I'll take your word that Exit Polls are unreliable, but increased Hispanic turnout in one city doesn't mean Trump has the support of most Hispanics across the country. I still haven't seen any evidence to that effect. Latinos are not a unified voting bloc and tend to vote per geographic location just like white people do. It also tends to be Latino men that support Trump and it's for similar reasons that white men love Trump: his disgusting personality lol. It's that brash, crass, in your face, IDGAF attitude that people find appealing which they have repeatedly said over and over when asked why they support President Trump, so pretending it's about policy is disingenuous IMO, especially since Trump has been so politically ineffective.
It's true that Latinos are a very diverse bunch and some groups swung harder than others. But it isn't just one city...it's everywhere. Trump did better in the hispanic areas of cities across the country such as, Miami, Houston, LA, Phoenix, and Chicago as well as rural hispanic areas like the Rio Grande Valley, Imperial CA, Yuma and Santa Cruz in Arizona, etc. I'll be really interested to see what percentage the voter file analysis says he won, it was probably around 40%.
And yeah, there is certainly some truth to the idea that Trump's bravado/attitude appeals to hispanic men...he is kinda like a Latin American politician in a sense. But look. Republicans down the ballot also improved with the Hispanic vote. The country is becoming less polarized by race and more polarized by class, and ultimately Hispanics generally have more in common with the kinds of whites shifting right (working class whites) than those shifting left (upper middle class whites.) It will be very interesting to see what happens in the future, while the class polarization is a bad thing the GOP becoming more diverse racially and intellectually would be a pretty good thing for the country. You're actually right in a sense, it isn't really about *policy* as much as it's about the next phase of the culture war. But the shift is very real IMO.
It's undeniable that we had a pretty strong economy these last few years. One thing I think is interesting about the report you shared being from 2016-2019 is that Trump did not take office until 2017, meaning 33% of the data considered for that report isn't even applicable to Trump's presidency. I also think it's worth noting that Trump has ripped Fed Chairman Jerome Powell a new asshole at every single turn and has done nothing but heap criticism at him while simultaneously taking credit for the booming economy.
Regarding tax cuts, those did not take effect until 2018. So by that time, unemployment had already dropped, household incomes had already increased, and millions of new jobs had already been created per the report. Therefore it's not honest for the GOP to credit the tax cuts for any of those achievements. They were already underway and there was no measured relationship between the size of the tax cut companies received and their subsequent investments as far as I can tell.
Yeah but I was talking about the political implications of the economy. I think President's alone don't really have that much power over the economy, but they typically get the credit/blame anyway. I think the best thing Trump did for the worker that an establishment politician wouldn't do is that he refused to loosen visa restrictions when we were at "full employment" early in his term. Turns out we weren't, the unemployment rate just kept falling and the working class experienced outsized gains thanks to a tighter labor market. However, had Clinton won, we absolutely would not have been looking at economic devastation. I'm honest enough to admit that the economy would've been good if she was President and it'll probably be good under Biden once we have the coronavirus recovery.
As for the tax cuts, it's complicated but in my opinion the high corporate tax really was a big impediment to incorporating in the United States (yes, there were tons of loopholes, but still.) However the bill in general sucked, it barely helped the working and middle classes and gave a big advantage to the wealthy. That aspect of GOP policy is really disgusting to me, because it's obvious by now that trickle down economics don't work. A better bill would have done the unpopular but necessary corporate tax cuts but would've offset it through much higher taxes on high personal incomes.
Furthermore similar gains could have been made years earlier had it not been for an insanely obstructionist Republican Congress. Obama repeatedly tried to get Republicans to sign on to additional spending and tax cuts for the middle and lower class, but the GOP refused every single time. You had Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, et. al insist that higher deficits were philosophically unacceptable and financially ruinous. Even when the Obama admin proposed a moderate stimulus plan in 2016 that would have targeted infrastructure, Republicans would not budge. However under Trump the GOP has presided over the largest two-year deficit in U.S. history outside of a recession with no care in the world. You really think they're going to continue that philosophy once a Dem administration is back? I don't but we shall see.
