posted
On a global perspective, I guess the global climate and the Chinese democracy movement look like they'll be down for the count.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: do you remember how i jumped up and down and celebrated that trump won the primary because it essentially surrendered the white house and the supreme court to the democratic party
i am happy to report that the state of the election is "still super over"
Look at how owned i am, this is like a new level of self ownage
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posted
We underestimated the desire of people who didn't get what they wanted, either in the primaries or in life, to burn it all down. We thought that enough of us would choose reason and compassion. We were wrong.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: We underestimated the desire of people who didn't get what they wanted, either in the primaries or in life, to burn it all down. We thought that enough of us would choose reason and compassion. We were wrong.
posted
One person here is eating a s**t-ton of crow right now. The schadenfreude is almost overwhelming...
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Don't worry, capax. Even after samprimary gets a seriously upset stomach you'll still be a hack:)
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: At least in CA we can get goooood and high about it.
Same here in Vegas.
As the HR manager I had to tell all of my employees today that while weed will be legal come January 1, they are still not allowed to spoke it before or during work hours.
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Stone_Wolf_, not all states are 100% in, at least last time I checked this morning. So the popular vote totals have not been finalized yet. You may now want to argue that our national elections should be determined by popular vote. This is an old argument. The Electoral College was designed to prevent some states from being too greatly more influential than other states. There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to that. But these are the rules we play by. The time to change the rules involving the Electoral College would be before the next election, not in time to affect the one just passed.
Kmboots, it has been my observation--oft confirmed especially in this forum--that liberal Democrats are the faction that have the least respect for objective facts and sound reasoning. Once your ego gets involved, your mind closes, and you immediately resort to insult and derision. You think your false accusations are factual, and thereafter presume to quote yourselves and try to rewrite history, claiming past victories that you did not win. Your present reaction shows you still haven't learned your lesson. Reality is not determined by majority vote. Vox Populi, VEX Dei.
By the way, the best way to show compassion is to enact policies that actually work to produce the greatest good that we can all afford. And what really works in social engineering is to recognize that the Ten Commandments really do have supreme moral weight. Anyone who leans even a little toward socialism needs to see that taking money from one group to give to another group is theft, which is contrary to the eighth commandment; and the basic popular appeal of socialism is covetousness, which is contrary to the tenth commandment. God calls these things sin for good reasons.
Rather than trying to falsely vilify the people who voted differently from the way you wanted them to, you might consider the observation of a commentator on FNC that one of the keys to Hillary's loss was the fact that African-Americans did not turn out in as great numbers as they did in previous elections. In the case of Detroit, the amount is something like 100,000. Which means that people in this demographic, that Hillary and the Democrats were counting on, were not enthusiastic, and perhaps are beginning to question whether the Democratic Party really has the best interests of African-Americans at heart. Along with this is the fact that Trump got twice the percentage of African-Americans to vote for him as Mitt Romney got to vote for him in 2012. Still single-digits percentage-wise, but double the previous amount.
[ November 09, 2016, 04:48 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: . And what really works in social engineering is to recognize that the Ten Commandments really do have supreme moral weight.
Someone should tell Donald Trump there's one in there about lying, one about adultery, and another about coveting a neighbor's wife.
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quote:Which means that people in this demographic, that Hillary and the Democrats were counting on, were not enthusiastic...
Or, of course, their votes were successfully suppressed, given that the states where turnout was unusually low were all states targeted by voter suppression efforts.
By the way, Ron, congrats on not being completely wrong for the second time in your history here at Hatrack.
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quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: One person here is eating a s**t-ton of crow right now. The schadenfreude is almost overwhelming...
haha, yes! question: did you support Trump's election and do you think he will be a good president who positively influences the future of the country?
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quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: One person here is eating a s**t-ton of crow right now. The schadenfreude is almost overwhelming...
haha, yes! question: did you support Trump's election and do you think he will be a good president who positively influences the future of the country?
