cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/7076150
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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Disclaimer: I don’t live in the US and, when looking at US politicians, my opinions are most aligned with those of Bernie Sanders.
I don’t think that the problem here is the republicans or democrats, but both. These poor places have long been neglected and no politician care about states that are not swing states and have very few electors. The whole political system seems to abandon poor people, old people and people living in rural areas.
The reason why they vote for Trump is that they want to give a big middle finger to those that they see trying to dismantle their way of life: city people and rich people. Farmers work very hard to feed their country and there’s a pride in being self reliant.
Take for example modern cars, you’re not supposed to fix them yourself. That’s the producers fault. But when politicians make fuel costs go up and try to incentivize EV purchases, people can feel like their agency is taken away. The problem isn’t the fuel pricing or the drive train, but the fact that you can no longer service your own car.
This is a problem with society in general, not with republicans. The alt-right movement feeds on these fractures in society. It’s a symptom, not the underlying sickness. To combat this we need better social security, free healthcare, and more wealth redistribution.
But they’re not both the same
My favorite example was a few years back when Trump was elected. Both candidates visited West Virginia:
Both are the same? One denied the problem and blatantly lied to his constituents. During his term in office, I don’t think there was any attempt to follow through. The other at least recognized the issue, spoke honestly , and proposed something. There were quite a few people who decided to vote for Trump because they didn’t believe Clinton’s solutions would work, voted for hiding their heads in the sand (somehow denying reality was “telling it like it is”) over recognizing the issue and at least trying something, voted against their own best interests, fucked around and found out
I like this example because it clearly shows both that all politicians suck and that “both sides” really are NOT the same
The moment Clinton said that (and that's a direct quote), she lost any hope of getting most of Appalachia to vote for her.
To be clear about what Clinton's plan looked like, even if you ignored her terrible delivery of it, here's what it sounds like to the guys on the ground who'd benefit from it:
Step one, first you lose your job, and we're going to speed that up by tightening regulations with the express goal of killing the coal industry faster.
Step two, then you get put on unemployment and a retraining program. This of course will cause some of you to lose your hones and vehicles, and for some your family too because especially in very socially conservative areas a man losing a job for a prolonged period is often a catalyst to losing a marriage. Now that you've lost your home, downsized your car and lost your family it's time for...
Step three, the industry you've been retrained for doesn't exist, or doesn't exist at remotely the necessary scale here, so now you just need to pull up stakes and move elsewhere. Hope you didn't have any family nearby you cared to see, or took care of, or if you lost your wife in the previous step ever wanted to see your kids again.
Step four, congratulations! If you made it here, you probably have a job again. I mean, you had to sell your home just to stay afloat through the retraining, it pays less than your old job, you're living somewhere with a higher cost of living now, and you had to be cut off from your entire support network, but you're probably employed!
And all of that assumes her plan as proposed was actually going to be a thing that actually happened. As opposed to the at least as likely scenario where they still use regulations to kill the coal market more efficiently, but don't do any of the other stuff. Which was probably at least as likely in a post-Byrd world (Byrd was corrupt as all hell, but he always did his best for his constituents).
Why would unemployment cause people to lose their homes and vehicles? Wouldn’t a lot of retraining programs aim to find ways to sustain people’s living in the meantime?
Benefits aren't as big as the income you lose, and often get tied up in red tape on the way leading to delays. Depending on how weird your personal situation might be, it could be up to a couple of months. I don't recall her plan involving increasing and expediting benefits to people in her retraining program.
Unemployment doesn't provide as much money as the jobs people are losing. My state has a maximum of $362/week. That isn't going to let you make a mortgage payment, car payment, and buy food. There also generally a lag in receiving benefits, the first payment could take a month or so to show up.
Especially in red states that have intentionally made getting benefits a long and tedious process and don't hire enough people to process a sudden surge in unemployment (see Covid in places like Texas where it could be weeks or longer until you can even apply because the website is down from the surge of people)
They both lied, they just said different lies. Do you think that if Hillary was elected, she would have done anything substantial for those people? If she really wanted to do something, she could have done it under Obama.
But neither she nor Obama(nor Trump nor any politician) gives a fuck about those people. And those people know it. So if they have to choose, they would choose someone that tells them shit they like. Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.
