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quote:The modern economy privileges the well-educated and highly-skilled, while giving them an excuse to denigrate the people at the bottom (both white and nonwhite) as lazy, untalented, uneducated, and unsophisticated. In a society focused on meritocratic, materialistic success, many well-off Americans from across the political spectrum scorn the white working class in particular for holding onto religious superstitions and politically incorrect views, and pity them for working lousy jobs at dollar stores and fast-food restaurants that the better-off rarely set foot in. And when other sources of meaning are hard to come by, those who struggle in the modern economy can lose their sense of self-worth. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/spiritual-crisis-modern-economy/511067/ The article acknowledges that racism/sexism etc could also have been a factor, but I think this essay is really penetrating, and it's raises the sort of issues that the neo-liberal establishment that was against Bernie Sanders doesn't want to touch. It would appear that many working class Americans have a huge amount of resentment of liberals, and voted for Trump to piss those people off...but I wonder if economic resentment had to have been a factor in that. The shifting nature of the U.S economy means the off-shoring or doing away with (via automation) of many jobs held by America's middle and working classes. These American middle and working class people find themselves in a bit of philosophical pickle though. They believe in meritocracy, because they hope to attain material comfort and the status that come with it, at the same time, economic and technological forces are undermining their competitive edge such that a lot of the economic gains of the modern era are going to coastal professionals and the super-wealthy. A lot of these working class and middle class people (who feel the economic pressure) sense that they are losing out in the very same system they believed in, but they can't exactly declare that they are angry because they feel like losers...hence the incoherence of their politics. These issues also animated the Bernie Sanders campaign, which truly spoke to the moment more than Hillary Clinton's ridiculous "more of the status quo" promises. Trump did to Hillary what Obama did to Romney: She was painted as someone who would make the economic situation of the working class as worse. Regardless of whether or not voters were naive to believe in Trump's message, it's clear that him directly addressing these issues in a way that played into the economic discontent of many people in middle America undeniably gave him the edge, and it was a disaster for the Democratic establishment to push aside Bernie Sanders. This could very well be the future -- the endless rage of the losers of the new economy who feel undignified. ps: i work as a security guard and I drive uber in the east coast usa
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Dec 29, 2016 06:50
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No op. Hillary campaign had its head up its rear end and failed us.
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Dec 29, 2016 06:54
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Hillary ran a perfect campaign and it is because she was too perfect that we don't have President Hillary. Any analysis is futile. That is the conclusion. No other conclusions exist nor are they acceptable unless you can prove to me that they are relevant using appropriate sabermetrics.
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Dec 29, 2016 07:34
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Republicans focused their propaganda in media that huge numbers of working class, voting age white people actually use: radio. There is no Democratic Rush Limbaugh out there. An entire generation (or two) of middle Americans has been brainwashed by Rush and his copycats. And they're absolutely convinced now that, outside of Fox, everything is "the liberal media." So good luck trying to win them back with MSNBC.
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Dec 29, 2016 07:38
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I don't think a lot of people really understand this issue. But, it's very simple. There are two sides, both accurate: 1. Hillary voters dose of reality: Hillary is a poo poo candidate in any setting and the Democrats really loving blew it by letting the Clintonian masterminds wrangle all of the turds in this year's poo poo-show fiesta, when they should have had this election cycle wrapped up as of January 2016. Notice I didn't say "Bernie Sanders would have won." We will never know if that would have happened. Quit fantasizing about it. He won't run in 2020, so instead of wondering "what might have happened" and trying to find blame for this whole fiasco elsewhere just point at the candidate who lost, and instead wonder "what would have happened if the 2016 Democratic party wasn't the second worst American political party ever." And, you know what? Obama could have helped here; people look up to him and are inspired by him. And if he was running in 2016, he would have won. That's not even wishful thinking. He could have - should have - worked harder to usher in a successor, but for whatever reason just didn't. Conversely, unlike BObama, no people like lying, crooked Hillary the USMC murdering crooked liar. Nobody likes her. That's why she lost. She is not well liked. Because, yes, it is a popularity contest, and you have to get people to vote for you by making them like you - not by categorizing everyone into little hateful stereotypes. Racist, misogynist, religious nut, homophobe, uneducated and/or stupid (but not retarded, because "words") are all words that were used, either one at a time or in some combination, to describe the majority of voters, including myself, at one time or another throughout the campaign. Hillary's general overall tone and demeanor make a poor impression. I voted for her because she's more qualified to be POTUS than DTrump. But I sure didn't vote for her because I like her. I reasoned that she would be capable of doing the job. But that is the best thing you can say about Hillary Clinton. She's "adequate." Joe "Big Fuckin' Deal" Biden would have carried this election without even breaking a sweat if he wanted to run. But he didn't, and the Democrats let their lovely party leaders trot out Ol' Kegleg without any thought for the