O/T:- Betting odds for US Election [The USA Politics Thread]

[jackal2]

I don’t think you can infer anything about the result of the Tory leadership election apart from the fact that a majority of the membership wanted Badenoch instead of Jenrick to be leader. If you pushed me I’d say from what I know of Tory members they prefer a strong, possibly authoritarian image which she has successfully cultivated, based on not much imo.

I wouldn't disagree that Conservative members prefer a strong, possibly authoritarian leader. I've never been a member of the party but I don't think it's any secret that many party members and supporters regard Margaret Thatcher as their best leader of modern times and she certainly fitted that description. Kemi has openly cited Mrs T as an influence, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if that was a big factor in her success. I've got a higher opinion of Kemi than you have, based on what I've seen so far, but it's certainly true that she is comparatively inexperienced and the acid test of her abilities and ideological strength is yet to come.

With regards to ethnic minorities voting for Trump, I’d say they are as susceptible to right wing populism as every other group, those it’s probably unwise to treat them as a homogeneous group as everyone has their individual reasons for why they vote as they do. People love simplistic answers to complex problems and Trump is as good as anyone else to providing those. Issues like immigration, international trade, the climate emergency, and the size of the state involve trade offs that politicians like Trump pretend don’t exist. I think he’ll be an even bigger disaster than the first time around, I’d have even taken a Tory government over here if it meant a defeat for him..

Just read a different explanation for Trump’s win which I think is worth sharing;

> The current prevailing theory about Trump's victory is that most Americans, irked by an unpleasant encounter with inflation, cast an anti-incumbent vote without giving much thought to the consequences of that vote for US democracy. I don't totally buy this whoops! theory. My sense is that, in this era of the Internet, there are millions more fascists in this country than people think, young men in particular. And I believe that many more millions are fascinated by Trump not for his supposed business prowess but for his transparent wish to hurt others. He is an evil guy, a villain — and many Americans are excited by it. Harris and the Democrats, by contrast, are boring, boring, boring. In this sense, the election was like a choice between four more years of church or four years of violent entertainment.

> Nihilistic consumerism, as much as authoritarianism, prevailed. Of course, political science is not designed to investigate this kind of stuff. The clearest insights we have come from the realm of philosophy and literature. Hannah Arendt and Primo Levi did not rely on focus groups

All of the above theories seem to be united by the fact that they essentially disparage and blame the voters.

The first seems to conclude that they are not especially intelligent people who are therefore susceptible to simplistic "populist" arguments. The second says they're basically a bunch of evil fascists whose numbers have previously been under-estimated. The third seems to imply they are all moral vacuums lost in a haze of consumerist behaviour and instant gratification.

I'm not saying that amongst Trump's voters there were not people of these types, but as you say, they are highly unlikely to be a homogenous whole who all fit the same description.

Two glaring absences from the theories listed above are arguably the most obvious and logical ones: that it was the economy, and a rejection of the progressive obsession with identity politics and 'Woke' culture. Again, these explanations won't fit every voter, but I've certainly heard numerous Trump voters being interviewed and giving these reasons repeatedly.

I suspect that if the Democrats in the aftermath of this election don't look more critically at their own performance and message, but instead go into denial and fall back on the lazy assumption that "the voter was wrong", then they are bound to repeat the same mistakes they've made before. There's an old saying in business that even if the customer is wrong, they're still right, because you can't get anywhere without them.