They are the same in that they are alienating this particular part of the population from the rest of society. I agree that one is clearly better than the other, but my guess is that some people vote for Trump just to “own them libs” in California. They see liberalism and socialism as a threat to their lifestyle, something that’s not necessarily true, and they’re protesting that. We do need politicians that are more understanding to their problems and not those that are solely focused on the urban voters.
I think that leftist policy is the way to go for this, but we still need to satisfy that idea of self reliance. Of course the Democratic Party is way more sane but in my view, they are still very conservative.
If you want to talk alienating people there's clear differences between the two parties as well. Let's assume you're correct that Democrats are alienating coal miners and basically anyone else that makes their living from fossil fuels. Who are the Republicans alienating?
The Republican argument has always been that even though they (obviously) hate or at least don't give a shit about all these classes of people their (non-existent) economic policies will benefit them somehow. Economic studies as well as basic measures of social health have all shown repeatedly that this is untrue. The actual (partisan) laws enacted by Republican majority in each state as well as federally have had negative impacts both economically and on the general well-being being of their constituents.
For incredibly obvious examples, the Texas Republican legislature banned municipalities from instituting mandatory water breaks for workers. Georgia's banned handing out water bottles to people waiting to vote. Florida is banning books with any sort of sexual theme (including biology books and books on sex education!) and the mere discussion of anything related to LGBTQ topics in schools.
In what universe are these good policies? They're not. From an economics standpoint Republicans are the kings of unnecessary licensing requirements (aka "job killing regulations") and placing unnecessary restrictions on job seekers as well as welfare programs in the form of mandatory drug testing (which has no purpose; do we really care if some disabled veteran is doing drugs from time to time?), extremely flawed citizenship checks (because there's no national database regular citizens are being denied), and banning necessary medical care (abortion, which is a human right according to the UN).
These are definitely not good policies. What I’m arguing for is that the fact that the poorest states are voting Republican, not because the voters benefit from Republican policy, but because they’re unhappy with how things are going in general in their part of the country.
The problem is that both parties are alienating the poor and rural populations. Just the fact that Hillary Clinton did run for president is a warning bell. One shouldn’t expect to see two presidential candidates from the same family. This is also true for the Bush family. This just shows that it’s a small and privileged elite that runs the US. Of course people are upset and of course they will vote for the opponent of a political dynasty.
No one seems to listen to rural and poor voters and therefore they vote for the most extreme and outrageous candidate that they can find. I’m arguing that they do not vote based on suggested policy. If Americans were rational, that’s have a social democratic party like most countries in Europe have.
You're wrong, though. One side is literally performing a hostile takeover of the government, trying to kill our democracy, openly hates anyone who isn't a rich white male, and tries to dismantle any and all social safety nets.
Rural areas pretty much only vote republican because they've been brainwashed into voting against their own best interests. Republicans have been dismantling the education systems in these areas for decades for just this reason. Many of these people need legitimate cult deprogramming.
So no, both parties are not the same by any stretch of the imagination.
Since WV was brought up earlier, I feel the need to point out that WV was a Dem safe state until 2000.
WV voted Dem because unions, and started voting GOP when the Dems started openly attacking the largest union industries in the state.
See, this is the problem. They’re called brainwashed when they’re protesting a system that failed them. Both parties are bad in that they are runned by wealthy elites that do not share the everyday worries of ordinary folk.
The problem is the wide gaps in society with billionaires that try to go to mars while spouting conspiracy theories at the same time as a single mom can’t feed her children while working two jobs.
I will maintain that the Republican Party is way worse than the Democratic Party but both are bad. What the US would need is an overhaul of the political system, with a removal of the electoral college and the first-past-the-post system. There is also a need for new parties that take the side of ordinary people.
You left women off your list.
This isn't some special unique ban. Giving anyone anything of any value for voting (even if it's just in general and without regard to who they claimed to vote for) is illegal and has been for a long time.
Anyone engaging in political messaging giving anything to anyone (or advertising in basically any fashion) within so many feet of any polling place (which includes the line) has also been illegal for a long time.
You could still probably get away with this anyways by setting up some kind of bottled water giveaway to anyone who wants some, regardless of if they are in line or even thinking about voting, so long as it also contains no reference to any candidate anywhere on it (because otherwise you couldn't do it near the line). But you'd have to absolutely avoid politicking whatsoever and you wouldn't be able to limit it to just voters. Which probably significantly reduces the desired impact.