Hillary and the “Deplorables” (plus more)

I hope some Hillary backers learn from her comments about Trump supporters. It doesn’t seem her inner circle has. The talking points they circulated to their surrogates said she made a mistake by saying “half” rather than “some.” That stance saddens me.

Her description of the “deplorables” was bad enough, but how she described the second “basket” was even worse because the condescension is less obvious. About those people she said:

That other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.

To say that those frustrated Trump supporters are suffering so much from extreme anxiety they are irrational is also an insult. In his Facebook Live commentary, Van Jones  presented a much different perspective. Unfortunately, it seems Hillary did not hear it.

Her remarks yesterday were not out of the blue. At other events in August which were closed to the press, she used the “baskets” metaphor. Why didn’t any of her people alert her to the risk involved?

In “I Love Donald Trump,” “Arlie Hochschild and Crossover Issues,”and other recent posts I’ve addressed those issues, sensing their importance.

But little did I anticipate that Hillary would place them front and center. I fear it will cost her the election.

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Other recent Wade's Wire posts:

Passenger Stories

Following are some of my recent interactions with passengers in my Yellow Cab:

A medical malpractice lawyer tells me that she alternates between representing patients and representing insurance companies because representing patients becomes too disturbing. I tell her about another passenger who works as a consultant to hospitals who told me that medical treatment is the third most common cause of death in the United States. She said she agrees. I asked her if she was familiar with Ivan Illich and his argument in Medical Nemesis that doctors cause more illness than they cure. She said she did not know the book but she believes the thesis is correct.....

To read more, see Passenger Stories.

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Proposals with Majority Support

I’m working on a list of proposed policies with majority support that a national organization could promote.

The current list reads as follows. Please suggest additions, with references to documentation.

Limit the amount of money individuals can contribute to political campaigns.
Reduce “corporate welfare” such as government aid to help other countries buy U.S.-made weapons.
Break up the big banks.
Provide free education at public colleges.
Make corporations and wealthy people pay what’s fair in federal taxes.
A Medicare-for-all insurance option.
Reduce military spending by at least $12 billion — especially money for weapons the military doesn’t want.
Reduce jail and prison populations and invest more in crime prevention and drug treatment.
A federal jobs program that would spend government money to create more than one million new jobs.....

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Donald Trump and White Voters

A piece for Rolling Stone by Joshua Holland, “Everyone Gets It Wrong About Donald Trump and White Voters,” presents a fairly detailed analysis concerning non-college-educated white voters.

Holland reports:

• The Democrats’ share of those voters in presidential elections has fluctuated pretty consistently with their share of all white votes (and the vote overall).
• Democrats have a serious problem with those voters in the Deep South and the Mountain states.
• Republicans are unpopular with this demographic in the North-central states and on the West Coast.
• And the two parties are competitive in the rest of the country.

Holland uses that data to make disparaging comments about the widespread concern about the issue....

To read more, see Donald Trump and White Voters