future. gently caress them; they let you down, they let me down, they even let the loving GOP down by not picking a figurehead that people could actually relate to more than they can relate to millionaire scumbag fratboy raping Donald "Grab them right in the pussy" Trump. They didn't listen to what was being said, didn't pay attention to what was happening, didn't even care. 2. Trump voters also have something to say: Not all Trump voters are racist, misogynist, religious nuts, homophobes, uneducated and/or stupid people that have no clue what they have just unleashed on America and the rest of the world. Most of them are, quite frankly, just regular people trying to make the best of their situation. They almost uniformly find Donald Trump to be a loving rich-entitled douchebag that would be an embarrassment at a holiday dinner, but that any candidate would be a better choice than Hillary loving Clinton, who we just cannot seem to wipe from our shoes. She's always hanging on, and she's a lovely stinker that would have been a weak, weak, weak and possibly nation-imploding POTUS. DTrump proved that you do not have to be "likeable" in absolute terms, just "likeable" in relative terms - i.e. relative to your opponent - in politics. And no, talk radio had nothing to do with this. People do not listen to talk radio if they can help it. Even if they live in Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, or anywhere else that is a perpetually red state. Fox News did everything they could to hand the election to Ted loving Cruz, but the people wouldn't have it, because he's so terrible. Again, DTrump is relatively better than Ted loving Cruz. The entire Republican party and the right wing media tried to DRail DTrump, but they couldn't do it, because every single GOP presidential candidate hopeful in the last 16 years has been a goddamn piece of poo poo, except for maybe Mittens, but he was both a) incredibly boring, rich, and out of touch, and b) running against BObama. Contrast Mittens to DTrump. DTrump is both a) definitely not boring while somehow remaining to be filthy loving rich and totally out of touch with any reality in any sphere of existence, and b) definitely not running against BObama. He didn't say a goddamn thing about what a horrible person and terrible POTUS BObama is/was after he wrapped up the nomination, because - and it doesn't take a genius to figure this out - BObama wasn't running, and is in fact rather well regarded by quite a few Americans and attacking Ol' Kegleg directly would only be marginally harder than winning the GOP nomination against the wishes of the entirety of the elected GOP and the FoxNews lapdogs. People voted for DTrump because they were so loving sick and tired of the rest of the failed bullshit their party had been force-feeding them ever since Reagan died that they felt they had to do something to keep Hillary out of the White House. They didn't vote for him because they were hateful racist bigoted homophobes trying to ensure the final slide of the American middle class right into the losing end of a certain Ayn Rand novel's political discourse. No no no. They loving hated the same old goddamn shitheads being trotted out every 4 years to see who could suck Zombie Reagan's cock the hardest - they hated their own party's other candidates as much as - if not more than - they hate Hillary. And further, if you can step back for a second from the safe space of the HuffPo/Atlantic blogosphere, you'll find that all of those reasons people can list to hate DTrump, his voters - notice I didn't say "supporters," I'm talking about people that actually showed up to vote for him - just don't get that worked up about those reasons. That's really the bottom line here. Taking great swathes of the entire voting population and classifying them as one or more varieties of bigots is rather offputting, to be quite frank. And rather loving dumb. Donald Trump offended just about every category of minority there is. True. Hillary Clinton and the Left Wing Scream Machine offended majorities of eligible voters. And that's just loving stupid. It's goddamn dumb and it's got to stop. And the Left Wing was sooooo busy pointing out what a terrible person DTrump is, for whatever hideous thing he has done or has said, that they missed out on the most important thing that there is in an election, which is what matters to the American people as a whole rather than a collection of single-issue minority agenda statements. Most Americans - indeed, most GOP voters - are not racist. They are just not black. Branding all of them as racists because they live in the world of the communities they live in and the people they work with or see in their neighborhood every day is loving dumb. Most Americans - indeed, most GOP voters - are not homophobes. They are just not gay. Branding all of them as homophobes because they live in the world of man/woman sex is loving dumb. You can go down the line with every category of bigotry that there is. All of them somehow got stirred to the top of the melting pot of democracy this year. It will be the same. Most Americans - indeed, most GOP voters - are not bigots. But bigotry, in one form or another, is all the loving politicians and media talk about anymore. And people are loving sick of it. And that's why DTrump is going to be our president. Because everyone was so busy pointing fingers at all the bigots & SJWs out there that nobody was talking about anything that mattered. So we should all stop trying to figure out what the gently caress is wrong with people that voted for DTrump, because the VAST MAJORITY of them are just normal people who don't hate anybody, are not statistically dumber than average, and just live their own lives and don't want or need to relate to anything or anyone else. The VAST MAJORITY of them absolutely believe in equality and fairness, because that's what we as Americans believe in. Instead, we should focus on what the gently caress is wrong with the Democratic party that they couldn't put forth a relatable, credible, engaging, inspiring candidate, and what the gently caress is wrong with the GOP that they couldn't control their own ticket at all but somehow got all three branches of the federal government handed to them on a silver loving platter and are going to work as hard as they can to gently caress it up over the next 100 days. We are at war, and have been continually at war for the last 20 years. Is anybody talking about that? Anybody? No. The closest thing to that that we are talking about at all is whether or not all muslims should be deported - because that both will happen and is constitutional, right? Is anybody talking about how the middle class has lost all stability whatsoever over the last 40 years? No; we're talking about trannies in bathrooms. OP that article was loving terrible. That's not an attack on you. The article itself is loving dripping with elitist bullshit and it makes me sick. Except for this paragraph: quote:In turn, some well-off Americans show their contempt for working-class whites in particular by calling them deluded—zombies under the sway of right-wing myths, zealots obsessed with pointless cultural symbols like flags and guns, or captives of other myriad forms of false consciousness. Indeed, in trying to diagnose their predicament, Democratic politicians have sometimes trivialized it—President Obama, in recorded comments at a 2008 fundraiser about how working-class voters from small towns “cling to guns or religion,” and Clinton, in her leaked remarks to donors suggesting that half of Trump’s supporters were a bigoted “basket of deplorables.” (Mitt Romney, of course, also wrote off a wide swath of Americans in his 2012 presidential run when—speaking at yet another private fundraiser—he expressed disdain for the “47 percent” of Americans who were “dependent upon government” and felt “entitled” to assistance.) Even if Obama and Clinton’s words in context were more nuanced and empathetic than is often acknowledged, statements of this sort can feed the long-held view among the white working class that those preaching economic enlightenment from up high do not take their concerns seriously. Unfortunately, that was the paragraph that the author included to give lip service to the adverse position of his thesis, and so I can only imagine the little smirky sneer he had on his face as he tapped it all out on his MacBook Air. Don't buy into the poo poo that this rear end in a top hat is shoveling. The 2016 election is not hard to figure out, and the amazing thing to me is that so many people turned out at all.
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Dec 29, 2016 10:48
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I agree with all your details, which are made all the worse by the blatant attempt of Clinton's allies to take the blame off of themselves by blaming James Comey, Russia, "fake news" etc for the loss. I had to motivate myself like crazy to vote for Hillary Clinton, and simply going out to vote felt like a chore in a way it didn't in 2008 and 12. She is unlikable. I think there are real clear tensions between segments of the Democratic party -- the working class and professional/elite classes. Obama managed to smooth over these tensions, but Hillary simply could not, which is why a lot of Democrats just stayed home quote:People voted for DTrump because they were so loving sick and tired of the rest of the failed bullshit their party had been force-feeding them ever since Reagan died that they felt they had to do something to keep Hillary out of the White House. They didn't vote for him because they were hateful racist bigoted homophobes trying to ensure the final slide of the American middle class right into the losing end of a certain Ayn Rand novel's political discourse. No no no. They loving hated the same old goddamn shitheads being trotted out every 4 years to see who could suck Zombie Reagan's cock the hardest - they hated their own party's other candidates as much as - if not more than - they hate Hillary. The difference is that Donald Trump addressed the economic anxieties of those voters in a way none of those other Republicans could, and Hillary would not. The key factor in this election (aside from Hillary's awfulness as a candidate) is the many former Obama voters who just stayed home or came out to vote for Trump. Focusing merely on Hillary's unpopularity kind of glosses over the fact that the professional and elite class of Democrats were very excited by her candidacy and the working class Dems were significantly indifferent or hostile, because they didn't see Hillary Clinton as someone who cared about their interests the same way the more coastal and prosperous Democratic voters did.
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Dec 29, 2016 11:18
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Aging Millenial posted:The difference is that Donald Trump addressed the economic anxieties of those voters in a way none of those other Republicans could, and Hillary would not. The key factor in this election (aside from Hillary's awfulness as a candidate) is the many former Obama voters who just stayed home or came out to vote for Trump. Focusing merely on Hillary's unpopularity kind of glosses over the fact that the professional and elite class of Democrats were very excited by her candidacy and the working class Dems were significantly indifferent or hostile, because they didn't see Hillary Clinton as someone who cared about their interests the same way the more coastal and prosperous Democratic voters did. It might have helped if Hillary had remembered to campaign in the mid west once or twice during the general election. Nothing says 'I don't give a poo poo about you or your concerns' like literally never visiting a state after the primary.
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Dec 29, 2016 12:57
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He won because those people are losers, and rather than work on the necessary actions to not be losers, they would rather elect someone who will gently caress things up, so their loserdom is justified. Who cares if life is hard for everyone? That's a good thing, it removes the burden to actually attempt to be a worthwhile human being because hey the system's stacked, what chance did I have etc.
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Dec 29, 2016 16:00
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I think these dissatisfied blue-collar guys were the tipping factor that won the election in states that would normally have been in the bag for the Democrats. So, yes, they won the election for Trump. But they weren't the largest part of those who voted for Trump - most Trump voters were simply loyal Republicans who would have voted for a stuffed carp with a "R" after its name. There's always going to be losers in any economy. And they have a tendency to vote for whoever is not in power. This is why power tends to flip parties between presidencies.
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Dec 29, 2016 16:40
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Aging Millenial posted:
Hello again, I won't repeat my 5 AM drunken nonsense with another 3 page long post, but thanks for reading it. Much obliged. But I just want to point out the highlighted portion of your post I quoted. . . the "professional and elite" class of Democrats are a very, very small number of people and are not, in fact, united by a love of Hillary Clinton. In fact, this very small group of people, when they have agreed on anything at all, have time and again failed to even try to make a case to the real power of any political party, which is the voters. Even that rear end in a top hat that wrote the article could barely go three paragraphs without in one way or another writing something that vilified the working class. The whole tone came off as a call to pity the working class for their dumbness. But the working class isn't dumb - in fact the author does point out in more than a few places that the working-class people that he spoke with - I'm sure that it was a big sacrifice for him to descend from his ivory tower to meet the help - that the working class views higher education as an essential component of success. This should at least have given the author a moment's pause to reflect on the implications and also on the realities of the working class today. More working-class young adults are in college now or have already graduated from college than any previous time in American history. This higher education component is one of the 'dividing lines' that are arbitrarily drawn to separate the "elites" from the "help," and (surprise, surprise) somehow the flooding of younger generations with larger percentages of people with higher education as a checked-off box on the "ladder to success" checklist has not produced a magical golden age of modern liberalism. It just hasn't. So, in other words, the Democratic elites and what they believe and what they get excited about carries little weight. Nobody listens to them. And when we consider all of Hollywood and the liberal media (such as it is. . . I don't find there to be some giant conspiracy here so much as it is a bunch of bloggers quoting each other) that stumped for Hillary in one way or another you have to consider the entire environment surrounding the 2016 election cycle. For one thing, nobody other than total loving assholes were vocal about their support of Donald Trump. This left a huge news media void that sucked up any sort of opinion that could be wrangled out of anybody with a recognizable name and/or face and blasted it all over the headlines. And even then, the message was more "we can't let Donald Trump be President" than "hey Hillary is pretty awesome." That is not an argument from a position of strength that is going to motivate people. I submit that it would have worked against Ted Cruz, who is actively hated by everyone who has ever met him - but not against Donald Trump. These supporting voices for Hillary only appeared to be popular endorsements because nobody was actively endorsing Donald Trump except for the "basket of deplorables." Now the "Obama voters who stayed home" are another thing - and they are real - but what they are is the so-called "undecided vote." Yeah, they voted for Obama, because they liked him well enough. They stayed home because of Hillary and Trump. Neither one of these two could motivate a bowel movement, much less getting a significant amount of voters who otherwise would not vote to do so. Neither Hillary nor Trump even tried to drag these folks out of their homes to the polls, and nobody who has not decided to vote for a candidate either as an endorsement of the candidate or a general endorsement of the party by the date of the election is going to vote at all. I've got to tell you that personally as a non-party affiliated voter it was very hard to be motivated for Hillary Clinton. She does nothing for me. And also, this sentence: quote:Focusing merely on Hillary's unpopularity kind of glosses over the fact that the professional and elite class of Democrats were very excited by her candidacy and the working class Dems were significantly indifferent or hostile, because they didn't see Hillary Clinton as someone who cared about their interests the same way the more coastal and prosperous Democratic voters did. Again, this isn't a personal attack. But look at how you've structured this: you've made a dividing line between "coastal and prosperous" slash "professional and elite" Democratic voters and "working class" Democrats. This shows that you believe that the "coastal and prosperous" Democrats are both more worthy and more important than "working class" Democrats. Otherwise, Hillary's unpopularity is very relevant: if the "coastal and prosperous" "professional and elite" Democrats significantly outnumber the working class Democrats, then yes; focusing on Hillary's unpopularity with the "working class" Democrats is in fact glossing over her unpopularity. But quite obviously - and I hope that you agree - the "elites" are a far smaller number of the total population group of Democrats than the "working class." So - focusing on her unpopularity is entirely the point. She utterly and completely fails to inspire confidence in her ability to lead. She is not well liked by enough people to be elected. . . and, as we can see, being well liked by the "right people" (i.e.: the coastal, prosperous, professional and elite Democrats) is not the most important factor in carrying an election. Popularity is the most important factor. Check out this article: http://www.270towin.com/news/2016/12/22/2016-alternate-electoral-methods-a-preliminary-look_437.html#.WGVHWPkrKM8 The article puts forth several different methodologies for vote allocation that still take into account the electoral college. In not one of those methodologies does Clinton win. We know that Clinton won the straight popular vote, true. But that factual piece of information only paints a half truth: on the one hand, it does tend to weigh against my point that "popularity is the most important factor," because if the popular vote wins the race then we would be looking at a Clinton presidency. On the other hand - and this is the unfortunate truth - the president is not elected by popular vote, and if the president was elected by popular vote the candidates would have run very different races and the results would have been very different. So, that very simple popular vote number isn't statistically significant (it's based on irrelevant facts - it's almost the same as saying "Trump won because more white people voted for him, and that's why Obama won twice as well." Trump and Obama both carried the white vote, but does anyone really believe that this was the sole factor deciding all three presidential elections mentioned? Of course not. . . the white vote is factually irrelevant). Instead, the popularity that matters is the ability to win electoral college votes, which means winning states. Here, Trump won "in spades." Clinton failed miserably. She carried 43% of the votes that matter. That's not even close. Not a Step illustrates this a few posts above this one. Clinton failed to contest for votes that matter. Had she put forth any effort to go after electoral votes instead of cowering in the safety of New York and California we'd be seeing a completely different picture - there were somewhere between 138 and 203 electoral votes up for grabs, depending on how you count the ones that are initially just going one way or another no matter what (i.e.: TX, CA, NY, states like that) and Clinton royally hosed almost all of them up. "Coastal and prosperous, professional and elite" Democrats are not powerful voters. They are a quite distinct minority even in New York and California. They don't matter and what they think doesn't matter in an election. That's the truth. Look, nobody is saying that Hillary Clinton ever stood a chance of carrying Texas. But even appearing to give a poo poo about, say, Florida and Michigan would have handed her all the votes she needed to win. But, yes. Donald Trump did, in his own way, address the economic anxieties that Clinton would not address. That's absolutely true. And immigration and terrorism are important matters, which decisively went towards Trump's favor. But let's look at a hard loving truth here: Clinton was Secretary of State when Bin Laden was killed and the Obama administration in general has been very hawkish on terrorism, and she got loving slaughtered on the issue. Just that factoid alone speaks volumes about her unpopularity.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:24
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KaiserSchnitzel posted:But let's look at a hard loving truth here: Clinton was Secretary of State when Bin Laden was killed and the Obama administration in general has been very hawkish on terrorism, and she got loving slaughtered on the issue. Just that factoid alone speaks volumes about her unpopularity. This, to me, says more about voters than Hillary. She's not Ms Charisma. But why should the ability to lead the free world be dependent on an ability to wink and smirk and smarm? She's competent, rational. Trump is incompetent, unbalanced. Case closed.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:30
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Sorry but if you've voted for the guy who wants to kick out all the latinx, put Muslims in camps, thinks women are his toys, and black people should be shot more in the street, not less, by law enforcement, then you're a bigot.
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Dec 29, 2016 19:51
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stone cold posted:Sorry but if you've voted for the guy who wants to kick out all the latinx, put Muslims in camps, thinks women are his toys, and black people should be shot more in the street, not less, by law enforcement, then you're a bigot. They may be bigots, but they run everything and will stomp on your face forever unless you find someone more appealing than Hillary with politics more appealing than the mush she tried to peddle.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:02
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Not a Step posted:They may be bigots, but they run everything and will stomp on your face forever unless you find someone more appealing than Hillary with politics more appealing than the mush she tried to peddle. So liberals are responsible for Donald Trump? Brilliant. I can't wait until he fucks things up and conservatives are all like "We had no option but to vote for him because your candidate was just so boring and annoying. So it's your fault we did this."
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Dec 29, 2016 20:08
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Trump also won the white middle-class, not just the working-class. He won white women. He did better among Hispanic voters than Romney did. And of course, low turnout among African-Americans was a critical factor in Hillary's loss. Sure, Hillary underperformed with the white working class...but she also underperformed with pretty much everyone else too. I understand why the "it was the white working class" narrative is so popular among Dems, though - it plays right into the Dem tendency to treat demographics as checkboxes, and lets them shove blame onto a single candidate while remaining blind to the decay of the Democratic party as a whole. They have virtually nothing to show for eight years in power except big losses at every level of government, an empty bench with hardly any up-and-comers, a campaign machine that's far worse than the one they had in 2008, and the worst future prospects either party has faced in decades. But instead of acknowledging all that and fundamentally reforming the party, they can just blame Hillary for failing to appeal to a single demographic.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:10
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BarbarianElephant posted:So liberals are responsible for Donald Trump? Brilliant. I can't wait until he fucks things up and conservatives are all like "We had no option but to vote for him because your candidate was just so boring and annoying. So it's your fault we did this." The election hinged on turnout. It wasnt masses of Rust Belters defecting from the Dems to vote for Trump, it was masses of Rust Belt Dems just not showing up for a candidate who never showed up for them. Hillary was a garbage candidate who ran a legendarily bad campaign and couldnt be bothered to connect with voters outside of her strongholds. Trump was also a garbage candidate but he had the bare basics of running a campaign - like showing up to talk to voters - down and won almost entirely on turning out the people who would have voted for a red cabbage with an R by it, provided the cabbage made a stop in their state once or twice. So yeah, a lot of the complete and total failure of the Democrats this cycle can expressly be laid at Hillary's feet for running what will go down as one of the worst national campaigns in living memory against one of the worst candidates in history.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:15
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KaiserSchnitzel posted:Notice I didn't say "Bernie Sanders would have won." We will never know if that would have happened. Quit fantasizing about it. quote:And, you know what? Obama could have helped here; people look up to him and are inspired by him. And if he was running in 2016, he would have won. quote:Joe "Big Fuckin' Deal" Biden would have carried this election without even breaking a sweat if he wanted to run. Lmfao. Also Bernie would've won.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:16
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Not a Step posted:The election hinged on turnout. It wasnt masses of Rust Belters defecting from the Dems to vote for Trump, it was masses of Rust Belt Dems just not showing up for a candidate who never showed up for them. Hillary was a garbage candidate who ran a legendarily bad campaign and couldnt be bothered to connect with voters outside of her strongholds. Trump was also a garbage candidate but he had the bare basics of running a campaign - like showing up to talk to voters - down and won almost entirely on turning out the people who would have voted for a red cabbage with an R by it, provided the cabbage made a stop in their state once or twice. You want a vision of the future? Imagine Election chat seeping into every thread for eternity.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:18
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moNHfeBJ81I
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Dec 29, 2016 20:19
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Not a Step posted:Hillary was a garbage candidate who ran a legendarily bad campaign and couldnt be bothered to connect with voters outside of her strongholds. I don't believe she ever connected with me. I never saw her speak and I don't believe she ever spoke near me. I don't feel personally valued by her. But you can bet like gently caress I voted for her, because Trump is a dangerous maniac and the Republicans keep trying to run the US economy into the ground. Voters in the USA shouldn't feel that the candidate has to personally shake their hand to be able to vote for them. There are over 300 million Americans, of hundreds of different large demographics! That's not even reasonable for the President of Iceland (pop about 300k)! I do live in a Democratic stronghold, but that just means we get ultra-ignored, because she would have won here even if she showed up only once to moon us with her wrinkly old naked bottom.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:22
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BarbarianElephant posted:I don't believe she ever connected with me. I never saw her speak and I don't believe she ever spoke near me. I don't feel personally valued by her. But you can bet like gently caress I voted for her, because Trump is a dangerous maniac and the Republicans keep trying to run the US economy into the ground. Its not unreasonable to believe a candidate who doesn't value your *state* enough to visit it even once during the entire general election but finds time for multiple celebrity appearances doesn't care about you or even pretend to understand or represent your interests. Also if youre going to subdivide America into demographics you really shouldnt be surprised when the subdivision no one did or will do jack poo poo for decides to just sit this one out.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:29
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Not a Step posted:Its not unreasonable to believe a candidate who doesn't value your *state* enough to visit it even once during the entire general election but finds time for multiple celebrity appearances doesn't care about you or even pretend to understand or represent your interests. Yeah, right, Trump never paid any attention to celebrity stuff at all. What world do you live in? The man is obsessed with celebrity. As for not visiting the state, there's 50 states and all the candidates tend to focus on the ones they can win but are not guaranteed to. If she'd paid attention to them equally, you'd have been all "LMFAO! Clinton went to Hawaii as much as she went to Florida! What a moron! No wonder she lost!" She miscalculated about the Rust Belt because she didn't believe that the people there would vote suicidally. She was wrong and they will suffer under Trump, sad to say.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:35
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Anyway, too many posters in this forum conflate their belief Hillary was the worst candidate with her platform being a non-starter with most would-be voters. A huge thing they keep ignoring (because it disrupts their narrative) is that Hillary had to deal with Benghazi/E-mails/Comey letter. That certainly had an effect on turnout.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:35
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I really don't think you need to take "all the blame off of Hillary and her campaign" to point out how insane the poo poo with Comey and the Russian hacking was, especially when the margins were so thin. It was a whole lot of crazy loving things that led us to the weird point we are at now
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Dec 29, 2016 20:39
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Doctor Butts posted:Anyway, too many posters in this forum conflate their belief Hillary was the worst candidate with her platform being a non-starter with most would-be voters. That's true, she did have to deal with the repercussions of her own incompetence and the damaging, undoctored leaks of what democratic operatives say and do behind the scenes.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:39
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tekz posted:That's true, she did have to deal with the repercussions of her own incompetence and the damaging, undoctored leaks of what democratic operatives say and do behind the scenes. Curse the foul assassin Benjamin Ghazi, the most dreaded of democratic operatives!
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Dec 29, 2016 20:40
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Doctor Butts posted:A huge thing they keep ignoring (because it disrupts their narrative) is that Hillary had to deal with Benghazi/E-mails/Comey letter. That certainly had an effect on turnout. Republicans played that stuff like genius. They had only a few little scandals about Hillary to play. Democrats had dozens of serious Trump scandals. But Republicans made every little non-scandal hit deep. It's like a genius poker player winning the game with the worst hand at the table. If only they could run the country as well as they play the political game.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:40
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What I don't understand is the whole superdelegate system was supposed to keep crappy, baggage-ridden, unelectable candidates away from the nomination and yet so many of them voted for Hillary?
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Dec 29, 2016 20:40
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tekz posted:That's true, she did have to deal with the repercussions of her own incompetence and the damaging, undoctored leaks of what democratic operatives say and do behind the scenes. So I guess the default state of mind for people like yourself is to start with the thought that Hillary Clinton was uniquely terrible as a candidate, and work backward to justify it from there.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:41
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tekz posted:That's true, she did have to deal with the repercussions of her own incompetence and the damaging, undoctored leaks of what democratic operatives say and do behind the scenes. If you think that the equivalent RNC emails would have revealed nothing but party harmony and noble intentions, boy have I got a bridge to sell you.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:41
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So maybe the real question here is why did left-liberal social democracy briefly appear to be succeeding in the period right after World War II, and what eventually derailed it's success? It was a remarkable accomplishment to actually have a broadly based series of movements fighting for equality inside a country as inherently racist and classist as America. What explains those successes? What caused their eventual failure? The article you posted specifically points out that many of the respondents rejected any kind of collective solution to their problems, such as stronger unions. That speaks to a massive failure on the part of American liberalism. It might have been possible for Democrats to occasionally win the presidency when the Republicans gently caress up visibly enough or tire voters out, but a sustainable progressive agenda needs some kind of institutional base, such as a popular labour movement. In a capitalist society some kind of conservative and individualist politics, which celebrates the status quo (i.e. whites are on top they must be there because of hard work, if blacks suffer worse outcomes it must be a deficiency of character or even genetics) is going to be the default. That's the ideology that most benefits the people who own and manage most of the wealth so of course it's going to be repeated constantly until the population internalizes. The real question is what kind of institutions could provide a counter-ideology that is convincing enough, and linked enough to the struggle of large numbers of people, to actually offer a viable alternative. For a few decades in the 20th century it sort of looked as though such a counter-ideology existed. Perhaps the first step is to understand what happened during that period and why that project ultimately failed. This is a bizarre post. Credentialed professionals in the top 10% of income earners, especially those living in the more liberal urban enclaves on either coast, have a much stronger influence on the ideology and policy agenda of the Democratic party than any other group outside big donors and lobbyists. For instance, Rush Limbo's post upthread is a pretty succinct and accurate summary of how a lot of Democrats actually think and it shouldn't be surprising that a party burdened with that kind of resentment against the voters it needs to win would make glaring tactical mistakes or misread the political moment so badly. stone cold posted:Sorry but if you've voted for the guy who wants to kick out all the latinx, put Muslims in camps, thinks women are his toys, and black people should be shot more in the street, not less, by law enforcement, then you're a bigot. A lot of people decided to vote third party or abstained from voting at all. In a handful of states, including states the Democrats shouldn't have lost like Wisconsin, more people voted for downballot candidates than voted for President. Even if you want to ignore all the counties that Obama won but which Clinton lost (which seems to indicate many bigots will actually vote for a black president if they think their lives will be materially better as a result) you still need to reckon with low Democratic turnout. Pointing out that Trump won because of bigotry is accurate but probably not all that helpful if you're trying to think of how to avoid losing in the future.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:42
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tekz posted:What I don't understand is the whole superdelegate system was supposed to keep crappy, baggage-ridden, unelectable candidates away from the nomination and yet so many of them voted for Hillary? 
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Dec 29, 2016 20:42
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Hey can we keep this thread not about how terrible HRC is? We have like three other threads for that. Maybe we can actually talk about the people who voted for Trump, even though they are "completely blameless for his presidency".  Animal-Mother posted:Republicans focused their propaganda in media that huge numbers of working class, voting age white people actually use: radio. There is no Democratic Rush Limbaugh out there. An entire generation (or two) of middle Americans has been brainwashed by Rush and his copycats. And they're absolutely convinced now that, outside of Fox, everything is "the liberal media." So good luck trying to win them back with MSNBC. This is a huge factor in people voting for trump. There are people who actually felt an obligation to vote against hillary, much like there were those who felt obligated to vote against Trump. But most people who voted against HRC did so based on years of fox news garbage. This is the "people who always vote R and weren't turned off enough by trump to stay home" category. Mostly. BarbarianElephant posted:There's always going to be losers in any economy. And they have a tendency to vote for whoever is not in power. This is why power tends to flip parties between presidencies. Rush Limbo posted:He won because those people are losers, and rather than work on the necessary actions to not be losers, they would rather elect someone who will gently caress things up, so their loserdom is justified And this is the another factor that more specifically explains the flipped obama states. Except there isn't a lot these people can do to stop being losers unless we are gonna start making unreasonable demands on them. That's an argument for the rural thread. tekz posted:Also Bernie would've won. Bloomberg would have won but the thread for that is here Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Dec 29, 2016 |
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Dec 29, 2016 20:45
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Maybe he won because at least some Democrats earnestly think things like "people only hate us because they're jealous of our incredible intelligence and talent", idk though.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:51
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BarbarianElephant posted:Yeah, right, Trump never paid any attention to celebrity stuff at all. What world do you live in? The man is obsessed with celebrity. Hillary avoided campaigning in rust belt states because her legendarily bad campaign came up with the insane idea that they were safe, so she never went despite the ground level operations desperately crying for help. Hillary also carefully avoided campaigning on any policy at all ('check my website!' does not count as campaigning) so if she did have a plan for the devastated towns of the rust belt she never told anyone about it. So, not believing that Hillary had any plan at all or even remotely cared they just stayed home. Again, there was no mass defection of voters to Trump. Thats a thing racist shitheads tell themselves to make themselves feel better. The Rust Belt Democratic voters who were firmly part of the Obama coalition that elected a black man to the presidency *twice* didn't vote Trump, they just didn't vote. Clinton offered them nothing and they responded in kind. Contrast that to Obama, who busted his rear end putting in appearances and making (empty) promises and handily carried those same states. Trump didn't even do particularly well this election, but he did show up for a few rallies and promised some insane solutions to difficult problems; which turned out to be just enough to convince the R voters who were always just going to vote R to actually make the effort to get to the polls. People don't vote for you if you obviously don't give a poo poo about them. When was the last time Hillary seriously talked about Flint, Michigan? A less garbage candidate should have made Flint a focal point of their campaign in the midwest. Hillary dropped it the moment the primary was over because she never really cared. Doctor Butts posted:Anyway, too many posters in this forum conflate their belief Hillary was the worst candidate with her platform being a non-starter with most would-be voters. Aren't all of those things nothingburgers though? I recall being told repeatedly they were all the nothingest of nothingburgers.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:52
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"There's always going to be losers in any economy. And they have a tendency to vote for whoever is not in power." is not a very good explanation because it assumes that winners and losers are going to be equivalently sized groups. There's no reason to think that in a society with as much inequality as the United States. Given the massive wealth disparity and economic disfunction in the country you could, in principle at least, unite a very large part of the population against the rentier capitalists and the ultra-rich. Roosevelt was able to win four terms back-to-back in part because he cultivated a perception (and backed it up with some real policy wins) that he was defending the interests of the majority against the "malefactors of great wealth".
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Dec 29, 2016 20:53
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BarbarianElephant posted:I don't believe she ever connected with me. I never saw her speak and I don't believe she ever spoke near me. I don't feel personally valued by her. But you can bet like gently caress I voted for her, because Trump is a dangerous maniac and the Republicans keep trying to run the US economy into the ground. It's this x1000. I could care less about Clinton. I'd have voted for Martin O'Malley to stop the bumbling, thin-skinned fuckstick that is Trump. I want every last one of the people who voted for him to spite people on the coasts to suffer the worst under his reign. I want their schools privitized and their rivers polluted into filth like his cabinet masterbate about every night. And they'll hem and haw and cry about Democrats again, because that's what they always do when a Republican fucks them. You (you being Kaiser) want to talk about how his supporters are just normal folks that are just so gosh darn tired of the mean ol' democrats calling them bigots? How about they stop chanting "Build the wall!" at rallies. Or "Lock her up!" Or waving confederate flags. How about they stop talking so much poo poo about BLM and Colin Kaepernick for daring to take a knee in protest of people literally being gunned down, unarmed in the streets by police. Hell, how about they stop gunning unarmed black folks down in general? Seeing as how the Sheriff's Orders and the Police Unions all are hard Trump fans. Perhaps stop attacking reporters or protesters, some of which hadn't even said a word. Oh I'm sorry, don't want to be lumped in with all these types? Maybe stop supporting the guy openly encouraging it. And mean ol' Hillary just doesn't respect them. Hell, I heard she did the Ben Ghazi and shot that there Ambassador herself.
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Dec 29, 2016 20:58
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Talmonis posted:It's this x1000. I could care less about Clinton. I'd have voted for Martin O'Malley to stop the bumbling, thin-skinned fuckstick that is Trump. I want every last one of the people who voted for him to spite people on the coasts to suffer the worst under his reign. I want their schools privitized and their rivers polluted into filth like his cabinet masterbate about every night. And they'll hem and haw and cry about Democrats again, because that's what they always do when a Republican fucks them. I don't. I want them to be OK. I want their lives to be better. That's why I voted Clinton.
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Dec 29, 2016 21:00
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BarbarianElephant posted:I don't. I want them to be OK. I want their lives to be better. That's why I voted Clinton. I'm glad. You're a good person. I'm tired of being good. gently caress them for what they've done.
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Dec 29, 2016 21:01
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Not a Step posted:Hillary avoided campaigning in rust belt states because her legendarily bad campaign came up with the insane idea that they were safe, so she never went despite the ground level operations desperately crying for help. Hillary also carefully avoided campaigning on any policy at all ('check my website!' does not count as campaigning) so if she did have a plan for the devastated towns of the rust belt she never told anyone about it. So, not believing that Hillary had any plan at all or even remotely cared they just stayed home. Well, Trump sure had a plan to gently caress them over, and he told them about it a lot (while making empty promises about getting coal jobs back that they could barely pretend to believe) so maybe they should have got over the fact that Clinton is hardly the slickest campaigner that the USA ever saw. Because Trump is the worst candidate for President in my lifetime.
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Dec 29, 2016 21:05
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