Yeah, the GOP played Obama very dirty, no doubt about it. I'm concerned about the debt as a long term issue, but in the short term large deficit spending so obviously juices the economy. As soon as a Democrat gets in, time for austerity! I think democrats fight better on the cultural front, but Republicans have much better politicians. You have to admire McConnell for how effective he is (and notice also how he squeezed Trump for absolutely everything he was worth to "the party")
Almost everyone acknowledges that it is notoriously hard to convict a cop, and that unions + other systemic policies make it hard to get rid of bad cops. But nobody ever wants to budge on policy. I don't want to hear "of course we need to get rid of bad apples" ever again. I want to know what policy changes, specifically, are being promoted, implemented and enforced. I don't want to live in a society without police either (even though I was very much of the ACAB philosophy and still maybe kinda sorta am). I don't think any cop is blameless under the status quo because of the thin blue line / blue wall of silence, plus just the inherent nature of police business. I resent the fact that off duty cops can drive around going 90 mph on their cell phone with marijuana on them and nobody's going to think twice about it. Maybe that's childish of me but I watch too many documentaries and have had too many personal experiences and observations to let it go. Of course I think decriminalizing drugs would have a great impact on policing but I know you probably disagree.
I agree with everything you said, including decriminalizing drugs, but I think you underestimate how dangerous the anti-police rhetoric can be. I have serious concerns about the future of policing as a career field...what kind of person from my generation would WANT to be a cop? If the culture makes the police out to be violent sociopaths, only violent sociopath is going to want to become a cop and the problem is going to get a lot worse. I also feel uncomfortable demonizing the police because of the many good police officers out there. But please don't take this as me trying to paper over the issues with American policing because I think you'd be surprised at how little we disagree here...I agree 100% with everything you said
Honestly I think police reform stuff is the issue where the parties most talk past each other. The things that people of both parties believe really aren't that different, generally speaking. Some of the reforms already made, like body cams becoming more and more common, are objectively good
Nick Sandmann spoke at the RNC and won a lawsuit for millions of dollars. His negative experience with the media did not usher him into obscurity, but instead promoted him to fame and fortune beyond his wildest dreams. How is he the poster child for Cancel Culture then?
I mean, Sandmann was a child who got death threats from celebrities for awkwardly standing in the vicinity of a Native American man. The media flew too close to the sun in telling lies about and doxxing a child over literally nothing. In his case he got justice because it was just that egregious--but the fact that they went after him despite him being a child and there being no evidence for his alleged "crimes" is a great example of the worst kind of instincts social media brings out in people. Most of the time the person being "canceled" really was being a shithead but the punishment never fits the crime--I just don't believe that somebody should be unable to feed their family because they said something uncouth during an argument. I've always hated "viral videos" of people, even before it got political and it was mostly people doing silly/stupid things...imagine if your most embarrassing or worst moment was caught on film and broadcast to tens of millions of people...
I have mixed feelings on this. Some conservatives I know are cheering the decline of NBA ratings since players have gotten "too political." Whether or not that's true doesn't matter so much as their perception that calls for NBA boycotts are working. They definitely TRY to utilize and implement Cancel Culture just as much as liberals. For instance conservatives go ape shit when Disney threatens to even hint that a character might not be straight. I mean Disney is still going strong of course, but conservatives absolutely act like whiney snowflakes who call for Cancellations over things they don't like. It's probs not as effective in part because it's hard to mount a PR campaign against liberal causes. What are they gonna say: "stop being so inclusive and uplifting!"
Yeah, I would never deny that conservatives can be whiny bitches about things they don't like in media or business. I deny that they are *effective* at it and that they commonly go after random, normal leftists in the same way that progressives do when people step out of line.
