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Author Topic: Presidential General Election News & Discussion Center 2016
Elison R. Salazar
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As kmboots, says, here's what I wrote in reddit:

quote:

The problem is that Trump is certainly going to support policies that will directly harm millions of people, the majority of whom are minorities; people who voted for Trump are essentially saying "Yeah, I'm okay with this."
They are okay with Don't Ask, Don't Tell, being reinstated.
They are okay with people going door to door to drag people away from friends and family and to put them on a boat back to their country of origin, where they'll likely die.
They are okay with sodomy laws being put back on the books and enforced.
They are okay with women's rights being restricted.
They are okay with the Federal government supporting a culture of racism, homophobia, islamophobia and xenophobia.
They are okay with all of this. And all of this is the tip of the iceberg.
This isn't generalizing, to support Trump you have to 100% be okay with and tolerate the fact that a good portion of people, of friends and family of the people, may very will suffer at the hands of a Trump Administration.
They are okay with this, this is objectively a fact.


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Heisenberg
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quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:
Originally posted by Heisenberg:


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?
You don't have to fix their problems. You just have to listen to them and empathise and say that you'll do your best to fix them.

This rustbelt, manufacturing, poor white, rural bloc, however you want to refer to them, they were in pain and they were being ignored. Their way of life and their lives have gotten worse, not better, over the past eight years. They blame establishment politicians and big money interests for this, as they should! You can't even call them hyprocrites, as the first people who they told to piss off were the very type of Republicans that put in place policies that enlarged the wealth gap.

So why would anyone think that they're going to rally to a person who has been in that system for 30 years, who earned huge amounts in speaking fees talking to the very people that they hate? Why would they believe a two sentence blurb on her website that was only put there to patronize the Sanders bloc when she said to Wall Street in private that she has to have a "private" opinion and a "public" one?

Blayne, there are a lot of voters who don't believe that Trump is going to do those things, and half that list are just general Republican goals anyway. It may or may not be silly to think that he won't do what he said or that which is implied by his words, but people chose to believe that because of their desperation and anger, and the hope that Trump would actually fight against those they thought responsible.

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Elison R. Salazar
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quote:

This rustbelt, manufacturing, poor white, rural bloc, however you want to refer to them, they were in pain and they were being ignored. Their way of life and their lives have gotten worse, not better, over the past eight years

The real, substantial solutions to their problems is basically some form of central planning and a massive expansion of the welfare safety net. I'm not convinced that any of them could be reasonably convinced to support such policies due to Fox News and the RWM and Think Tanks decidedly against anything that harms corporate neoliberal interests.

-Guaranteed Minimum Income.
-Affordable Housing.
-Infrastructure Investment and Jobs programs.
-Some form of the Japanese Ministry of the Economy, Industry, Trade, and Technology. Whose purpose is to "pick winners and losers" and to euthanize failing and unproductive industries, and see the seamless transition of the workers in those industries to more productive industries; long term investment into R&D, education, and training, and pursue a national trade and economy policy instead of "50 Experiments".

"We had good union paying jobs..." Those jobs are never coming back, globalism cannot be stopped. But the effects of it can be made painless through heavy government investment, planning, and intervention.

The people especially in the rural areas of the country, their livelihood is not a sustainable one. The private sector will not see the productivity or profit in their lives; there's no economy of scale; those farms will be automated and further mechanized until 1% of the population is all that is needed to maintain it.

But also that trend will continue, manufacturing, transportation, services; whole industries that employ hundreds of millions of people worldwide with automation will be entirely gone in the next 50 years; hundreds of millions of jobs will no longer exist.

