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It is so incredibly refreshing to hear someone with (however limited) power say what I've been seeing with the naked eye.
A four-hour drive through rural America last week showed me this: trump signs in the very poorest and the very richest yards, for miles and miles. There was the occasional Harris sign for obviously middle-class dwellings but not all.
He describes the plight of these people correctly, and while they haven't been offered enough by the dems, they aren't choosing the republicans because they are offering them more. They're choosing them because they fear change and the Republicans promise to protect them from change. The fear comes from ignorance / lack of a decent rural education system.
Not American, but I saw it as the opposite: that US voters are sick of the status quo. They want a radical change candidate who'll shake things up. They want anything but business-as-usual.
Not to discount stupidity and racism. There's that too, but I have to hope it's mostly borne out of fear.
Yeah, that is a very weird position to hold, the status quo is shit for me but I don't want change. Not disagreeing with you though that it is that way.
People are pretty good at adapting to even pretty lousy conditions if a steady-state can be maintained. We all have very strong loss aversion though. You can capitalize on the most extreme versions on this in populations that don't have a loss buffer, lack diverse skillsets , and have had limited exposure to diversity of any sort. Tell them someone that looks different than them is going to change the food they eat, build a different place of worship next to their church, and take their jobs away from them by working for much less and you've got an effective boogeyman that you can promise to defend them from (while stealing from them even). Hell, it works so damn well you can tell them that these boogie men will eat their pets and they will take you seriously.