Did Hillary underestimate rich people's xenophobia?

[darklordoftech]

The non-existence of "never-Trump" Republicans has left me wondering about this.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

They existed pretty substantially. Just not in the right places. Comey freaked a lot of them out at the very last minute.

[Intell]

They voted based on their wallet.

[TDAS04]

Rich whites voted their wallet and/or party loyalty.  Hillary underestimated lower-income whites' xenophobia.

[NOVA Green]

No, Hillary was perceived by many WWC voters as "taking their votes for granted".

Just like any other demographic in the US, Voters want to their elected Political Representatives to at least rhetorically show that they are fighters for marginalized communities encompassing a wide array of constituencies, and are at least talking about fundamental core issues and changing economic environments over the past 30+ Years of American History.

Dukakis got it enough in '88, even as Technocrat and lost by large margins mainly because of suburban Anglos, and not WWC Voters (Gephardt anyone )

Bush Sr, didn't get it in '92 and suddenly Ross Perot emerges out of nowhere to fill the vacuum.

Clinton '96 got it, and was able to both minimize 'Pub margins among suburban Anglos, and keep down Perot numbers against the lackluster 'Pub Bob Dole.

Gore '00 got it, and was able to perform pretty well among both WWC constituencies, while also starting to create massive swings among Knowledge Sector Workers (That still voted 'Pub).

Kerry '04 got it, but "kinder gentler Republican met swift-boat at a time where the Iraq War was starting to move front and center.

Obama '08/'12 got it and was able to minimize Dem losses and swing a significant number of George W. '00/'04 WWC voters.

HRC '16 was a total bust....

She appeared completely tone deaf to the legitimate concerns about generations of WWC voters, when it came to the "hot button" items of "off-shoring" of American Manufacturing jobs, where both the Democratic and Republican Parties alike are perceived by many as having "sold American workers down the river" and hiding behind the sacred altar of free trade that started with MFN with China after Tiananmen Square, NAFTA in the mid '90s, etc....

I come from a relatively rural and heavily manufacturing producing region of Oregon, and this isn't a Democrat/Republican/Libertarian/Green/Pink/Purple issue....

HRC did not directly address an issue at the forefront of many voters minds in '16, and instead you have a vacuum filled by Trump that promises to "bring jobs back to America"....

I have walked the line, worked the line, with tons of different political, social, economic backgrounds in a Manufacturing environments, and despite our roles and job titles, we have seen the failures of Democratic and Republican Presidential Administrations alike, when it comes to how various administrations appear more interested in the bottom lines of Wall Street than they do in investing and reinvesting in the American workforce.

I work in Fortune 50 Tech Sector Company, and although it is heavily Democratic leaning in terms of the employee population, we all know the real deal about how the CEOs sold us down the river to maximize quarterly earnings, shift jobs overseas to maximize profits, etc.... (Hence extremely high % of 3rd Party Votes in '16 in many parts of Oregon)

HRC's numbers cratered even harder in the Union Strongholds of the Midwest....

Trump did not win solely based upon xenophobia, but despite his hate speech....

"Rich People" (Not very many of them out there from my perspective as a % of population), had an extremely small electoral impact, and "Upper Middle-Class Voters", depending upon how one defines that by MHI / States / Metro Areas / Education Levels swung hard Dem, but ultimately, even there weren't enough to swing the Electoral College....

[Peanut]

They existed pretty substantially. Just not in the right places. Comey freaked a lot of them out at the very last minute.

[mvd10]

Idk whether you can fully trust the exit polls, but wealthy people did trend D by a lot. Trump dropped 5-7% compared to Romney with college-educated whites and voters with a household income above $100k. Darien, an extremely wealthy former sundown town with loads and loads of Wall Street bankers, voted 65% Romney in 2012 and only 41% Trump in 2016 lmao. If you look at the precinct level data and check the wealthiest towns in the US you see that Trump dropped 20-25% compared to Romney. In 2012 Romney won the vast majority of the wealthiest towns with only a small minority going to Obama, in 2016 the situation was reversed and Hillary won most of these towns (though Trump did win a few). Then again, I don't think these towns are that representative of the average wealthy voter lol.

But yeah, rich people aren't really a natural constituency for any left-wing party (with a few exceptions I guess) and I don't really see how the Democrats can build a long-term winning coalition which includes wealthy people, especially since they are drifting to the left.

[RaphaelDLG]

No, she underestimated their greed, religiosity, and jingoism, especially the former.

[Figueira]

Yes, her assumption that rich people are morally superior was quite bizarre.

[RINO Tom]

She underestimated rich people's preference for Republicans.  Make whatever wild accusations after that that you need to.

[IceSpear]

They existed pretty substantially. Just not in the right places. Comey freaked a lot of them out at the very last minute.

[Stranger in a strange land]

No, she underestimated their greed, religiosity, and jingoism, especially the former.

Yes. There's also the baffling, elitist assumption that getting a college degree somehow inoculates you against racism and xenophobia, even though "college" for a lot of people just means "spending 4-5 years at a lower-tier state school partying while pretending to study marketing or communications".

[RaphaelDLG]

No, she underestimated their greed, religiosity, and jingoism, especially the former.

