Here's a thought. Firstly, this election is going to be taught in history classes in 30 years, no matter who wins. How's that lesson plan going to be, and what will kids assume must have been true? "In the year of the clowning, the biggest clown of all ran for president."
Another thought, kids are, all of them, going to assume the old phrase "a trumped up charge" came from famous candidate Trump's historical strategy of making up random charges against his opponents.
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Here's a thought. Firstly, this election is going to be taught in history classes in 30 years, no matter who wins. How's that lesson plan going to be, and what will kids assume must have been true? "In the year of the clowning, the biggest clown of all ran for president."
It surely will be taught, but thinking \about this question right now, I think that the question can't be fully answered right now. That is because the context of such a lesson will be greatly affected by what happens in the years to come. Is this campaign a sign of bad things to come for America, if the Republican Party continues going down the absolutist, authoritarian road they currently are? If so the Trump campaign will be seen as an important turning point for the worse. Or, after this will their party's internal war at some point lead to the party regaining its sanity, perhaps by kicking out the worst elements? Right now this seems incredibly unlikely, but it's not impossible. In that case, the Trump campaign won't be nearly as important a historical moment as it would be in case #1.
Really though, it is rare for failed presidential campaigns to get much of any mention in history classes. You'll see books about one sometimes for sure, but in a school class? It'd need to have brought up some really important issue or candidate to get mentioned. Offhand, which ones can I think of that matter? William Jennings Bryan's multiple losses perhaps since they were important for that often-ignored era in American politics. Eugene Debs would also be worth a mention, probably, for how he pushed forward socialism in this country. Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 Bull Moose Party run for the presidency certainly, because of how it helped Wilson win. Goldwater is also very important because of how the kind of stridently conservative campaign he ran became their party's standard a few decades later, once Reagan took it on with more success. (That first scenario I outlined above about memory of the Trump campaign would be something sort of like that, but even worse for America.) There may be more, but that's all that comes to mind right now. People actually in power naturally usually are more important in history than those who lose...
Quote:Another thought, kids are, all of them, going to assume the old phrase "a trumped up charge" came from famous candidate Trump's historical strategy of making up random charges against his opponents.
I hadn't thought of that, and yeah, that'd be pretty funny if it ever becomes true...
While Trump's campaign didn't bring up anything particularly important by itself, the way it was waged is historically insane. I have no reason to expect the next election cycle, post-Trump, will be better than this one. It may be worse. Trump opened up the bottle, and I don't know that the racist orange genie will ever go back in. Politicians have seen the effectiveness of completely insane claims with zero basis in ANYONE'S understanding of a candidate work so long as the one making it has complete 100% confidence to the level of acting as though everyone already knew that "fact" before they said it. There's no backing away from that. That's going to be how the next campaign is run, and they're going to look for the candidates narcissistic enough to make those claims sound like established fact. Well, that's my fear.
That is a very troubling possibility, yes, but there is an important factor that helped push Trump towards success: that he was already an extremely prominent national figure. If some random Republican started talking sort of like Trump in 4 years, would the press hang on their every word like they did Trump's? Trump wasn't just someone, but surely one of the better-known people outside of politics in this country, at least in real estate and reality television anyway. The Donald used his name and prominence to get ridiculous amounts of free positive press and television coverage; this was key to his success. I am not convinced that some other person could replicate what Trump has done, since who else would be guaranteed that volume of free PR and TV air time?
I think that his longtime national prominence may have helped him get away with the lies too, because what else would you expect from this guy but bluster, lies (remember, he was the leading figure in the Birther movement), and a stubborn refusal to ever admit wrongdoing? Could some other person get away with lying as much as Trump without the press tearing them apart from a much earlier point in the campaign? You're probably right that at some point we will see more people in their party try his "just keep lying" campaign strategy in the future, so we'll see, but I do think there is a good possibility that it wouldn't go as well for most other people as it did for Trump.
It isn't enough to make stuff up. Presentation is everything. The key to his strategy is saying his claims as though he's bringing up something he and his audience were already talking about earlier, something that's already a settled subject that's accepted by everyone. That, as far as I can tell, is what makes him so unique. I mean, you know how those creepy clowns are all dragging Hillary supporters into the woods these days. I mean yeah, you know that, but what if I were to tell you they were eating them once they dragged them there?
I'm still under the distinct impression that Trump is such an egomaniac that he believes just about everything he says, but now I'm starting to think I got taken in by that delivery style. He at least SEEMED totally and absolutely convinced of what he was saying, even if it was easily demonstrably false. The man made his entire living convincing people to give him money in spite of his massive string of failures. It's no wonder his go-to strategy right now is claiming the system is against him.
That last part, that's the part that's really worrying. I won't go so far as some who think a civil war is looming (the US government happens to have too much military might for ANY militia to ever take them on), but I am expecting riots and acts of violence. Here's a piece of advice: don't put a Hillary bumper sticker on your car. I mean, that goes without saying for me (you already must have suspected I'm the sort who considers campaign bumper stickers utterly incapable of changing minds, and besides I prefer to keep my personal beliefs to myself in public instead of plastering them on my means of transportation), but for safety's sake, consider, like, just NOT putting that sticker on your car. I'm pretty sure the campaign will survive without it. If you already stuck it on there (you did, didn't you?) then I'd go ahead and cover it up with, I dunno, Calvin peeing on the ISIS logo or something. Just... something innocuous. Doesn't really matter who wins, just do it before you reenact a scene from the start of a zombie movie against your will.
Dark Jaguar Wrote:It isn't enough to make stuff up. Presentation is everything. The key to his strategy is saying his claims as though he's bringing up something he and his audience were already talking about earlier, something that's already a settled subject that's accepted by everyone. That, as far as I can tell, is what makes him so unique. I mean, you know how those creepy clowns are all dragging Hillary supporters into the woods these days. I mean yeah, you know that, but what if I were to tell you they were eating them once they dragged them there?
I guess, but is it that, or is it just random ramblings? Because going by everything of his I've heard, and that's not all that much outside of the debates because I do not watch Trump speeches, he seems utterly incapable of actually completing a thought, and often even a sentence. He constantly changes topics mid-sentence, drops topics, etc... which might be okay sometimes in conversation, but is not how to speak in debates, speeches, and such!
Quote:I'm still under the distinct impression that Trump is such an egomaniac that he believes just about everything he says, but now I'm starting to think I got taken in by that delivery style. He at least SEEMED totally and absolutely convinced of what he was saying, even if it was easily demonstrably false. The man made his entire living convincing people to give him money in spite of his massive string of failures. It's no wonder his go-to strategy right now is claiming the system is against him.
I have no idea if he believes what he's saying at any given moment, but even someone with as bad a narcissistic personality as he has must know somewhere inside that he's CONSTANTLY contradicting himself...
Quote:That last part, that's the part that's really worrying. I won't go so far as some who think a civil war is looming (the US government happens to have too much military might for ANY militia to ever take them on), but I am expecting riots and acts of violence. Here's a piece of advice: don't put a Hillary bumper sticker on your car. I mean, that goes without saying for me (you already must have suspected I'm the sort who considers campaign bumper stickers utterly incapable of changing minds, and besides I prefer to keep my personal beliefs to myself in public instead of plastering them on my means of transportation), but for safety's sake, consider, like, just NOT putting that sticker on your car. I'm pretty sure the campaign will survive without it. If you already stuck it on there (you did, didn't you?) then I'd go ahead and cover it up with, I dunno, Calvin peeing on the ISIS logo or something. Just... something innocuous. Doesn't really matter who wins, just do it before you reenact a scene from the start of a zombie movie against your will.
... So, are you joking, or are you actually kind of paranoid about this? I know that you live in far-right Oklahoma, quite different from where I am here in southern Maine (I live in a very liberal area...), but still, people going after cars with Hillary stickers on them? I can't see it.
You are right that I have a Hillary sticker on my car, though. It's been there since shortly after I was at the state convention a couple of months ago.
I see you toss around the word paranoid a lot in situations where that word doesn't work. Paranoia is all about being afraid people are coming to get you, like you personally, like, black helicopter stuff. This is more of a general fear that there's people out there who might just flip and put some militia plan into action somewhere.
How is saying that some crazies might do things to cars with Hillary stickers on them not kind of paranoid? I guess it is theoretically possible, given how horrible Trump's core supporters are, but even then it seems unlikely.
Also, shame on Comey for deciding to try to do his best to help the Republcians win as many House and Senate seats as possible. His actions will not change the Presidential result, but might hurt in some of the closer, and vitally important, down-ballot races. And this sure does make Obama's choice to nominate him as FBI head look bad, doesn't it! Maybe Democrats should nominate more Democrats to key posts, instead of Republicans...
