Hillary Clinton – former presidential candidate, former secretary of state, former senator and former first lady of the United States – said in 2016, during a campaign in New York, a phrase that translates the incomprehension of the members of the Democratic Party, the majority of the press and the American liberal elites about the phenomenon that that year would lead the outsider Donald Trump to the White House. To an audience of well-heeled people who irrigated her committee coffers, Hillary defined her Republican opponent’s voters as follows: “Just to generalize roughly, you can put half of Trump’s supporters in what I call the wretched basket.”
In 2020, when Trump lost re-election, many people celebrated as civilized America’s rematch against the barbarism that springs from the suburbs and rural areas. White people, rough, fascist, or as Hillary put it “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic…you name it”.
This week, in elections in some parts of the United States, the voice of America’s deplorables was heard again. There was a lot of noise in Virginia, the state that gave victory to Biden just a year ago and that visibly regretted what it did. Or at least not liking what the Democratic Party was doing over there and in Washington.
Newcomer Glenn Youngkin, of the Republican Party, ran over former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe, who, in addition to having previously governed the state, had the national prestige of having already presided over his own party and had by his side heavyweight electoral cables. , like President Biden and former Barack Obama.
McAuliffe’s election performance showed he was favored in the Washington, DC suburbs located on the right bank of the Potomac River, in the wealthy counties of Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince George, and in half a dozen urban areas outside the university’s capital Richmond. Charlottesville. In the rest of the state, Youngkin gave his opponent a clean sweep.
One of the explanations for the loss of the Democratic lead may be that the rope has been stretched too far. Increased taxes, indiscriminate welfare and a priority agenda detached from the real world. While people await policies that will help them out of the economic morass of the pandemic, the Democratic Party has prioritized debates such as imposing neutral pronouns, ending girls’ and boys’ toilets in schools and other perfumeries.
In New Jersey, Democrat Phil Murphy barely takes it. Republican Jack Ciattarelli won by less than 70,000 votes. A margin of 2.3%. But Steve Sweeney, the president of the New Jersey Senate, as the state legislature is called, did not have the same end. He lost to a truck driver who spent $153 on his campaign, 44% of which was spent on buying donuts and coffee for his constituencies on days of distributing business cards and flyers that were paid for with the rest of the money.
Ed Durr beat one of the most powerful Democrats in his state with a down-to-earth speech. Back to “the basket of deplorables”. In his campaign video, shot by himself with his selfie-style cell phone, he hit the Democrats hard. He accused Sweeney of acting bovine in favor of his co-religionist Murphy. In one of the excerpts, he says, “In 2020, my opponent sat and watched as Governor Murphy forced nursing homes to take in Covid-19 patients, resulting in the deaths of more than 8,000 of our seniors.” At another point, he concludes: “Sweeney remained silent as Governor Murphy closed more than a third of our small businesses, costing New Jersey families thousands of jobs.”
The election results in the two American states are explained by some as a reaction from the deplorable ones. Indeed, these same deplorable people have been blamed for delays in the Covid-19 vaccination campaign in the United States.
There is no lack of analyzes that place the explanation for the vaccination rate that is today on the back of the suburban white or with low education and the rustics lower than in Brazil. It is true that in this universe there are, yes, people vulnerable to delusions of the QAnon type, for example, but blaming the simpler people or the Republican voter for everything that “bad” goes on in the country is a comfort. Such a basket of deplorables cannot explain everything.
An example is Washington, DC The American capital is one of the most democratic – if not the most democratic – places in the United States. Since District of Columbia residents won the right to vote in presidential elections in 1964, a republican candidate never came out victorious. The percentages in favor of the Democrats have always been devastating. Always above 90% of votes.
But the Vaccination rates in Washington, DC are a horror. Democrats don’t get vaccinated either. Considering only the adult population, the one that votes, only 58% had been vaccinated. When expanded to adolescents over 12 years of age, the overall rate drops to 46.7%. And there is no significant difference in behavior between blacks, whites, Latinos or Asians, for example. The data, by the way, show that, among people under 40, blacks are the ones who have been vaccinated the least so far. Were they all deplorable trumpists? This American story has an inevitable parallel with Brazil. And honestly it’s not necessary to take another second of anyone’s life to explain.
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