Free Republic
Browse · Search
GOP Club
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Post: Trump voters remain loyal because they feel disrespected
Hot Air ^ | May 15, 2018 | John Sexton

Posted on 05/16/2018 4:22:42 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Monday, the Washington Post surveyed a new book, a memo, and a detailed report for the Post itself, all of which take a look at swing voting patterns in parts of the country that went for President Obama in 2008 and 2012 and then shifted to President Trump in 2016. The Post attempts to synthesize the findings of all three items and concludes that people in these parts of the country feel a lack of respect both for themselves and for the president they voted for:

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who helped orchestrate Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory, has obsessively studied the “Reagan Democrats” in Macomb for more than three decades. He went back after the 2016 election to understand how Trump won Michigan and recently returned to conduct another round of focus groups. “Trump voters complain that there is no respect for President Trump or for people like them who voted for him,” Greenberg writes in a new memo summarizing his latest findings, with Nancy Zdunkewicz of Democracy Corps…

Respect is also a central undercurrent in “The Great Revolt,” a new book by Republican operative Brad Todd and conservative columnist Salena Zito…

“We voted for President Obama and still we are ridiculed. Still we are considered racists,” said Cindy Hutchins, a store owner and nurse in Baldwin, Mich. “There is no respect for anyone who is just average and trying to do the right things.”

“Our culture in Hollywood or in the media gives off the distinct air of disregard to people who live in the middle of the country, as if we have no value or do not contribute to the betterment of society,” said Amy Giles-Maurer of Kenosha, Wis. “It’s frustrating. It really wants to make you stand up and yell, ‘We count,’ except of course we don’t. At least not in their eyes.”…

Dan Balz, The Washington Post’s chief correspondent, spent the past 16 months interviewing voters in rural areas of the upper Mississippi River valley where Obama won but then broke decisively for Trump…

“One of the places I would agree with the hardcore Trump people, they’re tired of being treated as the enemy by Barack Obama,” said Dennis Schminke, 65, a retired manager at Hormel, the company makes Spam in Austin, Minn., an area just north of the border with Iowa.

You can just imagine the respect people in San Francisco or New York City would have for a guy from Minnesota who makes Spam for a living. But the disdain is often more specific than that. One 54-year-old from Cleveland told the Post he switched parties because he just got tired of being called a racist by Democrats:

David Miller, a white 54-year-old Ohio voter at a polling place in Cudell Recreation Center in Cleveland, pulled a Republican primary ballot Tuesday for the first time he could remember to vote in the governor’s race. Like many other voters, he felt he had been left behind.

“I mainly was a mainstream Democrat,” he said, before describing how that started to change before the 2016 election. “Every time I turned on the TV, there’s a Democrat calling me a racist and I just got tired of it.”

Which brings me to an opinion piece that appeared in the New York Times on Saturday. It was titled, “Liberals, You’re Not as Smart as You Think.” The gist of it is that progressives often fail to realize how off-putting their moralizing can be to people who don’t share all of their views:

Liberals dominate the entertainment industry, many of the most influential news sources and America’s universities. This means that people with progressive leanings are everywhere in the public eye — and are also on the college campuses attended by many people’s children or grandkids. These platforms come with a lot of power to express values, confer credibility and celebrity and start national conversations that others really can’t ignore.

But this makes liberals feel more powerful than they are. Or, more accurately, this kind of power is double-edged. Liberals often don’t realize how provocative or inflammatory they can be. In exercising their power, they regularly not only persuade and attract but also annoy and repel…

Within just a few years, many liberals went from starting to talk about microaggressions to suggesting that it is racist even to question whether microaggressions are that important. “Gender identity disorder” was considered a form of mental illness until recently, but today anyone hesitant about transgender women using the ladies’ room is labeled a bigot. Liberals denounce “cultural appropriation” without, in many cases, doing the work of persuading people that there is anything wrong with, say, a teenager not of Chinese descent wearing a Chinese-style dress to prom or eating at a burrito cart run by two non-Latino women…

Even if liberals think their opponents are backward, they don’t have to gratuitously drive people away, including voters who cast ballots once or even twice for Mr. Obama before supporting Mr. Trump in 2016.

In other words, the smug attitude taken by a lot of progressives on these issues is one reason why people who once voted for Obama wound up voting for Trump. And it’s very possible they’ll do so again in 2020, especially if the left doubles-down on the condescension. Put another way, all Democrats have to do to succeed is put a cork in the smug, so why can’t they seem to do that?

My own take is that the condescension being noted by people in the middle of the country isn’t some sort of side-effect of progressivism which can be worked out. For many on the left, looking down on others is a feature, not a bug in their politics. There are a lot of people who bitterly cling to their anti-gun, anti-religion politics as a sign of their own superiority. There’s just no way to express that sort of moral superiority without having someone inferior to look down on. But the people they look down on can feel that disrespect and they don’t like it very much.


TOPICS: Issues; Parties; Polls; State and Local
KEYWORDS: 2018midterms; deplorables; media; polls; voters
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-24 next last

1 posted on 05/16/2018 4:22:42 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Actually, it’s our Constitution and our Republic that are disrespected.

POTUS trump is just the Messenger.


2 posted on 05/16/2018 4:27:49 PM PDT by Kickass Conservative ( An Armed Society is a Polite Society. An Unarmed Society is North Korea.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Gee, what was their first clue?


3 posted on 05/16/2018 4:28:59 PM PDT by colorado tanker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

More sycophantic writing from the never trumpets of hot air - it’s not diestepect at all.

