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 skyth wrote:
Interesting article on the middle class.

https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class

Thanks for sharing that.

Yes, very interesting. Im glad they did not fall into the very simple division of Poor,Middle, Upper class that people tend to and showed the granuality of how classes work. too often do I see people refer to just those 3 when talking about classes.

Best line in the article I think
"Economic resentment has fueled racial anxiety that, in some Trump supporters (and Trump himself), bleeds into open racism. But to write off WWC anger as nothing more than racism is intellectual comfort food, and it is dangerous."

 d-usa wrote:
Trump's first real interview post-election:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/13/politics/donald-trump-60-minutes-first-interview/index.html

So, let's see:

Trump to supporters: "Oh, there's not that many attacks going on, but people should stop it. And the protesters are way worse." Alright, Trump, why don't you use that Twitter account your so famous for to make a direct statement in a manner your supporters actually listen to?

Trump on Clinton: Ah, now they're "good people." So much for locking her up, right?

On Same-Sex Marriage/Abortion/Gun Rights: I find it difficult to believe they're going to find a conservative judge that manages to keep his hands off of same sex marriage but takes the standard conservative stance on the other two. Can anyone name someone like that from the Heritage Foundation's list?

On "Draining the Swamp": Sure, you're packing your transition team and Cabinet with the same old names, Trump. But you're totally going to get rid of those people in a year or two, right? That pivot's coming sometime soon.

On ISIS: And he's back to knowing better than the military.

Electoral College: Interesting, but dangerous. We've seen the attempts made and now celebrated by Republicans to disenfranchise black voters. It's a position that sounds great when your opponent has just won the popular vote, but can't hope to unseat you, but the implications should be scary.

On brand: Oh, Trump's not going to take the President's salary? Just like he funded his own campaign with his own billions of dollar, that totally happened.

Oh... .

Kevin M. Kruse ‏@KevinMKruse Nov 12
Another reason to focus attention on state legislatures: The GOP controls 32 right now. Only 38 needed to ratify constitutional amendments.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Yes, very interesting. Im glad they did not fall into the very simple division of Poor,Middle, Upper class that people tend to and showed the granuality of how classes work. too often do I see people refer to just those 3 when talking about classes.

Best line in the article I think
"Economic resentment has fueled racial anxiety that, in some Trump supporters (and Trump himself), bleeds into open racism. But to write off WWC anger as nothing more than racism is intellectual comfort food, and it is dangerous."

The irony in this, and indeed the entire article (which is a good article), is that it basically reads as "the things people say about the WWC are true, but they need to stop being said."

You can actually see all the accusations generally leveled against the WWC as racist (and sexist) present in the article. The author dismisses the Democratic Party as focusing on cultural issues. Ask the single black mother making 20k a year, with a husband in prison on a menial drug charge, and children she can barely support and are being dragged into the ganglands, if her problems are simply "cultural." Explain how a WWC woman angry that another woman can dump her kids all day and shop is simply economic. The author takes great pains to describe how part of HRC's fall is to sexist sentiment (it took so long for her to be qualified for office that by the time she finally was she couldn't win because she had too many mistakes in her past), and you can pretty much visualize how she is grinding her teeth in that section to avoid saying it bluntly. One of the first comments on the article is incredibly telling;

And it's shot through the article: 'WWC". The first 'w' standing for 'white'. The non-'W' working class has been dealing with worse economic hardship for a lot longer, yet it's only a problem when the 'W's finally realize that they're getting the dirty end of the stick, too.

Which is basically one of the core accusations that has been used to justify the claim that racism is still at work in white America; that white Americans dismiss the poverty and economic struggles of minority groups until those problems start to effect them. The author makes the important note that its not just about racism, but dumbs down the accusation into this simplistic boogyman. It's the same kind of knee jerk reactionism that I grew up with around in my own family. People criticizing police tactics aren't criticizing the police as part of the "WWC", but as a functioning arm of state policy. The author describes the WWC as falling into a rather extreme version of tribalism, assuming a direct attack against the entire group when the criticism is rather pointed (my mother does the same thing. When SCOTUS repealed DOMA she declared it "Obama is going to ban Christianity just you wait").

It's a bit having the cake and eating it to to pretend that the economic resentment felt by the WWC exist in a bubble, and isn't informed by knowledge of those even lower on the economic totem pole, how they're doing and who they are. What the author describes is a culture where the people immediately above and blow on social group in economic success are blamed for the middle groups problems even though neither of this groups have any better control over how things are going than they do. And to spite these two groups, the WWC votes for a guy they know can't help them but who tells them what they want to hear.

Which is basically what "liberals" have been saying for decades.

 whembly wrote:
Oh... .

