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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: U.S. Presidential Election 2016
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Superb. Just as we began to realise weeks ago. Some much further back. So, can we learn? Learn to love the illiberal working class?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by welsh dragon:
"President Obama has a special #ElectionNight message for you: "No matter what happens, the sun will rise in the morning" "
It wasn't the sun I was worried about.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
And (at least according to the Guardian) it does appear that the (white) female anti-trump vote was.
White women voted 20 points more towards Clinton than equivalent white men. College-educated white people voted 30 points more towards Clinton than non-college educated people. (The only white subgroup to favour Clinton was educated women.)
I'll try to find equivalent numbers from last time around, but it looks like pussy-grabbing isn't much worse than having binders full of women.
[ 09. November 2016, 13:04: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by welsh dragon:
"President Obama has a special #ElectionNight message for you: "No matter what happens, the sun will rise in the morning" "
It wasn't the sun I was worried about.
It's the fact that it will be in eclipse for at least four years. Let's just hope it doesn't go out.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by welsh dragon:
"President Obama has a special #ElectionNight message for you: "No matter what happens, the sun will rise in the morning" "
It wasn't the sun I was worried about.
It's the fact that it will be in eclipse for at least four years. Let's just hope it doesn't go out.
C S Lewis, in 'The Last Battle'. It's as if the sun rose in the morning and it was a black sun. (Not using quotes - it may be a paraphrase.)
[ 09. November 2016, 15:16: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
Well, that was unexpected!
One of the things that seems to have borne very little comment is that, at least as it stands, this looks like the second case of electoral/popular vote mis-alignment out of the past five presidential elections. They're still counting the popular vote so this could change, but as it stands Clinton received about 200,000 more votes than Trump nationwide.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Anyuta
Shipmate
# 14692
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Posted
I do not blame Hillary. She was a very qualified candidate. The things thrown against her were so minor, yet blown up to be so major by the media and her opponents. I think had any other candidate been in her place, they would have been smeared as well. Bernie would have had the antisemitic factor working aginst him, and of course, as a self declared socialist, he has that strike against him. Sure, the far left loved him (I loved him), but that's not how had to be convinced. the swing voters, the ones in the middle, the ones who are apathetic.. I can't see that they would have chosen to vote for him. HIllary lost because Trump won.
And we need to think seriously about what allowed Trump to win. Those people aren't just racist misogynist assholes. Sure, many are, but that's not who really made a difference. There are people, a LOT of people, in our country who feel like they have been left behind, that their values don't matter, that they are treated as jokes and as losers, and they are angry about it. and they voted. They think Trump will make them matter again. I think they are very sadly mistaken, but that's not the point. the point is that they exist, and that they do feel that way, legitimately so. What can we as a country do to make them feel like they matter. How can we make them feel that they don't have to turn to a Trump to have their concerns treated with respect. To some extent we are blaming the victims for speaking out. sure they are betting on the wrong horse, but that they felt so very strongly that at least SOMEONE understood shows that we just can't continue to write them off as uneducated yokels. I don't know the answer, but if we want to move forward we have to figure this out. These are the same type of folks who voted for Brexit. It isn't just to piss off us liberals. it's because they genuinely feel left out and are angry about it.
if we jut focus on thei racism and hatered, I think we are missing much of the point. Yes, that's certainly there. Yes, its terrible. But it's also a reaction to something deeper. a primitive "circle the wagons, shoot at anyone not like us" reaction, but still not the core problem. If we cant look past that at what people are really angry about (loss of jobs, hope, feeling like the concerns of "the other" are more important than their concerns) then we may never move forward.
Posts: 764 | From: USA | Registered: Mar 2009
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Croesos: yes, I noticed it. It must be galling to win the popular vote and lose the electoral college. Odd how it keeps happening (Gore/Bush).
[ 09. November 2016, 17:53: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Anyuta - yes, I keep saying about Brexit, it's not just that they think they've been left behind, left out, or whatever, it's that they have been. I don't know the ins and outs of the US scene, but parts of the UK which voted Leave have been deindustrialized, they have had austerity hammered at them, they are poor areas, and they are in the shadow of London usually. I'm not saying that makes it right to vote Brexit or Trump, but it makes it comprehensible. Labour treated them as voting fodder, the Tories as shit, so what do you do?
Having said that, plenty of wealthy people voted Leave, and I assume, Trump.