You can't tax break your way out of that. Maybe they'll support the Democrats next time if the Democrats run on that platform, who knows; but the answer is definitely not rolling back the clock, which basically isn't possible.

quote:

Blayne, there are a lot of voters who don't believe that Trump is going to do those things

They are deluded and playing with fire. Like Jews who voted for Hitler, "Nah he doesn't mean US, he means the Soviet Jews..."
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kmbboots
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Oh there is no question that Trump said all those things - an people ate it up with a spoon - but he is either stupid or lying or both. Their lives are going to keep getting worse and probably faster. Again, even Republicans can't bring back a golden age that doesn't exist. The most they can do is make the lives of women, minorities, LGBTQ people worse. Which may appease them.
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TomDavidson
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Heisenberg, you realize that you're arguing "Trump voters are stupid and irrational, but at least they have their reasons."
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kmbboots
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And that, if Dems want their votes, they should just lie to them.
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Heisenberg
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I'm saying that those reasons aren't, in a majority of them, racist ones. And if the left wants to ever try to make come back from this then they'd better think of some way to reach out to the people I've talked about above.

Or, you know, we could just keep calling them all bigots and dumbasses. Maybe we could invent a fourth branch of government so we could lose that, as well.

Dumb people also vote.

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kmbboots
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Maybe the solution to that is to help them be less dumb.
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Heisenberg
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That could definitely help. We could also try to bring those angry moderates together with the angry Sanders millenials; the roots of their anger lie in the same things.

Or we try to discuss with them some of the things Blayne mentioned.

The one thing that obviously won't work is pointing at laughing at the stupidity of desperate people who really, really want to believe in the words "Make America Great Again" whilst making Uncle Daddy redneck jokes.

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kmbboots
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If even one of them had an actual answer to what they meant by "great again", that was in any way realistic or didn't boil down to straight, white, "Christian" folks on top and not having to worry about the rights of minorities, you might have a point.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
Maybe the solution to that is to help them be less dumb.

hard to do when the school systems are being continuously and purposefully gutted
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Heisenberg
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Kate I'm not even one of them and even I know what they see in that phrase.

It means an America where they and theirs don't have to struggle to get by when once, not all that long ago, they could find work and provide for themselves satisfactorily, if not in great wealth. Where they don't have to watch their towns degrade into poverty stricken shitholes without any hope that it will ever get better. Where their plight isn't systematically ignored by DC.

Now, that almost certainly can't happen in the way they think it can, true. But to reduce that slogan and what it means to "White Christian patriarchy is pissed because we can't lynch black people anymore" is both objectively insulting and guaranteed to piss them off even more, because it just proves that the people saying that aren't listening to them.

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Heisenberg
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http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/

This is a really good article, written before the election, about some of the things I'm trying to say.

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kmbboots
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quote:
Originally posted by Heisenberg:
Kate I'm not even one of them and even I know what they see in that phrase.

It means an America where they and theirs don't have to struggle to get by when once, not all that long ago, they could find work and provide for themselves satisfactorily, if not in great wealth. Where they don't have to watch their towns degrade into poverty stricken shitholes without any hope that it will ever get better. Where their plight isn't systematically ignored by DC.

Now, that almost certainly can't happen in the way they think it can, true. But to reduce that slogan and what it means to "White Christian patriarchy is pissed because we can't lynch black people anymore" is both objectively insulting and guaranteed to piss them off even more, because it just proves that the people saying that aren't listening to them.

We have been over this. When? When was that? Rural America has always been grinding poverty for most of the people there. There just isn't enough demand to make jobs for everyone who wants to live there. Guess what? People in the cities don't want to live in poverty stricken s***holes either. And DC hasn't ignored them any more than anyone else. DC has, for example, tried to keep them from going bankrupt if they need medical treatment.

I said "realistic".

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kmbboots
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quote:
Originally posted by Heisenberg:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/

This is a really good article, written before the election, about some of the things I'm trying to say.

I am pretty sure we have all read that article and responded to it by now.
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TomDavidson
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Yeah, we've all read that article. The thing is, rural voters are still largely dipshits and need to stop being rural. Everyone knows this, even rural voters.
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Heisenberg
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We're not just talking about rural farmland. We're talking about the rustbelt. The manufacturing heart of America. The very battleground states that just voted for Trump. And people there, for the most part, were able to live a comfortable middle class lifestyle.