Kevin M. Kruse ‏@KevinMKruse Nov 12
Another reason to focus attention on state legislatures: The GOP controls 32 right now. Only 38 needed to ratify constitutional amendments.

Oh , indeed. It's a scary thought that a single political party (doesn't matter which) could be able to freely amend the Constitution to suit their agenda.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Oh... .

Kevin M. Kruse ‏@KevinMKruse Nov 12
Another reason to focus attention on state legislatures: The GOP controls 32 right now. Only 38 needed to ratify constitutional amendments.

Oh , indeed. It's a scary thought that a single political party (doesn't matter which) could be able to freely amend the Constitution to suit their agenda.

Yup.

Now do you see why I believe in the virtue of divided government? Yeah, gak moves slower, but it should keep most of the crays-crays away.

Divided government is fine, but not when that division is created by the "cray-crays", or division for the sake of division, or because the lobbies bought off enough politicians.

Heh, I was just chatting with a guy in my office who follows US politics about as closely as I do. The analogy we came up with was that this election result was like playing a fighting game. Clinton was the person who'd read every manual on the game, knew every combo and counter, and who each counter worked best against. After all, this was a woman who prepared enough to have a line prepared for the debates about how prepared she was. I'm somewhere there was a committee that determined how many times a minute she should be blinking. Trump was the button masher. He just turned up, hit A for 'attack Clinton' and b for 'make up a promise about manufacturing', and just spammed that over and over again.

The button masher won.

Prestor Jon wrote:
The most recent appointment, nominated by Obama, Elena Kagan, was never a judge and she was confirmed and is a current SCotUS justice. Democrats didn't complain of a lack of bench experience when Obama nominated Kagan who was previously the WH counsel.

Interesting. Thanks for the info, Prestor Jon and Scooty Puff Junior.


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 shasolenzabi wrote:
I agree with Sebster with the whole thing that Dems misunderstood the rest of the nation being able to disregard the wilder things Trump said as many figured he was either pandering or going over the top and it kinda worked.

I think that many people were able to disregard Trump's comments, or choose to hear them in such a way that they internally reshaped his comments in to something they liked.

However, I never said the Democrats misunderstood this. Some Democrats did, but plenty didn't. In fact, given the nervousness among Democrats before the election, and the despair among Republicans, I think the Democrats probably knew the score better than most.

But one day after an election the slate is wiped clean, everyone forgets what everyone said or thought the day before and we get a whole new world with everyone developing new pet theories.


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 Ustrello wrote:
Anyone who hoped a massive amount of jobs would be brought back to the rust belt was a damn fool

Right now, the BLS has 12,275,000 manufacturing jobs, that's as at August 2016 (the last finalised figures). The peak in manufacturing was in 1980, at 19,553,000 (though the really steep decline begin 2000, when as many as 17,302,000 people were still employed in the sector). Trump said he'd bring those jobs back. Whether we should judge him by the peak number, the 2000 number, or even the pre-GFC target of 14,210,000, I don't know.

This gives us something of a rube index. If Trump made his claim about restoring manufacturing jobs people believed him and he delivers nothing, then it's pretty safe to conclude people who supported Trump for his economic promises got played for rubes. On the other hand, most of the world has accepted that keeping manufacturing jobs in high income countries is very difficult (Germany as the exception), and if it turns out Trump can do something to make those jobs come back, well then it turns out people who bought in to mainstream economics have been getting played for rubes.

So I reckon it will be fun to track this BLS figure (to be accurate we'll start from the month Trump takes office), and find out who the suckers are.

We could probably do the same thing for Trump's claim of 6% growth to offset his tax cut, but that's so stupid it isn't even worth bothering with. Even the Republican conventional rate of 5% is too stupid to bother with. But this manufacturing index, well let's just wait and watch.


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 KommissarKiln wrote:
I disagree. I think it really has to do with the nature of changing experiences with age. Our demographic, especially those in universities and the likes, tend to be more idealistic and progressive. However, with age (aka once we start paying our own bills from our own career salaries), many of us will shift our focuses towards saving money where we can to support our own households, families, careers, etc. As the saying goes, "If you're not a Democrat at 20, you're heartless; if you're not a Republican at 40, you're brainless," or something to that effect. Not the most savory of quotes, but it does hint at this pattern of change. The next generation will also vote overwhelmingly liberal, period. In 20 years, many of us, though not all, will shift conservatively, guaranteed.

That quote is from Churchill. What is interesting to note from that quote is that Churchill was using it justify his positions, such as maintaining that "Indians are a beastly people with a beastly religion", and therefore weren't capable of independence. Thing is, it wasn't as though Churchill became more racist from 20 to 40. It's more that he was about as racist as other people when he was 20, and while he didn't change his view, society around him became a lot less racist over that time. He stood still, and his ideas became conservative as the society around him changed.

