MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2024
...other voters attacked: Based on Tim Craig's report in the Washington Post, life for Lori Mosura, age 55, "ain't been no crystal stair."
(We're quoting Langston Hughes, Mother to Son. For the full text of the poem, click here.)
Mosura lives in New Castle, Pennsylvania with her 17-year-old son. Craig describes her situation at the start of his report for the Post, then again a bit later:
Lori Mosura goes to the grocery store on a bicycle because she can’t afford to fix her Ford F-150 truck.
The single mother and her 17-year-old son live in an apartment that is so small she sleeps in the dining room. They receive $1,200 each month in food stamps and Social Security benefits but still come up short. Mosura said she often must decide whether to buy milk or toilet paper.
[...]
“People are struggling now more than ever, in this city especially,” said Mosura, who pays $375 a month for her apartment. She said she’s “prayed more in the past year than ever before” because of her mounting bills.
Mosura says she’s “prayed more in the past year" than she's ever prayed before. Long ago and far away, Woody Guthrie described a similar state of affairs. In one of his greatest songs, a struggling man says this:
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world any more
Today, Mosura prays like she never did before. So reported Craig in the Post.
Mosura is featured in the Post's report because of the way she voted in this year's election. We ourselves voted the other way—but with the Post's headline now included, here's where Mosura came down:
After backing Trump, low-income voters hope he doesn’t slash their benefits
Lori Mosura goes to the grocery store on a bicycle because she can’t afford to fix her Ford F-150 truck.
The single mother and her 17-year-old son live in an apartment that is so small she sleeps in the dining room. They receive $1,200 each month in food stamps and Social Security benefits but still come up short. Mosura said she often must decide whether to buy milk or toilet paper.
It was all that penny-pinching that drove the part-time tax consultant to abandon the Democratic Party this fall and vote for Donald Trump.
“He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich,” Mosura, 55, said on a recent afternoon. “I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.”
[...]
Some longtime Democrats like Mosura said they initially struggled over whether to vote for Trump. They had believed Democrats were the most likely to help the poor and disagreed with Republicans on issues like abortion. But Mosura said she kept coming back to the conclusion that Trump would put Americans like her first and improve her economic prospects.
Mosura said she has been unable to find full-time work in her field and is planning to change her party affiliation to Republican. But she also gets anxious when she hears GOP politicians talk about reducing government spending.
Will the incoming president "put Americans like her first?" We'll be surprised if that turns out to be right—but in that passage, Mosura explains her decision to vote for Candidate Trump.
She'd been a Democrat up until now. In this part of his report, Craig further reports the change in her thinking:
Milk or toilet paper
A decade ago, Mosura was a fervent supporter of the Clintons. She recalls meeting former president Bill Clinton in New Castle at a rally during Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the White House.
But the single mother said she began to drift away from Democrats as the party’s promises to help people like herself began to ring hollow. She said she’s been “suffering a lot” because of rising prices. Groceries she once thought of as staples—like soda—are now luxuries.
“People are struggling now more than ever, in this city especially,” said Mosura, who pays $375 a month for her apartment. She said she’s “prayed more in the past year than ever before” because of her mounting bills.
New Castle was a bastion for Democratic votes up until this year. But in larger Lawrence County, the shift toward the GOP has been ongoing. White, working class Americans were increasingly drawn to Republican candidates, in part because of their messaging on security and immigration.
Why would any decent person have voted for Candidate Trump? Many of us in Blue America—many of us in our ongoing state of tribal delusion—can't seem to think of a single possible reason.
Why did Mosura vote for Trump? According to that passage, she voted for Trump, at least in part, because of rising prices. Apparently based on other interviews, Criag says that other white, working class voters in Mosura's county have been drawn to Republican candidates "because of their messaging on security and immigration."
In his report for the Post, Craig quotes four (4) lower-income New Castle residents who voted for Candidate Trump. Along the way, he describes a more general situation which seems to have emerged in this year's election:
Trump carried the Pennsylvania city of New Castle by about 400 votes, becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to win here in nearly 70 years. More than 1 in 4 residents live in poverty, and the median income in this former steel and railroad hub ranks as one of the lowest in Pennsylvania.
New Castle’s poorest residents weren’t alone in putting their faith in Trump. Network exit polls suggest he erased the advantage Democrats had with low-income voters across the country.