You're right. The establishment as a whole hasn't done much of anything for poor people. But Trump at least made them think he cared about him. Clinton didn't. She called them deplorables, in fact.

But hey, Kate, by all means, you and yours continue to belittle these people and tell them that it's okay, a LOT of people are poor, just give the same establishment that got us to here another four years and it'll all be better.

I mean, we'll continue to lose elections, and all of the very real consequences of that, but at least you'll have been right.

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Heisenberg
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Sorry, I knew it was posted on Ornery, but there's a lot less crossover between here and there then there is between here and Sake.
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kmbboots
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So, again, we are back to lying and telling them that we can turn back the clock? Tell me how you are going to get manufacturing jobs in the rust belt? I mean Obama propped up the auto industry for a while but why would a corporation that makes things make them in - say - Kansas? What will make the corporation use people he has to pay a living wage to instead of automation? Why won't he send the stuff that can't be automated to China? Is the American worker going to work cheaper than the Chinese worker? Going to be okay with the same safety and working conditions? Okay. So we attack the trade agreements to try to keep foreign made good out. Of course, this will mean that the thing we do make will have a considerable smaller market. But okay. We make the things here. How much are they going to cost made here? Immigrants aren't taking American manufacturing jobs. They may be taking service jobs - food service, cab drivers, migrant workers.

You aren't listening. I am not saying it will be all better. I am saying that it is not going to be better unless they adapt to life in the 21st century. That the last people who will even try to make it better are the corporation-loving Republicans who want to further deregulate wages and workers' rights and insurance help and environmental regulations that might keep them from being poisoned.

That isn't belittling; it is respecting them enough to tell the truth.

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Heisenberg
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No. We can go in and promise to subsidize new industries in their areas. You know, like Obama did. We can do the things I listed in a post above.

Obama handed Clinton and McCain their behinds in 08 because he came in as an antiestablishment person with very little political experience. He told people that the system had failed them, and he would go to DC and fight to change that to help them. He even had a catchy yet ultimately empty catchphrase.

That sound like anyone we know?

Until things get better for people, being an outsider and/or antiestablishment candidate ultimately gives a person a massive advantage. That's how things are now.

Clinton was a poor choice of candidate from the very beginning.

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Heisenberg
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But the good news is, Chris Rock has announced he's running in 2020.
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kmbboots
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quote:
Originally posted by Heisenberg:
No. We can go in and promise to subsidize new industries in their areas. You know, like Obama did. We can do the things I listed in a post above.

Obama handed Clinton and McCain their behinds in 08 because he came in as an antiestablishment person with very little political experience. He told people that the system had failed them, and he would go to DC and fight to change that to help them. He even had a catchy yet ultimately empty catchphrase.

That sound like anyone we know?

Until things get better for people, being an outsider and/or antiestablishment candidate ultimately gives a person a massive advantage. That's how things are now.

Clinton was a poor choice of candidate from the very beginning.

And things aren't going to get better unless they adapt. Newcomer or not. Are you talking about just getting them to vote for a candidate or actually about making things better?
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Heisenberg
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Of course they have to adapt. But Clinton never targeted those voters on the issues that mattered to them. She should have.

And ultimately? Yeah. I'm trying to look on the bright side and hope Trump remains as contrary and untrue to his word as he ever has been, but the possible consequences of this election are both extreme and potentially extremely long lasting. (The Supreme Court.)

If that was the only option, Clinton should have walked in there and lied. It was that important.

Besides, rumor has it she's completely okay with having two different opinions on something, one public, one private.

Or we could have nominated the antiestablishment candidate with a 40 year long history of speaking out against the absolute shittiest things that the Federal government has done, even when it was unpopular. And who hated and publically blamed Wall Street and trade deals.

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Rakeesh
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It's clear you haven't actually read her remarks on two opinions. In, you know, a surprise to no one.

Basically what your point seems to be from how I've understood it is this: Clinton was such a bad candidate that even an obvious, flagrant liar with decades of the opposite of experience in helping non-college educated white American workers seemed like a better choice because he sounded confident and said though never offered a plan that he would make America great again.

