would certainly be more persuasive than labeling all of us as deplorable bigoted rubes. But, please feel free to keep on making the same mistakes that cost liberals their traditional base to begin with.

Right, but you have no problem with conservatives voting for a sexist, bigot who routinely insulted and villified women and minorities because he didn't refer to anybody as 'deplorable'?

The thing is, I'm not trying to win your vote.

You are going to have to win some fraction of Trump voters' votes if you want an electoral victory.

I would certainly give the same advice to conservatives if counseling them on how to persuade members of the other side, but given that they won most recently, they seem less in need of such advice.

Not at all winning back most Stein/Johnson voters is more likely/easier path to winning in 2018/2020 an that can be down by running a more liberal message which Trump is actually making easier by bringing back the war on drugs and pulling out of Paris

[136or142]

Common sense dictates that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. Whether or not you agree we deserve such respect, it would certainly be more persuasive than labeling all of us as deplorable bigoted rubes. But, please feel free to keep on making the same mistakes that cost liberals their traditional base to begin with.

Right, but you have no problem with conservatives voting for a sexist, bigot who routinely insulted and villified women and minorities because he didn't refer to anybody as 'deplorable'?

The thing is, I'm not trying to win your vote.

You are going to have to win some fraction of Trump voters' votes if you want an electoral victory.

I would certainly give the same advice to conservatives if counseling them on how to persuade members of the other side, but given that they won most recently, they seem less in need of such advice.

Not necessarily.  Winning back the votes of the holier than thou left wingers who voted for Dr Jill Stein and then getting out the people who voted for President Obama but didn't vote in 2016 would likely produce a comfortable victory.  Then there are also the voters who will be 18 in the next election, and the indications are that most young people are horrified that Donald Trump is President. Finally, thousands of Trump voters are literally killing themselves every year.

Then, when I wrote "I'm not trying to win your vote,"  I meant that literally.  I'm not a Democratic Party strategist or organizer.  It's not my job to try to reason with the idiot Trump voters.

[136or142]

Yeah, it is annoying how some liberals treat Trump voters as if they are morons who don't understand what they voted for. They aren't clueless rubes, who need to be shown the light. A lot of them know exactly what they voted for.

I don't necessarily agree with that.  I think a lot of them are morons.  They're just morons who are also adults.

That the base Trump voter also voted for their Republican Congressional Representative, many of whom have completely different ideas, at least on the economy, than the economic 'vision' that Trump spoke about in his stump speech most of the time, shows to me these people genuinely don't have a clue.

The point is though is that jerks like Chris Arnade can't have it both ways. Either these people are responsible adults who don't deserve to be condescended to by 'coastal elites' and they deserve to get what they voted for, like losing their health care coverage, or they're irresponsible morons who should, in fact, be treated with, if not condescension, then certainly with paternalism.

[Yank2133]

Arnade is the worst.

He treats Trump voters as if they are some native tribe on National Geographic. It is pathetic.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Yeah, it is annoying how some liberals treat Trump voters as if they are morons who don't understand what they voted for. They aren't clueless rubes, who need to be shown the light. A lot of them know exactly what they voted for.

I don't necessarily agree with that.  I think a lot of them are morons.  They're just morons who are also adults.

That the base Trump voter also voted for their Republican Congressional Representative, many of whom have completely different ideas, at least on the economy, than the economic 'vision' that Trump spoke about in his stump speech most of the time, shows to me these people genuinely don't have a clue.

The point is though is that jerks like Chris Arnade can't have it both ways. Either these people are responsible adults who don't deserve to be condescended to by 'coastal elites' and they deserve to get what they voted for, like losing their health care coverage, or they're irresponsible morons who should, in fact, be treated with, if not condescension, then certainly with paternalism.

As Lincoln said, "you can fool some of the people all of the time". That's Trump (and the GOP's) core constituency. Trying to appealing to them is useless as is trying to reason with them. hThey voted and cheered for a man who stood up and said he wanted to  murder innocent women and children en masse. (That he's also a pathological liar is not a mark in their favor.) Either we beat them at the ballot box by out-organizing their voter suppression and (Russian-assisted) psyops, or they (and the whole US) are going to eventually meet the same fate that came to a prior white-nationalist xenophobic authoritarian militaristic cult that followed a charismatic idiot to some magical idea of grand national destiny. Personally, I'm going to do what I can to make sure we beat them peacefully, because what will happen to our country (and the world) if we can't doesn't bear thinking about.