Similarly, people are appalled at Trump's statements and policies, but if we put him in a timewarp back to 1940 he'd probably be closer to the leftist radicals than the conservatives.

Those 20 year old kids that are voting overwhelmingly against Trump, a lot of them will one day end up conservatives. But it will be because when they're 40 then many of their ideas will be taken as the baseline, and liberalism will have taken on a whole bunch of new, radical ideas.


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 cuda1179 wrote:
According to the government, the average illegal immigrant that files their taxes not only doesn't pay anything, they actually get more back than they ever paid. For every dollar an illegal immigrant pays in income tax, they $5.40 back on their returns.

If you are talking about total taxes (income, sales, propterty, cigarette, gasoline tax, cell phone, etc.) the estimated total is $11 billion per year. However, with a population of 13 million that comes out to just $900 per person.

Holy fething gak this misses the point so bad. Totalling just taxes in and taxes might produce a flow to the illegal immigrant, but that assumes economic contribution is just taxes paid and benefits received. It is an idea that would turn every working class person in the country in to a net drain, and that's completely fething bonkers.

The economy needs working class people doing jobs like picking fruit or sweeping streets. They don't get paid much because that's how demand and supply works, but that doesn't measure actual economic value.


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 shasolenzabi wrote:
As for who the Republicans planned for? you might have a point, but then again, had Bernie won instead of Hillary, he had less ammo for them Hillary had a entire ammo train with her.

Sanders? The guy who started his career in Young People's Socialist League? That guy wouldn't have given Republicans any ammo?


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 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Without the ability to peak into an alternate universe where Comey didn't act, we'll never truly know how much of an impact his actions had. I certainly agree that Comey's actions did, indeed, stop (or was at least a speed bump to) her momentum, but so close to election day, it's really hard to say how many voters it swayed.

It's also hard to know if the momentum that was showing towards Clinton was real, or if it was just a result of Trump supporters going quiet for a while and declining polling requests while currents events showed how gak their candidate was. It's worth noting that by election day Clinton had restored a 3 to 4 point lead in polls, which would have been more than enough to win the election (instead of the approx 1 to 2 point she'll have by the time West Coast votes are fully counted).

As horrible a decision as Comey made, the bigger issue really is with the media and their coverage of the email controversy in general, which received vastly more than double the coverage of all of Clinton's policy positions in total. And it was coverage that focused on the issue as an ever breaking scandal, with lots of new claims that sounded really big, only to be quietly retracted or just not mentioned again as actual research showed the original claim to be false or wildly misleading.

That this faux scandal dominated the media when the other candidate had a new actual scandal just about every week really put in stark contrast how little judgement the media actually shows. There is no consideration given in political reporting to scale, context or importance. All that matters is the lure of getting the scoop, reporting on the breaking story. As such, it becomes possible to game this system by drip feeding nonsense, to make sure an issue remains on the front pages by always stringing along a new accusation/pretend revelation.


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Relapse wrote:
I am beginning to see sources that say Clinton lost the popular election, now that the votes have all been counted. I don't really trust the sources, though, since they are right wing with an axe to grind.
Has anybody seen anything about it in a more reliable news source?

I don't know what source you've been reading but I probably wouldn't read it anymore, because Trump will not win the popular election. The only question is how much she'll win by as remaining votes along the west coast, many of them early votes, come in at about 2 to 1 in favour of Clinton. It's expected she'll end up about 2 million more votes and end up with more votes than any presidential candidate in history, except Obama.


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Prestor Jon wrote:
That's a good point. The map shows the counties that Trump won but not the margin of victory in the county. However, the important thing I take away from that map is the fact that Trump won counties in every state except Massachusetts and Vermont. That map shows just how widespread support for Trump was and just how low support for Hillary was.

That's a completely bizarre conclusion, considering Clinton won more votes in.

The actual conclusion you can draw from that map is that rural areas preferred Trump, and because rural areas larger relative to their population than urban areas, Trump's 'landmass' looks very big. Of course, elections aren't decided on landmass, nor on popular vote. They are decided by the EC, and in that regard Trump won, by claiming just enough states by just enough votes. That's the story of this election.

The polls missing the amount of support Trump had seems to be the story people want to focus on but I think the bigger story is that the pollsters vastly overestimated the support Hillary had. Trump got fewer votes than McCain or Romney he clearly was a weaker candidate than they were in terms of motivating Republicans to vote. Pundits were commenting about how big of an advantage Hillary's ground game would be but instead her turnout was abysmal.