Which has little if any bearing on decades of coordinated, virulent sexism being directed at Clinton, I'm sure. For that matter politically Trump was an outsider and anti-establishment, sure, but in terms of his life before and even during his candidacy? Economically he was *exactly* the sort of person that had been ****ing them over and destroying the American middle class.

Part of the reason his supporters were willing to overlook that was, sure, he appealed to anger at Washington. But goddamnit, part of the reason they were willing to believe that a man who flies around in a *gold-plated jet* was somehow a *populist* concerned with helping the little guy is that they had been spoonfed almost a whole generation of toxic targeting, and not a little of that was anger at an 'uppity' woman.

If your overall point is 'don't talk to supporters that way, it will be ineffective', well in fact I think you probably have a point there. But I don't think it is your point, or at least it hasn't seemed to be. I think your point is also that you want to handwave away the idea that a substantial part of why she was a bad candidate was that *any* woman who entered politics over 20 years ago on the national stage would be seriously dinged up. And if you don't want to credit that ask yourself: if you were reading this in a history book, would you credit that early entrants into politics, members of a disenfranchised group, tend to get a fair shake first time around? Or would you expect what in fact actually tends to happen, that for the pioneers it's a murderous slog with a low success rate where every strategic and tactical misstep is much more damaging and every success doesn't carry quite as far?

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Rakeesh
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quote:
Or we could have nominated the antiestablishment candidate with a 40 year long history of speaking out against the absolute shittiest things that the Federal government has done, even when it was unpopular. And who hated and publically blamed Wall Street and trade deals.
I don't like the way the media and the DNC annointed Clinton. But don't act like Bernie was a solid bet for a win.
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Elison R. Salazar
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Part of the problem though, is that many of those people are conditioned to believe in are against their best interests to an palpably Pavlovian degree.

Like I'm sure Capaxfudgebuggery or Ron, and Dan Frank if he still posts here, would all visibly whiten at the suggestions I made, because they are essentially socialism, anti-free market capitalism (even though the private sphere would benefit hugely and be mostly the ones implementing such policies!).

Oh you're in poverty? Lets pass MinCome so you won't EVER worry about starving, or not paying rent and you won't have to take the first shitty McBurger job that offers you a position.

"SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM!!!!!!!! BETTER DEAD THAN RED ARGLEBARGLE!!!!! *BLIND KNEE JERK REACTIONARY REFERENCE TO STALIN HERE!!!!!*"

Oh the jobs are leaving your state and you got laid off? Here's 100 billion dollars for your state to build a Japan/China style bullet train system so you can find work in the city but still live in the country side and you can have a job helping to build it over the next decade and save that money for earn for your retirement.


"SOCIALISM! SOCIALISM!!!!!!!! BETTER DEAD THAN RED ARGLEBARGLE!!!!! *BLIND KNEE JERK REACTIONARY REFERENCE TO STALIN HERE!!!!!*"

Look, coal power is killing people. Killing the environment. It's unproductive and unprofitable; also shale and petrol isn't good enough, we need nuclear and renewables, which invest billions into R&D and start ups and fund major companies/firms to convert our grid to a green and sustainable one.

"THATS THE GOVERNMENT PICKING WINNERS AND LOSERS! CLIMATE CHANGE IS A CONSPIRACY BY LIEBERAL 'SCIENTISTS' WHO DON\'T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT! THEY ARE PAID BY CHYNA! IT SNOWED MAN LAST WEEK HOW CAN IT BE WARMING!? SOCIALISM! ARGLEBARGLE!"

They seriously don't understand that change is coming and it's going to lead to a catastrophic wealth gap that the 'free market' can't fix, the invisible hand is a myth. The only answer by then when it is too late is armed revolution like in 1917 or 1949; climate change is going to make people desperate when hundreds of millions of people are forced to leave their homes and migrate inland and further crowd the cities.

Then there is the racism aspect; many of the people that Trump appealed to genuinely want more government services but not if people who don't "deserve" it can also access those systems, aka black people and illegals.

