Honey69 wrote:
One main idea is that people with college educations were more likely to vote for Harris. Everyone else pretty much preferred Trump. I guess this was the second video.
Interesting statistic, and I've heard it's true. Don't quite know what it means in practice.
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She was speaking glowingly of Huey Long, and quoted Bernie Sanders saying that the Democratic Party had left the working class, so the working class left the Democratic Party, or something to that effect.
I don't know who Huey Long is. Presumably a Democrat politician. I know of Bernie though - mooted as the most popular politician in the USA. What he said there makes sense to me.
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My opinion is that people of lower intelligence (which might correlate with lower educational attainment) tend to be more visceral in their voting, and to respond more favorably to the ravings of a con artist.
That's a tad too loaded for me to tackle quickly, but there may be truth in parts of it at least.
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People liked Bill Clinton because he was loud, sexy, appeared "confident", and had a $200 haircut.
I've long thought that anybody who can give the appearance of confidence has a big advantage if they're after becoming a leader. Loudness always puts me off, but I guess the loud ones get heard more often. It'd be interesting to see a study or two on the impact of superficial qualities on voting preferences. As a fairly thoughtful type myself, I still find it hard to believe that those things carry any weight at all, but it's possible that people don't often have the time to think in much detail, and psychology is a strange thing.
De toutes les définitions de l'homme, la plus mauvaise me paraît celle qui en fait un animal raisonnable, as some Frenchman said. Crude translation: Homo sapiens ain't that sapiens. Of course
we're perfectly rational especially in this august forum.
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Very few of Trump's voters are really thinking things through. "Yay! Huge tariffs on imports, so that I won't be able to afford anything at Walmart! Just so the millionaires can have another huge tax cut!"
I don't quite know what import tariffs will do, but I gather some economists have said that protectionism tends to backfire, and I expect ornery folks will be the main casualties if they do.
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Trump also had a strong appeal to the xenophobes.
No doubt, but if I may play devil's advocate here, some of the reservations about immigration have merit I think. If they believe Trump's the only one who's serious about doing anything much about it, that would explain part of his popularity. But I think the cleverest right-wingers like to import cheap labour and then to blame the imported ones for the poverty of the indigenous population. How Mr. T fits into all that, I don't yet know.
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Maybe the next Democratic candidate has to descend to Trump's level. If there is another election.
A left-wing populist would be interesting. Last one I heard of did quite well in local government in the UK, but he didn't last very long. And the UK seems to different when it comes to populists. Boris Johnson probably won't be Prime Minister again.