Not, because Clinton's vote total is going to be something north of 63 million, the third highest vote total in history. This doesn't mean Clinton was a good candidate, but it does mean your conclusions above are pretty bad. Given the final result (likely a Clinton popular win by about 1 to 2 points) the polls were actually not that bad, they were certainly much closer than in 2012 (where they missed Obama's final win by about 3 points).

As I've said a few times now, the problem was not the polling numbers, but many of the polling models, which failed to consider that multiple states might miss their polls in a correlated fashion.


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 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
As a Brit, I do find it remarkable that almost a week later, you're still counting votes and still don't have a final count.

That's really standard including in your country. On election night there's a mad dash to count votes in close and decisive locations, so that a winner can be known as soon as possible, and once that's done a winner is declared and most people stop paying attention. But votes are still counted for a long time after the election, so the actual breakdown of the overall vote can be known.


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 skyth wrote:
Interesting article on the middle class.

https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class

It seems to me an interesting piece, particularly the part about disliking the professional while admiring the rich, and in highlighting working class resentment of the poor. These are good and often forgotten points.

However, the article makes two pretty big errors, I think. The first is in trying to define middle class while missing how generalising that concept is, and how much of it is unrelated to income. A guy working as a supervisor in a factory might earn the same as a research assistant at a library, but they are not in the same class, in terms of education and social circle they will be miles apart, and on top of that we might add race or geographical differences. This is the actual lesson here, that policies and positions crafted to appeal to a class as a whole might alienate much of that class. Talking about community colleges failed to reach many of these voters not because it wasn’t stressed enough, but because it doesn’t appeal to a 45 year old unemployed machinist who’s only memory of school is how much he hated it.

The second mistake, which is not stated as much as implicitly assumed throughout the article, is that there is a promise you can make to working class people that you might have some chance of actually keeping. Trump’s claim to help the working class is laughable not just because it was one of many ridiculous Trump claims, but because it is laughable when anyone makes the claim, because there is actually very little government can do to help people working a declining industry sector.

According to an article on the BBC, discussing the apparent failure of opinion polling, the election was ultimately decided by about 100,000 people in Pennsylvania and Florida.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-37949527

the BBC wrote:Should we give up on polls?

Despite the sequence of failures, it seems unlikely that people will stop commissioning polls. For all their problems, it's hard to think of how else we could get any idea of how people are planning to vote.
Perhaps one lesson we should take away is that the most we should hope of polls is that they're in the right ballpark - even when lots of them agree. So in close elections we should assume that the only thing polls can really tell us is that the election is indeed close - not that one candidate, or one side, is going to win.
It's worth pausing here to reflect on just how close the US result was. If a little under 1% of voters in Pennsylvania and Florida had gone for Clinton instead of Trump - about 100,000 of the 120 million who took part - it would have been she who won.
Had that happened there would probably be a lot less talk about a polling disaster.

 sebster wrote:
However, the article makes two pretty big errors, I think. The first is in trying to define middle class while missing how generalising that concept is, and how much of it is unrelated to income. A guy working as a supervisor in a factory might earn the same as a research assistant at a library, but they are not in the same class, in terms of education and social circle they will be miles apart, and on top of that we might add race or geographical differences. This is the actual lesson here, that policies and positions crafted to appeal to a class as a whole might alienate much of that class. Talking about community colleges failed to reach many of these voters not because it wasn’t stressed enough, but because it doesn’t appeal to a 45 year old unemployed machinist who’s only memory of school is how much he hated it.

The second mistake, which is not stated as much as implicitly assumed throughout the article, is that there is a promise you can make to working class people that you might have some chance of actually keeping. Trump’s claim to help the working class is laughable not just because it was one of many ridiculous Trump claims, but because it is laughable when anyone makes the claim, because there is actually very little government can do to help people working a declining industry sector.

I would agree on these points, but I actually think the first one is part of her point; the middle class and working class are very vague subjects, and while there are professionals who set up clearly defined models of these things that doesn't mean that the rest of the country is paying attention. If anything I think looking at these election results, and at Trump's campaign, suggests he is not remotely a button masher (at least no more than a typical Super Smash Bros. Melee player )

Trump played this campaign like a champ, and look what he got out of it. "Establishment" Republicans are checked. They can oppose him, but that would be suicidal at this point for their political careers. The Democrats have basically had their liver ripped out. Trump doesn't have to right the Republican ship, and I don't think he's going to try.

