Huffington Post - Working America, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO union federation, just spent five weeks canvassing in the Cleveland and Pittsburgh areas, focusing on likely voters who live outside the city and have household incomes at or below $75,000 (read: white and working class).
Of the entire Democratic and Republican fields, the most popular single candidate was Donald Trump -- and it wasn't even close. Thirty-eight percent of people who had already made up their minds said they wanted to vote for the Republican real estate magnate. The candidate with the next highest share was Democrat Hillary Clinton, with 22 percent.
Trump's haul was more than the rest of the GOP field combined, which was 22 percent. Democratic candidate and Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders rang up 12 percent of decided voters. The Clinton and Sanders shares, when combined, came out roughly equal to Trump's.
A third of the Trump supporters were so loyal that they claimed they would not vote for another candidate if Trump were not the nominee. Not surprisingly, "personality" was a greater factor than policy issues for many Trump backers. Almost half of the Trump contingent said they liked him particularly because he speaks his mind.
And that would partly explain this troubling finding for Democrats: One in four people who identified as Democrats said they were backing Trump.
The good news for Democrats and the rest of the Republican field was that a slight majority of 53 percent said they still hadn't settled on a candidate. As Working America put it in their paper, "key white-working class voters have not made up their minds yet in the 2016 presidential race, but of those who have, Donald Trump is the strongest choice."
3 comments:
Seems like that is now the case in Michigan as well.
Lots of Working class voters now acting out of a 'lesser -of-two-evils ' mind set just like the Libs that abandoned them.
Many suspect that GOP candidates are NOT great for them...but they will willingly mistake Trump's brashness for honesty any day of the week. And that looks like the 'lesser of evils' compared to blatant Clintonesque dishonesty & the overall condescending approach of Libs like Clinton/Obama etc.
They're going strong on HOPE and real easy on close scrutiny, imitating what Libs did last time around.
-JJoslin ( Detroit , Michigan )
Almost all of Obama's social programs are fake. The people know it, also Clinton is a fake oposition Canadate. Smoke and mirrors.
It seems the world economy is setting up for another downturn. How far down?
The cold war is now long gone, what political balance of political economy the world
Had then is mostly long gone. So the landing zone is a global third world economy and coming social Economic political chaos. Look at the chaos of today's current third world republics to see the likly immediate future for the dYing first wold republics. A hundred year plus dark age is coming until if and when a new balance of political economy forms for another period of time.
This is not so hard to understand. The Trump supporters are diverse but they share a commonality: they have all been disenfranchised by both parties.
My reading of the anti-Trump people is that they generally have much less awareness of how bad things are trending for the economy, jobs, trade, and debt. They also seem to have no awareness of the dangers of having proper security from all kinds of threats from terrorism (largely due to our inept and meddling foreign policy over the last 15 years) to random border violence. They seem to be rather easily whipped up and ascribe the worst of motives to a 70-year old alpha-male white rich New Yorker who communicates in the typical lexicon of a New Yorker. People who have known how New Yorkers communicate aren't as put off by this. Of course, there are many racists and supremecist groups who believe Trump is their savior. They will be greatly disappointed as there is no real hard evidence of racism but there is abrasiveness - huge difference. If anything his business background would seem to indicate inclusiveness - if not for its own sake but expediency.
My impression is that he would govern much more middle of the road than most of the GOP crowd - more along the lines of Kasich or Christie - protecting Social Security and medicare and seeking to make a much better deal with the healthcare industry than the greatly disappointing Obamacare. Yet he would bring an entirely new shift and boldness to the political discussion - and of course would not be beholden to the elite but would seek to elevate the stake of the losers who have been left behind to rust.
He will not deport 12 million people nor does he want to. People forget he is trying to get the GOP nomination and is playing to their frustration. He will of course have to build a fence (or try) and clamp down on the under-reported illegal activity by immigrants. That will be the compromise he is seeking and he has positioned himself for that.
The anti-Trump people seem to be doing much better overall than the pro-Trump crowd. They are in great denial of trends and also almost indifferent to the concerns of the pro-Trump crowd. This is the manifestation of the income-disparity of the last 30 years, which has grown exponentially since the crash of 2008. This is the arrogance and the failure of the establishment to see him coming.
The hysteria of the anti-Trumps has been fueled by the corporate media - which is controlled by the ruling elite. This elite has been pitting groups against each other forever using divide and conquer. The elite has been playing the race card all along - not Trump.
Someone like Trump coming along was inevitable given that both parties have been controlled ultimately by the same elite. It shows a failure of our political process due to this corruption.
Trump is not the cartoon character the media has portrayed him to be. He has been misunderstood and underestimated at every turn, not unlike Reagan. Not many saw Reagan as electable in 1976 or even 1980. Trump has also played this up extremely well.
But Reagan had to make a deal (or felt he did) to become President. After rejecting Ford as "co-President" - he accepted taking Bush as VP. Bush gradually inserted his people over Reagan's and co-opted his presidency, even more so after the assassination attempt.
What deal Trump ends up making with the establishment is unclear at this point - but one would assume he would make a better deal than Reagan. We have already seen the GOP establishment coming around to the fact that they will have to make a deal.
He is most likely aware that if he doesn't accept a deal, they will threaten him financially or personally. What he can end up accomplishing is uncertain.
My guess is that he can definitely beat a wounded Clinton or unfamiliar Sanders. He may have a harder time with Biden-Warren - but it's looking a lot like 1980 right now.
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