I didn't support Clinton or Trump. Do I think he will positively influence the future of the country? He has the potential to do so, yes, but the influence will be minimal and dependent upon a number of factors. Hopefully Trump has sense enough to surround himself with people who know how to run a country because he's lacking a good number of qualities a president must have to succeed. I think we'll see his rhetoric become less virulent but we should still expect WTF?-inducing comments and gaffes weekly during his term as president.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Or, of course, their votes were successfully suppressed, given that the states where turnout was unusually low were all states targeted by voter suppression efforts.
Tom, who do you think it was who suppressed voter turnout in Detroit--where virtually everyone is African-American, and where the government of the city has been controlled by Democrats for over 50 years? You liberal Democrat types should really stop believing your own propaganda, certainly where it makes no rational sense.
It has been reported that about 100,000 fewer African-Americans in Detroit voted this time than voted in the last presidential election. That is pretty significant, when you realize that the total margin of victory in Michigan for Trump was only 13,225. Really, do you think hordes of Tea Partiers were recruited to hang out at polling places in Detroit trying to intimidate people, enough to discourage 100,000 people from voting?
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quote:Originally posted by theamazeeaz: Someone should tell Donald Trump there's one in there about lying, one about adultery, and another about coveting a neighbor's wife.
It is venturing on really dangerous ground for anyone supporting the Clintonistas to criticize Trump for lying. No one in the history of human government has ever lied more about absolutely everything than Hillary Clinton. (Violation of the ninth commandment.) As for the seventh and tenth commandments, I would think Bill Clinton is so vulnerable to those charges, that supporters of Hillary would hesitate to bring them up in regard to Trump.
Look, I really have no burden to defend Trump, since I said from the beginning he is uncouth, and Ted Cruz is the one that Republicans should have nominated. But being a successful businessman, Trump has learned how to play within the intricacies of the law, domestically and internationally. Hillary, on the other hand, has made a career out of ignoring the law, skating from felony to felony, seemingly ever above the law, because there are people who always cover for her--like the medical examiner in Arkansas who ruled that several people who were going to blow the whistle on Clinton crooked dealings and suddenly wound up dead, were "suicides," even when in some cases they had two bullet holes in the back of the head. A special term has been coined for this: "Arkancide." Just Google Arkancide to review the large body of evidence about this. Many believe that Vince Foster (at one time Hillary's lover, and then threatened to go public with damaging information) was also Arkancided in Washington, D.C. This in turn is one of the reasons why a former assistant director of the FBI, James Kallstrom, charged that the Clintons are in fact a "crime family" comparable to Al Capone's mafia. Link: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/303458-former-fbi-official-clintons-are-a-crime-family
[ November 09, 2016, 11:16 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]
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I am tired of fighting what seems like a constant losing battle. I'm tired of false hope and shattered dreams. I'm tired of making two steps forward and three steps back progress. I'm tired of being told there is more that unites us than divides us. I'm tired of being told we need to come together when we disagree on everything. I'm tired of the rules constantly being changed. I'm tired of racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia. I'm tired of the lies. I'm tired of the willful disbelief in the truth. I'm tired of the demonization of knowledge. I'm tired of the media treating politics like reality TV. I'm tired of the dumbing down of America. I'm tired of votes not counting, not mattering, or being actively suppressed.
I loved politics once, mostly because I loved policy. Like Hillary, I was always more entertained by the wonkish aspects of it, the details and plans and experimenting with solutions. I liked the ideas in their many varied forms and investigating the pros and cons of each. I liked the complex problems. But politics isn't about that anymore. It's about bloodsport and winning. It's about conquest and defeat. I don't love that, and as a result can no longer involve myself in or enjoy politics the way I used to.
Most of us here probably do not buy into the concept of American Exceptionalism as often espoused by Republicans. I do think we are an exceptional nation in that we're unlike most every other nation, but not exceptionally superior. But any fantasy we held about our own superiority, be it intellectual or moral, should be gone now. America failed this week. It failed as a concept. The American experiment is over. It won't end all at once. You don't stop an aircraft carrier on a dime and you don't stop America the day after any election either. But regardless of what Trump does during his term, the fact that he was elected at all means something in America is fundamentally broken. It's the electoral college, or the media, or our education system, or Congress, or the Supreme Court, or the Constitution itself or it's very people. I don't know what combination of them make up the alchemy of failure, but the result is the same.
