Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
Manchu wrote: At the same time, we have to acknowledge that Trump's campaign definitely succeeded. That is, the votes were not merely against Hillary - although that certainly played an important role.
Which mean only means that we (we as in people not in the US) weren't hearing the full story, and that the news stories we heard and social media echo chamber that just repeats the words racist, bigot, misogyny and homophobe over and over again were only part of what actual Americans were hearing.
What can you tell me about the Trump campaign that makes it seem like it wasn't someone trying not to hit themselves in the face with a baseball bat yet continuously failing at that.
I really don't understand how he won given all we heard over here. Educate me please!
Australian media is extremely leftist and I think the population is more leftist too. Watching the count on Australian media kept giving the impression Hillary had a decent chance even as the more left wing American news sources were claiming almost certain Trump victory.
I have an almost even split of facebook friends who are American vs Australian (with a few Indians thrown in for good measure) and the Australians were crying more than the Americans were as the news of Trump's victory filtered through.
Funnily enough I think the feeling of it being socially unacceptable to support Trump was even larger in Australia than it is in the USA. In spite of all our bogans Australia is actually a very politically correct country overall, I think more Americans were willing to shrug off some of Trump's sillier comments to avoid letting Hillary get in.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/10 08:34:56
Ensis Ferrae wrote: 1. Not all of us "liberals" are that way...In a twisted way, I was hoping for a Clinton presidency followed swiftly by the Nixon treatment, thus resulting in a Kaine presidency. But I sure as gak ain't outside acting a fool.
Let is all hope that this does not happen to Trump because, yikes, you think he's bad, that Pence guy is waaaaaaaay more scary.
Pence is gonna be running the show anyway. Our shiny new President-Elect hasn't shown all that much interest in understanding or learning the nuances of government; supposedly, he offered Kasich control of foreign and domestic policy when shopping for VPs, leaving 'making America great again' as his own chosen task. It would fit with the way he does business - lend his name to stuff, collect the check, and wander off for a little light sexual assault. I imagine Pence would have been offered a similar deal.
I am somewhat expecting a GWish presidency. Light on policy from POTUS, with most of the actual decisions coming from the people that he will surround himself with. I do think that GW had more policy in his head than Trump though, and that Trump will surround himself with worse people.
Pence as the policy guy? Rudy "unconstitutional stop-and-frisk" Giuliani as AG? Newt "screw NATO" Gingrich as SoS? Ben Carson as Surgeon General?
That group of people scares me more than Donald "can I gild this" Trump.
Peregrine wrote: Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Whatever China might still have in their name or in their theoretical laws it's pretty well known that Chinese industry is allowed to get away with a lot. Blatant piracy, horrible working conditions, etc. And regardless of whether or not the worst offenders are punished after they're caught the point is that they tried. They didn't say "nah, let's not put toxic waste in this baby food, it would be wrong", they ruthlessly made money from selling a dangerous product because they saw an opportunity to do so.
One interesting thing with China about China is their laws on these kinds of things are extreme. Pirated DVDs and other copyright fraud can get you crazy long jail sentences, according to the laws on the books. But in reality it is totally unenforced. And I'm pretty sure the dudes runnin the company that sold that lethal baby formula ended up getting death. But the issue is that there's no enforcement of regulations, which is basically the same thing as having no regulations, which of course ended up with those dead babies.
Now Australian baby formula, which has been held to the highest regulatory standards and actually enforced gets to charge a huge premium on our sales in to China. But apparently enforcing regulation is bad.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Trump's victory was a huge shock to many people in the US, as well. Like you, many of us had never seen, read, or heard anything positive about or from this candidate. To me, it seemed absolutely impossible that he could be elected: I fully believed the NYT was justified in giving HRC an 85% chance of winning. But that turned out to be pure fantasy. What happened? First - yes, HRC lost. Second - mainstream sources unanimously underestimated the tidal wave of antiestablishment sentiment and how effectively Trump spoke to that demographic. I thought, and I think a lot of people also thought, Trump was just connecting with some kind of fringe bigots. Many people are still clinging to that narrative.