[ 09. November 2016, 17:59: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anyuta:
I do not blame Hillary. She was a very qualified candidate. The things thrown against her were so minor, yet blown up to be so major by the media and her opponents. I think had any other candidate been in her place, they would have been smeared as well. Bernie would have had the antisemitic factor working aginst him, and of course, as a self declared socialist, he has that strike against him. Sure, the far left loved him (I loved him), but that's not how had to be convinced. the swing voters, the ones in the middle, the ones who are apathetic.. I can't see that they would have chosen to vote for him. HIllary lost because Trump won.
On the first point. She was an establishment candidate at a time when people were railing against the present order. On Saunders, we don't know how things would have turned out had he run a full campaign, and had to face Trump in the debates.
The 'socialist' tag may not have hurt him in the way you suggest, there is some evidence that some who voted Trump would have voted Saunders instead, and a 16% swing amongst white males in the lowest income bracket that tends to back that up.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I think she was too tied with Obama, so you start to get that tedium in politics, after overly long stretches. Thus, Obama-Obama-Clinton is a bit like the wallpaper in the hotel bedroom, it goes on and on, and it makes you want to sleep.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Pancho
Shipmate
# 13533
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Posted
Clinton was carrying too much baggage: her own, her husband's, and President Obama's. The votes for Trump weren't so much votes for him as much as they were votes against Clinton and what ( in those voters eyes ) she represents. It's a twist on the saying "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't." In this case a whole, whole lot of people took a gamble, they held their noses and voted for the devil they sort-of didn't know. It's just that they thought they new the other one too well and weren't willing to take that risk but were willing to gamble that the other one would not turn out so bad after all.
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“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, ‘We piped to you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’"
Posts: 1988 | From: Alta California | Registered: Mar 2008
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pancho:
Clinton was carrying too much baggage: her own, her husband's, and President Obama's. The votes for Trump weren't so much votes for him as much as they were votes against Clinton and what ( in those voters eyes ) she represents. It's a twist on the saying "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't." In this case a whole, whole lot of people took a gamble, they held their noses and voted for the devil they sort-of didn't know. It's just that they thought they new the other one too well and weren't willing to take that risk but were willing to gamble that the other one would not turn out so bad after all.
Well put. I think you can know someone too well, as in marriage, sometimes. This happens to some politicians who have been around for ages, and the electorate can easily turn on them, not because of any particular faults, but sheer tedium, or ennui. It happened in the UK with Blair, who apart from the Iraq shambles, just became too much of a caricature of himself, and in some people, provokes revulsion.
But Hillary, my God, think of her track record, estimable as it is, but yawn, it's zzzz ...
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
I don't know if this happened (or how to prove it one way or the other) but I'm wondering if the constant bombardment of polls saying that Trump wouldn't win had an impact in several different ways:
- It maybe encouraged Trump supporters to vote
- It maybe discouraged jaded Clinton voters to not vote (they didn't think it would make any difference anyway)
- It maybe encouraged those who wanted to give the establishment a kick to vote (it wouldn't make any difference anyway)
- It maybe encouraged anyone tempted to get up to shinanigens to do it
- It maybe encouraged those speaking to pollsters to lie (disliking the liberal media?)
- It maybe encouraged the media to discount Trump as a never-going-to-happen candidate
It seems like it didn't actually need much of a swing from certain groups in certain states (unclear at the moment if people went from Obama to Trump or whether Obama supporter stayed at home and previously non-voters went with Trump) to make the difference.
I think there is some evidence of an echo chamber amongst many different media outlets who convinced themselves that Trump winning was never going to happen. But then I suppose given the negative press and yet he still managed it..
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arse
Posts: 10697 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
The big shift in the demographics was poor small-town uneducated whites, who saw a huge shift towards Trump.
In 2012, the candidates were the black guy (a community organizer) or a snobby elitist millionaire.
In 2016, the candidates were the woman who got paid millions of dollars to give speeches to a bunch of bankers, or a millionaire in a baseball cap who spoke their language.
