(I originally started the following as a comment on Booman’s recent post The Midterms Will Be Won or Lost in Trump Country. It grew. Here it is.)
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Just a few quick thoughts about this “Won or Lost in Trump Country” idea.
As I have said often on this blog, I regularly go incognito into “Trump Country” for days and even weeks at a time. This is not some kind of survey tactic; I simply visit friends and relatives who live in those areas and I also occasionally work…or at the very least pass through…those areas as a musician. I refuse to take a plane if a drive will take less than 7 hours because…
Because:
#1-Air travel…especially in the broken airports of most major U.S. cities…is now based on personal humiliation unless you are wealthy enough to buy your way out of being poked and prodded by minimum wage workers backed up by militarized police thugs with guns and then squeezed in a tiny seat and fed petroleum-based “snacks.”
and
#2-If it takes 7 hours or less to drive there, it is quite liable take about the same amount of time…door to door, including getting to the airport, going through the ridiculously inept Homeland Security bullshit, waiting for the almost inevitable “delayed” flights or worse, changing planes in South Carolina or some other place in Flyoverville, dealing with that delay, getting off the plane, waiting for your luggage (If you are lucky!!!) and getting to your destination by whatever hook or crook is available.
All the while being treated like a second-rate cash cow, milked of every nickel that can be squeezed out of you.
By comparison, driving is direct, free and easy in terms of taking a break and moving around when need be, more scenic, much less expensive and…if you keep your eyes and ears open…much more educational.
I keep my eyes and ears open, my mouth fairly shut and I can easily pass as a working class white voter myself. You’d be amazed at what you can see if you can pull cover.
Read on.
I have been noticing over the past…ohhh, say 10 or 15 years…a real change in the independence of women in these areas. Mostly, they always used to seem kind of…passive…in the thrall of their menfolk. But as the economic and work patterns have changed, so have they. They have been coming out of the shadow of their men and taking charge. Working eventually tends to do that to all disadvantaged classes. They actually need to be better than men at whatever they are doing in order to continue to work and progress in the workplace.
Now to the politics…
Instead of just propping up female candidates willy-nilly…deserving or not so deserving…in an attempt at identity politics, the Dems ought to be viciously attacking Trump on his own anti-female record.
I mean…c’mon!!!
It’s plain as day.
He has unfeelingly…and often quite publicly…grabbed more pussies than any other Lothario on historical record. Hell…he brags about it!!! He’s bought and sold wives, whores (official whores and just-dabbling-around whores) and any number of innocents who were simply too dumb to see his real colors.
He makes Bill Clinton look like Caspar Milquetoast.
Harvey Weinstein could be facing life in prison for his sad act, and he’s small potatoes compared to Trump.
Lay it on him!!!
I seem to hear…regularly from the all too common neocentrist leftiness deplorable-haters:…things that smack of the following:
Oh…them deplorable wimmen always vote whatever their man says they should vote!!! That’d be a waste of time. They didn’t vote for Hilllary!!!
Riiiight…
Maybe they just didn’t like Hillary’s superiority act?
I sure as hell didn’t.
Trump?
Now?
Decisively tarred and feathered by the media but still somehow managing to keep flying? Wet tar flying off his little fingers with every twittering flap?
Lay this on him!!!
A serial sexual predator in the White House!!!
A proven serial sexual predator!!!
He’d sooner fuck you over than eat bad food!!!
Lay it on him hard and often, and then watch the anti-Trump numbers jump.
Especially in so-called “Trump Land.”
They could care less about any alliances he has or has not tried to make with Putin. They’re too busy trying to make a living in two-worker households with kids. But on their daily work beat? They know a predator when they smell one. Just yell about it loud enough to really get their attention.
I was having a conversation recently wth a Puerto Rican friend regarding how Hispanic neighborhoods seem to have been able to more successfully resist viral gentrification (Read “Whitieification,” really.) than have any other working class ethnic neighborhoods in rapidly gentrifying NYC. Italian, African American, Irish, Polish and so on…almost all gone. I have written here about how their ongoing culture and the buffer of being bilingual helps them to resist…to organize and resist…and he laughed and said. “Yes. Of course. But more importantly…when we get mad we start to yell!!!” We both cracked up, but there’s a lot of truth in that.
Yell this message until you get working women’s attention in TrumpLand.
You might be surprised at the results.
Later…
AG