What seems to really have happened is, Trump did not merely turn out a protest vote. He made a real connection to people who feel forgotten by the mainstream discourse. I tend to accept that view considering that the mainstream did in fact overlook these folks. Here's how Murdoch's NY tabloid reported on it back in August:
While Trump supporters here are overwhelmingly white, their support has little to do with race (yes, you’ll always find one or two who make race the issue), but has a lot to do with a perceived loss of power.
Not power in the way that Washington or Wall Street boardrooms view power, but power in the sense that these people see a diminishing respect for them and their ways of life, their work ethic, their tendency to not be mobile. (Many live in the same eight square miles that their father’s father’s father lived in.)
Thirty years ago, such people determined the country’s standards in entertainment, music, food, clothing, politics, personal values. Today, they are the people who are accused of creating every social injustice imaginable; when anything in society fails, they get blamed.
Peregrine wrote: And this goes for the manufacturers as well. Which is easier: having to guess at the standard you have to meet to successfully defend yourself in a lawsuit from your customers, or looking up the standard regulations for the subject and following them?
That's a really good point and one I hadn't thought of. Thanks.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
H.B.M.C. wrote: Ah. The oft-reported 'tolerance' of the left.
Arguments about "the left is this", "no, the right is this" are boring as flying rodent gak, however...
I continue to be amazed at the hypocrisy in which any person on the right who says something bigoted can't be seen as representative of the right as a whole, even when one such bigot just got voted in as president by a whole bunch of right wing voters, but at the same time a bunch of protesting students can be used to discredit the whole of the left wing.
How fething stupid this tribalist left/right stuff quickly becomes.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
d-usa wrote: I'm surprised there hasn't been more talk about the FBI and the whole email October surprise so far, I expected that to be one of the first scapegoats for the result.
I saw some angry posts from people saying that Democrats won't forget what Comey did. I laughed as I pictured Monty Burns mocking the Germans, 'ooh the Democrats are mad at me'
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/11/10 09:08:47
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Peregrine wrote: There are more deplorables and gullible people than polls and analysis anticipated. The deplorables love him for obvious reasons, the gullible people somehow thought that a billionaire who was born into wealth and privilege and has a history of screwing over middle-class workers is somehow the champion of the masses who will give them their jobs back. So it turns out that if you yell racism and zero-substance nationalism loud enough you can win an election despite having policy positions that range from "not possible" to "sheer raving lunacy".
Smug, dismissive, condescending analysis of the largest demographic in the country has worked out really, really well for progressives lately.
As someone who likes seeing the people he votes for getting elected, I really hope you guys continue it.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Which mean only means that we (we as in people not in the US) weren't hearing the full story, and that the news stories we heard and social media echo chamber that just repeats the words racist, bigot, misogyny and homophobe over and over again were only part of what actual Americans were hearing.
What can you tell me about the Trump campaign that makes it seem like it wasn't someone trying not to hit themselves in the face with a baseball bat yet continuously failing at that.
I really don't understand how he won given all we heard over here. Educate me please!
As a fellow Aussie, I seem to have heard enough that I'm not too surprised by the outcome (horrified; yes, but not surprised). But to get into explanations it seems that Hillary wanted the american people to say "I'm with her". Trump reached out to a part of the population that felt that they were (and had been for a long time) ignored, and said "I'm with you".
Or for a deeper understanding; just go back and read most of what Sebster has been saying.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/11/10 11:22:15
Peregrine wrote: There are more deplorables and gullible people than polls and analysis anticipated. The deplorables love him for obvious reasons, the gullible people somehow thought that a billionaire who was born into wealth and privilege and has a history of screwing over middle-class workers is somehow the champion of the masses who will give them their jobs back. So it turns out that if you yell racism and zero-substance nationalism loud enough you can win an election despite having policy positions that range from "not possible" to "sheer raving lunacy".
