Tuesday, August 27, 2019
For American companies, being publicly conservative is unpopular.
Americans who support Trump believe they're in the majority that embraces conservative ideas and values. That's simply not true. Trump was elected because of an 18th century mechanism called the electoral college. He was outvoted by a popular vote of 3 million. He's a minority president, and his followers are a distinct and tyrannical minority who believe a majority of Americans and American corporations agree with them.
This is a delusion, just like the delusion they hold that Donald Trump is a powerful leader (he's not; he's a weakling who is not respected at home or abroad).
Here's what is happening all over the country:
Companies Are Realising That Being Publicly Conservative Is Really Unpopular
A new poll shows that people like brands more when they embrace progressive causes like LGBTQ rights, and dislike companies that support Republicans.
For a while now, conservatives have been complaining that big corporations, from social media giants to Nike, are biased against right-leaning values. A new poll from Morning Consult highlighted by Axios Monday morning shows why they’re probably right. It also suggests that there's good reason for companies to take a progressive stand: The buying public is on the left side of a lot of culture-war issues.
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The Morning Consult poll, which surveyed around 2,200 Americans, had a number of findings, but the one Axios pointed to was a list of "hot button issues" and the corresponding amount of respondents who felt positively or negatively about a company that took a stance on them.
The most popular issues included LGBTQ rights, affirmative action, criminal justice reform, and civil rights—all causes associated with the political left. And while support for the campaign of a Democrat attracted 3 percent more approval than disapproval from those surveyed, support for a Republican was the least popular stance a company could take at -12.
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10 comments:
Clearly in 2016 a majority of states preferred Trump to HRC resulting in the election of Trump. Had there been no Electoral College it is likely the United States would not have been formed and held together as long as it has.
The concern was that all states have equitable representation, a situation that as we see now would give the most populated regions of the country greater control over the less populated states. Something we would witness today were it not for the EC.
Perhaps it's time to rethink the value of the EC. But in so doing i we were to eliminate the EC a whole new set of issues just may surface. IE: Tyranny Of The Majority. There was a logical and rational thought process our founders used in devising the EC. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater may or may not be such a good thing.
just sayin...
Republican Stuart Stevens at USA Today:
...Republicans need an active, robust primary. The 2020 Republican primary is the definitional moment for the Republican Party for a generation or longer. We know who Trump is; the question for Republicans is who are we? Do we believe character doesn’t count, that the national debt is meaningless, that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (a man with American blood on his hands) is a “friend,” and that after decades of arguing that culture defines the soul of America, a president paying off a porn star is of no consequence?
A vote in the primary for Trump is to endorse all of the above. Arguing that you will vote for Trump because of judges but don’t approve of him saying he couldn’t have raped a woman because “she's not my type” is a childish rationalization. It’s like boarding a plane and saying you approve of where the first 10 rows are going but don’t approve of where the rest of the plane is landing. It’s one plane. You board it willingly and knowingly, or you get on a different plane.
RN, we are now living with the tyranny of the minority! At the founding of this country, there were long and contentious debates about representation. The most difficult question at the concerned representation. States with large populations of course wanted representation in the federal legislature to be proportionate to population. States with small populations wanted equal representation for each state. States with large numbers of slaves wanted slaves to count as people for purposes of representation but not for purposes of taxation; states without slaves wanted the opposite.
Eventually an arrangement was to grant slave states far greater representation in Congress than free states. The first census of the US counted 140,000 free citizens in New Hampshire, which meant that NH got four seats in the House. But South Carolina, with 140,000 free citizens and 100,000 slaves, got six seats. The population of Massachusetts was greater than the population of Virginia, but Virginia had 300,000 slave and so got more seats. That why the first five presidents were from Virginia!
The southern states wanted to count slaves as people at the same time they considered them property. The south held the north in a sort of ransome: do as we want or no deal on the Constitution; no country!
Tyranny of the minority!
Ray, more and more thoughtful conservatives understand that Trump is a disaster for America. Too bad they weren't more vocal in 2016 when others understood this.
If the EC is ever eliminated future generations will live with the result. Possible tyranny by the East & West coast states with a few liberal Midwest states tossed in. I'm sure, well, maybe sure, future generations will figure t all out better than past generations.
I'm not sure I agree with your headline.
Almost all publicly held companies now are LGBTQ friendly. I've got a relative in the Justice Dept and he says as a matter of course, every Fortune 500 company support those rights in relationship to hiring and employment practices. It's just good business. Sure, there are plenty of mom and pop and "closely held" businesses that still resist, but those numbers dwindle everyday.
I think businesses can be conservative and popular.
What they can't be is stupid conservative, racist and supportive of Pres Trump.
Companies seem to be well aware of this. Consider how many of them have gay-friendly workplace policies or have made a show of boycotting or pulling out of states that enacted anti-gay policies. Most companies are in it for the dollars -- they wouldn't be taking these stances unless they knew it was good for business.
The few exceptions are mostly companies owned by people who are highly religious, where prejudice overrules the profit motive.
As to the Electoral College, every other democracy in the world operates by the principle that the candidate who gets the most votes wins the election. Most developed countries are even more urbanized than the US, so presumably that makes their cities even more dominant, but people accept the basic principle of one person, one vote. Any defense of the Electoral College is an argument for minority rule like in South Africa under apartheid.
Every individual's vote for President should count equally, whether they live in Boston or on a ranch in Wyoming.
Shaw... let's hope those "thoughtful conservatives" show up in Nov 2020.
But isn't it time now for them to put up? When has it ever been alright for a President to be critical, and essentially call for criminal investigations of a former president. Conservatives used to call politicians who did that asses. Now they cheer it on. Or at best, they "wish" he wouldn't do that.
They never wished Obama would change anything. They just called him an ass, unqualified, O'Bummer, a socialist, unAmerican and more.
RN above "The concern was that all states have equitable representation," Not really. The slave states were in a minority and feared being dominated by the
"Yankees" many of them anti-slavery. The price the nascent US paid for including
the slave states permitted them to include 40% of their non-voting slaves in their
population for increasing their congressional seats; still, fearing majority
tyranny (yes slaveowners thought others were tyrannical), they insisted on the electoral college (and their own over representation. In a way, the EC was one of
the political contributors to the Civil War...and as of late giving us 2 of the last 5 presidents who lost the popular vote. If you fear a tyranny of the majority,
you must be terrified of the tyranny of the minority. Is not a lynchpin of democracy "one man, one vote"?
I have been thinking lately that "tyranny of the majority" doesn't sound as bad as it did when I was introduced to the concept. That was about 45 years ago. I used to think that nothing ever changed.
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