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What’s the Plan for the Sanders’ Voters?
We’ve had a lot of debate on Ricochet about people who don’t think Donald Trump’s much of a conservative, but who nonetheless hope to see the GOP win the presidency. Victor Davis Hanson — and many here on Ricochet — have pointed out that Trump’s supporters are hardly apt to vote for a candidate or a party that evinces utter contempt for them, nor is “contempt” a particularly attractive sentiment to express toward a large number of one’s fellow Americans.
“Far better than ridiculing Trump as a showboat,” Hanson writes,
would be to show more constructive passion than does Trump and to discover what makes sane citizens see him as their last resort. Rather than dismissing his empty populism, it would be wiser to fill it in. Respect and listen to and learn from Trump voters — and they will not vote for Trump.
Ross Douhat makes what’s to my mind an even more important argument:
He’s right, isn’t he? It’s a bedrock principle of representative democracy that people be represented. This seems like common sense, doesn’t it?
But here’s what troubles me: If that’s true, doesn’t it also stand to reason that you can’t hope to govern the country by ignoring the Sanders constituency? Yes, it does.
If the results we saw in Iowa are replicated throughout the country, it means the Sanders constituency is even larger than the Trump constituency. Would a president who ignores the Sanders constituency be politically stupid and actually wicked?
The Sanders voters are no more apt to go away than the Trump voters. What makes sane citizens see him as a last resort? What should we learn from them? How will we make them feel respected?
Who, realistically, do you think best equipped to govern a country so divided, and why do you think so?
Published in Elections
Maybe I’ve missed it (I only skimmed the comments), but I think one factor that applies to people who are willing to support the extreme is the element of fear. It’s hard to get at that fear, because it’s so visceral and terribly uncomfortable. So if you ask Sanders or Trump supporters, they can give you rational answers for their support, but underneath, they are terrified of where this country is going, and believe that we must do something drastic. We are all terrified, but some of us are more terrified of the potential cataclysm that could occur if the approach to change is too extreme. In spite of how the Republicans have seriously disappointed me, I’m still a Burkean at heart.
A random thought. I would be easier for me to change churches than to change which side of the church I sit on. Maybe its a personality thing.
The commonality I see looking at videos of crowds at their rallies — obviously I’ve neither been to a Trump nor a Sanders rally — is whiteness. Their constituencies are white people. Look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WLmryXIttE
What are the odds that in a random gathering of that many Americans there would be no one who’s not white? Something’s going on with white people in America.
Whiteness – indeed.
Although, I teach in a school that has a tiny black population and a much larger native American population, and they are all Trump supporters, following the lead at home I suspect. But otherwise dead on for Democrat party policies. My black friends are also either none of the above or Trump, and they have no love for Bernie. I think they pull for Clinton, as much any do, due to Bill.
What is going on with white people – I don’t think immigration can be left out of the equation.
Also, I think you are seeing the effects of the collapse of traditional Protestantism in the US, they (both Sanders/Trump) appeal to the post-religious, again Sanders more than Trump. Trump’s supporters are more likely to be be believers in the vague Santa-Claus=God-Oprah-angles are my grandparents-GodblesstheUSA strand of religion. Sanders socialism/SJ War is a replacement for religion.
There is a non-trivial portion of the left which is a hate-based ethno-nationalist alliance bent on the total dispossession of “white people.”
White people are also the only demographic to experience worse outcomes across just about all major social metrics.
The state of white america is not at all good. What with poverty, despair, and meth. No relief to problems within a meaningful time horizon, and no credible path to an actual better future in the world of transhumanist technophilia.
My brother has not been able to keep and secure regular employment outside of being a relatively successful reserve officer. He has no future, and I expect will live with me when he is old probably because of no actual real enough employment to get a realistic amount of social security. None of the people he lives with have real and regular employment. America has been gutted and is now bleeding out, and nobody has anything to say about this except to point at spurious metrics and say that your lived experience is wrong, you don’t exist, and even if you do die!
One thing that has struck me about both rallies, is how they remind me of Billy Graham crusades to continue my post-religion kick.
Yes to all this as well.
The rust belt is collapsing in a way and at a pace that should make all heads turn in despair. Being abroad Claire you may not sense what is happening in small city, town, and rural America from sea to shining sea north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Edited for a big typo.
I might not sense it even if I lived in rural America, because it’s a really big country, and people can be very unaware of what’s going on in other parts of it. But I can certainly see from the statistics — addiction, lower life expectancy, suicide — that something’s terribly wrong. It’s hard sometimes to figure out what’s media sensationalism and what’s a real problem, but declining life expectancy is obviously a sign that there’s a real problem.
Why would a GOP president be obligated to work with and represent Sanders’ supporters?
When did Obama accommodate Romney’s supporters or acknowledge the Congressional elections of 2010 and 2014?
Why is the first step for a Republican President to moderate positions, reach across the aisle, and betray primary and general campaign promises? However, when a committed progressive Democrat is elected that elections have consequences, they won, and he is keeping score?