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Heisenberg
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Hey, thanks for the backhanded insult, Rakeesh, but I've read the quote and her explanation of it's meaning.

She's willing to say one thing in public and another in private to help negotiate with the opposition.

Have many of the attacks on her been based on sexism? Of course.

I've thoroughly disliked her for a while, and it's because of poor past judgment, an inherent dislike of establishment politicians, and a closeness with Wall Street and special interests that I find distasteful. I'm a Sanders millenial. The only other politician that I've actually admired was Obama. And I'd feel the same about anyone with her record, man or woman.

I think there were many Trump voters who felt the same way I did about her, for the same reasons, with the added incentive that he wasn't a politician and promised great things. And while there were obviously voters who wouldn't vote for her because she was a woman, (like with Obama/race), I believe that the number of voters in the first group vastly outnumbered them.

You disagree, and neither of us is going to change the other's mind. Shall we just agree to disagree before we end up just insulting each other?

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Heisenberg
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quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:
Or we could have nominated the antiestablishment candidate with a 40 year long history of speaking out against the absolute shittiest things that the Federal government has done, even when it was unpopular. And who hated and publically blamed Wall Street and trade deals.
I don't like the way the media and the DNC annointed Clinton. But don't act like Bernie was a solid bet for a win.
As for this, there's no way to look into a parallel universe.

But Sanders was a populist antiestablishment politician with a pristine voting record. He had all of the angry populist support of Trump without the dumbassery, isms, and just general Trumpiness.

He would have zeroed out many of Trump's best advantages with the battleground state voters that mattered, by virtue of speaking to them in the same way without the sickening stuff.

I am completely certain he would have done better then Clinton.

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Heisenberg
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Look I do my posting from a phone. So sometimes, especially in long posts, I end up forgetting what was said in the latter half of what I'm responding to.

Yes. It is absolutely my point that talking down to the other side like they're automatically bigots and racists and idiots is absolutely asinine and probably cost us this election. That there were reasons beyond that to back Trump and reject Clinton.

In reference to what you said my other point was. I've said from the beginning, sexism played a part. She's gone through a lot of shit that she shouldn't have, and she has had to work harder then a man would. She has also done and said things that would also make me dislike a man. You can believe that, or just assume I'm sexist, I guess.

[ November 11, 2016, 07:15 PM: Message edited by: Heisenberg ]

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Heisenberg
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On a different note, the one we may have to really worry about is Pence.

The Congress is still in the hands of establishment Republicans, who really don't like Trump.

Because it's Trump, it's almost a guarantee that he's going to do something impeachable at some point. If he's done enough to piss Congress off, I can see them showing him the door to get Pence.

And unlike Trump, who you can at least hope will forget what he'd said he'd do, or change his mind on something because it's been like two weeks, Pence is a straight up conservative who has worked all his political life in service of the most vile Republican ideals. Pence, Ryan, and McConnell would get shit DONE in pretty much the worst possible way.

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Samprimary
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they are going to use him to get nearly as much done anyway.
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Nato
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What a week. Here's a bit of a braindump:

quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
I don't like the way the media and the DNC annointed Clinton. But don't act like Bernie was a solid bet for a win.

We can't peer into alternate timelines, we can only look at the evidence that's available to us. As much talk as there was in May of the dubious nature of the hypothetical head-to-head polling showing a Sanders landslide and a Clinton squeaker, those polls were pretty close on Clinton's popular vote margin after all.

In terms of positioning, Sanders would have done pretty well. He could speak to the issues that drove voters to Trump while contrasting favorably to Trump on issues that Clinton was unable to, like connections to the wealthy banks and the political insiders who ignored people's needs for so long. The polling and strategic argument for why Sanders would have won this election big is so strong that people who doubt it should probably have to provide evidence of why they think Sanders, currently the most popular (by approval rating) politician on the national stage, would have lost to the worst Republican candidate in our lifetimes.