Fifty percent of voters from families with an income of less than $50,000 a year cast their ballots for Trump, according to the data, compared with 48 percent for Vice President Kamala Harris. Four years ago, President Joe Biden carried those voters by 11 percentage points; Hillary Clinton won them by 12 points in 2016 and former president Barack Obama by 22 points in 2012.
According to (imperfect) exit polls, lower-income voters narrowly favored Candidate Trump on a nationwide basis. In his report, Craig quotes three other such voters in New Castle, though he doesn't say if any of this other three were Democrats up until now.
Craig's report is bult around a decision by Lori Mosura, age 55. We're willing to guess that life for her, and for her teenage son, ain't been no crystal stair.
Craig quotes four (4) people who voted for Candidate Trump. Nationwide, there were more than 77 million others. (For a comparable passage from Guthrie's song, see below.)
In an informative report, Craig quoted four (4) lower-income people who voted for Candidate Trump. When he did, a bunch of voters in Blue America decided it was time to attack.
For ourselves, our plan this week will be this:
We're going to use Craig's report about Mosura as a starting point for our continuing search. We'll finally start to offer some of the blindingly obvious answers to this lingering question:
Why would any decent person have voted for Candidate Trump?
Over here in Blue America, many of us seem proud of the fact that we can't even begin to imagine an answer to the question.
Many of us in Blue America can't begin to figure it out! In our view, this manifest blindness—this tribal delusion—may at times almost seem to say a great deal about voters like Us.
Tomorrow: Blue voters mock Mosura
Two versions of Guthrie's anthem: Guthrie recorded his song as part of the 1940 album, Dust Bowl Ballads. To hear that performance, click here.
In 1988, Bruce Springsteen recorded the song as part of a Folkways tribute album. To hear that superb performance, we recommend clicking this.
These are the closing lyrics to Guthrie's song as Springsteen sang it:
I Ain’t Got No Home
[...]
I mined in your mines and I gathered in your corn
I been workin', Mister, since the day that I was born
Now I worry all the time like I never did before
'Cause I ain't got no home in this world any more
Well now I just ramble 'round to see what I can see
It's a wide, wicked world, sure a funny place to be
Gamblin' man is rich and the workin' man is poor
I ain't got no home in this world any more
Well I'm stranded on this road that goes from sea to sea
A hundred thousand others are stranded here with me
A hundred thousand others, yes, a hundred thousand more
I ain't got no home in this world any more.
Instead of wasting her time praying, she should be doing something to help her economic situation. Has she thought about deep tax cuts for the rich and corporations?
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteYou know what else, Bob: the homelessness rate is the highest on record, this year.
But hey, surely the working people enjoy paying student debt of useless Democrat pencil-pushers! Thank you, Brandon!
And by the way, Bob, who has been running the country, for the last four years? Inquiring minds want to know.
Where oh where has the Daddy Government Republican voters have been crying out in the dark for, been hiding?
DeleteTrump's not giving you a pony, 9:00, but he'll gladly let you clean-up after it.
"Democrat pencil-pushers"
DeleteThe working folk. Unlike the Republican layabouts.
She needs to starve her 17-year old, instead of bringing in more revenue (get a second job).
ReplyDeleteIt's a neat trick I learned from the Right about how to deal with the federal deficit.
No decent person ever voted for Trump.
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna take a decidedly Republican stance on this woman. Stop watching sit coms.
ReplyDeleteWe might learn something, if these four Trump voters aren't some of the 70+ million who cheered along Trump's HUGE tax break for the rich and corporations.
ReplyDeleteThis woman's story makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteWhere is Ms. Mosura's son's father?
ReplyDeleteShe is too young for social security so perhaps he died and they are living on his son's SS death benefit? There are job training programs she could use to learn new skills. But if she can do taxes, why can't she operate a cash register and work in retail? Too much of her story doesn't add up.
DeleteThe most pro-labor president in my lifetime, but these poor sops swung to Trump because of the Haitians eating our pets I guess. I wonder if she ever notices which party blocks any democratic programs to help people in her situation?
ReplyDeleteBefore we tackle "Why would any decent person have voted for Candidate Trump?" we must note that no decent person votes for Democrats.
ReplyDelete"We" being you and the hamster in your pocket.
DeleteIs Somerby aware that Woody Guthrie was writing about the dust bowl, in which high winds blew away the topsoil so farmers had to leave their land to support themselves? Farmers planted wheat in order to get rich, but that crop didn't bind the soil, so their farms went bankrupt during drought.
