A lot of good things would have passed except the GOP blocked everything. Obamacare would have been better if the Democrats had full control. It would have looked different. Obama was lucky to get even that law. GOP trade policies in the past created the mess. Clinton was wrong about NAFTA. It should have never passed.

Repubes wanted to let it die along with NE Ohio. How fucking stupid are these people?

Stupid enough to vote for a man who'll give them the finger.

I don't mind them getting it if that's what they want from THEIR president.

I do hate that all of us will be getting the finger from his orange, racist, sexist, misogynistic behind as well.

Where they still have jobs because of Obama and if it had been left up to Trump and the Cons they'd be sorely out luck

But that great news was overshadowed by Comey's bullshit announcement about more irrelevant emails. This election was sabotaged by the FBI. It's a goddamn disgrace what happened and is nothing short of a right wing coup.

The economy is doing quite well.

As when it is true that you have to work hard just to stand still - that's been the case in many manufacturing industries for years due to overseas competition and technological change. Retraining is the one solution, but that's hard too, and doesn't feel very secure.

Plenty of people are used to that, but then they hear how well the economy is doing, then their inbox is flooded with nonsense about how everyone else is getting handouts and free stuff...

The more people do well, the more those just doing ok resent it. It's easy for a political party to exploit that, and keep in mind that the median trump voter income is 70k. That's a decent living, but not so much they see the recovery and think their fair share of that is going to people that don't deserve it.

And I hope their jobs are the first ones gone.

because the facts don't fit their preconceived narrative.

Good, it didn't belong in there. I would like to see a link to the info you claimed you read on the NCH website regarding panhandling, because what I found is the opposite of what you claimed. They fight the criminalization of homelessness including ordinances against panhandling. http://nationalhomeless.org/issues/civil-rights/

Put up or confirm my opinion about what you are really up to.

Your behavior is weird and I'm putting you on ignore

I would have said I might have misremembered which homeless coalition I heard say it, I heard one of them on my local radio saying what I relayed, but a quick search found this one saying basically exactly what I said

https://www.nhceh.org/differing-methods-in-place-to-deal-with-panhandling-issue-in-nh

Now kindly leave me alone and have more respect for other people's opinions. I find you very offensive and I'm asking you to bug off

but I did not see anything about NOT giving to panhandlers

maybe you were only hearing what reinforced your obvious prejudice.

From the article:

"“Panhandlers really give homeless people a bad name,” said Cathy Kuhn, the director of New Hampshire Coalition to End Homelessness


One study in San Francisco showed that 44% of the homeless use it for drugs, the ones who don't, for many of them homelessness is either a choice, as the above article states, or they do not take advantage of the many programs available to them like those which would give them food stamps, a path to a residence... Instead they choose to beg. Those are all facts you can research yourself. Therefore, the large majority of cash handouts constitutes enabling, as various studies have shown.

Homeless vets have specific help available

http://www.fresno.va.gov/services/homeless/

That's as much research I will do for you, and it's the last response.

And voted for pro free trade johnson and portman.

Clinton offered substantive positions on economic (and other) issues, whereas Trump did not. Like Obama, she spoke about Green industry jobs, raising wages, making people pay their fair share in taxes, tech entrepreneurship, etc. Trump, meanwhile, says things like, "We're looking at jobs--big league jobs."

People who think Clinton lost because of economic issue messaging are out to lunch. Trump voters weren't going to vote for Clinton no matter what.

And yet we are supposed to trust them bigly when they tell us how to remake the Democratic Party.

There's been a white backlash every time there's been racial progress, such as electing Obama and his executive action that produced DACA.

No Democratic candidate for president has won the white vote since LBJ. Trump didn't put forth substantive positions on economic issues, and if trade was such an important issue in places like Ohio, Portman wouldn't have kicked Strickland's ass. Voter preferences are more of a cultural/social matter than an economic one.

Trump, instead of being laughed off as a joke, gained steam when he suggested that virtually all Mexican immigrants are rapists and drug dealers. Clinton opposed Trump's position and rhetoric, therefore racism and xenophobia were factors in the result. The Dem candidate doesn't have to be a person of color for that to be the case.