And if you look at the response to the recent cases of small-town high school football players raping drunken schoolfriends, you find widespread victim blaming and "boys will be boys" rape excusing. People who think like that wouldn't have a problem with Trump grabbing women by the pussy - clearly the women must have been coming on to him.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Just to add, I'm not American, but I could feel it happening to me, during the debates, for example. Again, Clinton handled them very well, but somehow in a familiar way, as if I've been listening to her all my life. I suppose that could be comforting, but also enervating. It doesn't recommend Trump, but then as in marriage, one might fancy someone a bit louche, who might go behind the arras with you, and give you a surprise.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Pancho
Shipmate
# 13533
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well put. I think you can know someone too well, as in marriage, sometimes. This happens to some politicians who have been around for ages, and the electorate can easily turn on them, not because of any particular faults, but sheer tedium, or ennui. It happened in the UK with Blair, who apart from the Iraq shambles, just became too much of a caricature of himself, and in some people, provokes revulsion.
But Hillary, my God, think of her track record, estimable as it is, but yawn, it's zzzz ...
I think, though, that it went beyond tedium or ennui. There was resentment, too. I need to say that this is not the same as the sexism, or racism or hate that I still see too many people blaming for Clinton's loss ( though I believe that exists.) There is a resentment among a lot of people against the attitudes they feel are being held against them and the way they've been ignored. To them, she represents those attitudes. I'm thinking of the statement she made earlier this year about putting coal miners out of business [link]. Those people see and hear things like this and take it as evidence that they're not really wanted.
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“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market places and calling to their playmates, ‘We piped to you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’"
Posts: 1988 | From: Alta California | Registered: Mar 2008
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
So little of the media coverage here has been about policy, and so much about unpresidential behaviour that opponents are trying to talk up into scandal, that it's hard to tell.
But it seemed like Hilary offered managerial competence and continuation of the present, while the Donald offered hope that the future can be better, that the system can be shaken up and made to deliver more of what ordinary people want.
Just as 8 years ago Obama was the candidate of hope for beneficial change.
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anyuta:
I do not blame Hillary. She was a very qualified candidate. The things thrown against her were so minor, yet blown up to be so major by the media and her opponents. I think had any other candidate been in her place, they would have been smeared as well. Bernie would have had the antisemitic factor working aginst him, and of course, as a self declared socialist, he has that strike against him. Sure, the far left loved him (I loved him), but that's not how had to be convinced. the swing voters, the ones in the middle, the ones who are apathetic.. I can't see that they would have chosen to vote for him. HIllary lost because Trump won.
And we need to think seriously about what allowed Trump to win. Those people aren't just racist misogynist assholes. Sure, many are, but that's not who really made a difference. There are people, a LOT of people, in our country who feel like they have been left behind, that their values don't matter, that they are treated as jokes and as losers, and they are angry about it. and they voted. They think Trump will make them matter again. I think they are very sadly mistaken, but that's not the point. the point is that they exist, and that they do feel that way, legitimately so. What can we as a country do to make them feel like they matter. How can we make them feel that they don't have to turn to a Trump to have their concerns treated with respect. To some extent we are blaming the victims for speaking out. sure they are betting on the wrong horse, but that they felt so very strongly that at least SOMEONE understood shows that we just can't continue to write them off as uneducated yokels. I don't know the answer, but if we want to move forward we have to figure this out. These are the same type of folks who voted for Brexit. It isn't just to piss off us liberals. it's because they genuinely feel left out and are angry about it.
if we jut focus on thei racism and hatered, I think we are missing much of the point. Yes, that's certainly there. Yes, its terrible. But it's also a reaction to something deeper. a primitive "circle the wagons, shoot at anyone not like us" reaction, but still not the core problem. If we cant look past that at what people are really angry about (loss of jobs, hope, feeling like the concerns of "the other" are more important than their concerns) then we may never move forward.
I think you are spot on.
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Just as 8 years ago Obama was the candidate of hope for beneficial change.
I remember that, and also how the uneducated white males made fun of it. "Keep the change," their bumper stickers read. Now they will get to eat change Republican style for four years. Hope they can stomach it.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anyuta:
I do not blame Hillary. She was a very qualified candidate. The things thrown against her were so minor, yet blown up to be so major by the media and her opponents. I think had any other candidate been in her place, they would have been smeared as well...<snip>.There are people, a LOT of people, in our country who feel like they have been left behind, that their values don't matter, that they are treated as jokes and as losers, and they are angry about it. and they voted. They think Trump will make them matter again. I think they are very sadly mistaken, but that's not the point. the point is that they exist, and that they do feel that way, legitimately so....<snip>. If we cant look past that at what people are really angry about (loss of jobs, hope, feeling like the concerns of "the other" are more important than their concerns) then we may never move forward.