--

I don't blame Clinton for running, and I supported her campaign in the general after she beat the candidate who I thought had a much better path to a much larger Democratic victory in the fall. She's got some great experience for the job. But also some history and a very cautious strategy that wouldn't have led to much positive change. She buys into a lot of assumptions about how the world works that lock us in those patterns, and some of those assumptions are really disturbing, like the necessity of bombing wedding parties with drones. She faced some very fair criticism and additional measures of criticism that others have not had to face. For some reason, it wasn't really brought up by politicians that the Bush White House used RNC email servers and lost 22 million emails... somehow others have gotten away with that. Sexism is a real dynamic in the campaign, and let's call it out where it exists and try to remove those obstacles from the path in 2018 and 2020, but we can't use "sexism" as a reason not to talk about problems with a candidate. But there were many other reasons she was a poor strategic choice for a candidate in 2016.

This week is bad, gives me a bad feeling about the quality of American democracy, but what was really scaring me in 2014 was that we were going to be stuck with a Clinton v a Bush when what the world needed was change to so many of the assumptions that have been built up over decades. We got a differently hellish battle that has made the world a pretty awful place to turn on the TV news in for the last 12 months, but we almost got the Democratic candidate that would have excited millions of Americans to vote for something, not against.

I do blame the DNC for not running a fair primary that could have been a proof point that the Democratic Party is the institution that aims to improve our democracy and electoral systems. (Why is Donna Brazile allowed near the office this week?) They could have tried building a movement based on reducing the impact of money in elections and providing fair competition and voting rules that promote the ability for the people to make the best ideological and strategic decision for a presidential candidate to run in the general. Instead, we have DNC staff and hundreds of "superdelegates" who chose their candidate before the primary season started and weren't interested in debates or public participation of the electorate to help them choose. Those insiders chose to be a party closed to the voices of people who were frustrated with a Democratic Party that isn't really all that democratic. That choice lost them the general election, and they need to be held accountable for that. We need a party that can improve democracy in this country. Let's see if the left wing of the party gets to take a chance at building that movement now that the centrist wing failed to even try.

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Ron Lambert
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Some people are trying to make an issue out of the fact that though Trump won convincingly in the Electoral College, he did not win the popular vote. But it is not much of an issue, since the difference in the popular vote was only 395,050. That is out of over 120 million who voted. That small difference could be explained by the dead people who Democrats got to vote for them. [Wink]

Now we are beginning to hear Trump walking back some of his more extreme statements, even suggesting he might preserve some parts of Obamacare. I said this might happen back when he was waging his nomination battle with more worthy candidates, like Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. As I and others have pointed out, Trump has been a lifelong liberal Democrat, and even gave substantial donations to Hillary's presidential bid in 2008. I'm just glad the Clinton crime family did not get to take over the White House. We'll have to see how many of his promises Trump keeps. The first real test will come in whom he nominates to replace Justice Anton Scalia on the Supreme Court.

[ November 11, 2016, 09:50 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]

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Heisenberg
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Great post, Nato. I agree with every word.
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Samprimary
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hang on though

quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
By the way, Ron, congrats on not being completely wrong for the second time in your history here at Hatrack.

so

did ron make a prediction trump was going to win? i thought he did earlier, but because trump actually won, now i'm wondering if that's a prediction ron actually made

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Elison R. Salazar
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quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
Some people are trying to make an issue out of the fact that though Trump won convincingly in the Electoral College, he did not win the popular vote. But it is not much of an issue, since the difference in the popular vote was only 395,050. That is out of over 120 million who voted. That small difference could be explained by the dead people who Democrats got to vote for them. [Wink]

Actually the Electoral College is a huge issue.

See here

Also here

Basically your ignorance in this topic is no surprise, but don't pretend for one second that the Electoral College isn't fundamentally a problem with American Democracy that is a ticking timebomb to Civil War as soon as it's ever tied.

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Ron Lambert
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Elison, what would really create a crisis with the Electoral College would be for some of the electors not to vote the way the people voted--which they are free to do. Imagine what would happen if the electors chose to make Hillary the winner!

