This report from the Guardian seems, to me, to cut right through all the BS and get right to the heart of the matter in this upcoming election. Many have responded to Hillary Clinton comment about the so-called “Deplorables” but few have fully addressed the rest of what she said right after that.
But that other basket of people are those that feel the economy has let them down. Nobody cares about them. Nobodies worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change.
She had a point. A good point. It’s a point that, beyond the deplorables and their ilk, has been strongly resonating and actually driving former Democratic voters from Youngstown Ohio into the Trump camp.
This is a good 12 min video but all of it is worth watching.
It’s already gotten some traction because this is the report that feature local Trump county organizer Kathy Miller who was rather outspoken.
“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” she said.
“You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.”
Miller also called the Black Lives Matter movement “a stupid waste of time” and said lower voter turnout among African Americans could be related to “the way they’re raised”.
Her comments risk further alienating African American voters from Trump in the crucial swing state. No Republican president has reached the White House without also winning Ohio, a state in which 12.7% of the population is black.
…
Miller added: “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this ... Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods, and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America.”
Miller dismissed the suggestion that Trump was exploiting racist or prejudiced views among some voters as “the media making stuff up”. Instead, she said of the Republican nominee: “He’s very willing to talk about issues that have never been discussed publicly.”
Yeah, I know that’s gobsmacking and Miller has consequently resigned her position and has been replaced by an African-American woman who had previously called Trump’s various comments “Deplorable” but it’s almost not the point. The point is that Youngstown had been a Democratic stronghold, but his year nearly 6,000 Democrats have re-registered as Republicans. Some of them may share sentiments with Miller but a great many of them probably don’t, they’re more concerned with their own personal futures, their own personal prosperity and that of their family in a blue collar hard working area and when it comes to that bread and butter argument, Trump is winning.
There’s a really good section prior to Miller’s talking to a former union Steel Worker about how jobs and plants in the area have disappeared. There’s a moment where the correspondent talks to a former Democratic candidate for Sheriff who has decided to go all in for Trump over the issue of jobs.
There’s also a talk he has with a black local union leader who describes how they, from their perspective, have rejected Trump almost out of hand because of his long standing birtherism, and denigration of all sorts of minorities. It’s time we heard a little from the anti-Millers.
Guardian: The economic hardships that have been reaped in this area have affected everyone equally, but the way in which they’re responding in this particular election is determined by race.
Jaladah Aslam: First of all I think that Trump’s racial rhetoric is more palatable to white democrats than it is to black. Just like we’re not gonna touch him with a ten foot pole. if you say these things about Mexicans, and you say these things about Muslims, and you say these things about — y’know even is so-called appeal to us is like “what the hell do you have to lose?” Are you serious? That’s how you talk to us? And we’re supposed to vote for you. We — y’know — we’re not buying into that, that’s a deal breaker for us. Given the history of African-Americans in this nation , for someone to disrespect minorities… and actually if he’d never said that to us, but just the way he talks about other minorities, cuz we know what’s next. We know what’s next, if you disrespect them — you disrespect us.
Whereas white democrats — even those that say they don’t like it, they’ll tolerate it. They’ll buy the other piece of that message because that doesn’t affect them personally as much. And so then, like “hmmm… well maybe he said some real bad things but I don’t think he’s racist.” They start making excuses for him. And the bottom line is that if somebody tells you who they are, you should believe them.
Donald Trump likes to pretend that he’s the savior of he middle class. That he’s the one that’s going undo, or redo all these trade deals and suddenly get companies to come streaming back into America and not do it by undercutting wages, or benefits, or undercutting safety and quality standards and regulations — ok, yeah he gave that last one up already — and he’s going to bring back the “great” America that wasn’t plauged and beset with all these problems brought by minorities and Muslims, and the truth is that a great many struggling blue collar — white and even a few black — Americans and more than ready to hear that message.
That’s the America they really truly, seriously, seriously, seriously want Back Again.
It’s the phantasmigorical America that Never, Ever, Ever, Ever, Existed. And it’s not coming back.
Ever. Ever. Ever.
Getting those people over their cynicism. frustration and finger-pointing to minorities, immigrants, China and Mexico — even the ones are not Racist, but willing to put up with and makes excuses for Trump’s racism -- and having them focus on a united future of expanded opportunities in new markets in clean energy and green tech may be our biggest challenge yet.
But I think we’re up to it.
Take 12 minutes and watch the entire clip, not just the sensationalist part with Miller.