I think you and I are working under two different definitions of paranoia. I'm using the "a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance, typically elaborated into an organized system" definition, and you're using the other definition of just a general distrust and fear of certain groups, like the hacking fears of the early 2000's. Never mind that though, I'm not REALLY all that afraid, but it is certainly a possibility considering that actual people HAVE been attacking others for their political beliefs this cycle. It's just that so far those attacks have been relegated to political rallies. At the very least, it isn't worth putting my thoughts out there. Has anyone, ever, and I mean EVER, been convinced by a bumper sticker? Have YOU ever been influenced by a bumper sticker? They don't do anything! Fundamentally, no one cares about some random person's opinion just because they happen to be stopped behind them in traffic. Why should they be? Also, no bumper sticker has EVER had a good argument printed on it. Not once.
Yeah, I don't think I have ever been convinced by a bumper sticker to change my view on some political issue, but they can be amusing at times, so why not have a few?
A Black Falcon Wrote:Yeah, I don't think I have ever been convinced by a bumper sticker to change my view on some political issue, but they can be amusing at times, so why not have a few?
A Black Falcon Wrote:Yeah, I don't think I have ever been convinced by a bumper sticker to change my view on some political issue, but they can be amusing at times, so why not have a few?
The grammar is so bad there that it's kind of distracting... heh.
Also, apparently there are a lot of Trump fans in the FBI, which is why so many anti-Hillary things are leaking from there. Why FBI employees would be supporting someone who is such a big fan of Russia (unless he's more than that) I have no idea, but sadly they are.
Well, the FBI primarily deals with domestic issues, so maybe they don't care so much about Russia. The CIA on the other hand, if they came out supporting Trump that'd be weird.
While his chances are not zero, thanks to booming Latino turnout in Nevada and Florida, most notably, I think Trump's pretty much done. He'd need AMAZING turnout on election day to overcome these numbers, and that seems unlikely. So yeah, only a few more days to go!
Yep, I'll be preventing Trump from getting in office. I'll also be voting for anyone I think can keep her on course. I'm voting for policies and hoping that works out. In the case of Oklahoma, an independent senator stands a better chance of a win than a democrat, so you can guess how I'm voting there. There's really only one candidate that has actually got all the progressive answers I'm looking for. Too many of the others refused to actually state their positions, so they're out.
But sadly, most in the media don't realize that. Instead they focus on Hillary's non-scandal emails, dragging her down for something which has nothing behind it, while overlooking or barely mentioning the innumerable Trump scandals out there which are, unlike Hillary's actually real. To mention only a few of the most recent: Trump's possible connection to a Russian bank, Trump's past statements praising Putin and a story about how Putin has worked to get Trump on their side and work with and support his campaign against Hillary, as he of course is, that Trump borrowed and lost other peoples' money, something which got him out of paying taxes without losing any of his own cash (legally questionable...), all get barely mentioned or ignored is not okay. Oh but of course, those two Russia stories, which came out a few days ago, are totally false because some anonymous source in the ("the FBI is Trumpland") FBI leaked info immediately to the NY Times claiming that they weren't getting anywhere finding real ties between Trump and Russia because, well, we want Trump to win regardless of how much damage this does to America overseas, so let's leak (or make up, who knows) this to help him out! Trump was even endorsed by the KKK, and the media didn't even mention it. Hillary is running against the Republican Party, the KKK, Russia and people being supported by Russia like Wikileaks and Trump, and more... and despite all that she's going to win, hopefully big.
But regardless, did any of those stories or more stick much in the press? Of course not, as that SNL sketch says they were way too busy obsessing about her emails, as if that is in any way comparable to Trump's scandals. Why do so many people in the press want Donald Trump to be president? Fortunately the American people look like they are going to be smart enough to reject him, but it should never have gotten to this point.
So yeah, for once SNL actually did a great sketch. I wish the media would listen, but sadly I doubt that will happen. That's not a good sign for the future, but at least the worst is probably going to lose this time, and that's something.
Looks like they have effectively won control of all three branches of government.
Nate Silver is examining where their models failed, and it looks like the biggest failure is the one we all made. We had no idea there were so many people in this nation that felt like strangers in their own land. Then they all voted like a minority block. It was as though Trump kicked through a rotten floor board and send countless deplorables scurrying into the light. They've been there the whole time, but it took Trump to mobilize them.
The third party candidate is already taking the blame as a vote spoiler, but it appears that his support was so spread out that even if all of them ended up going Clinton, it wouldn't have won her the electoral votes she needed.
On that point, a coalition of states is coming together to change their laws so that their electoral colleges are sworn to vote for whoever wins the national popular vote, not the state popular vote. This would effectively make the electoral college null and void, and merely an odd quirky step in the process rather than one that determines the entire result of an presidential election. Problem is, I remember hearing such rhetoric before, and nothing came of it. If anything good can come out of this election, the death of the electoral college is it, and that should be our focus.
As terrible as this result is, I'm fairly confident Trump is going to do something impeachable in fairly short order. At least then, we get a run of the mill republican president. We've handled that before.
Even so, though, people deserve the person they voted into office, so yes, Weltall, just not in the way that I hoped, of course. Maine elected similarly horrendously insulting Paul LePage twice as Governor, and we got exactly what you'd expect from such a person... but I can't say it was undeserved, since he did win.
On that note though, here in Maine a referendum to change state-level votes to a ranked-choice system, where you rank all candidates in the order you want them to win, passed yesterday. There were five referendums this year, and currently all except for a gun-control one are passing. It's disappointing that that one is failing, but an increase to the minimum wage did pass and that's great. Ranked choice also passed of course, and it is potentially great because LePage would never have won in 2010 in the first place with it... so yeah, ranked choice will be good. Maine already has one other use of ranked choice, for Portland mayor elections, and it works pretty well. I think it's a good idea that should be implemented nationwide, because it would allow people to vote for a third-party candidate first and a major party candidate second, to support that third party without wasting their vote. As much as I support Democrats, I do think that would be an overall good. Also, of course... as I said LePage wouldn't have won. But that isn't the only reason to support it, so it's great it will be implemented for governor races too now. Maybe also state house & senate? Not sure. (Oh, and the Maine state house is kind of crazy -- it looks like, after this election, the Dems picked up 1 state senate seat overall, making for a 19 R - 17 D Senate, and Republicans picked up a few house seats, making for a 75 D - 74 R - 2 Libertarian state house. Gah. That sure looks like a recipe for gridlock... :p (Yes, we have a big state legislature, one of the bigger ones in fact. New Hampshire's is even bigger though!)
Nationally, yes, that Hillary won the popular vote is a really important point. I hope that this is another wake-up call for how badly we need a national popular vote of some form, by amendment or the "National Popular Vote" compact. We've badly needed this since 2000, but sadly it didn't gain enough traction and hasn't happened yet. It needs to. I've thought that getting rid of the electoral college was a good idea ever since the Bush-Gore debacle, but Republican and swing-state intransigence has so far stopped the national popular vote movement. Something needs to change to make it happen, because this kind of situation is unacceptable -- the person who most voters support should, of course, be the winner! And that's Hillary.
(Oh, and I don't think Bernie would have done better; he'd probably have done worse. Biden, though... that would have been an interesting one.)
Even if Trump does something "impeachable", Republicans control both the House and Senate, and won't do a damned thing about it. Come January, they'll all be lining up to kiss the ring. The Don's election was a referendum on the establishment. He exceeded all expectations, beat every opponent, and rose to the top. Why fight him when you can join him?
We're fucked. Part of me wants to stay and watch the trainwreck, but this election has been so stressful, I think I just want to withdrawal and forget all about politics for a while. It's too much. The most I'd like to do is come back in the midterms, research who's on the ballot, and cast my vote there... occasional voting is the most power I'll ever have (outside of perhaps volunteering). But the day-to-day stuff? I need a break to keep my sanity.
Sacred Jellybean Wrote:Even if Trump does something "impeachable", Republicans control both the House and Senate, and won't do a damned thing about it. Come January, they'll all be lining up to kiss the ring. The Don's election was a referendum on the establishment. He exceeded all expectations, beat every opponent, and rose to the top. Why fight him when you can join him?
That could happen, yes, but he didn't win a majority of the popular vote and the vast majority of their actual legislators surely don't like him very much, so as his scandals and court cases pile up, I could see even the Republicans giving up on him. After all, almost all of them would rather have Pence as president anyway, no question.
Or alternately, if there's a big economic collapse or something or if America wants to right this wrong and gives the Dems a big win in 2018, then we can impeach him then for what is sure to be the most criminal White House since Nixon.
On the note of 2018, since we're the opposition now, defending those really hard to defend Senate seats in 2018 (North Dakota, Montana, Missouri...) probably gets easier -- the party out of power usually gains in off-year elections during the other party's presidency. Of course, the Dems gained a little in both houses of Congress this election, but that will hopefully continue.