The Electoral College is not a big enough issue for any real organized effort to be made to do away with it. Where is the legislation that would be needed? This is only talked about after an election that has been hotly contested, where the sore losers wish things could have been different.

It would be far more profitable to inquire honestly why so many African-Americans chose not to vote in this election. Almost a third less voted in Detroit alone, compared to 2012. And remember, Trump's total margin of victory in Michigan was only 13,225. True, Trump did not need to win Michigan--but he did need to win Pennsylvania, and Florida, and Ohio, and North Carolina--all of which have large African-American populations.

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Heisenberg
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Imma break it down for you, Ronnie.

The debate over the electoral college is a debate over whether the individual states themselves should have more say over who is President, or whether it should be a popular vote. Which do you think it should be? And why?

And personally, I agree with you. Donald Trump is a leaf in the wind, and I'm absolutely hoping that the breeze shifts him away from conservative causes now that he's won the presidency and had his ego stroked.

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Heisenberg
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Also for this election cycle, and in this political climate, Clinton was an awful Democratic candidate. You might as well ask why Whitey McScrooge didn't have the best of turnouts in 2012.

Enjoy your victory. I personally am hoping it'a ephemeral at best and Trump stays Trumpian. If not, rest assured that me and mine will be fighting you and yours every single centimeter of the way.

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SenojRetep
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quote:
Originally posted by SenojRetep:
So where does that 16% of the vote go? Does it split evenly between the two candidates? Or swing more toward one or the other? This chart maps out how undecideds broke in several close Senate contests over the past few elections. I'm not sure of the methodology, but it appears that in most cases the 'undecideds' seem to break disproportionately toward one candidate or another.

If this translates to the Presidential election, it means that this election could still be a blowout either way, with Trump winning Oregon or Minnesota, or Clinton winning Georgia or Arizona. Or, if the shifts are idiosyncratic, it could mean a large deviation from the fairly consistent red/blue maps we've seen over the last four elections.

In the end, it was sort of a mix of these things; Clinton got unexpectedly close in Georgia and Arizona, and of course Trump overtook her in the mid-West (although he didn't quite capture Minnesota).

Here's how undecideds broke for a few signficant states, courtesy of FiveThirtyEight:

State/Clinton share/Trump share
Wisconsin 30% 59%
Minnesota 31 53
Utah 19 41
Iowa 34 54
Pennsylvania 37 54
Florida 38 55
Maine 33 49
New Hampshire 37 52
Michigan 39 50
North Carolina 41 49
New Mexico 41 46
Ohio 43 46
Virginia 45 42
Nevada 45 40
Georgia 52 42

I wonder whether the results portend anything permanent or if they really are just idiosyncratic shifts. Do PA, OH, WI, MI become Republicans to lose in 2018 and beyond? Are AZ, GA, TX on the brink of being purple states? If so, this could be a transition between the coastal vs. interior red blue maps we've seen for 20-30 years and the beginning of a more North/South map dominated by a labor divide between the old industrial base in the North and Sun Belt Latino-infused labor in the South.

Personally I lean toward it being idiosyncratic, especially given Trump as the GOP standard bearer. I imagine he will disappoint those who put him in office almost right away and they will go back to feeling frustrated and ignored and we'll slide back into ideological, progressive vs. conservative politics.

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Elison R. Salazar
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quote:
Originally posted by Ron Lambert:
Elison, what would really create a crisis with the Electoral College would be for some of the electors not to vote the way the people voted--which they are free to do. Imagine what would happen if the electors chose to make Hillary the winner!

The Electoral College is not a big enough issue for any real organized effort to be made to do away with it. Where is the legislation that would be needed? This is only talked about after an election that has been hotly contested, where the sore losers wish things could have been different.

It would be far more profitable to inquire honestly why so many African-Americans chose not to vote in this election. Almost a third less voted in Detroit alone, compared to 2012. And remember, Trump's total margin of victory in Michigan was only 13,225. True, Trump did not need to win Michigan--but he did need to win Pennsylvania, and Florida, and Ohio, and North Carolina--all of which have large African-American populations.

