Barack Obama, speaking at a fundraiser in San Francisco in 2008, said:
“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
It haunted him for the entirety of his presidential terms. This is the 2020 version of that:
The arrogance, the dismissiveness, the smug cackling, the accents.
If Donald Trump wins re-election this year, I’ll remember this brief CNN segment late one Saturday night in January as the perfect encapsulation for why it happened. pic.twitter.com/8kQ6zN9AZV
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) January 28, 2020
I have my political differences with Rick Wilson, but we’ve never argued or treated one another discourteously and I hope that continues. This does pain me to watch though, because it seems far removed from the past commentary I’d grown accustomed to from Wilson, commentary not predicated upon agreement, but commentary that was purposefully analytical. This just seems like he’s given up and has resorted to Democrats’ long-established ad hominem attacks against rural people. I don’t know about the other guest.
The big thing this misses is actual analysis of the Trump demo. True, rural folks broke for Trump. It’s not just that demo, however, the rust belt broke for Trump. Trump garnered more black voters and performed better with Latino voters than his Republican predecessor in 2012. To assume that people support Trump because they’re stupid, unsophisticated hillbillies suggests that you don’t know or don’t care what motivates voters, which is partly the point of political analysis, or the reason they’re on TV. It’s also political suicide because it stereotypes voters in a way that Democrats normally protest.
Granted, bashing Trump and mocking voters affords invite opportunities on more than just one cable news outlet (ask me about my Bannon criticism and see the emailed inquiries!), but it doesn’t serve either the viewer or the purpose.
Also, there’s this:
CNN and @donlemon think @realDonaldTrump supporters are too stupid to use maps… pic.twitter.com/E6hY23djXc
— Rusty Weiss ???????? (@rustyweiss74) January 28, 2020