Also, the party has been SERIOUSLY wiped out at the state level over the past 8 years, as the party in power usually loses in states too and we have totally failed to figure out how to ameliorate that, but now maybe that can start to reverse. Getting the states back will be a long, slow process, but it's important and being out of power may help with that.
Of course, none of that in any way makes this okay, not with how the Republicans now have all three branches of government again and will surely use that power for some incredibly bad legislation -- repealing Obamacare, etc etc. I wonder, will the Democrats in congress finally decide to actually oppose Republicans, instead of continuing the decent, but now clearly failed, strategy of being reasonable in the face of Republican intransigence? You will never fire up the base by constantly giving in, as Republicans figured out over the past eight years. Blocking everything is horrible for having a functioning democracy, but it works. That it's come to this is a sign of our democracy's decline, probably, but what else can you do in the face of a crazy party unwilling to ever compromise? Keeping Obama from accomplishing anything for six years has helped them. We can hurt them by using some of those tactics. 48 senators can accomplish a lot, if they actually try. I'm not expecting it, sadly, but they must.
Quote:We're fucked. Part of me wants to stay and watch the trainwreck, but this election has been so stressful, I think I just want to withdrawal and forget all about politics for a while. It's too much. The most I'd like to do is come back in the midterms, research who's on the ballot, and cast my vote there... occasional voting is the most power I'll ever have (outside of perhaps volunteering). But the day-to-day stuff? I need a break to keep my sanity.
Understandable. With how much the media loves reporting on Trump (and helped him win of course!) TV and such is probably going to be insufferable for some time to come, no question... I don't think I'll want to watch much of that either.
The media has a lot to attone for with this. They're the ones that decided Trump needed a free podium to speak from for YEARS now, every single time Trump said "hey, I got something to say", some news network would hand him a microphone, never mind that he's never once shown that his opinion has ANY worth whatsoever. Nah, they'll let him speak his mind the NIGHT Obama won that first term to stain the whole thing with the beginnings of the Birther movement.
I really do think you're wrong about Bernie. There were a disturbingly large number of people who, when polled at the time, said they would "either vote for Trump or Bernie". Nate Silver himself is reconsidering his view on Bernie's chances in light of failed predictions for this election. Namely, the policies did NOT matter to the contingent of voters who came out in force. What mattered, and what they TOLD us mattered over and over again above all else, was that Trump was perceived to be an "outsider" who promised to help save rural America (which, well, has NOT recovered from the recession the same way cities have, and really are in a lot of trouble). Bernie, even though he's the polar opposite of Trump as far as policy, was viewed in the same terms. I PERSONALLY know people who, after Bernie lost the nomination, instantly went for Trump (I'm not particularly close to these people, but I have personal knowledge they exist). Due to a general failing to poll rural areas, we didn't see this election as one that would really be THIS close. Biden might actually have won by virtue of not being as "tainted" as Hillary was perceived to be, but it would still have been close. What was needed more than anything else, as is becoming crystal clear, was someone with both charisma and a genuine authenticity. Hillary "I ain't no ways tired" Clinton is NOT her authentic self. Part of that is a history that forced her to reinvent herself at every turn, spurned on in a large part due to institutionalized sexism, but keeping up that facade with the entire country watching, well, people saw right through it and rather than consider WHY she might be putting on all these faces, they dismissed her as ingenuine. Trump, if anything can be said about him, is genuine Trump (which is to say, terrible). Bernie also had that going for him. I doubt enough polling data is going to come along to make it definitive, but I'm pretty convinced that a statistically significant number of those who mobilized for Trump would have split off to vote for Bernie had he run, based on their own words if nothing else.
As it stands, Clinton is through. The democratic party is never going to give her another chance at this. She's also got a completely wrong reputation regarding the Benghazi over her head, so she may never get near the white house again for that matter. She'll either focus on a senator's career or focus on her charity (the latter meaning undoing the separation she and Bill had to do recently for this election).
Trump, well, in my lifetime when a party wins the presidency, they seem to always fully support them as their candidate of choice to get that second term (under the infallible "they won one time, so they can win again" logic, which, well, has been pretty true for the last 3 presidents). However, his own party hates him so much that I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't back him even as the incumbent in four years.
I've been seeing countless news posts and even some of my favorite comedy types going on and on about "healing" and "sticking together". I guess they just want to avoid a civil war. I don't really think there's a huge chance of one breaking out, but I would love it if they would just SHUT UP about "healing". What we need now is political activism. At this point, complacency is the enemy. At every step, pressure needs to be put out to block Trump from every dang ol' thang he attempts to do from here until impeachment. I'm sure we're going to get another self-righteous South Park episode making fun of the losers because to those guys status quo is eternal and perfect and must never be upset. Everything is going to be fine... for people making South Park and late night comedy. For the poorest people, for the immigrants, for black people, for women, it will NOT be fine.
I've also come to realize that the modern social justice movement could use a change in tactics. Until now, it seems everyone's been content to simply call for the banishment of everyone grouped into that basket of deplorables. It is clear now that this was never going to work. They were always there, and all we did was push them into the shadows. It seems clear to me now that the only chance left is to change every last one of them, and never give up trying. It was never enough to simply block them and silence them at every opportunity, no matter how much we may have had every right to, because we're now paying that price.
Quote:(Oh, and I don't think Bernie would have done better; he'd probably have done worse. Biden, though... that would have been an interesting one.)
We need to step outside of the alternate reality we were living in for the last month. You saw what just happened. This party got destroyed on Tuesday. Not defeated, but annihilated, and nobody in the party saw it coming. Yet again, we've put forth a host of critically bad candidates and with the opportunity to break the GOP for good, it is instead the Democratic Party whose future looks bleak and uncertain. And it's because the party has too many people in it who think the way you do.
You just watched a person defeat both major party establishments. First his own, and now ours. Clearly, we need a populist progressive voice. We need to flush the Clinton-style establishment out of the party because clearly America wants none of it. How many more embarrassing defeats do we have to suffer before you stop lying yourself?
Bernie Sanders would not have lost PA, OH, MI and WI. What a shit show. I didn't want her as our candidate because I knew she wasn't electable.
Quote:Everyone knew this was how it was going to be, if they were paying attention. Trump isn't a new phenomenon, merely the latest, orangest face of a Republican Party which doesn't like Trump only because he's being too honest about what the party really stands for: white males who are straight and Christian and of at least some level of material wealth. While some GOP idiots have actually suffered for being honest before (Todd Akin comes to mind as an example), it usually doesn't work out this way. Most of the time, they will say something outrageous or even outright hateful, and other than the predictable outrage, no consequences are really in store for them most of the time. For some reason, people thought it was going to be different, and Trump's apparent nosedive appeared to be confirmation of this assumption.
It would probably be sufficient in most cases, but HRC is hated and distrusted by almost as large a portion of the population as he is. Is that fair? No. She sucks but is still a clearly superior choice, there's no question. Is it right? Well, she really seems to go out of her way to invite criticism whenever it doesn't just come to her.
Problem here is, winning the White House should have been the top priority. Putting up the best candidate should have been the top priority. And that didn't happen. Instead of giving the Democratic Party a de facto leader who is (relatively) spotless in terms of reputation and who is a generator of voter enthusiasm on par with Donald Trump, the voters made the wrong choice and instead selected a candidate who (fairly or not) is a lightning rod for distractions and controversy and does not have a) the charisma to make up for it and b) the ideological spark that the Party has so damnably lacked in recent decades. We've brought a knife to a gun fight in the hopes that the guy with the gun is too stupid to use it properly.
I mean, the Volkischer Beobachter Breitbart crowd is going to make up scandals if they can't find any, sure. They do it a lot as it is. They don't have to do as much work as they would have against Bernie Sanders, for whom the best they could hope for is throw around the world 'socialist' and pray that it works better against Sanders than it ever did against Obama. For some reason, there are Democrats who honestly believe that would have been more damaging to our White House chances than Benghazi, email servers, and an overt, unapologetic relationship with the architects of the 2008 recession.
Honestly, she's a terrible, almost inept candidate. Her campaign is run by idiots who have little grasp of how to win. When Trump was plummeting, what did Clinton do to help accelerate his plummeting? Whenever she wasn't staying entirely out of the spotlight, it was only to emerge and remind everyone that Trump sucks. Which he does, sure. We already know he sucks. 42% (+-) of voters agree and are voting for her. That does absolutely nothing to convince that 15ish % of voters who think she sucks as bad as he does. It does little to convince non-voters to participate. Or, it was to emerge and court disaffected Republicans, which seems insane. Most of them who say they hate Trump will probably still vote for him. A lot who say they won't probably will anyway, especially now that Clinton's looking vulnerable and the polls are trending away from her.