Add to this the evangelicals turned out in favour of Trump 81 to 16, because they've have basically submitted themselves to whomever the Republican party put up as a candidate, for reasons that I can best describe as a shared commitment to form a collective delusion. Reading my cousin and his friend's facebook discussion on why they all agree Trump was interesting because he was a billionaire but also a man of the people, and man who was publicly shallow but privately so generous... it kind of gave me a scientology vibe.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Australian media is extremely leftist and I think the population is more leftist too. Watching the count on Australian media kept giving the impression Hillary had a decent chance even as the more left wing American news sources were claiming almost certain Trump victory.
We're more left than the US, but still to the right of most of the rest of the developed world. Which tells you how far to the right America is. Nothing wrong with that of course, each country can pick it's own policies, but it is what it is.
Australian media isn't that left, unless you buy in to the Liberal government's moaning, as they become ever so slightly like a mini version of the Republican party. Nah, the issue with our coverage of the US presidential race and mocking Trump was because like most countries we spend a fair bit of our time sneering out how other countries do things. And with Trump there was so much to sneer at, so that's what we did.
Oh, and they wouldn't have called the election early because they don't know the system that well. They were still prattling on about Florida like it was 2000 well in to the night, when that was never part of Clinton's firewall this time around. They were simply not as astute on the reality of the race as the Americans, for the obvious reason that it isn't their country.
Funnily enough I think the feeling of it being socially unacceptable to support Trump was even larger in Australia than it is in the USA. In spite of all our bogans Australia is actually a very politically correct country overall
Dude, what? We've just been though PUP, One Nation and Rise Up. There's no shortage of crazy and right wing politics here as well. The reason Trump has few supporters is because many people in the US only supported him as part of their commitment to the Republican Party... and because nationalists who prattle on about putting their own interests first tend to only be popular in their own country, the country who's interests they are putting first.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2016/11/10 09:22:09
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.
Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.
From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.
There have been "hundreds" of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.
One was in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: "I hope Obama gets assassinated." That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law's front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, Millner said.
...
Other incidents include:
•Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: "Let's shoot that (N-word) in the head."
•Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.
•University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. "It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork," Houston said.
•Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.
•Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
•A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted 'Obama.'
•In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying "now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house."
Of course that same article still is relevant today:
Potok, who is white, said he believes there is "a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them."
Grant Griffin, a 46-year-old white Georgia native, expressed similar sentiments: "I believe our nation is ruined and has been for several decades and the election of Obama is merely the culmination of the change.
Seaward wrote: Smug, dismissive, condescending analysis of the largest demographic in the country has worked out really, really well for progressives lately.
As opposed to the insightful analysis of "lie, lie, and lie some more" that Trump's campaign used? Clearly progressives underestimated the strength of Trump's followers (and, more importantly, overestimated the strength of their own candidate's support), but that doesn't make what I said wrong. The large demographic that Trump flipped from D to R shouldn't have believed one bit of what he was saying. Trump isn't going to get their jobs back. The economic factors that moved jobs out of those areas are unlikely to change, and no amount of promises to "make America great again" will change the fact that technology and automation have made labor-intensive manufacturing methods obsolete. And Trump is not going to put the interest of lower-class workers above those of his fellow wealthy elites. FFS, this is a person who bragged about how he doesn't pay taxes and regularly screwed over his own workers because refusing to pay them was good for his profit margins. This comic pretty well sums up the idea of voting for Trump in this situation:
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
Trump's victory was a huge shock to many people in the US, as well. Like you, many of us had never seen, read, or heard anything positive about or from this candidate. To me, it seemed absolutely impossible that he could be elected: I fully believed the NYT was justified in giving HRC an 85% chance of winning. But that turned out to be pure fantasy. What happened? First - yes, HRC lost. Second - mainstream sources unanimously underestimated the tidal wave of antiestablishment sentiment and how effectively Trump spoke to that demographic. I thought, and I think a lot of people also thought, Trump was just connecting with some kind of fringe bigots. Many people are still clinging to that narrative.
What seems to really have happened is, Trump did not merely turn out a protest vote. He made a real connection to people who feel forgotten by the mainstream discourse. I tend to accept that view considering that the mainstream did in fact overlook these folks. Here's how Murdoch's NY tabloid reported on it back in August:
While Trump supporters here are overwhelmingly white, their support has little to do with race (yes, you’ll always find one or two who make race the issue), but has a lot to do with a perceived loss of power.