The only way to fix this country is for either the collective will of government and our institutions to be harnessed to recommit to what got us here in the first place, or for the populace to rise up en masse and demand reform. Given what happened this week, I just don't see how either of these things are possible.
So America will collapse, slowly, over time, and take a good chunk of the stable world order with it. It will devolve into a lesser nation and abandon all the principles espoused at its birth. And eventually, maybe after a long time but certainly at some point, it will die.
I'm not sad that Hillary lost because I wanted Hillary herself to win. I'm sad for everything I wrote about. And because I'm tired and I just can't fight anymore, and I can't muster the will to believe that my fighting even matters. More than the country breaking, something inside me broke on Tuesday night and I'm not sure how it gets fixed. It's one of those fundamental breaking points where a universal truth is destroyed, like a child's belief in their parents as heroes; this isn't the country I thought it was, and I think it's beyond saving. And on a lesser note I realize I don't matter from an electoral perspective. My efforts to learn and better myself, to try to change the minds of those around me and influence them for the better, they're just a waste of time. It's difficult to accept that one's personal efforts over the course of years were all for nothing.
So I'm sad, and tired, and broken. And I'm just not sure I care any more. Maybe that will change and I'll start to care again. Maybe I'll be less sad when enough time has gone by. But this one isn't going away. It's a sea change. And it will be, unlike our union, eternal.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I understand your anguish, or at least empathize with it from my own elephant on my chest...but it's not that bad man...while this turn of events is tragic and shocking, your efforts were not For nothing! Four years go by in a blink, and impeachment is not off the table.
Also remember that the pendulum will swing back, and it's not how many times you get knocked down, but rather how many times you get back up that is your measure.
quote:Four years go by in a blink, and impeachment is not off the table.
Except that the Republicans control all three branches of government, one of which includes lifetime appointments, and can rewrite legislative rules. Also, if they vote for impeachment, it'll only be to put someone like Pence in charge of government -- which I'm not entirely unconvinced isn't part of their original plan.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: We underestimated the desire of people who didn't get what they wanted, either in the primaries or in life, to burn it all down. We thought that enough of us would choose reason and compassion. We were wrong.
I've heard this sentiment expressed in a few different places, particularly by Democrats (I want to say liberals, but it's used so often as a pejorative by conservatives that I hardly like to use it anymore, even when it's more accurate). I guess...I'm hoping that I can share my experience, briefly, with this election, as a conservative who didn't vote for Trump. Maybe I won't say anything that you all haven't already considered or expected, but I'd like to say it anyway because I want you all to understand why, even though I hated the idea of Trump as president, I also didn't vote for Clinton.
Going into this, we knew the Yellow Dog Republican/bigot/angry-and-uneducated trifecta was going to vote for Trump. Clinton was never going to get their votes, obviously. But I'm not sure the Democrats understood just how many of us Christian right-wingers were open to an option other than Trump. I belong to a large organization in Texas (a cooperative home school) that's made up of Christians from a wide variety of denominations, but we, as a group, watched in horror as Trump made his way through the primaries. I barely know any practicing Christians who support Trump; the conservatives I know who like him are either not Christian or nominal Christians.
But we believed, because most people believed, that the Democrats were going to take the Oval Office and the Senate. Just like Tom seems upset with the idea of an all-Republican government (and I don't blame him) we conservatives saw a likely path to a very Democrat-heavy Washington. In my mind, the best case scenario (of the ones given, which all sucked) would have been Clinton in the White House and a fresher Republican Senate, which might have led to more deadlock (maybe not) but wouldn't have equaled a runaway for Democrats. I was hoping for some temperance in the selection of Justices.
When it came time to vote, I stood there in the booth for several long minutes trying to decide what to do. But I believed Democrats would win the Senate and, in the end, I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger on Clinton. Not because she's Democrat or a woman or a liar, but because I didn't feel connected to her or her party at all and I couldn't stand the idea of no check to that power.