But, this is not just a problem HRC and her campaign is responsible for. Liberal media, especially that which favors Clinton (DKos, looking at your ugly orange shit here), and the Party in general, are great at illustrating the moral bankruptcy of conservatives. They are great at jumping on every gaffe and pointing out every single stupid or hateful thing conservatives say. Problem is, it is preaching to the choir. DKos is every bit as much a Democratic echo chamber as Breitbart is for racists and shit heads. Republicans have a ceiling (or, perhaps an Electoral Blue Wall) because they have only invective while not even pretending to care about finding actual solutions to anything ever. This is not nearly as egregious on the Dem side but it still dominates the internal discourse. I already know the GOP has fucked up everything. I know they're terrible human beings who believe that human empathy is a sign of weakness. What I don't know is why we sit back and gripe about this instead of taking the fight to them in the venue of public opinion. Trump is going to fuck everything. What is Clinton going to do? Not fuck everything? Not be as bad? I mean obviously. How about, instead, a proactive approach that advances the cause of progressive politics instead of interminably playing defense against an opponent which, by rights, should have been rendered ineffective a decade ago? Instead, the Democrats almost compulsively play down to the Republicans and give them advantage after advantage they could never achieve on their own.
Perhaps a historically embarrassing defeat to Trump will finally light a fire under the party and make them realize that it was entirely their own fault it happened (because it absolutely is), but if crushing midterm defeat after crushing midterm defeat hasn't accomplished that, why would this?
Republicans energize their base. They turn out voters. They have to because demographics are always eroding their influence. Democrats seem to be complacent because they feel demographics will eventually become too big an advantage to overcome. Perhaps in ten or twenty years that will be true. And it will be cold comfort to an America with six conservative judges on the Supreme Court.
I'm not a fan but I want her to win this. Thing is, I have never had much reason to feel confident she's up to the task. And here she is right now, bleeding away a huge polling lead that was giftwrapped, squandering an advantage far beyond anything Obama could have hoped to enjoy. Which, above all the other problems I had with her as a candidate in the primary, is the biggest reason why I supported her opponent so stridently. She's highly qualified, very intelligent, tons of relevant experience, and is 2 points ahead of a literal idiot who is probably not qualified to be an assistant manager at Wal-Mart.
I don't have a crystal ball if you're wondering. All this was obvious months ago. So let's not fuck this up next time.
Getting rid of our neutralizing the electoral college seriously needs to be a top priority for this nation. I know that it would mean fewer candidates would visit this state, since both campaigns came here multiple times thanks to our law giving electoral votes by congressional district, but it would get us actual presidents the people actually want, instead of disasters like Bush and, sure to be even worse, Trump. And it would mean that the people would actually be voting for president, instead of the states doing so, which I think would be a big improvement. While appealing to any states not very Democratic party-controlled may seem impossible due to how the current system has given Republicans systemic advantages over the past 16 years, there must be a way to word it to appeal to everyone. 2004 is a possible one to mention there -- Kerry almost became president despite losing the popular vote by millions, because he lost Ohio by something like 100,000 votes, not many for a big state like that. Had he won Ohio he would have won a lower-popular-vote victory because it was very close in terms of electoral votes. But because Bush did hang on, Republicans have little interest in changing the system. (Trump himself bashed the electoral colleges' continued existence back in 2012, apparently, though now he'd probably take a different take on it given that it's the only reason he won...)
Dark Jaguar Wrote:I really do think you're wrong about Bernie. There were a disturbingly large number of people who, when polled at the time, said they would "either vote for Trump or Bernie". Nate Silver himself is reconsidering his view on Bernie's chances in light of failed predictions for this election. Namely, the policies did NOT matter to the contingent of voters who came out in force. What mattered, and what they TOLD us mattered over and over again above all else, was that Trump was perceived to be an "outsider" who promised to help save rural America (which, well, has NOT recovered from the recession the same way cities have, and really are in a lot of trouble). Bernie, even though he's the polar opposite of Trump as far as policy, was viewed in the same terms. I PERSONALLY know people who, after Bernie lost the nomination, instantly went for Trump (I'm not particularly close to these people, but I have personal knowledge they exist). Due to a general failing to poll rural areas, we didn't see this election as one that would really be THIS close. Biden might actually have won by virtue of not being as "tainted" as Hillary was perceived to be, but it would still have been close. What was needed more than anything else, as is becoming crystal clear, was someone with both charisma and a genuine authenticity. Hillary "I ain't no ways tired" Clinton is NOT her authentic self. Part of that is a history that forced her to reinvent herself at every turn, spurned on in a large part due to institutionalized sexism, but keeping up that facade with the entire country watching, well, people saw right through it and rather than consider WHY she might be putting on all these faces, they dismissed her as ingenuine. Trump, if anything can be said about him, is genuine Trump (which is to say, terrible). Bernie also had that going for him. I doubt enough polling data is going to come along to make it definitive, but I'm pretty convinced that a statistically significant number of those who mobilized for Trump would have split off to vote for Bernie had he run, based on their own words if nothing else.
I just do not believe that there are hundreds of thousands or more of such people out there, and that's what you'd need for Bernie-to-Trump voters to have an impact. No, the main problem just was that turnout was down on both sides, but worse on the Democratic side. And there, yes, Bernie would have energized the base more, I agree... but here's the thing, as I said back in the primaries -- Bernie was not attacked much. Hillary never used really harsh attacks towards him, and the Republicans didn't say a word negative about him because they thought he would be the easier opponent. That would have changed in a hurry had he been nominated, and after struggling against months of savage Trump and other Republican attacks, Bernie's popularity with everyone OUTSIDE of the Democratic base would have been much depressed. I don't think he could have recovered from that.
Weltall Wrote:Bernie Sanders would not have lost PA, OH, MI and WI. What a shit show. I didn't want her as our candidate because I knew she wasn't electable.
Again, after dealing with the Republican attack machine for months, there is no way Bernie could ever have won. The lines of attack are just so obvious, focusing on his socialism of course but also attacking him (perhaps unfairly) for his wife's role in that college shutting down, etc. It never gave you pause that the Republicans said nothing bad about Bernie through the entire primary cycle? That was not real praise, they hate socialists! It was a tactic to try to get the opponent they thought would be easier to beat, Bernie Sanders.
I don't know if Bernie would have won those four states or not, but would he have carried other key states that Hillary's better minority outreach helped the Democrats hold, such as Nevada, Colorado, or Virginia? Could he have won a Florida, Arizona, or North Carolina either? I don't think so. I do agree Hillary obviously didn't focus enough on the Rust Belt, and probably should have been there instead of putting resources in Texas or such (though losing Texas by less than ten points is a pretty good sign for the future and the best Dems have done there in a long time), and probably a Bernie or Joe Biden would have done that, but anyone could have found a way to lose this race when polling was as off in Trump's favor as it was. Maybe Joe Biden would have won, though... we'll never know.
Quote:We need to step outside of the alternate reality we were living in for the last month. You saw what just happened. This party got destroyed on Tuesday. Not defeated, but annihilated, and nobody in the party saw it coming.
That is not true. Yes, the Democrats had an extremely disappointing, awful day, but we were not "annihilated". Hillary won the popular vote, something which matters a lot. You can't call it a term that bad when a majority of voters support you! Democrats also gained two seats in the Senate, both from states Hillary won, and held the one close seat they were defending. Democrats also gained some seats in the house, maybe five or such. Of course Republicans kept their majorities in both, which is horrible, but gaining a few seats is not "annihilated", losing seats would be. And at the state level there were mixed results. Republicans did win some legislatures, but on the other hand that awful racist sheriff of Maripoca County (Pheonix area) Arizona, Joe Arpaio, finally lost after so long! And Roy Cooper, governor of North Carolina and behind their terrible anti-transgender bathroom bill, is currently very narrowly losing that race, which would be fantastic; Cooper's defeat should hold up at this point. Some liberal ballot measures passed in states around the nation as well. This country keeps moving forward on some issues at least, and that is great.
I'm stunned. It really does feel like you and I are in two different universes and saw two different outcomes.
Quote:Again, after dealing with the Republican attack machine for months, there is no way Bernie could ever have won. The lines of attack are just so obvious, focusing on his socialism of course but also attacking him (perhaps unfairly) for his wife's role in that college shutting down, etc. It never gave you pause that the Republicans said nothing bad about Bernie through the entire primary cycle? That was not real praise, they hate socialists! It was a tactic to try to get the opponent they thought would be easier to beat, Bernie Sanders.
