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#1,701
Easy to analyse a campaign in retrospect but it really feels like "it's the economy, stupid" approach has won again.
"Follow the money/self-interest" is basically the Occam's Razor of political science. Ultimately the white poor are feeling the pinch financially and Trump kept speaking to those issues over and over again. His lack of real policy proposals to fix it, as well as fallacious blameshifting to illegal immigrants is besides the point. He kept acknowledging the issue explicitly while Clinton really only alluded to it as part of a "we need to stay the course" message.
I don't think a deep existing underlying racism or fear of a Mexican invasion was at the heart of this election. The economy was. If you don't know where the money to pay the mortgage is coming from, then it's hard to get whipped into a frenzy about social justice and minority rights. The anti-immigration stuff was largely whipped up by the Trump campaign as the "they took our jerbs" wedge to create the us vs them divide to get undecided working class voters to buy the illusion of an easy fix to their economic woes.
I can't help but think Howard's "we decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come" wedge tactic has been widely appropriated world wide, exported by Crosby Textor et al. It's incredibly successful and lives on here with "stop the boats".
"Follow the money/self-interest" is basically the Occam's Razor of political science. Ultimately the white poor are feeling the pinch financially and Trump kept speaking to those issues over and over again. His lack of real policy proposals to fix it, as well as fallacious blameshifting to illegal immigrants is besides the point. He kept acknowledging the issue explicitly while Clinton really only alluded to it as part of a "we need to stay the course" message.
I don't think a deep existing underlying racism or fear of a Mexican invasion was at the heart of this election. The economy was. If you don't know where the money to pay the mortgage is coming from, then it's hard to get whipped into a frenzy about social justice and minority rights. The anti-immigration stuff was largely whipped up by the Trump campaign as the "they took our jerbs" wedge to create the us vs them divide to get undecided working class voters to buy the illusion of an easy fix to their economic woes.
I can't help but think Howard's "we decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come" wedge tactic has been widely appropriated world wide, exported by Crosby Textor et al. It's incredibly successful and lives on here with "stop the boats".