Gary Younge, writing in the Guardian, has been "embedded in a faded industrial town in mid-America: Muncie, Illinois. His conclusions here are remarkably similar to anyuta's view.
The guys left behind by capitalist forces have a legitimate claim to anger and fear. Much of the US is heading in the direction of becoming Guatemala, ruled by somewhat trained militarised police, and offered no prospects of work.
And the guys who set off the recession of '08 have not suffered at all. If anything, they were coddled. Hell, I'm pissed off that this has happened and I have a relatively safe pension and live in a country with state health care. I can't imagine what it would be like to live in what is essentially an abandoned town.
Not that voting for Trump would help, but supporting "the way things are" is not viable, either.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
...The guys left behind by capitalist forces have a legitimate claim to anger and fear. ...
And President-Elect Fart will change nothing. His ties and hats come from China. He rips off small businesses. He scams ordinary people out of their life savings. He cheats on his taxes.* Hey, left-behind guys, you'll never win the battle if you don't know who your real enemy is. Maybe that's why you got left behind ...
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*He claims he's being audited. You don't get audited unless there's something fishy about your tax returns. He could prove otherwise in an instant, but hasn't and won't. Q.E.D.
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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Martin--
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Ah GK, the myth of voter fraud.
What has that got to do with this election? Apart from being a lie used by the winner?
*No*, election fraud, not voter fraud. Done by insiders. People in the discussion made that same mistake.
I probably shouldn't have brought it up again. But it was part of the overall tenor of things I was talking about.
So people can believe it, or not. I'm dropping this part of the discussion. Would produce far more heat than light, and solve nothing.
NOTE: I'm in bad shape over the election, and am rationing my time, news access, etc. I dropped all news right before the victory speech. I've still got the presumptive president elect compartmentalized. So much there that's impossible to deal with.
And I'm in deep mourning over not having a woman president *finally*. It will be a long time before another woman is ready, let alone gets this far again. And we're not going to have anyone with Hillary's unique set of skills, accomplishment, and experience.
Maybe, just maybe, one of the many little girls who dressed up in a Hillary pantsuit for Halloween (yes, really) will grow up to be president.
But it will be a long wait.
![[Waterworks]](graemlins/bawling.gif) ![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif)
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Golden Key:
And I'm in deep mourning over not having a woman president *finally*. It will be a long time before another woman is ready, let alone gets this far again. And we're not going to have anyone with Hillary's unique set of skills, accomplishment, and experience.
I'll flat out dispute "ready" - there are plenty of women in US politics who have just as much talent and experience as a typical male presidential candidate.
Likely to be selected? Well, that depends, now, doesn't it. If I glance over the pool of likely candidates for 2020, I'd give you even odds that a woman would prove the most able candidate. A bigger question is whether the Democratic party thinks a woman can be elected next time around, of if they're going to pick a man based on the apparent sexism faced by HRC.
Kaine/Klobuchar 2020?
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Ticks Soror Magna's post. Big tick!
I've just been looking at the "Trumpocalypse" Hell thread. Hadn't realised that voting percentages were that low,down about 3% cf 2012 and 6% cf 2008.
Perhaps the unpleasantness of the campaign and the unpopularity of both candidates was in play?
At any rate, it might have had some impact on the results. Here's a link.
Despite the believed superiority of Hillary Clintgon's ground game, it looks as though it didn't get out the votes for her that were there. Are there any demographics about relative turn out cf party allegiance?
[ 10. November 2016, 08:57: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pancho:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well put. I think you can know someone too well, as in marriage, sometimes. This happens to some politicians who have been around for ages, and the electorate can easily turn on them, not because of any particular faults, but sheer tedium, or ennui. It happened in the UK with Blair, who apart from the Iraq shambles, just became too much of a caricature of himself, and in some people, provokes revulsion.
But Hillary, my God, think of her track record, estimable as it is, but yawn, it's zzzz ...
I think, though, that it went beyond tedium or ennui. There was resentment, too. I need to say that this is not the same as the sexism, or racism or hate that I still see too many people blaming for Clinton's loss ( though I believe that exists.) There is a resentment among a lot of people against the attitudes they feel are being held against them and the way they've been ignored. To them, she represents those attitudes. I'm thinking of the statement she made earlier this year about putting coal miners out of business [link]. Those people see and hear things like this and take it as evidence that they're not really wanted.