Yeah, so we instead nominate the candidate who comes already equipped with tons of baggage and look what happened. Nothing but non-stop scandal and mudslinging and being prepared and used to it did not help her win. Of fucking course they would try to smear Bernie. It would not have worked anywhere near to the extent it worked on Clinton because Clinton was a historically unpopular candidate while Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in the United States.
It astounds me that you believe what you're saying, when our next president was accused repeatedly of sexual assault and child rape and is still going to be our next president.
Quote:I don't know if Bernie would have won those four states or not, but would he have carried other key states that Hillary's better minority outreach helped the Democrats hold, such as Nevada, Colorado, or Virginia? Could he have won a Florida, Arizona, or North Carolina either? I don't think so. I do agree Hillary obviously didn't focus enough on the Rust Belt, and probably should have been there instead of putting resources in Texas or such (though losing Texas by less than ten points is a pretty good sign for the future and the best Dems have done there in a long time), and probably a Bernie or Joe Biden would have done that, but anyone could have found a way to lose this race when polling was as off in Trump's favor as it was. Maybe Joe Biden would have won, though... we'll never know.
Hillary dumped ass in the rust belt, but she also failed miserably with minority turnout. Trump did better with Latinos than Romney for fucks' sake, while threatening to deport 11 million Latinos. She failed miserably with overall turnout as well, five million fewer votes than Obama in 2012 and ten million fewer than in 2008. Bernie could have easily pulled down numbers like that.
Maybe the GOP thought Bernie would be an easier win. Just like Dems felt certain Trump would be an easy win. Bernie has the same populist economic appeal as Trump while also being a much better human being. There's no doubt in my mind he would be president-elect today.
Quote:That is not true. Yes, the Democrats had an extremely disappointing, awful day, but we were not "annihilated". Hillary won the popular vote, something which matters a lot. You can't call it a term that bad when a majority of voters support you!
When you gain 100 fewer electoral votes than every single polling aggregate model predicts, you got annihilated. But goody, Hillary won a moral victory by winning the popular vote by a fraction of a percent against a literal cartoon character.
Quote:Democrats also gained two seats in the Senate, both from states Hillary won, and held the one close seat they were defending. Democrats also gained some seats in the house, maybe five or such. Of course Republicans kept their majorities in both, which is horrible, but gaining a few seats is not "annihilated", losing seats would be. And at the state level there were mixed results. Republicans did win some legislatures, but on the other hand that awful racist sheriff of Maripoca County (Pheonix area) Arizona, Joe Arpaio, finally lost after so long! And Roy Cooper, governor of North Carolina and behind their terrible anti-transgender bathroom bill, is currently very narrowly losing that race, which would be fantastic; Cooper's defeat should hold up at this point. Some liberal ballot measures passed in states around the nation as well. This country keeps moving forward on some issues at least, and that is great.
Democrats also lost the Supreme Court for yet another generation. So we face losing every single progressive gain made via legislation and judicial fiat over the last eight years. Obamacare is doomed. Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges are likely doomed. Citizens United is safe. I hope those two or three gained Senate seats make you feel better when Donald nominates Ted Cruz to SCOTUS and he is appointed without serious opposition.
You think nothing's wrong even when us Bernie people were telling you this was going to happen.
Weltall Wrote:Yeah, so we instead nominate the candidate who comes already equipped with tons of baggage and look what happened. Nothing but non-stop scandal and mudslinging and being prepared and used to it did not help her win. Of fucking course they would try to smear Bernie. It would not have worked anywhere near to the extent it worked on Clinton because Clinton was a historically unpopular candidate while Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in the United States.
Yeah, because he wasn't attacked. It is impossible to compare Bernie's numbers to Hillary's or Trump's since there has never been a concerted attack campaign made against him; Hillary's primary campaign focused on issues, and that's different from the kind of campaign this general election was going to be about regardless of the candidate the Dems nominated.
Quote:It astounds me that you believe what you're saying, when our next president was accused repeatedly of sexual assault and child rape and is still going to be our next president.
Sadly, too many people voted on party loyalty and (wrong-headed beliefs in Republican lies about) economics first and not decency or facts. That changes nothing about the fact that Bernie's name would have been dragged through the mud and he would not be anywhere near as popular today as he now is. But besides that, you think states like Ohio or North Carolina were going to vote for a literal socialist? Good luck!
Quote:Hillary dumped ass in the rust belt, but she also failed miserably with minority turnout. Trump did better with Latinos than Romney for fucks' sa[I]ke, while threatening to deport 11 million Latinos. She failed miserably with overall turnout as well, five million fewer votes than Obama in 2012 and ten million fewer than in 2008. Bernie could have easily pulled down numbers like that.
On that last point, no way. Throughout the primaries we saw how awful his support among minorities was, overall. What makes you think that would have changed dramatically had he been nominated?
Quote:Maybe the GOP thought Bernie would be an easier win. Just like Dems felt certain Trump would be an easy win. Bernie has the same populist economic appeal as Trump while also being a much better human being.
These things are both true, but someone as far left as Bernie would inevitably struggle to win given how suspicious Americans are of anything vaguely socialist, of course.
Quote:There's no doubt in my mind he would be president-elect today.
Given the generally not great economic situation and the right-wing trend many nations around the world have been seeing in recent years, any Democrat was going to have a hard time winning this year. We absolutely should have won this, and I did think that beating Trump would be easier than their other candidates, but once Republicans decided to support Trump it was going to be a tough race because, for whatever stupid reason, the American people continue to be easily fooled by Republicans' terrible economic policy positions, and economics are always the primary concern in any election.
Quote:When you gain 100 fewer electoral votes than every single polling aggregate model predicts, you got annihilated. But goody, Hillary won a moral victory by winning the popular vote by a fraction of a percent against a literal cartoon character.
No, you were very narrowly defeated. Hillary won the popular vote, and lost Pennsylvania, Michigan (if that loss is certified, it's still officially uncalled), and Wisconsin combined by fewer votes than Kerry lost Ohio by in '04. You're conflating a big polling miss with a big loss in the actual election, and I do think the two things are different.
Quote:Democrats also lost the Supreme Court for yet another generation. So we face losing every single progressive gain made via legislation and judicial fiat over the last eight years. Obamacare is doomed. Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges are likely doomed. Citizens United is safe. I hope those two or three gained Senate seats make you feel better when Donald nominates Ted Cruz to SCOTUS and he is appointed without serious opposition.
Oh come on, I know that the Democrats like to roll over and give up way too often, but you're giving even this party too little credit here! 48 senators can accomplish quite a bit, as we saw with the Republicans' effective opposition to Obama when they were in the minority in the Senate, and I hope and expect that our senators will fight back against all of the issues you list here. They will win some of those fights for sure, and that's awful, but not ALL of those things are doomed. (Oh, and Obergefell v. Hodges is not changing. Trump doesn't care about hating the gays like many in his party do, and LGBT hate does not play as well as it once did -- see Roy Cooper losing, apparently, despite Trump winning NC easily, for example. That would never have happened in a year like '04 ,when so many gay marriage ban amendments passed nationwide!)
Quote:You think nothing's wrong even when us Bernie people were telling you this was going to happen.
If Bernie had been the nominee we'd be baving this same conversation, just the other way around.
Oh, one other important issue to discuss. If the Republicans want to get a lot of their legislation through the Senate, they will need to either water it down significantly enough to get over possible Democratic filibusters, or get rid of the filibuster for legislation, and Supreme Court justices too if they nominate some crazy to the court. The problem is of course, they LOVE the filibuster when in the minority, as we have seen over the past eight years, so would they really take the permanent (because once gone it won't come back!) damage not having that to rely on would do for some short-term gain? Their party makes some incredibly bad choices and likes to change their positions on issues all the time, but even the Republicans will seriously hesitate before getting rid of the legislative filibuster after having made historically heavy use of it over the past eight years; I don't think it's going away, at least not soon. You can probably find at least 3 Republican senators who support keeping it. Probably many more than that. And as long as the filibuster exists, you can't get everything you want in this system.
(Oh, and the other Republican senators mostly can't stand Ted Cruz, so he definitely would not be a nominee they let sail through easily!)
We can sit here and argue from here until inauguration over who would have fared better. (Believe me, I would LOVE to do that right now. Learning from past mistakes matters, and recognizing what mistakes were made is the first part of that.)
