One of the most significant moments which radically altered the course of the 2016 US presidential election was when candidate Hillary Clinton self immolated with what was meant to be a throwaway quip:
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
And just like that, a quarter of the American population were banished by the Democratic nominee, to languish in politically correct purgatory.
Many political analysts believe that was the moment when Clinton well and truly lost the working class heartlands, shedding blue collar voters that had previously been a party stronghold for the Democrats. But it seems that after four years of railing against President rump, the Democratic party never did any real soul searching, at least not enough to generate enough self-awareness so as to avoid making that very mistake again in 2020.
One is for sure: oligarch, multi billionaire and Democratic candidate, Michael Bloomberg, never paid much attention to why Hillary lost in 2016. If he had, he would be doing this….
Columnist Gary Abernathy explains…
As far as Trump supporters are concerned, one might well ask: “When will more people have the courage to support Trump?” Still, such a barrage of moral lecturing might eventually lead one to question their association with Trump and the GOP — until someone like Mike Bloomberg comes along.
Bloomberg, the gazillionaire former mayor of New York who is seeking to buy the Democratic nomination for president, is quickly rivaling Trump on the sheer volume of regrettable words and deeds concerning women and minorities emerging from his recent past. But Bloomberg’s biggest mistake may not be in whatever sins he may have personally committed; it could be the contempt in which he apparently holds middle America.
An example came to light over the weekend with a 2016 video wherein Bloomberg described how simple — or simpleminded ― he thinks it is to be a farmer.
“I could teach anybody, even people in this room, to be a farmer,” Bloomberg said during remarks at the Said Business School at the University of Oxford in England. “You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn,” explained Farmer Mike.
The Bloomberg campaign complained that the clip was selectively edited to obscure that Bloomberg wasn’t talking about modern-day practices, but even granting that rather generous interpretation, the comments were ignorant and tone-deaf. Similarly problematic was the attitude Bloomberg seemed to hold toward factory work. “You put the piece of metal in the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow, you can have a job,” he said.
Bloomberg said the new “information economy” demands that people “think and analyze,” which depends on “a lot more gray matter” than is apparently necessary to be a farmer or a factory worker, in his view.
Bloomberg’s words were soon answered with reminders of just how much brainpower, technology and skill are required to be a modern farmer, and his condescension was noted by pundits and politicians across the ideological spectrum.
But Bloomberg’s haughtiness has ramifications beyond his own presidential quest. More troubling for Democrats is that it all contributed once again to the perception that the liberal elite views millions of Americans as uneducated, backward Neanderthals, or as comprising the “credulous boomer rube demo,” as political consultant Rick Wilson recently described it to a fit of giggles from CNN’s Don Lemon. (Lemon later said he was laughing at a joke made just prior to Wilson’s comment, not at any group of people.)
Democrats who are backing Bloomberg might well be asked, “Did you learn nothing from Hillary Clinton?” Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” description of “half” of Trump’s supporters — “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it,” she declared — undoubtedly lost her support in states that were supposedly part of the “blue wall.” Bloomberg didn’t use such vivid descriptions, but his dismissiveness toward the skills and intelligence of farmers and other industrial workers demonstrates the same contemptuous ivory-tower attitude.
(…) Some Democrats are fretting about the possibility of nominating a socialist as their standard-bearer. To be sure, that would be uncharted territory. But they should worry even more about nominating another condescending elitist, because they know from four years ago how that will turn out.
Continue this article at The Washington Post
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