Why this poorly-educated American will NEVER support Donald Trump

During his victory speech following the Nevada Republican caucuses last night, likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said, “I love the poorly-educated!”

As someone who has no college degree, by modern standards, I am poorly-educated. I don’t love Trump back; in fact, I’d never support someone like Trump.

Trump’s entire presidential campaign is predicated on stirring up bigotry towards every group of people that isn’t white, male, Christian, heterosexual, and able-bodied. In at least one documented instance, Trump has inspired hate crimes.

On actual political issues, Trump wants to continue the Ronald Reagan tradition of redistributing wealth to the wealthiest people in this country, wants to waste taxpayer dollars on an unnecessary border fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, and wants to start unjustified wars. America simply cannot afford Trump’s dangerous ideas, and even us poorly-educated rednecks understand that. That’s why we support Bernie Sanders, because he’s the only person who can defeat Trump.

Advertisement

Hillary should condemn anti-Semitism by her supporters immediately

It’s been brought to my attention that one of the many Nevada precinct captains in the Nevada Democratic caucuses a couple of days ago said that caucus-goers at his precinct shouldn’t support Bernie Sanders because he’s a socialist Jew:

Now, to be fair, a Bernie supporter was prohibited from talking to undecided voters after making some kind of remark about Hillary’s gender, but bigotry doesn’t justify bigotry. This is the kind of stuff you expect from racist, sexist, and xenophobic Donald Trump supporters, not from supporters of Democratic presidential campaigns.

Much hay has been made about Bernie supporters saying offensive things and being rowdy online, but there are many Hillary supporters who are worse than the most vile of the Bernie supporters. Bernie has condemned bigotry by his supporters. It’s time for Hillary to do the same in regards to her supporters.

About that poll showing a Hillary/Bernie tie in Nevada…

Yesterday, a poll was released showing Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in a 45-45 tie in Nevada, with the Nevada Democratic caucuses one week from today.

However, here’s a few caveats about the poll:

• The poll was conducted for The Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing website.
• The poll was conducted by TargetPoint Consulting, a consulting/polling firm that I’ve never heard of before.
• Nevada holds caucuses for major-party presidential nominations, which are extremely difficult to poll accurately.

Those points, in and of themselves, makes the poll immediately suspect in my eyes (remember, I’m a Bernie supporter). However, there’s been extremely little polling of Nevada on the Democratic side, so this is one of the few polls that we can go by to get a general idea as to the state of the Democratic race in Nevada.

I’m not all that familiar with the Nevada Democratic caucus electorate, but, looking at the crosstabs of the poll, a few of them stood out to me:

• The percentage of respondents aged 45-64 (32%) was the same as the percentage of respondents aged 65 or older (32%). In most parts of the country, the 45-64 age demographic is the largest voting bloc by a statistically significant margin.
• A majority of poll respondents (55%) had never participated in a prior Democratic caucus in Nevada. This is extremely high for any part of the country, although there were a lot more new voters who registered in Nevada in 2015 than in 2007, the year before the last seriously-contested Democratic presidential nomination race.
• For the questions about which candidate cares about the poll respondent more and which candidate is more progressive, the exact same result was reached: 36% Hillary, 49% Bernie, and 15% “both equal”.
• Three questions (Clinton Foundation donations, 2008 bank bailout vote, and FBI investigation) were asked that were negative of Hillary, and two questions (tax increases and government spending increases) were asked that were negative of Bernie. Of those questions, neither of the two Bernie questions made a majority of poll respondents less likely to support him, whereas two of the three Hillary questions (Clinton Foundation donations and 2008 bank bailout vote) made a majority of poll respondents less likely to support her (the other question, regarding the FBI investigation, had a majority of respondents say that they were “not at all concerned” about it)
• Only 4% of the poll respondents said that they were members of the Culinary Workers Union (simply known as “the Culinary” in Nevada parlance), the largest group of organized workers in Nevada. If I were to guess, the Culinary compromises a much larger percentage of the Nevada Democratic caucus electorate.
• 66% of the poll respondents live in Clark County (Las Vegas area), compared to 18% who live in Washoe County (Reno/Sparks area), with 16% living in the rest of the state (listed as “Rural” in the poll). Nevada has one of the most uneven population distributions of any state. Clark County has, per the 2010 Census, nearly 69% of Nevada’s population, and Clark County is more Democratic than Nevada as a whole is, so Clark County appears to have actually been undersampled in the poll.

I’m a staunch Bernie supporter, but I don’t think that these poll numbers are accurate, and I would guess that Hillary is actually ahead in Nevada by 4 to 7 percentage points.