Yes. There's also the baffling, elitist assumption that getting a college degree somehow inoculates you against racism and xenophobia, even though "college" for a lot of people just means "spending 4-5 years at a lower-tier state school partying while pretending to study marketing or communications".

Eh, well, the story of this election is that college degreed people moved decisively toward Democrats for the first time, right? (after traditionally being a Republican constituency in the 90s, early 00s).

And the people who were traditional republicans turned off by trump's misogyny, xenophobia, etc were the people that she was targeting.  The really xenophobic ones she wasn't really trying to peel off, they are a working class/rural.

Also, as an aside, college degree is kind of a complex marker for generation and class nowadays it seems like.

[NOVA Green]

Idk whether you can fully trust the exit polls, but wealthy people did trend D by a lot. Trump dropped 5-7% compared to Romney with college-educated whites and voters with a household income above $100k. Darien, an extremely wealthy former sundown town with loads and loads of Wall Street bankers, voted 65% Romney in 2012 and only 41% Trump in 2016 lmao. If you look at the precinct level data and check the wealthiest towns in the US you see that Trump dropped 20-25% compared to Romney. In 2012 Romney won the vast majority of the wealthiest towns with only a small minority going to Obama, in 2016 the situation was reversed and Hillary won most of these towns (though Trump did win a few). Then again, I don't think these towns are that representative of the average wealthy voter lol.

But yeah, rich people aren't really a natural constituency for any left-wing party (with a few exceptions I guess) and I don't really see how the Democrats can build a long-term winning coalition which includes wealthy people, especially since they are drifting to the left.

There are a few threads on this, which I'm pretty sure you are well aware of (Bolded your opening sentence) but including for context for others on Atlas that haven't checked out some of the classic threads on the topic from "way back in the dayz....."

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=267040.0

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=259050.0

Obviously I can't speak for on behalf of "rich people", having never been one myself, let alone "just" upper middle-class, even if you look at MHI and adjust for average COLA by County / Metro Region,

Bolded your closing statement...

I guess the main question is do we measure "rich" as the 1% ers, or the 5% ers or the 10% ers....

If we start moving into the realm of the 5% > 10% do we measure that by a bell curve of MHI or individuals/couples whose net worth as American Citizens is measured against the entire wealth of Americans???

Being "Rich" in America has always inherently been viewed from the perspective of those who don't consider themselves "Rich", but what does it actually mean? How can we quantify the relative richness of of American voters?

We all know what it means to "not be rich" but in many ways it's a comparative valuation....

Some decades back when I was in my Teens, me and my working-class friends in Oregon would talk about all the nice houses being rapidly built up the hillsides where individuals had occupations such as Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, and we would talk about the "Rich people up in the Hills"....

Many of these folks living in the "mansions up in the hills" were parents of some of my friends over many years in public school, that were able to achieve economic success, while still working hard and not screwing people over to make a buck.... (Back in those days these same precincts in my Cities in Oregon were fairly heavy Reagan '84 Country, etc...), as were the College precincts. The working class precincts were solidly Democratic in what at that time was an overwhelming Anglo-American part of Oregon.

Now that the same economic dislocations have hit many of the traditionally upper-income and educated populations over the past few decades, that my community was dealing with on the "other side of town/tracks" for several decades in Oregon History, the scene has flipped around a little bit....

Still, I suspect that many "Upper Middle-Class Anglos" will continue to resist the Trumpster in 2020, even in places, where unlike the West Coast, the Republican brand did not completely collapse over the past few decades....

[Fuzzy Bear]

https://www.weeklystandard.com/elliott-abrams/when-you-cant-stand-your-candidate

[quote-Elliott Abrams]In 1972 and the rest of the 1970s, the question of changing parties did not arise for many of us. Jackson supporters were hawks, and the alternative—the détente policies of Nixon and Kissinger—were no attraction. The GOP of those days seemed to be the party of the Chamber of Commerce and the country club, not the conservative party William F. Buckley was fighting for—and finally got in 1980 when Ronald Reagan won the nomination and the presidency. Moreover, we thought we could win this battle within the Democratic party.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Today, that same situation will obtain: Conservatives seem unlikely to switch to a Democratic party whose heart and soul are with Bernie Sanders and whose candidate will be Hillary Clinton. Nothing we want is to be found in that party.
[/quote]


Hillary underestimated the partisanship of #NeverTrump Republicans.  However appalled they were at Trump, none of them saw anything in the Democratic Party that they wanted.  Elliott Abrams nailed that analysis.  When you add the degree to which the Clintons are loathed by partisan Republicans, this shouldn't have been a tough call.

Hilary banked on #NeverTrump Republcans to pull her through, and ignored WWC voters in WI, MI, and PA.   And she lost.  Why is this a head-scratcher?  She went after voters who saw nothing they wanted in the Democratic Party and ignored voters who her hoping and praying that they'd still see something there they could grasp onto.

[Matty]

I think the so called "wedge" between college educated and non-college educated whites is a bit overrated.

Wealthy white communities have historically had similar levels of jingoism, crime-on-street paranoia, NIMBYISM, and social conservatism as working class towns.