ReplyDeleteDid they sleep in the dining room? No. They got in their cars or hit the road walking, with their life's possessions and their families, until they got to places like California, where they picked fruit and lived in the dry river beds in shanties and tents until they could find other work. The San Fernando Valley is full of the descendents of the dust bowl, Okies and Arkies they were called. This was during the depression, or they would have found work closer to their original homes. The dust settled as far away as NYC in this natural disaster caused by individual greed and bad farming techniques. Our elementary school classes in the 1950s included a unit on the dangers of soil erosion, how to do crop rotation and how to plant in order to hold the soil. In Los Angeles.
None of those dustbowl refugees were working as "part-time tax consultants" which is seasonal work at best (like being a dept store Santa). They worked at whatever they could find along the way, migrating to more prosperous areas. They subsisted on other people's charity, because there were no social systems to help them. They had little education, while this woman seems to at least know how to do taxes. Why does she not know how to think? Perhaps that is her disability?
Maybe her boy can start a meth lab.
ReplyDeleteOmg. That is so methed up.
DeleteThere are people in dire circumstances and when you try to suggest ways to improve their lives, they have a reason why each of your suggestions won't work. Then you reach the conclusion that they do not wish to change how they are living. It is their right to live however they want, but then they claim that it is not their fault but their circumstances that keep them poor. Something is wrong in their lives, but it isn't obvious what it is without counseling.
ReplyDeleteI knew a woman once who had accounting skills but claimed she couldn't get work without a proper work wardrobe. So someone bought her clothes. She still didn't go look for work. The actual problem was that she was an alcoholic and had red marks on her face from broken blood vessels due to her drinking. Employers saw that and wouldn't hire her. That was a legitimate choice on their part, since she had not stopped drinking.
So, what are we not being told about this woman's situation? Perhaps she doesn't need a job, but needs rehab. Perhaps her son is not doing well enough at school to make plans for work. Whatever it is, the reporter decided not to dig deeper or embarrass his informant by telling readers the truth. She may think that a Republican wouldn't make her try to get sober or go to night school or whatever it is that is keeping her poor. If her son's payments stop at age 18, she is going to have to do something different. How she thinks Trump will help her is the missing piece. What does she think he will do for her?
Corby/Perry/a - how is your grandson? Have you helped them with their homework lately?
DeleteThat sounds like a threat. Good thing Corby etc. is anonymous here, with people like you around.
DeleteYour posts give you away, sweet darling.
DeleteTrolls coming in with their rape-y vibes today. I guess the stock market is down.
Delete
ReplyDeleteEver since my uncle eaten by cannibals, my supplies of delicious word-salads have become endless, and are still growing.
I am Corby.
Haitian immigrants told Trump he can't close the border.
Delete"Sometimes, work can be hard to find. Given the way we humans are wired, empathy can sometimes be harder."
ReplyDeleteSomerby reads this story about a part-time tax preparer and concludes that work is hard to find? Retired accountants do taxes as a public service. There is free online software to help people do taxes. This isn't a job for an adult. She is snowing the reporter when she says that is her work. If she is an accountant or accounting clerk, there are plenty of jobs around. So her story makes no sense.
This woman's son is old enough to be home without a babysitter. If she still isn't working, then something else is wrong in her life. The change from being a Democrat to being a Republican (perhaps suggested by the reporter to find someone to interview) makes no more sense than anything else about her life. Her son could be working himself but isn't? Why is the son not living in the dining room instead of his mom? What son lets his mother do that?
No wonder other readers of this perhaps invented story had criticisms! How are we supposed to believe that a woman who could not manage her life, based on the story told by the reporter, was going to the polls? These are the folks who do not vote at all. But we're supposed to believe she is changing her party affiliation because of Trump?
JD Vance had to tell a lot of lies to put across his story in Hillbilly Elegy. It isn't as easy as it looks to invent a sob story. The easiest explanation in this report is that she has more money than she is claiming to have because she doesn't do part-time tax consulting but has some other occupation. It may lack empathy to disbelieve someone's story, but what character trait does it take to tell such stories in the first place?
DeleteSomerby seems to have forgotten Stephen Glass, who worked at the New Republic for 3 years until it was discovered that he was making up his reports, not researching them. People can and do make things up, especially when there is some reward for doing so.
Where is JD Vance when we need him?
ReplyDeleteHe’s busy licking the boots of President Musk/VP Trump, as Thiel watches and waits in the wings.