I've come to believe the only way to help our country right now though is to focus on what we can actually do from this rather awful state we're now in. I could hope for a miracle (I just daydreamed a scenario where Trump is visited by 3 ghosts on Christmas Eve and completely mends his ways, going on to become the greatest president the US, nay, the WORLD, has ever seen), but instead let's focus on that electoral college workaround. (That MUST be in the public eye, and talked about on the major comedy shows for months to come, or it'll be forgotten. That's reality.) Let's focus on suggesting ACTUAL solutions to rural America's issues. Those would be the issues that drove them all to vote when as a group they never cared to vote for either candidates in past elections, and the group that won Trump the presidency. Trump, as he is now, is going to fail them all. Let's suggest real plans that can save rural America. I'm not talking about hand-outs, because most rural Americans don't want that. They want self sufficiency. Surely we can figure out systems that don't require us to spread out massive infrastructure across most of the US just to help them. (And no, suggesting all of them just move to the city is a horrible idea. No one wants to abandon everyone they've ever known just to survive. Many would rather die.) This is only a skeleton of an idea, but I've been thinking about setting up a plan of support that resembles the circulatory system somewhat. Rather than a small town in trouble only being able to petition the capital of their state for aid, small towns would have a network of aid they could call on from towns and cities close to them. Proximity is everything here. They would be people they might have seen passing through, or people they've met going to those towns themselves now and then. They would know each other, and since it would be a group of towns offering aid, the burdon would be split. This would extend on up branches with the capital of that state as a main artery. Similarly, states could ask the immediately surrounding states for aid with a much more direct system in place before needing to directly petition the US government for aid. Heck, such a system would make people naturally interested in the welfare of those around them on a larger scale, which is something humans struggle with. Additionally, bringing jobs back home has always been a major complaint of small towns, and they're right. Without actual work, they can't really sustain themselves, and factories are where that work come from. Set some real limits on how many jobs US based companies can send overseas. This sounds isolationist, but at the same time it also puts pressure on countries like China to fix their own humanitarian issues. If American companies are forced by US law to pay workers, no matter the country, the same wages whether they do it overseas or here, chinese companies lose a little of that motivation to treat their own employees so badly to keep those wages down in the first place. Along those lines, while my own state did vote against that ridiculous "right to farm" law that's been making the rounds lately (it basically would let farmers, or more accurately the companies that pay the farmers, to sue away regulation after regulation on farming practices), there should be an actual set of laws protecting farmers. Not from regulations, exactly, but from companies that exploit them. I was disgusted to find out how many farmers actually would prefer NOT to torture their livestock if they could help it, but are essentially forced to by draconian requirements of the massive companies that hire their services. Since those massive companies are practically the only way small time farmers can even sell their goods any more, they're pushed into a corner in a lot of ways.
This isn't to ignore the vast other injustices faced by so many in the US, but to acknowledge we've got another group that needs to be added to the list. Along the way, perhaps they can learn that those they thought were their enemies never were to begin with. How can all this be done? At this point, we've got to start locally, and branch out from there. The top down approach isn't going to work with the republicans in charge, so building such networks will have to start from the bottom up. While the highest levels were being won, I watched a number of bills at the lowest levels go the way of progressives. That's our "in", the bottom.
Quote:but instead let's focus on that electoral college workaround. (That MUST be in the public eye, and talked about on the major comedy shows for months to come, or it'll be forgotten. That's reality.)
Yeah, we need to make sure to not let this fact go. In fact, Hillary might end up winning by a million votes, which is more than Gore beat Bush by in '00! We won't know the final margin for a week or two, since those mail-in ballots out West take time to arrive, provisional ballots nationwide are heavily Democratic in most places but have mostly not yet been counted, etc., but it could end up that high.
Quote:This is only a skeleton of an idea, but I've been thinking about setting up a plan of support that resembles the circulatory system somewhat. Rather than a small town in trouble only being able to petition the capital of their state for aid, small towns would have a network of aid they could call on from towns and cities close to them. Proximity is everything here. They would be people they might have seen passing through, or people they've met going to those towns themselves now and then. They would know each other, and since it would be a group of towns offering aid, the burdon would be split. This would extend on up branches with the capital of that state as a main artery. Similarly, states could ask the immediately surrounding states for aid with a much more direct system in place before needing to directly petition the US government for aid. Heck, such a system would make people naturally interested in the welfare of those around them on a larger scale, which is something humans struggle with.
Air for what, disasters and such? That's what we have a federal government for...
Quote:Additionally, bringing jobs back home has always been a major complaint of small towns, and they're right. Without actual work, they can't really sustain themselves, and factories are where that work come from. Set some real limits on how many jobs US based companies can send overseas. This sounds isolationist, but at the same time it also puts pressure on countries like China to fix their own humanitarian issues. If American companies are forced by US law to pay workers, no matter the country, the same wages whether they do it overseas or here, chinese companies lose a little of that motivation to treat their own employees so badly to keep those wages down in the first place.
The issue of trade and open v. closed borders is a very complicated one, and I've never been very good at economics so I don't have a strong position myself, really; I do think the TPP sounds bad, and generally free trade agreements do seem to have done more harm than good, but on the other hadn they probably have brought some benefits too, particularly to the other nations more so than to America itself. America may have been hurt by NAFTA for example, but has Mexico benefited more than we have hurt? I don't know, but if you care about humanity as a whole instead of just us that is a question that matters.
As for China though, that's hard because they make SO much stuff that getting into a trade war with China seems like a sure way to hurt the global economy. There are a lot of very good reasons to greatly dislike the Chinese government, but how can you start economically attacking them when they're so important in world trade? And the same goes for the US, biggest economy on Earth and all. On the other hand, everyone deserves decent working conditions and a better environment, and without pressure how can you try to convince governments which do not care to change? So yeah, there are good arguments both ways here. We should be tougher on China, but wrecking the world economy probably is not a good idea...
Quote:Along those lines, while my own state did vote against that ridiculous "right to farm" law that's been making the rounds lately (it basically would let farmers, or more accurately the companies that pay the farmers, to sue away regulation after regulation on farming practices), there should be an actual set of laws protecting farmers. Not from regulations, exactly, but from companies that exploit them. I was disgusted to find out how many farmers actually would prefer NOT to torture their livestock if they could help it, but are essentially forced to by draconian requirements of the massive companies that hire their services. Since those massive companies are practically the only way small time farmers can even sell their goods any more, they're pushed into a corner in a lot of ways.
So even Republican-dominated Oklahoma opposes bad bills sometimes? That's good to hear.
Just as an idea, what if any US-based company were required to pay even overseas workers in other countries the same wages and provide the same benefits that US workers would get (and this would be on top of that own nation's laws governing worker benefits). It would basically remove any benefit that company would get using overseas workers. Along those lines, if a US based company suddenly decided "you know what, we're actually an Indian company now", they'd have to have a government board review come in and verify if such a decision was actually justified or if it was an attempt to skirt around US regulations.
Doing more to get companies to pay their workers in other countries more is a very good idea, but matching US wages isn't; the standards of living in different countries are very different, so you need a lot more money to live decently in this country, or Europe or such, than in much of the third world. I agree with paying them more, but matching US wages would never happen, companies would find ways around it. And it'd be quite a bit more money than those people need to live similarly to someone working for that company here.
In other news, since Trump won, we've seen news stories saying that:
- He is completely unprepared and did not think, or really want to, win. There's a picture of the group watching returns at Trump HQ I presume, everyone else is cheering while he looks quite down. And that news article saying that he doesn't really want to live in the White House and would rather stay in Trump Tower ("can I come home on weekends, like members of congress?")... lol.
- He is totally unprepared and doesn't have a set transition team yet, much less much of a clue what kind of administration he will have. Only NOW has the press bothered to start asking questions about what Trump actually believes about issues. Umm, this is something you should have been pushing hard for months ago you know! The first big question is, will he go with the Steve Bannon of Breitbart for his Chief of Staff, or Reince Preibus of the RNC? Or will it be someone else? That'll say a lot about which directon he goes in.
- Will he decide to take on the Republican Party on issues such as the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill he wants to pass, or his signature anti-lobbying reforms? Republicans they have blocked such things for years now, of course, but Trump just doesn't care about deficits like a post-Bush Republican "should", so how hard will he go after his own party for this stuff?
So yeah, his incompetence and ignorance are so massive they're almost amusing, and it will be interesting to see if he really takes on his party, that won't help his chances of getting much done. And we don't want them to get much done, with how bad it'll surely almost all be!
On the other hand, of course, probably the worst effect of a Republican administration will be the massive damage it is sure to have on the climate. He's already talking about trying to find a way out of the Paris accords, putting a climate change denier in charge of the EPA, etc. How can people be so unbelievably stupid that they deny the terrifyingly obvious on this issue? It's incredibly sad for any slight chances we had for warding off some extremely bad effects of global warming... which is, of course, already a problem, but it'll get much much worse.
Has a president ever just up and resigned? Clearly there's a system in place to handle it (we'd have Pence for president), but historically has that ever been the cause?
Note that I don't expect that to happen. Trump's ego would get in the way.