[TheSaint250]

Lol this entire thread is just made to insult Trump voters.

See, the thing is Democrats will never understand Trump voters.  Every issue a Trump voter gives as justification is just turned into "YOU'RE RACIST" or "YOU'RE SEXIST" or "YOU'RE SELFISH" when the exact opposite is true.  Democrats have become so out-of-touch so many Americans that there is no way they could possibly understand reasons behind voting.  It was never about "minority growth threatening the white majority" or "suppressing women" or whatever.  It's about economic growth, strengthening our border (no, not the wall; many Trump voters don't believe there will be a wall), and a variety of other issues.

[BuckeyeNut]

This thread is why I hate coastal liberals.

[tik 🪀✨]

it's very possible to appeal to trump voters without being a bigot / hillary clinton was very bad at this. as we say in ohio: "bigotry goes badly with bread and butter...ly" (it is customary in ohio to force things to rhyme because it distracts from the despair)

why are we still having these kinds of discussions?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

"I don't empathize with Trump voters, therefore this is my opinion of them, which is evidence of why we shouldn't empathize with Trump voters"

[tik 🪀✨]

"I don't empathize with Trump voters, therefore this is my opinion of them, which is evidence of why we shouldn't empathize with Trump voters"

all discussions of demographics on Atlas devolve into generalisations that are ALWAYS SO GROSS STOP IT

[TheSaint250]

Lol this entire thread is just made to insult Trump voters.

See, the thing is Democrats will never understand Trump voters.  Every issue a Trump voter gives as justification is just turned into "YOU'RE RACIST" or "YOU'RE SEXIST" or "YOU'RE SELFISH" when the exact opposite is true.  Democrats have become so out-of-touch so many Americans that there is no way they could possibly understand reasons behind voting.  It was never about "minority growth threatening the white majority" or "suppressing women" or whatever.  It's about economic growth, strengthening our border (no, not the wall; many Trump voters don't believe there will be a wall), and a variety of other issues.

Because the 45.9% of this country who got conned is SO good at respecting others and treating them like adults, right? Or understanding why they vote the way they do? Because I always hear about how Democrats are terrorists, un-American, always stealing elections, "not even real people", or just whiny snowflakes. I'm no liberal, but the kind of sh**t I hear from older white people over the age of 45 on my Facebook feed makes me yearn for the days when their electoral impact in this country is insignificant. And no, it's almost all about these people feeling rattled by the rapid change going on in this country. What the hell did you think all the underlying tones of Trump's campaign were geared towards? It was  a nostalgia for a time that is long since gone and is not coming back, no matter what BS Trump promised.

There were no "underlying tones."  It's a yearning for the days when we loved to be American, yes, the days of Reagan's and Clinton's presidencies.  Americans worked together and didn't casually call each other racists or 100% refuse to work with others.  A time when it wasn't wrong to have a strong military or keep our borders strong, a time when we made logical governing decisions, not stupid ones to piss off the other side.  There is no "LET'S GO BACK TO THE DAYS OF GEORGE WALLACE."  There is none of that, and if I thought there was eve a small amount of that, I wouldn't have supported Trump.  We need to be more economically strong like under Reagan and Clinton and not just settle for enough or attempt to downplay America being the greatest country ever.

[ApatheticAustrian]

understanding and sharing or agreeing are btw 2 different set of things.

[136or142]

"I don't empathize with Trump voters, therefore this is my opinion of them, which is evidence of why we shouldn't empathize with Trump voters"

So, please tell me why I should emphasize with Trump voters.

[TheSaint250]

"I don't empathize with Trump voters, therefore this is my opinion of them, which is evidence of why we shouldn't empathize with Trump voters"

So, please tell me why I should emphasize with Trump voters.

Because, at the end of the day, we are all Americans.