DeleteRumor has it that he's working with Maybelline to launch a line of mascara for men.
DeletePerhaps this woman's perception that Trump is attuned to people beyond just the rich, stems from a belief that Democrats are too focused on the rich or that Democrats have given up on wanting the support of the working class. Chuck Schumer said in 2016: “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” (Dems lost 3 of those 4 states.) Maybe Democrats have had a well designed strategy of pivoting towards suburban, more affluent, and often college-educated voters and away from the the working class because their own policies like NAFTA made it almost impossible to continue to appeal to working class voters with a straight face after NAFTA had wiped out their lives and destroyed their communities. And maybe Democrat's losses to Trump were because that gambit didn't pay off.
ReplyDeleteGiven that the Democrats were working hard during the campaign to attract exactly these voters, why would they believe Democrats have given up? That makes even less sense than this woman's story. Poor people are not processing campaign efforts at the level of NAFTA policy or obscure statements by Schumer.
DeleteThere are no jobs for part-time tax consultants in local communities because of NAFTA? Try again.
Free trade was a republican goal. After the country gave Ronald McDonald a second term with 49 of 50 states, dems saw the public wanted it. so fuck off, NAFTA was signed in 1992, guess who was president.
DeleteWorking class voters would believe Democrats had given up on them for lots of reasons. Deindustrialization. Identity politics. Democrats may have tried to court these voters but the voters may have stayed focused on their actions and not their words.
DeletePoor Hispanics, poor trans etc prioritize economic reform over bizarre ethnic neologisms and giving teenage boys access to maxi pads.
DeleteTrump may have spoken to them in a more direct and emotionally connecting way than the Democrats did. Ie. Making them feel like he was feeling their pain. Trump may have done a better job of that than Harris and the Dems. Remember Harris's strange 'Thank a Union Memba' speech. Working class people may have seen this and felt they were being played as Harris was strangely adopting a false accent without any context or apparent reason.
DeleteDemocrats message was much more"Trump is bad and we are not Trump" than "we are the party that champions ordinary people and democracy".
DeleteThis may have been because they couldn’t convincingly argue the latter case, as they had intentionally shifted away from ordinary people due to a policy change to cater to the interests of corporate donors over those of the general public. And they may have applied the logic Schumer used to try to pull this off and, you know, failed. They may have whiffed on that plan. Now, it may be it's time to regroup and figure out a new plan.
Trump's message was "I am your retribution" - retribution for what exactly? For allowing him to lead an insurrection?
DeletePresident George H.W. Bush (R) signing NAFTA was the worst thing the Democratic Party ever did.
DeleteTrump's message was not "I am your retribution", Soros-bot. His message was: I will fix things broken by the Democrat party.
Delete11:55 Democrats lost because of a lack of access to polls and people were not ready for a black woman.
DeleteBad, bad people.
DeleteIs 11:07 mocking critics of Dems?
DeleteHow does one not know free trade/NAFTA was a Republican project?
Then once corrected, how does one cling to the same misguided argument?
The commenter either has no integrity, or is mocking Republicans/Somerby for their transparent idiocy.
What did Harris offer this woman? “Trump is Hitler.” “Republicans are racists.”
ReplyDeleteAlso “Joy!”
DeleteDemocrats and Harris didn't seem to convincingly feel her pain as well as Orange McRapeypants did. I wonder what he must have felt as he was out maneuvering them in this simple regard. He must have been astonished Democrats had given him an opening to do so. I'm sure he knew that in doing so, they were handing him the presidency.
DeleteIt's such a colossal political strategic error it's almost hard to believe the Democrats didn't do it on purpose.
The Post probably didn't ask Mosura what she thought of Trump's HUGE tax break for the rich and corporations, because they don't want to lose access to her.
DeleteLOL.
Delete"What did Harris offer this woman? “Trump is Hitler.” “Republicans are racists.”"
They are so stupid, they even managed to lose a bunch of voters who were supposed to be impressed by “Republicans are racists”.
No one believes anything any Democrat party boss (or bot) would say anymore. That's an achievement of sorts.
Harris did not run on trans issues or “Trump is Hitler/Republicans are racist” (it was Vance that ran on dog whistling racism and called Trump “America’s Hitler”), nor did any Dem.
DeleteHarris ran the exact same campaign as Biden did, same as Hillary Clinton, using the same staff even. Biden won because there were less impediments to voting due to Covid, and he is a White male. This is trivially obvious.