Anyway, as to that wage thing, that's entirely my point, actually. It WOULD be crazy for them to spend that much on foreign workers, so they would bring it all back home. That's the whole idea, in fact.
It is with sincerity that I ask why people are acting like the Democratic Party is not facing an existential crisis.
Republicans control all three appendages of the federal government after a summer of the mainstream media furtively dreaming about a Democratic takeover of the entire Congress. They also control more than 30 state governments and are competitive in more. That's almost enough to start talking about constitutional amendments. Another midterm meltdown in 2018 would make it a lot more than talk. The entire leadership of the party keeps talking about popular vote and stoking anger about the electoral college and yes, sure, let's give it to Hillary instead since she really won. That'll go over well with 60 million Americans who thought the election was going to be rigged.
Democrats are still fighting the war they just lost. And it was a lost war. Smoking ruins. Paul LePage is cackling right now, I can hear it. They should be gearing up for the next fight, like Bernie Sanders is doing right now.
ABF, sir, I'm begging you. Look at what just happened. That was the complete opposite of what was supposed to happen. The complete opposite of what every poll and 'reputable' media outlet said was sure to happen. This is the bad future.
ABF works more closely with an actual party than anyone else here. I'd say it is pretty important that he's able to take a few steps back and look at the party externally, because yes, it's in a crisis.
Just look at this in regards to my admittedly undeveloped suggestion: "companies would find ways around it" That's a pretty defeatist attitude to have. Why try if companies would fight it, is that right? And now look where we are, when an entire party rolls over every time someone pushes back. This is not a good strategy, but the democrats are convinced, absolutely convinced, that if they are nice enough, cooperative enough, and concede enough, eventually those who hate them will finally work with them. Every time they fail, they panic but eventually swing right around to that same mind set. "The strategy of bending over backwards can't fail, it can only BE failed. We just didn't give up ENOUGH to them!"
I'm so sick of hearing "we would have done it that way, but we already knew everyone would hate it if we did, so we conceded on points before we even suggested anything". Just TRY to do something daring. Suggest something that'll outrage your opponents for once! Yes, you very likely will still need to concede some things, but at least you didn't show up to the bargaining table with half of the things you wanted already thrown out.
Quote:Here are a few tastes of what was in store for Sanders, straight out of the Republican playbook: He thinks rape is a-ok. In 1972, when he was 31, Sanders wrote a fictitious essay in which he described a woman enjoying being raped by three men. Yes, there is an explanation for it—a long, complicated one, just like the one that would make clear why the Clinton emails story was nonsense. And we all know how well that worked out.
Then there’s the fact that Bernie was on unemployment until his mid-30s, and that he stole electricity from a neighbor after failing to pay his bills, and that he co-sponsored a bill to ship Vermont’s nuclear waste to a poor Hispanic community in Texas, where it could be dumped. You can just see the words, “Environmental racist” on Republican billboards. And if you can’t, I already did. They were in the Republican opposition research book as a proposal on how to frame the nuclear waste issue.
Also on the list: Sanders violated campaign finance laws, criticized Clinton for supporting the 1994 Crime Bill that he voted for, and he voted against the Amber Alert system.
The Republicans had at least four other damning Sanders videos (I don’t know what they showed) and the opposition research folder was almost two-feet thick.
And this quote doesn't even mention the most obvious attack, that he's a socialist. Remember, in some polling socialists rank below atheists, last I remember!
Anyway, getting back to politics as they are, it is kind of amusing to see Trump reverse course on so many issues. People have to have known he'd be completely unreliable when it comes to holding any actual policy positions, but come on, even beyond the unbelievably horrible things he's said and probably also done, how could people have actually voted for someone this random? Unfortunately though, the two likely-to-be-worst things about the coming administration, the environment and courts, aren't on the list of things he's flipped; it's almost everything else. But with how random he is who knows what's going to happen. I presume bad things, but you never know for sure.
The other big issue now is, who should be the DNC chairman? Keith Ellison, the black Muslim progressive congressman from Minnesota, is the most prominent candidate, but Howard Dean (chair from ~'05-'08) said he might be interested too. Ellison is the likely insider choice, but can he run a winning nationwide effort? Because we very, very badly need to rebuild Democratic state parties nationwide, since Dean's 50 state strategy ended when he left and Obama did not continue anything like it, sadly; that has to be considered one of his bigger mistakes, I think. I'm sure Ellison will excite the left, but we need to rebuild the party nationwide, across all people hurt by the Republicans' policies whether or not they realize they should be voting Democratic... but on the other hand, exciting your base is a good way to help boost turnout, so that direction could help. But while energizing the base is absolutely crucial, we need to get beyond the base too, particularly to win back those Midwestern states which are trending Republican, but with the right message maybe could be brought back to our side... Republican policies will not, in reality, help rebuild the Rust Belt, after all! When the Trump presidency fails to do that, hopefully they turn on him, and that party.
A Black Falcon Wrote:And this quote doesn't even mention the most obvious attack, that he's a socialist. Remember, in some polling socialists rank below atheists, last I remember!
I remember each one of these but the last from the primary.
What I do know is that socialism and atheism are neither as deeply unpopular as Hillary Clinton (50% find socialism unfavorable, 55% for Clinton according to the final RCP average). Furthermore, neither of these things is unpopular among young voters (another demographic Clinton simply assumed would flock to her; she got 55%).
The MSM spent months calling Trump a fascist and a racist and accused him of actually raping people rather than writing a fictional story about it 44 years ago, and I'm quite certain all those things are far less favorable than being 'socialist', but none of that stopped him.
In fact, you really have to give Trump credit. He singlehandedly destroyed both major party establishments in just one year.
Quote:When the Trump presidency fails to do that, hopefully they turn on him, and that party.
18 experienced politicians decided that the best way to beat Trump was to wait and hope for his fans to turn on him. Considering how that turned out for all 18 of them, perhaps Dems need to figure out how to make a proactive play for those independents who went his way and make for them an actual, convincing case that we will do a better job, rather than hoping they figure it out on their own. Doing that means we need a credible voice who speaks for Democrats.
Weltall Wrote:I remember each one of these but the last from the primary.
I don't, I hadn't heard of maybe any of the things in that second paragraph there. And beyond that, Hillary herself, her advertising campaign, and such never mentioned any of them. Republicans, on the other hand, would have had ads on for months hammering him for those things, like they did with Hillary. Relatively few people knew about any of those things during the primaries, but everyone would have known of whichever ones the Republicans focused on in the general. Very different situation there.
Quote:What I do know is that socialism and atheism are neither as deeply unpopular as Hillary Clinton (50% find socialism unfavorable, 55% for Clinton according to the final RCP average).
That number for socialism would be higher after half a year of Republican attack ads aimed at Bernie, I think.
Quote: Furthermore, neither of these things is unpopular among young voters (another demographic Clinton simply assumed would flock to her; she got 55%).
Uh, you think younger voters find nothing in that list objectionable? None are horrible, sure, but the "ship nuclear waste to Texas" thing might, and voting against the Amber Alert system and such too. But unfortunately, younger voters rarely vote so while the slightly lower younger voter vote percent hurt, it wasn't a kille, since you can't rely on younger voters anyway. If younger voters actually voted we would be in a very different situation in this country today, because most are liberal.
Quote:The MSM spent months calling Trump a fascist and a racist and accused him of actually raping people rather than writing a fictional story about it 44 years ago, and I'm quite certain all those things are far less favorable than being 'socialist', but none of that stopped him.
Sure, but it would be a race between two candidates damaged by attacks, and Bernie's big negative (socialism) is a bigger one than any one of Trump's. That most certainly should not be the case, but it is. Overall though, it's not like a Trump-Bernie race would have been positive and issues-focused, no way that happens with Trump on the ballot. It would have been a very negative campaign either way and Bernie had some big negatives and lines of attack too that most people do not know of unless they closely followed the primaries, and even then I still hadn't heard all of that.
Quote:In fact, you really have to give Trump credit. He singlehandedly destroyed both major party establishments in just one year.
18 experienced politicians decided that the best way to beat Trump was to wait and hope for his fans to turn on him. Considering how that turned out for all 18 of them, perhaps Dems need to figure out how to make a proactive play for those independents who went his way and make for them an actual, convincing case that we will do a better job, rather than hoping they figure it out on their own. Doing that means we need a credible voice who speaks for Democrats.
Yeah, I agree that we definitely need to try to come up with a strategy to win over Trump voters who are not committed Republican voters, yeah. For sure. What I'm not sure about is if Keith Ellison is the person to lead that effort or not. It looks like he's the likely one to do it, though... but beyond how liberal he is, will he be DNC head part-time, or quit Congress to run the DNC? Having someone splitting time between congress and the DNC does not always work well, as we have seen. This is a concern I've seen around today, and it does seem like a good one, since both of our last two DNC chairs have been sitting elected officials, splitting time between the DNC and their main job, and we haven't done great through most of that time, 2012 excepted of course.
