Why Would an Intelligent Christian Vote for Trump?

Exactly.

@JayGoogle If you truly don't get it, read this post over and over again until you do. It sells more papers to say only extremely racist white supremacists voted for Trump, to pretend like a few thousand illegals being detained is a culmination of all his "problems", but it comes down to economics and economics alone.

You think Trump voters and many of his biggest fans don't know that 80% of what he says is total horse ****? That it's mainly for entertainment value to get him press? That he's a predator like Democrat Bill Clinton? They know it, and they don't care, because people just want better jobs and to live with some $. Many are too shy to say it, but Trump went after this aggressively and has a term as President to show for it. Just goes to show how out of touch the media (and Hillary as well, because she only goes based on their predictions and test polls) is with reality outside the city. Because that reality won't sell page views.

 

Again, and where is the pandering to the Inner city poor? Where is the concern about their wealth?

It's honestly tiring hearing about how rural America needs to be appeased when the other side of it has never got such appeasement and when the Democrats do say they will do something for them you get people saying "Look at the democrats PANDERING!" Yet, Clinton did talk about those jobs. The Democrats constantly still talk about those jobs. Bernie mainly but it seems like since the Democrats also 'pander' to inner city folks some people see that as a bad thing for whatever reason, like those people should just be put 2nd in line and not given equal attention...

Did his message work? Let's not forget that he didn't even win the popular vote, as most presidents do, most of the country dislikes him, strongly and most of the country disapproves of the job he's doing. People are still working their tails off and still have little to show for it, so all this talk about how he's going to do something is just talk.

It is the SAME talk Clinton offered, it is quite frankly the same talk EVERY politician offers. You are acting like a politician has never offered more jobs and better living. That's the basic standard for any platform. Like Trump did some new thing by promising jobs. As if no other politician (probably literally every president ever) did not promise more jobs, better jobs, and in general a better living. That's standard generic stuff.

Look, you can look at the poll results on issues and see that Immigration was a BIG issue for conservatives. The SCOTUS also a big issue. We can act like this didn't play into, that this was all economic strife, but you'd be kidding yourself. The economy is the biggest issue every election if there isn't a major war going on, Democrats also rated the economy as their biggest issue...and they still voted for Clinton. So what really was the difference?

The difference is that Republicans did not think Clinton would be as tough on immigration and that they wanted a conservative SCOTUS. Probably because of these social issues that you think had 0 effect on his election. The person you quoted even said that he focused hard on immigration. I'm not even sure he's completely agreeing with you but he can speak for himself.

You really think that Trump won because he promised more jobs? If it were that simple, anyone could be president. Several factors were at play here, including his appeasement to yes, a very xenophobic base and a bible thumping base as well. Every presidential candidate is going to promise a strong economy.

 

The SCOTUS seat was the main catalyst for most of the Christians I know voting for Trump.

 

related

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2018/07/wapos-richard-cohen-seems-to-be-asking.html

 

Because he’s intelligent, duh!

 

Trump wasn't a standard republican. Yes, many of the republican base voted for supreme court and controlling illegal immigration, etc. However those people are not the people that won Trump the election. Those people usually vote anyway. Trump flipped Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Michigan and Pennsylvania have been blue for 30 years, and Wisconsin has been blue for 34 years. He won counties in those states that Obama won comfortably. It was a combination of Trump's economic message and the democrats running a bad candidate that put him over the top. The political middle in those states won the election for Trump.

Also, we are going to trust poll numbers again? That didn't work out so well in November 2016 for the democrats. People don't want to talk about it. They voted for Trump, but the left is now demonizing anyone that supported him. So they go home from their new job, see their 401k up, and smile a little as they go about their business. If someone voted for Trump but voted for Obama before that and they are called a Nazi racist, anti-this, anti-that you think they will move over to the other side? I don't.

If the economy is rolling along in 2020 he will be re-elected. That's why people like Bill Maher are praying for a recession.

 

Each person perception is their reality. We all have it, and some of us recognize it’s a perception more than reality. But what’s disturbing is the knowing that something is wrong but it must be god plan so it’s ok. Not new but still disturbing. Once you are there, anything goes. Rationalization is self realized but accepted. This isn’t ignorance (thought there is that) but a willingness to be okay with what you know is wrong because you surrender to a greater power that must be right.

 

https://www.thenation.com/article/economic-anxiety-didnt-make-people-vote-trump-racism-did/

Fear of loosing the culture war, not econmic anxiety was the driving factor for voter turnout in those states.

Also, this notion that voters changed their vote from Obama to Trump is disengenous.

Those districts changed their vote from voter turnout effects, not individual changing their vote. One group of people were more motivated to go to the polls than the other. Sure there are individual cases of individuals changing their vote, but in the macro perspective, it was due to voter turnout and what groups of people were more motivated to go out and vote, not this narrative of a mass swath of people changing their vote individually .