This is the problem with the center right world view. They describe the left as opponents or polite people with whom they disagree. Center right still wishes a polite debate at the country club while the left is cutting our throats in the parking lot.
Well, how’s this attitude working out for the country? Not well, I’d say.
What incentive do they have to change their behavior?
I’d say it is working out swimmingly for those that supported Obama.
Perhaps we can elect someone with a similar commitment on the right. Unfortunately, it appears late in the game for that person to declare for the campaign.
I think there’s plenty that hardline conservatism has to offer some of the OWS/Sanders people. So I’m not convinced we need to compromise or soften all that much – we just need to present it in their terms; we need to be forthright in making our case to their needs.
But this is a big part (I think) of the rise of Trump: no one is doing that. Instead they hide away conservative ideas so as not to offend; they enter the debate with the weakest compromise position as the opening bid; they are beholden and don’t exactly support hardline conservative positions themselves.
None. Republicans keep handing them a blank check.
Step 1: realize that the things driving Trump and Sanders are not madness, youth, or cravenness (mostly). There is dissatisfaction, disaffectation, and there is damn good reason for it with at least some but I suspect significant overlap. And, no “regular” candidate seems to be addressing any of it.
So why are so many of them behind Sanders?
Sanders is the natural continuation of the Obama agenda to the left. Sanders platform seems the perfect/logical extension of what Obama began.
Perhaps I am missing something in your question.
Brent, I’m just as frustrated and just as unwilling to moderate as you are. However, I’ve thought for a long time now that we might want to try persuading with conservative positions, try addressing concerns of Sanders voters with conservative prescriptions. AT the very least, let’s have the inevitable compromises skew right more often than not – for a change.
I am all for it and lets try. Read the stuff Lazy Millennial writes. There are many young Americans like him. Unfortunately we stopped making the arguments and instead propose gimmicks.
However, if we win the election with conservative arguments, and I think we have a good chance, then do not backtrack on those arguments.
Obama won twice on a hard leftist agenda and governed exactly that way.
Another datapoint:
Interracial cuckoldry porn targeting white women is a thing. Entirely built on contempt for and degradation of the white male, with their weak character and inadequate penis size.
The world is a weird place. I am not sure what to make of it, but it definitely strikes me as indicative of something.
I sincerely hope this is deemed CoC compliant. This may be the new course record for Ricochet.
Well Done.
I am your internet anthropologist I peak under the bed so you don’t have too.
Thank you.
I do think there is some madness though, especially in the gender stuff, the silly campus demands and the rabid equality rhetoric. There’s deep unrealism in these, and they are part of the Bernie phenom. Such voters have channeled their own dissatisfaction in these ways because it makes them feel good about themselves and unselfish. They do have legitimate reasons for the dissatisfaction, but the lies of the left (a form of mad idiocy) have prevented them from seeing sensible (conservative) solutions to their problems. If we find solutions, however, the madness will die down I firmly believe! I hope anyway.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
The cruelest thing we could do is give them what they want. That would pretty much guarantee my kids future would be destroyed. It’s funny to see my daughter, who leans towards Bernie! dealing with a mortgage and taxes and noticing what she earns is not what she’s paid. She also is upset because her bonus at work is tied into a socialistic “we all share” process, when her department brings in a big chunk of the profits, but of course everyone in the store ( except her department) voted for it because well Fair! The light is coming on.
Lets beat them in November then worry about bringing them around…
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
H. L. Mencken
This is the argument for federalism. Let them ruin California, so that the country learns from their example. The obvious reply of “but they never learn from their mistakes!” is an argument against democracy, not federalism.
Claire, Madison Wi is 86% White and 6% Asian. The Iowa Republican party is nearly 100% White (Iowa is 94% White). This not really that unusual.
Interestingly Trump seems to be the only Republican making a dent with Black voters…
Question #1
In 2016, America will elect a President. If the election for President of the United States were today, and the only two names on the ballot were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who would you vote for?
I wonder how much all this has to do with the sexual revolution entering its reign of terror phase? People often talk about the risk of political instability from millions of Chinese young men being unable to get dates. But really, who knows how many young white Americans feel similarly trapped? Cultural norms (for the majority culture) around dating have fractured in the past decade or two so that there is no longer a clear model to follow to pursue someone romantically. The extreme responses to this state of affairs, known online by the labels SJW and MRA, have a lot of overlap with the Sanders and Trump camps, respectively.
See if you can find footage of a Sanders rally that doesn’t look like that. I haven’t, so far. Doesn’t mean there hasn’t been one, only means I haven’t seen it so far — for what that’s worth.
This isn’t what many Sanders voters believe. Some percentage of them — I don’t rightly know what percentage it is, but it’s non-zero — believe Obama’s mistake was an excess of centrism. They see Hillary as Obama’s natural successor, and Sanders as what they thought they were voting for in Obama, until Obama betrayed the revolution. I’m certain a significant percentage of them believe this sincerely. What percentage, I don’t know.