It's very obvious now what he plans to do; transform the Republican party into a Nationalist Workers party (pretend no other party anywhere else in the world has ever named itself remotely like that for a few seconds that's not a Godwin its just the most accurate name for what he seems to be transitioning to). Trump can easily keep the Rust Belt. All he has to do is a few things to make their lives easier. Pass a child care credit here. "Fix" an ACA here. Keep playing to nationalist sentiment and hammering home how the Democrats can't/haven't help them. Keep demonizing mainstream media. Shift blame when necessary. He can bring some Libertarians back into the fold easily, and he really doesn't have to do anything to appeal to the Religious Right so long as the Democrats continue to actively support the LGBT movement (even if they don't, they won't switch to voting blue in 4 years so the worst that could happen is they don't vote for anyone).

He has four years to play the populist and keep the votes he gained and further stifle the potential for a Democratic comeback in 2020. It seems foolish to automatically count him out as a one term President at this point. Sure, maybe if he kept playing the traditional Republican game but he hasn't done that for the past year, and there's no reason to think he suddenly will now. If he successfully moves the Republican party he can secure everything he's gained in 2016 and leave lots of room to gain more.

Prestor Jon wrote:
That's a good point. The map shows the counties that Trump won but not the margin of victory in the county. However, the important thing I take away from that map is the fact that Trump won counties in every state except Massachusetts and Vermont. That map shows just how widespread support for Trump was and just how low support for Hillary was.

Low support for Hillary? More than Trump and most votes any candinate in USA has ever got except for Obama. I wouldn't call that exactly as low support...Especially when she had more support than other candinate.

 sebster wrote:


That quote is from Churchill..

nope.

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotations/135-quotes-falsely-attributed

 infinite_array wrote:
Alright, Trump, why don't you use that Twitter account your so famous for to make a direct statement in a manner your supporters actually listen to?

He's too busy insulting media(and particularly New York Times). One would think soon-to-be president would have more important ways to spend day than insult media on twitter but...

One thing's for sure, the US Constitution will be tested like never before - and we'll see how really good a document it is.

James Madison Vs. The GOP.

Who will win?




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 LordofHats wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Add that to GOP Congress/Senate/POTUS and you have all 3 branches under GOP control and supposedly, that hasn't happened since 1928.

Functionally no party has ever controlled all 3 branches, because SCOTUS is not elected and not under the purview of any political party. Going by appointees, from 1972-2016 the majority of sitting Court Justices were appointed by Republicans (with Trump's election this will not change anytime soon). If you mean the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, the GOP has controlled all three at once in 2003-2007, 1953-1955, and 1931-1933.

Even I know that SCOTUS is not elected! C'mom, who do you think I am?

I'm making the point that you'll have a pro-Conservative SCOTUS as well as the GOP taking the White House and the Congress/Senate.

That hasn't happened in a long time.

Plus, Whembley's point about the number of states being under GOP control, makes this a rare situation.

Like I said above, the US Constitution will be tested like never before, and we'll see how good a document it really is.

My money's on James Madison. Any nation that can survive a civil war, can survive Trump.

 sebster wrote:


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 shasolenzabi wrote:
As for who the Republicans planned for? you might have a point, but then again, had Bernie won instead of Hillary, he had less ammo for them Hillary had a entire ammo train with her.

Sanders? The guy who started his career in Young People's Socialist League? That guy wouldn't have given Republicans any ammo?

They would have have ammo but it wouldn´t stick, Trump rode to victory by portraying himself as an anti-establishment vote against the person who is the personification of the establishment. That would obviously not work against Snaders, in fact, I think Sanders would have blown Trump out of the water with ease if he had been running for the democrats.

He needed to win the nomination first, though, and failed that hurdle by about 6 million to 9 million votes.

Besides, Hillary's numbers were not nearly as bad as people keep saying. If you read the BBC's article about the polling, it shows she lost because of Pennsylvania and Florida, and both states voted for Trump by very small margins indeed. Nation-wide Hillary was more popular than Trump and won the popular vote.

The message here is that if Trump feths up raising the rust belt some jobs, and that is a pretty difficult task, and the Democrats get their act together with concrete proposals in opposition, they could flip a million voters in the right areas and sweep the country in 2020.

Congressional elections are done differently so it won't happen in the mid-terms, I expect.

I'm sure Trump could have made up just as many lies about Sanders as he did Hillary.

On the subject of the media focussing on the E-mails, they really just did what Trump was doing all along: attacking the establishment, sticking it to "the man". There's less news value in catching an orange buffoon in the act than there is in (trying to manage) catching an ex-Secretary of State. The question is whether the media is the dependent or independent variable vis-a-vis the population in this case. In other words, is the media printing news that people already wanted or do people want it because it's what they're being provided with?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
On the subject of the media focussing on the E-mails, they really just did what Trump was doing all along: attacking the establishment, sticking it to "the man". There's less news value in catching an orange buffoon in the act than there is in (trying to manage) catching an ex-Secretary of State. The question is whether the media is the dependent or independent variable vis-a-vis the population in this case. In other words, is the media printing news that people already wanted or do people want it because it's what they're being provided with?