Republicans seem frustrated that Dems are not taking their “advice” on electoral strategies. While this is an amusing circumstance, it is, in the end, completely irrelevant.
What does DinC offer the comments section but repetitive, stale Republican cant, Gish gallops, and Lee Atwater dog whistles.
DeleteHarris never said Republicans are racist but you go ahead and keep with your (as usual) phony narrative.Go ahead and show us the quote. Meanwhile:
Deletehttps://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/23/gop-race-comments-harris-00170735
It is no wonder that a woman who thinks she can pray herself out of debt would vote for Trump. Or maybe she was praying for the pets the Haitians were eating. A grifter who has logged in over 40,000 lies can convince desperate people who cannot seem to help themselves that, among other things, he will lower grocery prices. Check that; that was before the election. If she or her son worked the register at a grocery store, she would likely get a food discount, but that would involve work. Maybe her son will learn from her continuing mistakes. He could then write a book about it.
Blue America provides most of the labor that Red America then lives off of and uses to fund their layabout lifestyles.
DeleteThis circumstance causes a lot of cognitive dissonance, shame, and guilt among Red America, which then fuels their bitterness and hatred of Blue America.
1:45 Got that right.
Delete1:45 is scientific and brilliant.
Delete1:45 is perfect. It explains everything.
Delete1:45 was written by someone with tremendous, enormous intellect. Whose uncle was perhaps eaten by cannibals.
DeleteOof! Somebody got triggered. Nerve got touched, I reckon.
DeleteYes, because 1:45 is so beautiful. Please read it.
DeleteWhy is Cecelia posting as Anonymous today?
DeleteThe truth set 1:45 free.
DeleteI love the smell of Somerby deciding to take ridiculously silly stories at face value when it suits his agenda in the morning, it smells like…the death of a blog.
ReplyDeleteThis blog died years ago.
DeleteThe context is that Reagan/Bush Sr/Bush Jr/Trump all tanked the economy for the bottom 90% in their terms, and in each case it was cleaned up by Clinton/Obama/Biden, respectively. (In terms of the cleanup, neoliberals Clinton and Obama had less success than the more pro labor Biden.)
ReplyDeleteSomerby is aware of this context, thus explains his claim he voted for the Dems, per usual. Yet Somerby apparently thinks Mosura is too stupid to share his awareness.
In trying to explain why someone would vote for Republicans, all Somerby is really offering is that Republican voters are dumber than he is.
While this may be true, it hardly offers any meaningful explanatory value.
Being charitable, Somerby is a poor thinker; he may also be bought and paid for.
Republicans are good at blaming others. Mosura’s supposed inability to find a job is, apparently, the Democrats’ fault, so she will vote for Republicans, the “party of personal responsibility”, who will not improve her situation, but will pass more tax cuts for the wealthy, and talk about cutting “entitlements”, and then, when she still doesn’t find a better job, they will tell her it’s Soros, Democrats, and their “woke” ideology that is to blame.
ReplyDeleteAnd she'll believe them again.
DeleteSomerby: I got nothing.
ReplyDeleteEveryone else with two or more brain cells: We know!
David, what will Donald Trump do for Lori Mosura? What should he do for her? If you were President, what would you do for her?
ReplyDeleteIn reality, it’s Musk that, after the election, has been running around calling Republicans “fools” and “racists”, with Republicans responding by calling Musk a “toddler”; Republicans are pissed they got conned by an immigrant snake oil salesman. Who knew?
ReplyDeleteRepublicans are now saying “the left was right about Musk all along”.
DeleteIt’s almost a laugh.
The much-heralded leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, speculated that he could slash $2 trillion from the federal budget. He is, in fact, starting his tenure already $100 billion in the hole. After he halted the passage of a bill to fund our government, the eventual bill that passed spent $100 billion more than the initial, rejected version.
ReplyDeleteSo now, to reach its original goal, DOGE will need to come up with $2.1 trillion in savings.
Climate change is a hoax, so not giving money to DeSantis and Abbott due to bad weather will provide some savings.
Delete"Why would any decent person have voted for Candidate Trump? Many of us in Blue America—many of us in our ongoing state of tribal delusion—can't seem to think of a single possible reason."
ReplyDeleteNot thinking is the American religion.
Thinking is for poor people who don't know how to afford things. To admit you thought about anything is admitting you're poor.
ReplyDelete