Not power in the way that Washington or Wall Street boardrooms view power, but power in the sense that these people see a diminishing respect for them and their ways of life, their work ethic, their tendency to not be mobile. (Many live in the same eight square miles that their father’s father’s father lived in.)
Thirty years ago, such people determined the country’s standards in entertainment, music, food, clothing, politics, personal values. Today, they are the people who are accused of creating every social injustice imaginable; when anything in society fails, they get blamed.
The surprise comes mostly from the result not lining up with the polls. After a few elections where polls predicted the final outcome pretty well, and the swing states had big enough buffers that even a bigger polling wouldn't have meant much, people got to thinking that a 3 to 4 point polling lead was a certain win. Reading Nate Silver though showed a really clear argument that wasn't the case, but unfortunately it seems lots of people look at Nate Silver's polling aggregates, but don't read the work he puts in to explaining the amount of uncertainty in there.
Also, you know, I can understand a fairly natural bias against believing the idiot who'd done a couple of dozen horrible things that would sink any other campaign couldn't possibly win. It wasn't what the numbers were saying and I so I didn't believe it myself, but I can see how a lot of people might reach that conclusion.
As to the second point, the quote from the NY Post, it was rather nicely written (for the Post) but was basically describing racial resentment. We used to run this place and now we don't and we're angry about it. I'm not saying it isn't a reason for Trump's win, I think it's a big reason. I am saying it is a reason, but it isn't a defense.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seaward wrote: Smug, dismissive, condescending analysis of the largest demographic in the country has worked out really, really well for progressives lately.
As someone who likes seeing the people he votes for getting elected, I really hope you guys continue it.
Increasingly bonkers rightwing fantasies combined with contempt for national institutions led to you guys nominating Trump and then putting him in power.
As someone who thinks power is best kept away from nincompoops, I really hope you guys don't continue it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/10 09:33:31
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
Saw an article on FB reporting that someone hoisted a Nazi flag over their house this morning. The person who posted it said this shows how scary things are. Turns out the house was in San Francisco and the owner decided to fly the swaztika to protest Trump's election. Someone pointed this out to the poster, who in turn doubled-down, claiming he had indeed read the article but was just agreeing with the guy's protest. Maybe that is true ... seems like a weird statement. How is an anti-Trump guy flying a Nazi flag demonstarting that we live in a scary time? Isn't that actaully instead generating a scary time? There is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy in microcosm here that I hope, given these protests, it doesn't become a larger thing.
Peregrine wrote: As opposed to the insightful analysis of "lie, lie, and lie some more" that Trump's campaign used?
I said it earlier in this thread, but I think Thiel's analysis is spot-on: progressives took Trump literally but not seriously, and Trump's voters took him seriously but not literally. They know the wall isn't going up (and most of them didn't support it, anyway). They know the glory days of manufacturing aren't coming back, but at least Trump's concerned about them.
Clearly progressives underestimated the strength of Trump's followers (and, more importantly, overestimated the strength of their own candidate's support), but that doesn't make what I said wrong. The large demographic that Trump flipped from D to R shouldn't have believed one bit of what he was saying.
Nor should they have believed one bit of what Clinton was saying. And they didn't. They didn't believe either, in fact.
Trump isn't going to get their jobs back. The economic factors that moved jobs out of those areas are unlikely to change, and no amount of promises to "make America great again" will change the fact that technology and automation have made labor-intensive manufacturing methods obsolete. And Trump is not going to put the interest of lower-class workers above those of his fellow wealthy elites. FFS, this is a person who bragged about how he doesn't pay taxes and regularly screwed over his own workers because refusing to pay them was good for his profit margins.
Yet he was the only one in the race talking to them. Plenty of others talked about them, but only to call them racist, misogynist, sister-fething hillbillies who were too stupid to vote for Clinton.
Again, believe me, I fething hope they keep doing exactly that.
