Hope Is What Separates Trump Voters From Clinton Voters

It’s pretty clear who Donald Trump wants to help, because he names them at every rally. Miners. Steelworkers. Guys on the assembly line, whose jobs are either being stolen by the Chinese or strangled to death by Obama’s regulations. If globalization has put your livelihood in jeopardy, Trump wants you on his side. And given his sky-high popularity among white men without a college degree, I’d argue this pitch is gaining traction.

But here’s the weird thing: Folks in hard-hit industrial towns aren’t voting for Trump. When Michigan Republicans went to the polls in March, economists expected to see huge Trump turnout in areas with the most shuttered factories. Instead, they got the opposite: Trump’s support was strongest in towns that had gained manufacturing jobs. He did about 20 percentage points worse in areas where layoffs were most intense. It was completely the opposite of what everyone expected.

Earlier this month, Gallup economist Jonathan Rothwell published a working paper ..... he used opinion poll results instead of vote totals, making the data more current. Rothwell found the same trend: Trump did worse in towns that lost manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2007, and better in areas that gained them. Indeed, Trump is most popular in prosperous areas. Apparently, economic pain doesn’t guarantee votes for the Republican nominee, and economic success is no guard against him.

I’d argue the real dividing line is optimism. Consider this: Two-thirds of Hillary Clinton’s supporters think the next generation will be in better shape than we are today, or least the same, according to Pew Research. The reverse is true for Trump’s camp. Sixty-eight percent of his supporters think the next generation will be worse off. ....

What we’re seeing is a hope gap. ..... Could hope be the missing link between education and Trump?

This "Progressive"/Democrat Party meme that is the "uneducated" (inferring "under class," by their artificial standards) whom Trump attracts is further evidence of their deep-seated arrogance and ignorance.

American citizens might need to worry more about a President and federal government who constantly distrust them, than about fellow citizens and "outsider" nominee chosen by "the People's."

The current President constantly acts as though his role is to police the behavior of citizens in their person-to-person, or neighbor-to-neighbor interactions than to protect all of them from foreign and domestic dangers.

Compare and contrast his words and actions with those of an early President:

This President seems to be exhibiting an intense mistrust of the judgment of citizens ("the People")--a curious attitude for those who, one might think, would be most familiar with the writings and speeches of America's Founders.
After all, those Founders and Framers of the 1787 Constitution relied on the ratification process in the States, and any future Amendment to that Constitution, by the Constitution's own provision, still requires the assent of "the People."
"I am not among those who fear the people. They...are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people...must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they (the British) now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers....This example reads to us the salutary lesson that private fortunes are destroyed by public, as well as by private extravagance. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from the principle in one instance, becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the 'bellum omnium in omnia,' which some philosophers...have mistaken for the natural, instead of the abusive, state of man. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." - Thomas Jefferson
In 2016, "the People," having watched their elected so-called "conservative" Republican leaders fail miserably at even slowing the oppressive "progressive" "train" of "wretchedness and oppression."
"The People" who Justice Story called "the only KEEPERS of the Constitution" see the so-called "conservatives" they elected betray them, and they have responded with an outright rejection, county by county, in most of the states won by Trump.
It is time now for those GOP leaders the voters rejected in the Primaries to decide whether they will turn over the Executive Branch to a self-described "progressive" who promises to double down on the Obama agenda,
or
whether they will show statesmanship by accepting "the People's" choice, re-engaging in their delegated duties to preserve and protect the Constitution, and be a part of placing the Republican Party on a firm footing of fidelity to that Constitution's limits on power and protection's for liberty.

After reading all your great comments, another thing that is common in socialism/communism is the degradation of human integrity.

First thing The State do is to strip off the basic human feelings of self (dignity, etc.).

It is the false hope (or optimism in this author’s case) of Obama/Hillary voters who think the gravy train will continue indefinitely, as if this is the 1950s without the social upheaval (because we live in the enlightened age, after Democrats help eliminate our societal injustices).

But that still does not jive with the ‘more educated’ theme, so I really don’t know how the author came to his conclusion. Our FReeper commenters have much more insights than that guy.

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