I will preface this by saying I am rather scared for the future as I think Trump is a complete loose cannon who has the temperament of a rabid squirrel. I'll also say that I could never vote for Hillary Clinton seeing as how the job of the President is to administer and enforce the law and she openly flaunts her disregard of the same. So I pulled the lever on Gary Johnson, a guy I admittedly know absolutely nothing about.
Having bared my soul, I think it is really lazy to equate big groups voters to the same qualities you see in the candidates for whom they voted. My wife voted for Hillary Clinton, plugging her nose. That does not mean she endorses corruption and lying your way through life.
Which leads me to whether someone who feels like this guy can explain how "racism" explains these results?
2000 - Gore - 47%
2004 - Kerry - 46%
2008 - Obama - 48%
2012 - Obama - 48%
Those are the voting results for Democrats in Presidential elections from a rural-ish Republican leaning county in Southern Ohio I know very well. If "racism" was so much in play among all the purported uneducated, low brow hicks in this county how does the purported Kenyan born black Muslim who was a community organizer on the Southside of Chicago not once but twice hold up well against the lilly white Democrats from 2000 and 2004?
And that brings me to Tuesday. Clinton won . . . 29% of the vote in this same county - a 19 point drop from what Obama pulled in each of the last two elections. And you can literally repeat this exercise over and over and over and over in similar counties all across the rust belt. Clinton literally lost counties in Wisconsin that have not voted Republican in almost 60 years.
Trump, who I think has no real chance of helping these people, spoke to their very kitchen table concerns. Those include a long, slow decay of their communities. He stepped in and said I get it, you've gotten a raw deal from the elites. And I will make you "Great" again. He spoke up against Free Trade, promised tariffs if factories were closed and said illegal immigration would no longer be allowed to suck jobs (never mind many of these counties have few illegal immigrants). What did Clinton (and, frankly, the other Republican candidates) offer these voters? Retraining for jobs that don't exist? She did call them "deplorable" and "unredeemable" - a huge political blunder. Faced with these two choices these voters fled to Trump in big chunks - overlooking all of the ridiculous things he said about all sundry of groups of people. Had he been an even better "vessel" for his message he may have won by significantly more.