It's also worth noting that Trump's victory can't be chalked up solely to that demographic - he won college-educated whites, too. He won white people. Across the board.
sebster wrote: As someone who thinks power is best kept away from nincompoops, I really hope you guys don't continue it.
Yes, it's amusing how suddenly everyone on the left's worried about power being in the wrong hands. Time's exhortation for Obama to end the NSA spy state "before it's too late" is particularly funny; apparently they forgot that he had eight years to do it, and expanded it instead of contracted it.
Perhaps people should have thought about the dangers of expanding executive power when it was their guy who had it? Nah, that'd be a little too close to libertarian thinking.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2016/11/10 09:39:36
I probably would have agreed with you before election night about "it's just racial resentment." Now I think the story is more complex and the article captures that. It isn't just race. It's a broad set of complicated factors that get summed up as "way of life" or "culture." Boiling it down to race is what many better, or usually better?, papers not only got wrong but in getting it wrong mobilized them.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/10 09:41:55
Seaward wrote: Plenty of others talked about them, but only to call them racist, misogynist, sister-fething hillbillies who were too stupid to vote for Clinton.
Seaward wrote: They know the glory days of manufacturing aren't coming back, but at least Trump's concerned about them.
But my point is that Trump isn't concerned about them. He's the guy who tells you all about how good a friend you are while he's sleeping with your wife and stealing all your stuff. Trump is perfectly happy to hire people like them, use their labor, and then refuse to pay them because he knows that they can't afford to fight him in court over it. They're nothing more than a tool for Trump to use for his own benefit.
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
Peregrine wrote: But my point is that Trump isn't concerned about them. He's the guy who tells you all about how good a friend you are while he's sleeping with your wife and stealing all your stuff. Trump is perfectly happy to hire people like them, use their labor, and then refuse to pay them because he knows that they can't afford to fight him in court over it. They're nothing more than a tool for Trump to use for his own benefit.
Isn't it sad that that's still better than not even caring enough to lie to them? Democrats chose not to even bother with lies this time around, because those people matter so little to them that they thought they could get away with it.
Seaward wrote: They know the glory days of manufacturing aren't coming back, but at least Trump's concerned about them.
But my point is that Trump isn't concerned about them. He's the guy who tells you all about how good a friend you are while he's sleeping with your wife and stealing all your stuff. Trump is perfectly happy to hire people like them, use their labor, and then refuse to pay them because he knows that they can't afford to fight him in court over it. They're nothing more than a tool for Trump to use for his own benefit.
No, he's not.
Trump mentioned the people in the rust belt a few times in his campaign.
But how could he change their situation. Their glory days will not come back in a world of globalization.
Former moderator 40kOnline
Lanchester's square law - please obey in list building!
Illumini: "And thank you for not finishing your post with a "" I'm sorry, but after 7200 's that has to be the most annoying sign-off ever."
H.B.M.C. wrote: I really don't understand how he won given all we heard over here. Educate me please!
There are more deplorables and gullible people than polls and analysis anticipated. The deplorables love him for obvious reasons, the gullible people somehow thought that a billionaire who was born into wealth and privilege and has a history of screwing over middle-class workers is somehow the champion of the masses who will give them their jobs back. So it turns out that if you yell racism and zero-substance nationalism loud enough you can win an election despite having policy positions that range from "not possible" to "sheer raving lunacy".
One factor is that Trump's core is more likely to be farmers, less wealthy and generally against new innovations like smart phones. And polls were often done online. So short of going face to face ask many of the typical Trump voters would not be answering poll.
Ditto for simply not telling since they don't want to be known to vote for that lunatic with emotions over facts as policy.
Also it's not like Trumps popularity soared as much as Democrats failed to go in and vote. Think I have been saying past month or two that low voting helps protest candinates like Trump...And elections had pathetically low voting %(around 50%!). So that helped him a lot. Clinton simply failed to make voters move up. Simply best of the country isn't enough for that.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Seaward wrote: They know the glory days of manufacturing aren't coming back, but at least Trump's concerned about them.
But that's flat out lie. His policies are exact OPPOSITE what they should be if he was concerned.
Basically they shot themselves at their own foot voting for candinate who doesn't give a damn about them and is only going to make their life more misery.
