The average Trump voter's annual income was $72,000. Not rich, but not poor. Presumably many went to college. Rich people voted for Trump because they assumed, apparently correctly, that he would act in their interest (see: attempts to pass Republican health care bill to benefit rich people and screw over everybody else) and fill the government with people who acted in their interest. Poorer people voted for Trump believed, incorrectly, that he would "drain the swamp," restore failing industries like coal mining so they could get jobs, etc. They were people who believed the fake news items about Hillary Clinton committing murders. They were people who didn't hear about, ignored or excused a lot of Trump's behavior. He wore a baseball cap and talked like a regular Joe and seemed like one of them except that he'd built a fortune so he must be smart about money (never mind six bankruptcies and a rich dad who bailed him out) and who would side with them against the "elites."
Lee, I can't explain where your daughter fits into that picture, but that's my understanding of the two most common Trump supporters. Some people are just regular conservatives, I guess. In a way, it's kind of cool that she's become such a media superstar! If only it were for a different reason.
I don't know about Denver, but most big cities are blue-ish and you are obviously much more of an expert than I am but Denver has always struck me that way. Aspen and Telluride are anomalies. It would be like saying Texas can't be conservative because Austin. Or Oregon is totally liberal because Portland. Minneapolis and St. Paul are very blue, suburbs purple, rural areas red (which is new -- outstate MN used to be more blue). But because the cities are so much bigger than everything else, MN always goes for Democrats.
I'm partway through the scary Colorado article but what has struck me so far is the stuff about the crime rate in rural cities (if that's not too much of an oxymoron). I thought Trump's depiction of the cities as cauldrons of violent crime seemed crazy -- violent crime is waaayyyyyyy down. Chicago -- infamous for violent crime! -- had 762 murders in 2016. That's about twice as many murders annually as New Orleans had when I lived there (when the city averaged about one a day), but Chicago is about six times bigger.
So Trump's claims seemed wildly absurd. But if people in Grand Junction and places like that are seeing homicides soar, I can see why that argument would seem valid to them.
I talked to someone from Colorado on Facebook about economics. Lee, maybe she was even a friend of yours! I told her there were actual job shortages in many industries and the recovery economy actually looks pretty good (nationally, wages have stayed flat, but even they're beginning to rise slightly, and corporate profits have of course soared). She argued, saying the exact opposite is true in CO. I didn't understand it at the time, but the article addresses that pretty clearly, so now I get what she was talking about.
Topic: In the New Yorker... (Read 2403322 times)