Preposterous. Everyone knows the media is a liberal conspiracy and would never shower the populace in reports about a Democrat's dirty laundry.

... so Alex Jones is claiming that Trump called him & thanked him for work/support.

That's a cheery thought eh ?



It'll be interesting to see that when -- and let's hope there isn't anything -- there's a shooting or an attack or whathaveyou whether or not the BIG BAD EVUL USA govt. is behind it all or not.

 sebster wrote:
Heh, I was just chatting with a guy in my office who follows US politics about as closely as I do. The analogy we came up with was that this election result was like playing a fighting game. Clinton was the person who'd read every manual on the game, knew every combo and counter, and who each counter worked best against. After all, this was a woman who prepared enough to have a line prepared for the debates about how prepared she was. I'm somewhere there was a committee that determined how many times a minute she should be blinking. Trump was the button masher. He just turned up, hit A for 'attack Clinton' and b for 'make up a promise about manufacturing', and just spammed that over and over again.

The button masher won.

As someone who used to work in a video arcade, that is probably the best analogy I've seen. All too often I would see some six year old walk up, drop his quarters in, and then start swinging wildly on the joystick and randomly mashing buttons and still manage to beat the l better player simply because of the wild unpredictability (and half the time the kid usually didn't even remember which character he was on the screen).

Anyway, as far as polls go, I've had first-hand experience for the last eight years as to why they don't work: they never include enough people. As a federal employee, every year a survey goes out to gauge employee opinions on how their agency is doing. The respondents are randomly selected. Every year my agency was consistently rated highly, as one of the best agencies to work for in the government. And every year not one person in my group (admittedly only four of us at the most at any one time) was ever randomly selected to respond. But, one year, a few years back, they opened the survey to everyone. Lo and behold, with everybody responding, our agency's scores suddenly dropped a good bit. Unsurprisingly, the survey has been random participants since.

So, yeah, surveys never involve enough people, or somehow randomly select an unrepresentative cross section.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Heh, I was just chatting with a guy in my office who follows US politics about as closely as I do. The analogy we came up with was that this election result was like playing a fighting game. Clinton was the person who'd read every manual on the game, knew every combo and counter, and who each counter worked best against. After all, this was a woman who prepared enough to have a line prepared for the debates about how prepared she was. I'm somewhere there was a committee that determined how many times a minute she should be blinking. Trump was the button masher. He just turned up, hit A for 'attack Clinton' and b for 'make up a promise about manufacturing', and just spammed that over and over again.

The button masher won.

As someone who used to work in a video arcade, that is probably the best analogy I've seen. All too often I would see some six year old walk up, drop his quarters in, and then start swinging wildly on the joystick and randomly mashing buttons and still manage to beat the l better player simply because of the wild unpredictability (and half the time the kid usually didn't even remember which character he was on the screen).

Anyway, as far as polls go, I've had first-hand experience for the last eight years as to why they don't work: they never include enough people. As a federal employee, every year a survey goes out to gauge employee opinions on how their agency is doing. The respondents are randomly selected. Every year my agency was consistently rated highly, as one of the best agencies to work for in the government. And every year not one person in my group (admittedly only four of us at the most at any one time) was ever randomly selected to respond. But, one year, a few years back, they opened the survey to everyone. Lo and behold, with everybody responding, our agency's scores suddenly dropped a good bit. Unsurprisingly, the survey has been random participants since.

So, yeah, surveys never involve enough people, or somehow randomly select an unrepresentative cross section.

Nobody I work with ever fills those out because everybody knows that they link the IP address to the survey and if you say something mean about your manager you'll get in trouble

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
So umm........Trump just announced his plan for 6 week paid maternity leave to be required...............
Im suddenly not so scared.
What if, WHAT IF, we where all duped? That trumps insane pandering was just a bid and he knows how to work people?

Mexico Wall? Whaaaaaat?

I said Mexico Mall! Fill it with Tacos, sombreros and gak. I love Mexicans.

Biggest double cross, evah!

Edit: Stereotypes listed for comedic effect as Trump would likely say it. Please don't ban me.

Again.

To be frank, while some of it has been mixed, his moves so far have been positive.

*Reibus as Chief of Staff is good as he has the rolodex and temperament to work with Congress to pass legislation.
*Giuliani for...something. I'd like to see him as AG. It would be the penultimate position of his legal career.
*T's statements about deporting criminals, but heavily focusing on border security. Excelsior!
*I saw the thing on child leave. I told you he wasn't conservative.
*Rumors he's going after regulations, and lobbying.
*Rumors that Diamond will be Treasury Sec (head of JP Morgan/Chase).

