2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: You can't win elections if you don't grow up and stop hating voters [View all]Garrett78
(10,721 posts)Clinton and Democrats already campaign on economics...to a far more substantial degree than Trump did. Trump spewed lies and vague gobbledygook. "We're looking at jobs--big league jobs." Um, okay.
Clinton campaigned on universal early childhood education, expansion of health insurance, 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, generating "enough renewable energy to power every home in America, with half a billion solar panels installed by the end of Hillarys first term," a substantial increase to the federal minimum wage, equal pay for women, debt-free and more affordable college, free community college, "a $25 billion fund will support historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and other minority-serving institutions," the development of new green industries, massive infrastructure investment, etc.
And Clinton won among the working class. If some (not all) white working class voters have much different expectations than the working class overall, it's not difficult to determine why.
Yes, there may be some Trump voters who were honestly taken in by a portion of his economic message so much so that they could overlook everything else or were somehow unaware of everything else (the long history of sexual assault, the long history of overt bigotry, the conspiracy theories he promotes, the Russia connection, his celebration of the housing collapse because he could profit off it, his stiffing the contractors/blue collar workers he hired over the years, his tax plan that helps the wealthiest and harms the working class, etc.). Well, good fucking luck reaching those folks.
There are also some who were just blinded by their hatred for Clinton, much of that hatred rooted in sexism and misogyny and a belief in the many lies spread about her through the decades.
And then there are a hell of a lot of people who voted based on racism, xenophobia and a twisted Christian supremacy.