Yebbut, that was a case in point. What she actually said (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/may/10/context-hillary-clintons-comments-about-coal-jobs/) and how the media reported it are quite different things. Certainly in this country (I can't talk about the USA) a lot of the resentment is purposely stoked up by right wing press who run continuous stories implying that "they" are being given preferential treatment over "you". There are people in the UK who really believe that the moment you jump off the back of a lorry from Calais you're given a council house.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Something like 7m voters went missing between 2012 and 2016. In terms of votes cast Trump actually did worse than Romney and McCain. Off the top of my head I can think of three possibilities.
1/ Clinton's negative approval ratings led people to mutter plague on both their houses and stay at home on the big day.
2/ Republican voter suppression tactics worked bigly.
3/ A combination of 1 & 2.
[ETA: x-post.]
[ 10. November 2016, 08:34: Message edited by: Callan ]
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
Hey, left-behind guys, you'll never win the battle if you don't know who your real enemy is.
Their real enemy is the globalisation that has seen their jobs in factories, mills, mines, etc. move to other countries because it's cheaper to import raw materials from those other countries than it is to pay Americans to produce them. Which means that Trump's insular, protectionist stance is more likely to help them than Clinton's promotion of free international trade.
It seems to me that the left-behind guys knew that perfectly well, and voted accordingly.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
Even if manufacturing returned to the Rust Belt, it wouldn't employ a bunch of working class guys. It would employ a few people with college degrees who would program and look after the robots that perform the tasks these days. And Trump's tariffs would benefit no one here - we'd just pay a lot more for imported consumer goods. Since the middle class will have less disposable income due to our incomes being more heavily taxed, this is all a recipe for disaster. Trump's economic "plan" is going to hurt the white working class. And then where will they direct their rage?
The real winners in this election are affluent white folks. Same folks who have always been the winners. A lot of things in this country may change in the near term, but that most certainly won't be one of them.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
...The guys left behind by capitalist forces have a legitimate claim to anger and fear. ...
And President-Elect Fart will change nothing. His ties and hats come from China. He rips off small businesses. He scams ordinary people out of their life savings. He cheats on his taxes.* Hey, left-behind guys, you'll never win the battle if you don't know who your real enemy is. Maybe that's why you got left behind ...
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*He claims he's being audited. You don't get audited unless there's something fishy about your tax returns. He could prove otherwise in an instant, but hasn't and won't. Q.E.D.
The question of the 'real enemy' is a moving target. I can understand why some people thought it was globalization that has taken their jobs away, and that Clinton is keen on free trade, which tends to oil the engine of globalization.
I agree that that doesn't mean that Trump has the solution to that one, since protectionism has its own devils.
Quote: "You go to New England, you go to Ohio, Pennsylvania, you go anywhere you want, Secretary Clinton, and you will see devastation where manufacture is down 30, 40, sometimes 50 per cent."
This is a killing quote from Trump, isn't it? It tended to get lost in all the sniffles and sex talk, but my recollection is that Clinton prevaricated at this point.
Trump may be talking economic bollocks, but I can see why it seems to have hit home with some. (Of course, Sanders had made the same criticism, from the left).
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
all the sniffles and sex talk
I.e., the objections to misogyny. Let's be clear about this. It is wrong to play this down. Immoral. Shameful.
quote:
Trump may be talking economic bollocks, but I can see why it seems to have hit home with some. (Of course, Sanders had made the same criticism, from the left).
And if they weren't also racists, Sanders might have made more headway.
The economics of all this are brutally important, but make no mistake, they interact with sexism and bigotry in horrifying ways.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
all the sniffles and sex talk
I.e., the objections to misogyny. Let's be clear about this. It is wrong to play this down. Immoral. Shameful.
quote:
Trump may be talking economic bollocks, but I can see why it seems to have hit home with some. (Of course, Sanders had made the same criticism, from the left).
And if they weren't also racists, Sanders might have made more headway.
The economics of all this are brutally important, but make no mistake, they interact with sexism and bigotry in horrifying ways.
Oh FFS, I'm not playing down the misogyny. Can't I fucking abbreviate a section of the debates without being hauled up? If I didn't do that, my post would be ten pages long.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Indeed, Sanders actually made some kind of sense as a candidate for expressing dissatisfaction with how economic changes have affected the USA.