Also those election polls were every accurate within the margin of error. Hence how Hillary won the popular vote. All polls aggregated gave Trump a 15% chance of winning the election. Sometimes, the 15% odds happen or else it would be a 0% chance.

Also it's unfortunate that so many Amerocans don't understand how massive the inertia of our economy is.

 

And I'm agreeing with you. The idea that people just voted for Trump only because of economics is just off. It's not like only poor people voted for Trump or vice versa.

I'm not saying that no one voted for him because of economic anxiety though.

 

Please elaborate on that last sentence.

These are more left leaning editorials , Hilary played it safe and only went by the polls, whereas Trump used xenophobia as 1 of many tools to get people riled up into thinking he was there to make a big change. Heard of "drain the swamp"? Why dont these cutesy opinion pieces focus on that? Avg Americans were struggling with quality of life, getting priced out of comfortable middle class lives of previous generations by Chinese and Indians, and were tired of the same old politicians making promises they couldnt cash. They wanted change to better their economic situation. Hilary was part of the swamp that needed to be drained, and her out of touch rhetoric only created more swing votes towards Trump. Trump was incisive in targeting what he needed to , and quite frankly, has delivered from an economic standpoint.

Of course, that's what made it not surprising to people who actually had a pulse of the entire landscape.

 

In addition to post above:
Hilary was part of the problem you get with politicians , all talk and no ability to back it up. Trump targeted draining the swamp hard , did so, and his hardline views aligned with the many, many Americans who were struggling financially. It's not what you say but how you say it , most citizens are not PhDs from Yale. Was xenophobia part of it? Of course, but a very very small percentage compared to the whole "system" being broken, need an outsider to fix it, drain the swamp that caused so many Democrats to swing their votes. You have to be able to pick up on trends, and hilary + lib media showed how out of touch they were. It would be embarrassing if she were to run again, but it likely wont matter. Trump will get reelected because he has aggressively gone after short term economic simulation.

 

I think you mean stimulation. I actually agree with a lot of what you wrote here, but 45 has in no way done so, in terms of draining any swamps. Putting in people with no relevant training and/or complete cynicism about their posts (e.g. Sec. of Ed., EPA director, etc.) is not draining the swamp, especially if you just appoint rich lobbyists from industries that stand to benefit by weakening consumer protections in those sectors.

What he's doing is putting the swamp on steroids. You and others just like this version better. And people like me see it as much worse than the standard swamp.

 

Well, we can agree that people see Washington as corrupt and Clinton definitely represented that part of Washington that people like. I think you can argue that Obama surged because he ran on change most of all and him being a relatively new politician he was seen as an outsider of sorts.

I'm also not sure we can agree on Democrats switching their votes, if any did, were they just independents that decided to go the other way this time? I think it's quite rare that anyone entrenched on their side switches votes, it's more likely they just don't vote at all, but I'm not sure how anyone proves that the claim that actual liberals swapped over to Trump. I just don't see it happening since there wasn't a single liberal thing Trump offered to liberals and even now his administration continues to paint liberals as a literal evil that needs to be defeated...so yeah...

We will disagree about Trump draining the swamp. I think he just put in new swamp monsters.

 

Yeah..... except that the unemployment rate when Obama took office was at 8.5% and by year two it was down to 5%..... also the deficit % went down under Obama as did costs. Hillary Clinton was supported by Obama.... and under Bill Clinton (her husband) the improvement was even more stark.

So really your premise falls apart. If anything white people in the fly over states were sick of being over looked with upper middle class whites, academics and minorities all being somewhat represented. No one was fighting for the low class whites in shitty places like rural Pennsylvania, or Ohio.

Trump hasn't really helped poor whites at all, but they are just happy to have someone embrace them, even if it is all a con.

 

Also...... no, the Republicans and Donald Trump do not address or target the inner city at all. They also do not appeal to homosexuals, non conventional families, minorities or atheists.

Likewise the Democrats do no target poor white people in rural areas or Christians or middle class white males.

 

The polls were not really wrong, they had Trump with a 25%-33% chance of winning the election. He won a narrow election. 25%-33% is a real chance at victory.

The economy doing well in 2019 would be a huge boon for Trump, but he is a very polarizing candidate that narrowly won the presidency against "a bad candidate" and has been a complete **** show since. So there are no guarantees for Trump. I had this same conversation with some democrat friends of mine that were certain Trump would lose in 2020. It is going to be competitive regardless.

 

btw, this is the same Robert Jeffress that said:

And, when asked about trump's affair with Stormy Daniels,

 

So, Trump has a faith advisor?

I'm sure they have a lot of deep discussions about faith.

 

He needs his faith adviser by his side during these very bad and horrible impeachment proceedings.