USA economy was going UP. Say good bye to that. Oh sure maybe year or two he can artificially boost it with huge loans but that's not sustainable. And then it's going to be even worse.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/11/10 10:22:46
Interesting chart here. Looks like Trump didn't actually manage to increase republican turnout in any meaningful way, the main reason Clinton lost was because the democrats stayed home. So, the deplorables and the gullible certainly get their share of the blame for letting a candidate as obviously terrible as Trump get even 5% of the vote, but there are some profoundly stupid people on the left who certainly aren't on Peregrine's good side right now.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/11/10 10:29:35
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
Peregrine wrote: Interesting chart here. Looks like Trump didn't actually manage to increase republican turnout in any meaningful way,
There were some gains in individual states in the rust belt, but overall it really was more about who didn't vote than who did vote.
And that's the main reason I'm less worried about the future of the country. This was less of a referendum on "the power of the forgotten white voters" than it first appeared.
This is just something that occurred to me, but is Trump the new Ronald Reagan?
I'll happily admit I don't know much about Reagan (before my time), but there seem to be a lot of superficial similarities: "outsider" populist who got elected in a climate of uncertainty and fear, often seen as underqualified and bringing the wrong attitude to the job, very messed-up personal life that clashed with the values he claimed to be embodying, completely beloved by the right nonetheless.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/10 10:48:04
"The 75mm gun is firing. The 37mm gun is firing, but is traversed round the wrong way. The Browning is jammed. I am saying "Driver, advance." and the driver, who can't hear me, is reversing. And as I look over the top of the turret and see twelve enemy tanks fifty yards away, someone hands me a cheese sandwich."
H.B.M.C. wrote: Which mean only means that we (we as in people not in the US) weren't hearing the full story, and that the news stories we heard and social media echo chamber that just repeats the words racist, bigot, misogyny and homophobe over and over again were only part of what actual Americans were hearing
Manchu wrote:
Seaward wrote: Plenty of others talked about them, but only to call them racist, misogynist, sister-fething hillbillies who were too stupid to vote for Clinton.
I think this is spot-on.
Seaward wrote:
Peregrine wrote: But my point is that Trump isn't concerned about them. He's the guy who tells you all about how good a friend you are while he's sleeping with your wife and stealing all your stuff. Trump is perfectly happy to hire people like them, use their labor, and then refuse to pay them because he knows that they can't afford to fight him in court over it. They're nothing more than a tool for Trump to use for his own benefit.
Isn't it sad that that's still better than not even caring enough to lie to them? Democrats chose not to even bother with lies this time around, because those people matter so little to them that they thought they could get away with it.
I think this is very much the heart of why Trump managed to enthuse such a large part of the "white vote".
The part of the white working class / middle class that feel mainstream media has lost connection to them.
I think a lot of the Trump voters realize a lot of what Trump is saying is bs. Taking him "seriously but not literally"
Peregrine wrote: As opposed to the insightful analysis of "lie, lie, and lie some more" that Trump's campaign used?
I said it earlier in this thread, but I think Thiel's analysis is spot-on: progressives took Trump literally but not seriously, and Trump's voters took him seriously but not literally. They know the wall isn't going up (and most of them didn't support it, anyway). They know the glory days of manufacturing aren't coming back, but at least Trump's concerned about them.
Many realize that he won't be able to achieve most of his crazy promises. They don't care. They're so fed up with being looked down upon. Being talked about but not talked with.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/11/10 10:56:09
Zywus wrote: Many realize that he won't be able to achieve most of his crazy promises. They don't care. They're so fed up with being looked down upon. Being talked about but not talked with.
And that's what's so insane. People are willing to vote for someone who is going to actively work to make their lives worse, simply because he's willing to lie and tell them he cares about them as he does it.
There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices.
