or: They won't tell you that but I just did.
THE QUEST TO pin down the win of Trump to any one thing or even a couple or three or four things might be a legacy of the "enlightenment's" origin in the culture of science, in its most unrealistic ideological form. The relationship of the culture of physics to the ideologically material-monistic quest of physicists, as manifested in today's quest for a theory of everything, is a very real thing.
The belief against all evidence that sociology and psychology are sciences and, in large part what the motivation to consider something so clearly an attenuated manifestation of that, opinion polling, is a direct consequence of the idea that due to the monistic nature of reality, reality is vulnerable to the methods of physics and chemistry, so deeply embedded that I'd bet most of those who practice those have, at best, a vague notion that that is the foundation of their claim that what they are doing is science.
The fact is that all of those social, would-be sciences that mount such quests to come up with simple answers to extremely complex questions, are based on the practice of pretending you can even discern "data" to come up with a basis for answering those questions that way. The fact is no one asking anyone what their motives are can come up with even one reliable datum, even someone who believes they are answering a survey question honestly and completely can't really know if their motives or ideas or opinions are so simply expressed. And that's not to mention those who lie to pollsters BECAUSE THEY LIE TO THEMSELVES about why they vote the way they do. I'll bet a large percentage of those who gave such answers to surveyors or pollsters wouldn't admit that that's why they voted the way they did.
Academics and "journalists" don't admit the dodgy nature of what they base their "studies" and "analyses" on. I'll admit the following from me is no more scientific than what they do. They won't tell you that but I just did.
I think the strength of misogyny and racism in the culture as manifested every single day in the passive acceptance of violence and the casual acceptance of stereotypical and negative views of both Women and People of Color probably account for the first reason that both she and Hillary Clinton lost by the narrowest of margins. Though neither of those reasons is a simple phenomenon. Racists are often misogynists, racists include those who have interiorized the generally racist culture (Clarence Thomas?) and women have often interoirized misogyny (the examples of that include every Woman Trumpist you could name).
Ignorance is another pervasive and obvious reason as can be seen in the numerous Trump voters who believed his line about how tariffs were going to be paid by foreign companies and corporations. - something that I think Trump still believes, himself. And that's only one instance of how the basic ignorance of a very large percentage of voters can win a presidential election for someone who the media endlessly echos in their lies as comprises the public career of Donald Trump from even before he rode down the chintzy golden escalator. To attribute some folk wisdom as so many of these journalistic and pseudo-sociological explanations do is absurd. Even the attributed wisdom that Trump won because of the price of eggs is, at bottom, an example of the ignorance of a large number of Americans because along with that artificial boost to the price of eggs came the undeniable benefits to Americans in their earnings.
Another big part of that is the little mentioned attempt early in the Biden-Harris administration to boost the minimum wage as part of their wildly successful economic recovery program, including direct payments to Americans, WHICH WAS BLOCKED BY REPUBLICANS AND ONE SENATE ALLY, AS I RECALL WITH AN ORDER FROM TRUMP TO DO THAT. Kirsten Sinema is a one-person reason that more Americans didn't directly experience what would have been one of the greatest boosts in personal wealth among the working poor and many in the lower middle class. But she couldn't have done it WITHOUT UNANIMOUS REPUBLICAN HELP TO THE BENEFIT OF TRUMP.
Which brings us to a third most obvious reason that Trump won, he had the support of the mass media that makes up what most Americans seen to believe is what they know about the world and what they believe they experience. Now, this is something that could, actually be studied accurately because you can see and analyze what the mass media did, potentially you could even come up with an accurate generalization of what the most observed online media did during the election period in the hundred or so days that comprised the campaign of Kamala Harris against Trump. Though it would be a massive undertaking. But if such a study of such an observable, you might say studyable phenomenon as that is impractically complex, it only proves my point made above that doing so for something you can't directly observe is impossible. I would point out one big part of that observable, even quantifiable phenomenon is the amount of coverage to opinion polls comprised the content of that media during those crucial days.
And there are certainly many other reasons that led the thin margin of voters AND THE NON-VOTERS who reimposed Trump on us, one of those things is what gave him his first regime, the Electoral College. The Israeli conduct in Gaza one which I have been dealing with in the past couple of weeks is a big one which has hardly been covered. And it's clear that a lot of the result of that in those wanting to stop the genocide in Gaza were swayed by other factors, including ignorance of what Trump had long ago done and said he would do in giving the Israeli government a free hand WITH AMERICAN SUPPORT. I would expect that a lot of the Jewish voters who voted for Trump did so on that basis, though that is hardly ever mentioned by anyone but Trump and he can't stop himself from lying and whining ANTISEMITICALLY on the topic.
Update: I noticed on coming back to the computer that after a largely sleepless night I neglected to note the original of this was posted at RMJ's.
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