But I don't think it had to go that way. I believe that some of us, the younger ones or the ones who lean a bit libertarian, the red-violets, could have been swayed to vote Democrat in this particular election, because we disliked Trump so much. But I'm not sure the Democrats really understood the potential there, maybe because we don't stir up a fuss or make ourselves known. I'm not a political scientist, so I can't say what I think the DNC should have done in this case. I don't know what policies or politicking could have been implemented in order to grab the disgusted conservative crowd. I only know that I didn't witness any real attempts, at least not here in the "red" south. I think many of us felt lumped in with Trump and alienated.
Anyway, I'm not trying to place blame anywhere, and I'm not trying to open myself up to attack. I'm just sharing my feelings because I'm frustrated, too, and I'm in the camp that I think many Democrats believe they can't relate to.
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That helps, PSI. I was trying to get my head around more mainstream Republicans being okay with Trump winning, and I had forgotten that the choice faced in the booth probably looked different at the time.
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: I understand your anguish, or at least empathize with it from my own elephant on my chest...but it's not that bad man...while this turn of events is tragic and shocking, your efforts were not For nothing! Four years go by in a blink, and impeachment is not off the table.
Also remember that the pendulum will swing back, and it's not how many times you get knocked down, but rather how many times you get back up that is your measure.
First, I'd repeat everything Tom said above.
But I'd also reiterate my point that you're thinking too tactically. This isn't about today, tomorrow, or even just Trump's term in office. It's about what must be true in order for him to get elected. I don't care if the pendulum swings back. It'll swing back and the GOP will just stymie progress for four more years now that they know it works. And then when nothing happens the people will usher Republicans back into power.
The only thing I see worth doing is that I'm going to start donating to non-profits that might actually make a difference. I'm donating to the ACLU today and will be on the look out for other organizations that have that level of impact they do in defending against Trump's most likely excesses.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Lyrhawn, I am just going to share what is - with better and worse moments - what is helping me.
After a very bad night on Tuesday, I remembered that I am a folk singer dammit. I have the tools for this! I am equipped to emotionally cope with terrible, oppressive government. And to help others do that. I was reminded that, whatever the government, we all have gifts to make things better, to deal with grief, to inspire, to comfort, to protect. Actors, poets, teachers, lawyers, people with time and energy or resources to help. Even if it is just to be kind, we are not powerless. Another friend found comfort in paying it backward at Starbucks because there was grace in people being kind no matter who they voted for. A friend who is a yoga instructor helped herself and helped others to just breathe and to find calm.
I went to hear a friend's band last night and they opened with a defiant version of "Oooh Child" that was an anthem and went on to play a set that had exhausted dispirited middle-aged folks dancing like crazy people. Both musicians and audience were reminded that there will still be joy and fun and we can still have that.
Finally, an Irish American friend of mine posted this and I am sharing it with his permission.
quote: I received a promotion this morning. I went from your everyday civic voter to a human rights activist. My voice will be collected with others to make a deafening reminder that we insist to be held safely in this nations embrace, all of us. To all my friends who are afraid because their lives as US immigrants, as LGBT persons, as non christians, as women, as people of this nation, you will always find safety and comfort in my house. To my friends who are not yet, and hopefully never, on the outside looking in, if that time should come when you are no longer welcome in the community you thought would save you, you too are welcome and safe in my house. I will carry a banner, raise a flag and march determined to keep you all safe. I will not let my fear stop me. Love and peace to you all.
I am really lucky to live in a blue state and I know it must be much harder to be surrounded by people who supported Trump but I found that these things have helped me and maybe they will help you.
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Kate - It didn't help, but I was warmed by the effort. Thanks.
I'm not feeling any better. Republican efforts at "uniting" the country are only further infuriating me. Every slight and anti-democratic act of the last 8 years is coming back to roost with every comment they make.
And the more I think about it, the more I think I shouldn't get over this. Getting over things is what lets us give people a pass time and time again for poor behavior.
I think the only way to make sure we stay engaged to keep the country safe is to maintain perpetual and unforgiving outrage and anger.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I'm just a bit salty cause this refusal to go beyond "racism sexism xenophobia" in explaining and understanding the support Trump had just won us President Trump and a Republican Congress.