It’s because the left has become completely unhinged and abandoned America outright for a socialist utopia. They care not for law - they care not for the constitution - they care not for independent thought and most of all - they care not for liberty but an oppressive imposing government to be used at will against anybody that stands in their way.

In short - they’re unAmerican.

That is why Trump maintains his support and it confounds and pisses off the left that we would choose individuality and self-sovereignty over a candy land utopia.


4 posted on 05/16/2018 4:36:50 PM PDT by Skywise
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Skywise

A Candyland utopia that they’ve been promising for 70 years and NEVER delivered on.


5 posted on 05/16/2018 4:39:42 PM PDT by Luircin
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: colorado tanker

Vote Trump—or let the Democrat Commies Impeach him and Pence and make Nancy P. President! She would select Hillary as her VP—Then resign.


6 posted on 05/16/2018 4:46:22 PM PDT by Forward the Light Brigade (Into the Jaws of H*ll Onward! Ride to the sound of the guns!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

The patterns may be similar, but the Obama shift had a whole different set of voters than the Trump shift did.

Those shifting to Obama were voting for his promised pie-in-the-sky Obamaphones, Obamacare, etc.

Those shifting to Trump were voting for a whole different set of promises -- closing the border, building the wall, improving the economy, JOBS, etc.

The elections of Obama and Trump were as different as night and day.


7 posted on 05/16/2018 4:49:09 PM PDT by TomGuy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

the dems and their media allies have already doubled down and triple downed on calling anyone and everyone who voted for Trump and evil, deplorable being, not even a real person. You see it on CNN, MSNBC every hour of every. You see it every single “award show” where all the limousine liberals pat themselves on the back, and then attack those who watch their crap on TV, at the movies or buy their crappy music.

After the 2016 election, the NYT ran an editorial saying that they were going to engage in some introspection to figure out where they went so wrong in their predictions. From what they’ve done since the election, it appears that they concluded that they didn’t attack Trump and his voters enough.


8 posted on 05/16/2018 4:49:51 PM PDT by euram
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

9 posted on 05/16/2018 4:56:58 PM PDT by 4Liberty (illegal immigration is a "process" crime too....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Disrespected by the media, hollyweird, academia, the dem’s, and the rest of the leftist cabal; yes.

I was a bit disappointed in Trump signing the budget in which he didn’t get the funds for the border or wall but a more pressing issue of funding our military was accomplished so I decided to be patient for now.


10 posted on 05/16/2018 5:00:58 PM PDT by Boomer (Leftism is a Malignant Moral Cancer on Society!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: euram

Yes, what a surprise!


11 posted on 05/16/2018 5:05:24 PM PDT by fortheDeclaration (Pr 14:34 Righteousness exalteth a nation:but sin is a reproach to any people)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

I still watch the election night results to see the smugness wiped off of the MSM faces!


12 posted on 05/16/2018 5:06:12 PM PDT by fortheDeclaration (Pr 14:34 Righteousness exalteth a nation:but sin is a reproach to any people)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Forward the Light Brigade

Of course I will vote against Nan and Upchuck, but even if we lose the Senate, the Dems will never get 2/3 to impeach. In fact, if they try impeachment it could very well set Trump up for reelection in 2020. The backlash could be huge.


13 posted on 05/16/2018 5:11:14 PM PDT by colorado tanker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Translation: if progs didn’t act so immature, smug, angry and condescending, they would be able to convince more people to buy into their murderous Stalinist collectivism.


14 posted on 05/16/2018 5:29:04 PM PDT by lurk
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

This imbecile could not be further from the truth. They will never get it nor admit it.


15 posted on 05/16/2018 5:33:07 PM PDT by shanover (...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.-S.Adams)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

liberals are in local newspapers, talk radio newsrooms (not necessarily the hosts, though those exist too) and local tv “news” organizations.

many of them are young, new graduates of schools that have imbued them with the taint of statism.


16 posted on 05/16/2018 5:51:39 PM PDT by SoFloFreeper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

“The nerve of those backwards Nazi cretins to think we unbiased heroes of the media have any disrespect for them.”


17 posted on 05/16/2018 5:59:15 PM PDT by OrangeHoof (CNN - the most busted name in news.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: euram

Bingo. All real Americans need to do to see the contempt in which Northeast/Left Coast Letists hold them is turn on the TV...or listen to any of a number of entertainers talk about politics or watch the lying MSM. Its right there on full display all day every day.

The article is right. Snobbery, condescension and a holier than though attitude are at the very heart of progressivism. They will never be able to stop. They will simply double down - as the media has done ever since Trump was elected. They will continue to scream that anybody who does not agree with them is a backward, hateful, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, uneducated, knuckle dragging, inbred redneck deplorable.

and Trump will beat their asses again in 2020. It will be glorious. :^)


18 posted on 05/16/2018 6:00:43 PM PDT by FLT-bird (..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

It’s amazing how people who have been proven wrong so often can still thibk themselves smarter than everyone else.


19 posted on 05/16/2018 6:02:31 PM PDT by Behind the Blue Wall
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Skywise

Wise analysis, Skywise.

The story decries only progressive “attitudes”, but as you point out, it’s their belief system as much as their haughtiness.

A truly unbalanced story meant to deceive.


20 posted on 05/17/2018 12:43:41 AM PDT by poconopundit (MAGA... Get the Spirit. Grow your community. Focus on your Life's Work. Empower the Young.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-24 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
GOP Club
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson