Presidential Election 2016

[phop]

Demolished. What a fucking disaster.

[Didier]

It's midnight and Minnesota is still "too close to call."

[intercomnut]

The good news is that the VAST majority of the things we discuss on this site aren't really impacted by national politics, it's the state legislature I'm watching.

I genuinely don't know the answer to this question (and I'm not sure I want to): If republicans have control of all 3 branches, could this hurt federal funding for some of our transit projects? Especially BLRT?

[mister.shoes]

Clearly a lot of #NeverTrumpers "came home." Can the same be said for the #BernieOrBusters? Or are you going to wash your hands of this and say "told you so"? Oh, wait, guess so.

[Tiller]

I voted for Hillary. And I told you so.

[Didier]

It's 1:30 a.m. and Minnesota still isn't called, but consider this:

Trump/Johnson/McMullin combined to take 50.5 percent of the Minnesota vote, while Clinton/Stein combined for 47.8 percent.

[kirby96]

Democracy. Ain't it great? Arab spring, brexit, trump!




De

[LakeCharles]

I voted for Hillary. And I told you so.

We have a President Trump and you are sitting here gloating? Get over yourself.

[Tiller]

I was responding to the comment above me if you can't tell.

[mattaudio]

Makes me wonder how Bernie/Trump would have stacked up.

[mister.shoes]

Thanks for coming to your senses and doing that. Your heaping pile of snark on the previous page implied otherwise.

[twincitizen]

The Irony is just so thick: a Historically unpopular candidate (who is so unelectable that she's losing to the misshapen orange love child of Berlusconi and Hitler) was chosen because she was the more electable candidate.

Like, seriously, she's losing to Trump. The proof is in the pudding that she's shit.

Look, I was never a Berner, but I have reached basically the same conclusion. And if you try to make this argument in progressive circles, you're immediately called a misogynist. Which is crap.

1. Hillary's baggage/negatives is what lost this election. Racism, misogyny, fear, resentment, etc. were obviously all factors as well.
2. She narrowly won the popular vote! Take away her baggage, and how does that not come out as a win?
3. There are TONS of Democrats still denying that her baggage was a factor! What the actual F?!
4. But it's not really "our fault" as we were never given a real choice (and no, Bernie doesn't count, because...)
5. F*** Bernie Sanders, for real. His movement reeks of being the "Tea Party" of the left. His extreme-left political views are simply incompatible with the vast majority of America. Would he have beat Trump? Yeah, I think he probably would have. But so would an Elizabeth Warren (or Amy or whoever the hell you want to name). Literally any Democratic Senator or Governor without Hillary's baggage would have won last night.
6. I'm pissed at Hillary for running. 18 months ago I was pissed at her for deciding to run. I didn't want her to run. It's not directly Hillary's fault that no other Democrats even explored running. But with her running, no one even dared to try (aside from Martin O'Malley & Lincoln Chafee... )

[amiller92]

The problem with your argument is that Hillary's favorables were quite high at the outset. Look at the numbers from before around March of last year here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... html#polls

Her nonsense "baggage" gets traction in no small part because of misogyny. We would not have spent two years (or whatever) talking about the emails practices of a male candidate as if they mattered. We just wouldn't. Heck, they tried their damnedest to make a charity that provides AIDS drugs to millions of people a negative! The truth is people love Hillary except when she's actively campaigning. You think that's about her and not us?

As for Bernie, he's once again not a Democrat. That's all you really need to know about his movement. Given the chance (again) to work to make the party more progressive, he ran away. Because Bernie's about Bernie being right and pure and good. Not about making change.

I think it's insane, though, to think that a Jewish socialist would have beaten Trump in particular. Few things would have better gotten his voters to the polls. Maybe a gay Muslim socialist would have, but Bernie would have been the next best thing for Trump.

Would Biden or Warren? Maybe. They decided not to run.

[mattaudio]

I think liberals are very much overestimating the misogyny / anti-semitism / racism / etc factor (yes, it's definitely there, and yes they are very vocal right now) and underestimating the stick-it-to-the-establishment, feeling-disenfranchised-by-neoliberalism factor (whether or not the frustration is valid). Bernie could have easily picked up a rust belt state or two, and we'd be looking at a different future today.

[twincitizen]

Michael Moore wrote this 4 months ago: http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

In a way I'm glad I didn't real it until today, but jesus...he was exactly correct. Trump pulled off a clean sweep of WI-MI-OH-PA

[Tiller]

The problem with your argument is that Hillary's favorables were quite high at the outset. Look at the numbers from before around March of last year here: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... html#polls

Her nonsense "baggage" gets traction in no small part because of misogyny. We would not have spent two years (or whatever) talking about the emails practices of a male candidate as if they mattered. We just wouldn't. Heck, they tried their damnedest to make a charity that provides AIDS drugs to millions of people a negative! The truth is people love Hillary except when she's actively campaigning. You think that's about her and not us?

As for Bernie, he's once again not a Democrat. That's all you really need to know about his movement. Given the chance (again) to work to make the party more progressive, he ran away. Because Bernie's about Bernie being right and pure and good. Not about making change.

I think it's insane, though, to think that a Jewish socialist would have beaten Trump in particular. Few things would have better gotten his voters to the polls. Maybe a gay Muslim socialist would have, but Bernie would have been the next best thing for Trump.

Would Biden or Warren? Maybe. They decided not to run.

This is why we lost. America's White Collar class has no idea what's going on with the Working Class. They view everything through the lens of social issues, when economic issues were the meat of this election.

The white working class' standard of living has been going down. Their life expectancy has been going down. Drug abuse, particularly Heroine and Alcohol, has gone significantly up. Educational attainment is shit. Their infrastructure is falling apart. Their Children have tens of thousands of dollars of student loans, because they tried to get white collar jobs like you guys, because all the blue collar jobs have been disappearing. Now they're struggling to survive, working in retail and fast food joints. They've been ignored and taken advantage of politically for decades. Socially, they've lost many of the overt privileges they used to enjoy, meaning that while their economic standing in society has significantly eroded, their social standing has as well. Beyond simply losing their privileges, classism among smug, well-off liberals is very common (stereotyped as "limousine liberals").

I have spoken to a great deal of people over the past year (nearly a year and a half now), and while the upper-middle class and the rich are doing well, no one else is. Issues like Immigration have both a cultural/social lens (being against it because it lets brown people in), and an economic lens (being against it because it depresses wages). While both things are part of the issue, people vote their pocketbooks, and it's the latter that most noticeably swung PA, OH, WI, and MI (and I'm sure its also what swung IA, FL, and NC, they're just not as stereo-typically blue collar). The economics and politics of the situation are deeply intertwined.

The Zeitgeist has been clear to those who have been on both sides of the fence for a while. Those polls that showed Hillary 1% up against Trump (and Bernie up by significantly more) months ago nailed it. Trump is horribly unpopular. If you just blame -isms for why he won instead of examining where we went wrong, he will win again in 2020.

[twincitizen]

Some takes:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... trump.html
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/11/trum ... tic-party/
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/dem ... of-brexit/

[BoredAgain]

Michael Moore wrote this 4 months ago: http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

In a way I'm glad I didn't real it until today, but jesus...he was exactly correct. Trump pulled off a clean sweep of WI-MI-OH-PA

An interesting read. I don't always care for Michael Moore, but he seems to have caught on early this time.

If you want a visual representation of that rust belt swing, take a look at this graphic from NYT. It is remarkable, though not surprising.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016 ... right.html

[amiller92]

This is why we lost. America's White Collar class has no idea what's going on with the Working Class. They view everything through the lens of social issues, when economic issues were the meat of this election.

The white working class' standard of living has been going down. Their life expectancy has been going down. Drug abuse, particularly Heroine and Alcohol, has gone significantly up. Educational attainment is shit. Their infrastructure is falling apart. Their Children have tens of thousands of dollars of student loans, because they tried to get white collar jobs like you guys, because all the blue collar jobs have been disappearing. Now they're struggling to survive, working in retail and fast food joints. They've been ignored and taken advantage of politically for decades. Socially, they've lost many of the overt privileges they used to enjoy, meaning that while their economic standing in society has significantly eroded, their social standing has as well. Beyond simply losing their privileges, classism among smug, well-off liberals is very common (stereotyped as "limousine liberals").

I have spoken to a great deal of people over the past year (nearly a year and a half now), and while the upper-middle class and the rich are doing well, no one else is. Issues like Immigration have both a cultural/social lens (being against it because it lets brown people in), and an economic lens (being against it because it depresses wages). While both things are part of the issue, people vote their pocketbooks, and it's the latter that most noticeably swung PA, OH, WI, and MI (and I'm sure its also what swung IA, FL, and NC, they're just not as stereo-typically blue collar). The economics and politics of the situation are deeply intertwined.

The Zeitgeist has been clear to those who have been on both sides of the fence for a while. Those polls that showed Hillary 1% up against Trump (and Bernie up by significantly more) months ago nailed it. Trump is horribly unpopular. If you just blame -isms for why he won instead of examining where we went wrong, he will win again in 2020.

All of that would be vastly more compelling had Trump not also won among affluent whites. And college educated whites.

[kirby96]

But affluent and college educated whites were gonna go with any republican. The difference maker is precisely as Tiller describes it. That and Hilary's unlikability.

Turn out a few more rednecks, lose a few blacks, voila. Trump is president.