And instead of acknowledging that, all anyone wants to decry is unfairness and isms. No one wants to look at what we did wrong.
The way this campaign was run and the electorate interpreted got our side bent over a table. I'm not going to participate in an echo chamber and help set up the next crushing defeat.
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That's a whole lot of exagerration. What was actually happening, on Sake at least, was an acknowledgement of what role those things played-and a rejection of your suggestions that they played no role at all, or a small one if memory serves. Can't look at it now though.
The Clinton campaign could have done a number of things better. *Possibly* a Sanders campaign would have been victorious. But I simply don't think it's true that the loss was due only to errors, by a significant stretch.
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Also, Heisenberg, you were already 'not participating in the echo chamber'. It's not some new resolution you've made. Finally, when even Trump and his staff were surprised at their victory, I think it's safe to say things are more complicated than 'she screwed up.'
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I said it played a small one. And I stand by that. Our definitions may skew, though.
Trump won because people are angry about how the economy and their lives are going. Their antiestablishment anger overrode their distaste for the various and sundry ism quotes that flowed like a spring from Trump's mouth. I personally don't feel that them prioritizing their disgust with the establishment over their distaste for stuff like that makes them, themselves, racist etc.
Remember, before the Trumpers ever rejected the establishment Democrat, they rejected sixteen establishment Republicans. The writing for this was on the wall.
I was saying since June that, hey, just painting everyone on the other side as bigoted dumbasses and walking around with unbearable smugness realllly didn't work out too well for Britain, maybe we should rethink our strategy. And me and others saying that were given pats on the head.
We - the general liberal we, not just Sake - are still doing it. Instead of acknowledging a bad campaign and a bad candidate, and what we can do to win over those voters next time, everyone's howling about how the country is neck deep in isms.
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I never said it was a new resolution. I'm just explaining why I'm going to continue to speak as I have been doing.
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One could also say, with at least as much accuracy, that Republicans turned out to vote in non-extraordinary numbers and Democratic turnout was depressed. So no, it's not just about unrest with the status quo. And you can blame the loss on how awful Clinton was all you like, you can sneer as you have at the notion that sexism and racism had any significant part to play in Trump's victory. You can even-falsely-characterize the labeling of the loss as solely due to such things according to the 'echo chamber'.
Won't be true, though.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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We - the general liberal we, not just Sake - are still doing it. Instead of acknowledging a bad campaign and a bad candidate, and what we can do to win over those voters next time, everyone's howling about how the country is neck deep in isms.
Because the only thing that will make those voters happy is to turn back the clock to a time (when was that?) when the the America they imaging was economically sustainable. When it took zillions of small farms and lots of folks to work them because we didn't have farm machinery. When manufacturing wasn't automated so it took a lot of people to make stuff - forgetting that they were unionized so not a big window there, and before China became a modern country who produces stuff more cheaply. To reach out to them, we have to stop having a global economy. How does that happen exactly?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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So Democratic turnout was low in a year where liberal rhetoric over Trump was an 11/10 on the panic dial, but Clinton wasn't a bad candidate? She was a superbly qualified candidate, sure she was, but in an election cycle where it was clear from the beginning that being part of the establishment was something big to overcome she was also a bad one. At least, if your goal is to win the election.
There are not 60 million sexist and racist voters in this country. There are a whole lot, yes, but they all tend to vote Republican anyway. It was the moderates that on the election for Trump. They chose him because he said what people whose quality of life has gone down wanted to hear about free trade agreements and the establishment.
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I'd also genuinely be interested in seeing far left or progressive sources that are talking about this aspect of it, instead of lamenting how America is still neck deep in racists and sexists.
Posts: 572 | Registered: Jun 2013
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There are not 60 million sexist and racist voters in this country. There are a whole lot, yes, but they all tend to vote Republican anyway. It was the moderates that on the election for Trump. They chose him because he said what people whose quality of life has gone down wanted to hear about free trade agreements and the establishment.
They might not be sexist or racist but at best they did not care enough about not being sexist or racist - or homophobic - to vote against those who are and whose policies reflect that. They basically said, too bad about you and your rights but they are not really important to us.
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