General Discussion

talking about them to avoid the elephant in the room:

UW professor got it right on Trump. So why is he being ignored?

"On Monday researchers released the most comprehensive survey data yet aimed at understanding what actually went down in Election 2016. The group includes academics but also right-leaning outlets such The Heritage Foundation and left-leaners like the Center for American Progress.

What’s different about the Voter Study Group is that it tracks the attitudes and votes of the same 8,000 adults since before the 2012 election, and then throughout the 2016 election. So it’s like the nation’s largest, longest political focus group.

The story we’ve told ourselves — that working-class whites flocked to Trump due to job worries or free trade or economic populism — is basically wrong, the research papers released this week suggest.

They did flock to Trump. But the reason they did so in enough numbers for Trump to win wasn’t anxiety about the economy. It was anxiety about Mexicans, Muslims and blacks.

Here’s how they put it in academese: “What stands out most, however, is the attitudes that became more strongly related to the vote in 2016: attitudes about immigration, feelings toward black people, and feelings toward Muslims,” writes George Washington University professor John Sides. He notes that the media focused on less-educated whites, but negative racial attitudes fueled by Trump were a big motivator for college-educated whites, too."

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/uw-professor-got-it-right-on-trump-so-why-is-he-being-ignored/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=article_left_1.1

So "economic anxiety" and "feeling left out" and all the other BS is BS but it's good fodder to fill air time and to fill up space in a publication I guess.