EDIT: I pulled my back yesterday (I was shocked when the family didn't grab my wallet, take out the cash and run away laughing but hey) so will be carefully screening my posts as I am in serious owee mode.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
One thing's for sure, the US Constitution will be tested like never before - and we'll see how really good a document it is.

James Madison Vs. The GOP.

Who will win?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Add that to GOP Congress/Senate/POTUS and you have all 3 branches under GOP control and supposedly, that hasn't happened since 1928.

Functionally no party has ever controlled all 3 branches, because SCOTUS is not elected and not under the purview of any political party. Going by appointees, from 1972-2016 the majority of sitting Court Justices were appointed by Republicans (with Trump's election this will not change anytime soon). If you mean the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, the GOP has controlled all three at once in 2003-2007, 1953-1955, and 1931-1933.

Even I know that SCOTUS is not elected! C'mom, who do you think I am?

I'm making the point that you'll have a pro-Conservative SCOTUS as well as the GOP taking the White House and the Congress/Senate.

That hasn't happened in a long time.

Plus, Whembley's point about the number of states being under GOP control, makes this a rare situation.

Like I said above, the US Constitution will be tested like never before, and we'll see how good a document it really is.

My money's on James Madison. Any nation that can survive a civil war, can survive Trump.

So much sensationalism!

The Constitution - and the USA and, dare I say it?, The World - will be just fine.

 Frazzled wrote:
To be frank, while some of it has been mixed, his moves so far have been positive.

*Reibus as Chief of Staff is good as he has the rolodex and temperament to work with Congress to pass legislation.
*Giuliani for...something. I'd like to see him as AG. It would be the penultimate position of his legal career.
*T's statements about deporting criminals, but heavily focusing on border security. Excelsior!
*I saw the thing on child leave. I told you he wasn't conservative.
*Rumors he's going after regulations, and lobbying.
*Rumors that Diamond will be Treasury Sec (head of JP Morgan/Chase).

EDIT: I pulled my back yesterday (I was shocked when the family didn't grab my wallet, take out the cash and run away laughing but hey) so will be carefully screening my posts as I am in serious owee mode.

Improved border security is a positive and logical move, but it ain't going to be a wall!

Deporting 3 million foreign criminals will be a logistical and organisational nightmare, assuming you can find them.

And Diamond for Treasury sec? You're not talking about Bob Diamond are you? Because that guy got ran out of Britain!

 sebster wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:
The most recent appointment, nominated by Obama, Elena Kagan, was never a judge and she was confirmed and is a current SCotUS justice. Democrats didn't complain of a lack of bench experience when Obama nominated Kagan who was previously the WH counsel.

Interesting. Thanks for the info, Prestor Jon and Scooty Puff Junior.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Prestor Jon wrote:
That's a good point. The map shows the counties that Trump won but not the margin of victory in the county. However, the important thing I take away from that map is the fact that Trump won counties in every state except Massachusetts and Vermont. That map shows just how widespread support for Trump was and just how low support for Hillary was.

That's a completely bizarre conclusion, considering Clinton won more votes in.

The actual conclusion you can draw from that map is that rural areas preferred Trump, and because rural areas larger relative to their population than urban areas, Trump's 'landmass' looks very big. Of course, elections aren't decided on landmass, nor on popular vote. They are decided by the EC, and in that regard Trump won, by claiming just enough states by just enough votes. That's the story of this election.

The polls missing the amount of support Trump had seems to be the story people want to focus on but I think the bigger story is that the pollsters vastly overestimated the support Hillary had. Trump got fewer votes than McCain or Romney he clearly was a weaker candidate than they were in terms of motivating Republicans to vote. Pundits were commenting about how big of an advantage Hillary's ground game would be but instead her turnout was abysmal.

Not, because Clinton's vote total is going to be something north of 63 million, the third highest vote total in history. This doesn't mean Clinton was a good candidate, but it does mean your conclusions above are pretty bad. Given the final result (likely a Clinton popular win by about 1 to 2 points) the polls were actually not that bad, they were certainly much closer than in 2012 (where they missed Obama's final win by about 3 points).

As I've said a few times now, the problem was not the polling numbers, but many of the polling models, which failed to consider that multiple states might miss their polls in a correlated fashion.

I was surprised Kagan got overlooked by so many. She was confirmed by the senate in 2010 and the vote was 63-37 with 5 Republicans and the "Indpedents" (Lieberman and Sanders) voting for her and only one Democrat voting against. She's had to recuse herself from a few SCotUS cases due to conflicts of interest with her time as Solicitor General which is to be expected. Thurgood Marshall had to recuse himself from many cases due to his time serving as Solicitor General.