Oh good lord ABF, "come up with a strategy to win over Trump voters who are not committed Republican voters"? PLEASE tell me you aren't just going to repeat history and go for the same old "middle of the road" campaigning the party has been doing for years now. That strategy destroys your own values! Go for the group who came out of the woodworks in droves to vote for Trump that no one accounted for. Get some plans together for saving rural America. That's how you do it. PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME YOU THINK COMPROMISING LIBERAL VALUES IS STILL THE BEST STRATEGY! If you do that, I'll have lost all hope in the democratic party to actually be capable of learning from their own mistakes.
In a completely unrelated note, here's a video about the electoral college. At least now I can say I understand what the founding father's reasoning was, so I can safely say it no longer applies to modern America.
We just lost. We lost because just barely too few midwesterners voted for Hillary, while also she failed to win many of the other battleground states. Her margin of victory in the popular vote keeps growing -- it's over 800,000 now apparently, with millions of votes still left to count in California -- but sadly that doesn't matter much.
So, how do you turn that around? Yes, invigorating the left is good, but you can't win without appealing to people who voted for Trump too. Write all of them off as "deplorables" or something (however accurate that term is, and it sure is accurate!) and try to win with only liberals and and we quite likely lose again. Maybe it'd be another loss with a majority of the popular vote again, but you need to be actual President, of course. And to do that you need to attract in people who voted for the previous party last time.
As for issues, though, no, I am not saying that issues-wise we should move to the center. I don't think I've ever said that! The Democrats are too far to the right as it is, moving right would be a bad idea. You don't need to move right to win over some people who voted for Trump. After all, particularly in the Midwest, many voted for him for economic reasons. We have better actual economic policy positions, we just need to get better at advocating for them, obviously. Standing up for what we believe in, instead of constantly giving in, will help as well of course, but I'm not too hopeful there sadly. Now, you do need to be running on values people support, which is why I've always been skeptical of Bernie's chances; running moderate or conservative Democrats in some seats is sometimes necessary. Still, some down-ballot races have shown that a real liberal can win in some tough races if they run the right kind of race and are the right candidate, and that Bernie had the level of success he did does show that.
On the other hand though, we are seeing now Senate races are tied closer than ever to Presidential races -- that old adage that "all politics are local" is less true than it used to be. So, this year, the three close Senate seats the Dems won are in states Hillary won (Nevada, Illinois, New Hampshire), while losing all the close or once-thought-to-be-close races in states Trump won. Things definitely did not used to be that clear-cut. Senators still need to run a good race to win, don't get me wrong, and some will run above or below their president, but they are less separated than they used to be.
Quote:Get some plans together for saving rural America. That's how you do it.
Indeed, one analysis I've seen for one of the reasons why Hillary lost the Midwest was that she focused too much on pushing up the margins in urban areas, and not enough in trying to get out what Democratic vote remains in rural areas. I know rural areas are heavily Republican, but you need SOME votes there to win. That was surely important to the Dem victories in most states in that region in the '92 to '12 elections. So yeah, we need to do this. Of course, the Republicans should help us with this, as their policies inevitably fail to help and hopefully we can convince people to give our (better) ideas a try instead, as I said earlier.
That's good, because I was getting rather tired of hearing so very many democrats act like the only thing they did wrong was not shift to the right ENOUGH. It's a rhetoric I'm still hearing here and there.
If your idea of appealing to the other side is to show them how progressive policies help them too, we're on the same page. It does need to go further. Just like things such as affirmative action specifically target a specific group of people and their particular needs, we need policies that specifically target rural America's problems. My suggested laws regulating how US based companies can pay overseas employees I think would go a long way to bringing work back to America, which is what rural places need to actually sustain their lives in the long term. Of course companies won't like it, but I'm okay with that. Of course consumers are going to pay the price when a lot of these companies pass the added cost onto us (instead of lowering pay for the board of directors), but that won't last either if they go too far with it. (Locally, my ISP has been steadily raising it's prices every time some new regulation is passed on them by the FCC, and wow is it transparent, but that doesn't mean the FCC is wrong, it means that my ISP is wrong, and I'm just about ready to switch to some competition that's gained some traction here lately).
So, since Hillary's campaign isn't interested (too bad, Gore fought for every vote he could...), Jill Stein and the Greens are... going to fun an effort to get recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Or rather, they put up a funding page to make that happen, and the money absolutely poured in! https://jillstein.nationbuilder.com/recount It took less than a day to get the full 2.5 million funded that they initially asked for. That's great! Yes, I doubt that this will overturn the results of the election, but we need audits like this to know that our system actually is still fair. If you don't recount you don't know, and I think there is reason to want to be sure these counts were right, for as unlikely as it is if there is any chance something was messed with, we need to find that out! And regardless, this kind of thing should be done regularly anyway to make sure things are accurate.
On a related note, much of the Pennsylvania vote uses electronic voting machines with no paper record, so there's no real way to recount them. Seriously, they need to get rid of those and go back to paper; with no record, there's no way to be sure if the vote was actually legitimate or not. It's a huge issue in any close election. After the mid '00s most states got rid of no-record electronic voting machines, but not Pennsylvania apparently, sadly enough... unfortunate.
But yeah, regardless of the unlikeliness of the results being overturned, I'm all for this effort and hope the recounts happen. The Green Party's useful sometimes, apparently, such as when the Dems are being too nice to push for something like this... seriously, you don't win when you won't fight for your values and candidates. Even if it's unlikely, push for every vote you can. (And challenging elections has worked, at least once in a Presidential race -- look up 1876.)
Power tends to preserve itself. Psychiatrists have been telling us for years that fiercly competitive environments like, well, the top leadership in political parties attract psychopaths and encourage their own survival strategies. I'm sure that many in the party really were trying to change things, but I'm just as sure that the psychopaths hiding in the party managed to steer everyone back onto the "no no, let's not change anything, let's just do everything we've been doing because it keeps those in power around here happy" mindset.
So ABF, could you provide an argument as to how the democrats can change with the same old leadership? Maybe something like "well, she does have the experience" (at getting the whole party in trouble)? Maybe you'll point out how a lot of positions UNDER her are getting changed to that new way of thinking (which won't matter if the one in charge still thinks the old strategy is best and can overturn their ideas at every turn). Nah, everyone panicked for a precious few weeks or so, but those who wanted change in the party have been kept under control by those who just want to keep their positions of power intact.
Well, I think I'd just focus on the fact that the main reason we aren't winning the House, which Pelosi is in charge of our representatives in, is not because of anything she did, but instead is because of gerrymandering and the way liberals have moved so heavily into cities in ways that make winning outside of those areas harder. I don't see how any other person could have won us a House majority this year, no matter how the Presidential race went, thanks to those factors.
So, why change House leadership now? She didn't do a bad job or anything, we never had a chance of winning there in the first place, not in a post-2010 gerrymanders world. The key thing for winning back the House is doing well in the 2018 and 2020 state-level races in areas currently controlled by Republicans. Fail that and things will continue as they are regardless of who we choose as House leader, most likely...
A Black Falcon Wrote:Well, I think I'd just focus on the fact that the main reason we aren't winning the House, which Pelosi is in charge of our representatives in, is not because of anything she did, but instead is because of gerrymandering and the way liberals have moved so heavily into cities in ways that make winning outside of those areas harder. I don't see how any other person could have won us a House majority this year, no matter how the Presidential race went, thanks to those factors.
Instead of relying on existing liberals, we should be trying to make new ones. The current Party leadership is not only disinterested in this critical endeavor, it seeks to actively suppress outspoken leftists and writing off independent voters. That's why the Dems have no chance of winning. You are acting like it's just how it goes, but this latest failure in a string of heartbreaking failures has been self-inflicted and the people who are responsible are going to remain in charge.
Quote:So, why change House leadership now?
I'll answer your question with the remainder of your paragraph.
Quote:The key thing for winning back the House is doing well in the 2018 and 2020 state-level races in areas currently controlled by Republicans. Fail that and things will continue as they are regardless of who we choose as House leader, most likely...
Current House (and party) leadership has had eight years to prove, repeatedly, that they are not up to the task of doing well in elections on any level that are either seriously contested or not currently in their control. Why not change House leadership now?
I hadn't thought of that, and yeah, that'd be pretty funny if it ever becomes true...![[Image: 406ba29a1a8fd9066f7d3003a7c5a729.png]](https://i.gyazo.com/406ba29a1a8fd9066f7d3003a7c5a729.png)
![[Image: hqdefault.jpg]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ey3PbD75cjc/hqdefault.jpg)