Not to mention voter suppression, which was made easier thanks to the Shelby County v. Holder decision of 2013.

doesn't know how to handle an economy, and Strickland was vastly outspent, among other reasons

http://www.cleveland.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/11/four_reasons_rob_portman_thump.html

There is a lot of evidence that free trade is the main reason Trump gained steam in the rust belt. Why do you think Bernie Sanders did so well there? Google the number of people still on Trade Adjustment Assistance in the rust belt.. It's not a made up thing

People who were sold on "we'll make unbelievable deals" and "we're looking at jobs--big league jobs" weren't going to vote for Clinton no matter what. Clinton offered far more substance on economic matters and everything else. But, like Obama in 2012, she lost the white vote by 20 points.

No Democratic candidate for president has won the white vote since LBJ, and that's certainly not because the Republican Party is the party of sound economic policy. Folks who don't see by now that "voodoo economics" benefits the few at the cost of the many aren't ever going to see it. And all Trump is promising is more of the same.

And the median income of Trump supporters was substantially higher than the median income of Clinton supporters. She did better among those most hurt by the recession.

Last edited Sat Nov 26, 2016, 11:49 PM - Edit history (1)

They don't give two shits about anything else but what they need to do to survive. I moved away from a place like that due to lack of decent jobs. Tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt and can't even find a $10 an hour job in a small city of about 45k people because there just aren't enough jobs to go around. THAT is what rust belt voters and blue collar workers care about.

There will be no more McDonalds jobs in a decade or two.

And that isn't going to change. There will need to be new green industries created and more done to combat wage disparities, but even that won't be enough. A universal basic income is needed.

Somehow I think that universal basic income is a nonstarter for the foreseeable future. Hopefully we can at least got the conversation started.

I don't expect there to be a universal basic income in the US in my lifetime. But we're also not going to see an end to automation or the return of jobs that have gone overseas.

If no one has income, who is going to buy the products made by robots? And at what point do the forgotten masses, as in the French Revolution, have no option left but to revolt? That is essentially what people in the rust belt are doing with their trump vote.

People think Democrats are a bunch of arrogant professionals whose greatest struggles in life are tax raises or getting their kids in to a nicer private school. And unfortunately it seems like that's too often the case, from what it sounds like.

They vote Repub or stay home instead of voting Dem when we most need them. If they are stupid enough to think Republicans have their backs or will actually make their lives better, then they need to prepare to learn a very painful lesson. Maybe they will wise up once they lose their health insurance, unemployment, Medicare, Social Security and any hope of finding a job with Republicans in charge of all levels of government for them.

...and are anti-union, you have to ask if they really are Democrats?

refocusing not simply to blue collar economic concerns, but away from social issues entirely. They are afraid of the same tired "get us there and then we've got you" bullshit.

I am very much an advocate of focusing on the economy and jobs as a primary issue , but it isn't mutually exclusive to civil rights. It goes hand and hand. The white middle class need to stop thinking that immigrants and people of color are the ones taking away their security. They need to be given a truer narrative about who they are actually up against, and they need to be given not just the promise of economic betterment by us going after the people who have all the wealth and making them put it back into the commons, but brought to the understanding that their own lives are made better by abandoning divisive dehumanizing politics.

Give them hope for the future, not with a narrative that suggests they are going to need to tighten their belts and share, but with one that says "you deserve more" and I think that suddenly they won't be so afraid of hearing messaging that says, "and by the way, so do your brothers and sisters who are immigrants and people of color." And "by the way, the thing that's been keeping you from getting more is this divide and conquer bullshit that has attempted to distract you from the prize. The very forces that want you to be suspicious of your fellow citizens-in-struggle are the people that hold 95% of the nation's wealth. Lets start loving each other, and work together to change that."

There's granted, a naive simplicity to the way I'm saying this, but the impetus is to get away from the loss avoidance that is making people crazy and particularly susceptible to hate mongering. Nobody is receptive to a thing in that panicked state of mind. Give them that security and all of a sudden all of the things on the platform that are going to make the lives of people of color and immigrants better aren't seen as a direct threat to their own well being. Say it pulls 10 percent, hell, 5 percent of the white male vote in our direction. That's all she wrote for the GOP, and civil rights issues don't have to get sidelined from the platform to do it.