You can't focus on the popular vote in terms of degree of support. In our federal system we vote by State, which are represented in the Electoral College. The map whembly posted and referred to as a "sea of red" showed Trump winning a large majority of the counties within most states. Trump flipped a lot of Obama counties and those were the votes that got him victories in Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania. Trump won more counties than he was expected to do and won states that were expected to be won by Hillary. Flipping Obama counties into Trump counties created the "sea of red" and won Trump the election.

You need to be wary of mistaking a higher number of votes cast as evidence of higher turnout.

Washington (CNN) — Voter turnout this year dipped to nearly its lowest point in two decades.

While election officials are still tabulating ballots, the 126 million votes already counted means about 55% of voting age citizens cast ballots this year.

That measure of turnout is the lowest in a presidential election since 1996, when 53.5% of voting-age citizens turned out.

As election officials go through outstanding ballots -- such as provisional ballots and those with write-ins -- the turnout figures will change.

But it would take another 18.7 million votes to reach the high point for turnout of 2008, when nearly 64% of voting age citizens cast a ballot.

Early results in some of the key states that propelled President-elect Donald Trump to his win reveal that more voters cast ballots this year than in 2012, even though overall turnout was down.

In Florida, nearly 9.4 million ballots were cast, compared to 8.5 million in 2012. Michigan saw 4.8 million compared to 4.7 million four years ago. And in North Carolina, the 4.7 million ballots this year was about 138,000 more than last cycle.

Full measures of turnout won't be clear for as long as several more weeks, when election officials in the various states finish tabulating and certify the results.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-2016/

Trump won with fewer votes than Romney or McCain because he got a majority of the votes in swing states where voters failed to turnout for Hillary. States that had been reliably Democrat wins for the past few presidential election cycles switched to Trump this year and it was due to low turnout numbers.

Hillary will win the popular vote but she'll win by having a large margin of victory in populous states. Hillary is going to win California by 3 million votes. That margin alone pretty much totals the difference between the two candidates.
http://vote.sos.ca.gov/returns/president/
So Hillary wins CA by 3 million votes (the Republican party in CA is virtually nonexistent) but we vote by State so Hillary wins 55 Electoral votes for CA whether she wins the State by 3,000,000 votes or 3,000 votes. Hillary needed her supporters to have a good turnout nationally and they didn't so she lost.

 Alpharius wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
One thing's for sure, the US Constitution will be tested like never before - and we'll see how really good a document it is.

James Madison Vs. The GOP.

Who will win?




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Add that to GOP Congress/Senate/POTUS and you have all 3 branches under GOP control and supposedly, that hasn't happened since 1928.

Functionally no party has ever controlled all 3 branches, because SCOTUS is not elected and not under the purview of any political party. Going by appointees, from 1972-2016 the majority of sitting Court Justices were appointed by Republicans (with Trump's election this will not change anytime soon). If you mean the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, the GOP has controlled all three at once in 2003-2007, 1953-1955, and 1931-1933.

Even I know that SCOTUS is not elected! C'mom, who do you think I am?

I'm making the point that you'll have a pro-Conservative SCOTUS as well as the GOP taking the White House and the Congress/Senate.

That hasn't happened in a long time.

Plus, Whembley's point about the number of states being under GOP control, makes this a rare situation.

Like I said above, the US Constitution will be tested like never before, and we'll see how good a document it really is.

My money's on James Madison. Any nation that can survive a civil war, can survive Trump.

So much sensationalism!

The Constitution - and the USA and, dare I say it?, The World - will be just fine.

Sensationalism is the backbone of dakka

I'll be fine - I'm close to a remote Scottish island,

but I do have my doubts about the ability of the Constitution to handle Trump.

And earlier post was saying that 32 states are GOP, and only 6 more are needed for a constitutional convention or something

And as always, I worry about Scotland, we did try to ban him and a lot of people here annoyed him.

I fear no US Marine Corps or 82nd Airborne, but I'm to old to dig trenches in my back yard

Improved border security is a positive and logical move, but it ain't going to be a wall!

I'd prefer it was a moat filled with sharks with freakin lazer beams, but I don't really care how.

Deporting 3 million foreign criminals will be a logistical and organisational nightmare, assuming you can find them.

Don't care. Just do it. Thats what the government is for. Its a key responsibility of government, in contrast to everything else it does (poorly).

And Diamond for Treasury sec? You're not talking about Bob Diamond are you? Because that guy got ran out of Britain!

CEO of JP Morgan Chase
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Dimon