This might be a controversial opinion, but I think a lot of people might be overestimating Trump's actual impact on this election. It's not like he flipped solid blue states like New York (even though it's his home town). What happened across most of the country was people voted the same way that they always vote, and probably the same way their parents voted. A lot of the analysis that I read, during the run-up to this election, predicted a republican swing this year (regardless of who the candidate was). All this talk about "Trump tapped into something" is affording him more credit than he deserves. What really happened (IMO), is both candidates were uninspiring, so there was a low voter turnout, and a higher than usual percentage of the votes went to third-parties. There is also the difficulty of maintaining power for a third term. All these things suggested a Republican win, irrespective of what Trump said or did.
Trump showed himself to be ignorant, crass, misogynistic etc... and while people in the public eye (including republicans) tried to distance themselves from him, it made no difference to most voters. There was no way hard-line republicans were voting for some hippy democrat, and true-blue democrats view all republican candidates as Ignorant bible-bashing racists, so Trump really just fulfilled expectations. He didn't do anything special, or sway lots of people. He was just in the right place at the right time, and managed to benefit from a low democrat turnout (and a low turnout generally). That's all that happened.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2016/11/10 11:59:19
After looking at some of the stats, was surprised to learn that turnout dropped to nearly 50%
and that almost 100 million Americans never voted
Perhaps rumours of Trump's popularity are greatly exaggerated?
Then again, I'm coming off the back of a Scottish independence referendum 85% turnout
2015 General Election 60% turnout
and a EU Referendum 73% turnout, so maybe I'm too used to the heady days of high turnouts
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
Zywus wrote: Many realize that he won't be able to achieve most of his crazy promises. They don't care. They're so fed up with being looked down upon. Being talked about but not talked with.
And that's what's so insane. People are willing to vote for someone who is going to actively work to make their lives worse, simply because he's willing to lie and tell them he cares about them as he does it.
I predicted a Trump victory, but I'm also predicting a 1 term Trump Administration, as I think the nation will quickly tire of Trump and his policies will meet reality. The same thing happened to Obama and the Tea Party, the latter thinking that all they had to do was jump up and down in Washington, and their demands would be meet.
In a way though, I don't blame people for voting Trump, because I know how a Clinton administration plays out.
Her military advisors and strategists would be the same people at the DoD that moved from GW Bush, to Obama, and would then latch on to Clinton.
She'd be signing off drone strikes from day 1.
G'Bay would still be there, serving as a reminder to retreat of American values.
She'd be diving into Syria and talking about a no fly zone
and there would be lip service paid to the economy, and the average American man and woman...
In short, another 8 years of Obama, and I don't think people wanted that...
Trump is a 100-1 shot, I think most people know that in their hearts, but that they'd rather gamble and lose on Trump, then stick with Hilary, speaks volumes....
Well, let me put it this way... He got fewer votes than Romney, McCain, and (ironically) Hillary Clinton, and they all lost.
Proof, if any were needed, that he was in the right place at the right time.
Blame needs to be pointed at HRC for not mobilizing her supporters. With the most amount of campaign cash, there's really no excuse....
As I said earlier, America would have no problem with a female president - they just didn't want Clinton, any woman but her, seemed to be the mantra.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/10 11:47:40
"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: After looking at some of the stats, was surprised to learn that turnout dropped to nearly 50%
and that almost 100 million Americans never voted
Perhaps rumours of Trump's popularity are greatly exaggerated?
Then again, I'm coming off the back of a Scottish independence referendum 85% turnout
2015 General Election 60% turnout
and a EU Referendum 73% turnout, so maybe I'm too used to the heady days of high turnouts
Of those 3 only 1st would cause high-five's here. Remaining ones would be "oh damn it's low". It's been low but still around the 70% ballmark. 50% would be horrible.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Her military advisors and strategists would be the same people at the DoD that moved from GW Bush, to Obama, and would then latch on to Clinton.
She'd be signing off drone strikes from day 1.
G'Bay would still be there, serving as a reminder to retreat of American values.
She'd be diving into Syria and talking about a no fly zone
and there would be lip service paid to the economy, and the average American man and woman...
And Trump bombing the area like he has said he would do is better...How? Only difference would be that potential for nukes to be employed(after all according to him they should have been already used).
And Trump's economic plans are totally nuts as anybody who thinks for a second will realize.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/11/10 11:56:26