The reasons why Hillary lost is something the Democratic Party will be intensely studying and debating going forward, it looks like Keith Ellison will be made the new DNC Chair meaning the party will embrace the Bernie Sanders wing for their strategy going forward; so you better prey that Trump is only a mediocre President because we might actually get a real progressive and economic populist candidate for 2020, who will win if Trump is the dumpster fire we all think he is.

As for the Electoral College did you click the links? We now have five times in US history in which not only has it produced a result that did not reflect the will of the people; but even you should look at the map of the counties that went Democrat and realize that the Electoral College does not actually do the job of having the States have a say in picking the next President.

Look at his second video and not only is it possible to win the Electoral College with only 25% of the vote (a failure of Democracy) but the real issue is that only a minority of swing states actually matter for choosing the next President.

Remember, Republican turnout was roughly the same it was the last two elections; Democratic turnout is what fell; so if Democratic turnout recovers to it's 2012 level for 2020 the Democrats win because they only need to win in Florida because they'll have carried all the other states they need because of the metropolitan areas.

As the US population grows and the metro areas become denser the importance of a few States, most notably the states that all were leaning Dem in polling plus Texas (further highlighting that Demographics may make Texas a purple state over the next decade or two).

Even you should see this as a structural failure of the Electoral College because it means the Democrats may, as soon as they correct their messaging and choose better candidates for office to fix their turnout will just have a permanent lock on the Presidency.

The problem with the Electoral College is a structural and long term disaster that only needs a 269-269 tie once, or as you say the Electors awarding the Presidency against the will of the people for civil war to occur; even if it is merely for cynical reasons you should support it's reform as an important issue; this is a fundamental issue with your democracy.

Additionally the House should be elected via Single Transferable Voting and not First Past the Post and the Presidency should be elected via Alternative Vote to avoid further undemocratic outcomes. You should ALSO support this because STV would lead to an increased amount of Republican representation in deeply blue states like New York.

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NobleHunter
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Speaking of Democratic turn out, has any seen any hard data on the effects of the various voter suppression, I mean anti-fraud measures? I saw one article that talked about the Voters Rights Act but it didn't have actual numbers.
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Elison R. Salazar
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I think it made the difference in NC, but it shouldn't have come down to that.
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Heisenberg
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It's easy to talk about changing how voting would work.

In reality, it would take 2/3 of State (majority Republican) legislatures going along with it. Who here sees that happening?

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Ron Lambert
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Good point, Heisenberg. In case anyone is not aware, it will require a Constitutional Amendment to get rid of the Electoral College--which means 2/3 of both houses of Congress must vote in favor of the amendment, and 3/4 of all state legislatures must vote in favor. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_amendment

As for the vain attempt to link voter ID verification with voter suppression, only a person who intends to perpetrate voter fraud would object to voters being required to present proper identification to vote. After all, you have to do this to get a driver's license, or fly on a plane, etc. Characterizing this as "voter suppression" is utterly irrational. It is interesting that only Democrats feel the need to object to voter ID verification.

[ November 12, 2016, 01:38 PM: Message edited by: Ron Lambert ]

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NobleHunter
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Last time I checked, there was no constitutional right to drive or fly. Not to mention I'm just characterizing it as described by some of its proponents.

The Electoral College can be worked around if the states agree to assign electors based on the results of the national popular vote (I'm feeling too lazy to look up what they're calling it). Once states totally 270 votes have agreed the Electoral College would always reflect the popular vote. No amendment required.

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Heisenberg
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TFW you realize that you've been living in Europe long enough that you automatically describe incremental changes in centimeters instead of inches.
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Ron Lambert
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I thought I had come up with an original name for the president-elect: Trumplestiltskin. Unfortunately, when I Googled the name, I discovered someone had already thought of it.
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Ron Lambert
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NobleHunter, I have a constitutional right not to have someone else pretend to be me and vote in my name.

I also have a constitutional right to expect of my country that we have honest elections.

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NobleHunter
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Only insofar as it interferes with your ability to vote.
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