But the choice is instead a billionaire with a history of not paying for work. That's what gets me. The sentiments that led to rejection of "establishment" candidates, I understand. The choice of alternative, I do not. It's only understandable on the basis that folks wanted a posturing alpha male as their leader. They knew where they stood when it was a rich white oaf that was screwing them over.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Indeed, Sanders actually made some kind of sense as a candidate for expressing dissatisfaction with how economic changes have affected the USA.
But the choice is instead a billionaire with a history of not paying for work. That's what gets me. The sentiments that led to rejection of "establishment" candidates, I understand. The choice of alternative, I do not. It's only understandable on the basis that folks wanted a posturing alpha male as their leader. They knew where they stood when it was a rich white oaf that was screwing them over.
It looks like smoke and mirrors to me. I mean Trump hit Clinton in an open goal, that is, her support for free trade, and TTP, and so on, but his own economic 'plans' are not exactly detailed, are they? But I guess they didn't need to be. If you hammer a candidate on their weakness on X, you don't always have to have a replacement. This may reflect badly on the intelligence of the electorate, but Trump is really crying buckets over that. All is fair in love and politics.
[ 10. November 2016, 11:29: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
If you hammer a candidate on their weakness on X, you don't always have to have a replacement.
And this is frequently the stupidity of the electorate. Not just in this case.
It's generally proven that negative campaigning about your opponent is more successful than talking about your own stuff, so no wonder that's the tactic that politicians repeatedly adopt.
And no wonder it works. It's so much more concrete.
But it is fundamentally a con, or a distraction. It avoids the far harder questions of a positive action plan for the future.
And the electorate falls for it on a regular basis. We don't use elections to elect people to office. We use them to vote people out of office.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The sentiments that led to rejection of "establishment" candidates, I understand. The choice of alternative, I do not.
How much choice over the alternative did people have, though? They can only vote for the candidates that are standing, even in the primaries. Once Clinton had beaten Sanders (and one wonders how many of them were eligible to vote in Democrat primaries anyway) there was only one alternative available, so they chose it.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Going back to the misogyny, Clinton landed heavy blows on this, and Trump's other bigotries, but she had left an unprotected flank, in relation to free trade. Trump seemed so chaotic, that it was difficult to see that he was focusing heavy artillery on this flank, but he was, as the above quote shows, and quite probably, it worked.
How could Clinton rebut this stuff? Quite difficult, as she was caught in a kind of twilight zone. Yes, I support free trade, but no I don't. The other problem is that she is trying to defend some of Obama's policies, isn't she? OK, Obama is still popular-ish, but some people don't want son-of-Obama or daughter-of-Obama.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
What a quote. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, / In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump."
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The sentiments that led to rejection of "establishment" candidates, I understand. The choice of alternative, I do not.
How much choice over the alternative did people have, though? They can only vote for the candidates that are standing, even in the primaries. Once Clinton had beaten Sanders (and one wonders how many of them were eligible to vote in Democrat primaries anyway) there was only one alternative available, so they chose it.
No, there was not only option open. They had the choice of deciding that some things were not worth the price. They had the choice of figuring out that, however much the establishment was bad, the proffered alternative was worse.
And yes, I fully acknowledge that's a "lesser of two evils" argument. But that's what I'm left with in this line of thinking. Acknowledging the perceived problems with the establishment does not lead me to the conclusion that the only choice available was to buck the establishment, any more than I would conclude that, with no other treatment option for a nasty disease being offered, I ought to choose to kill the patient.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
But that's a rational argument. Politics mainly is not, I think. We are not Swift's Houyhnhnms.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
But that's a rational argument. Politics mainly is not, I think. We are not Swift's Houyhnhnms.
What you're telling me is that a large proportion of human beings are idiots. I already know this.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
But that's a rational argument. Politics mainly is not, I think. We are not Swift's Houyhnhnms.
What you're telling me is that a large proportion of human beings are idiots. I already know this.
Well, no. I don't think that. I think politics has a large chunk of the non-rational in it, but that isn't surprising. I don't think humans are particularly rational, but this is a fascinating topic for elsewhere.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
Of course, in America there's also a reasonably common belief that this particular patient SHOULD be killed, that the aim should be to make federal government completely non functional.
The states do all the "good" stuff in this model.
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Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
What you're telling me is that a large proportion of human beings are idiots. I already know this.
Horace Vandergelder in Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (Hello Dolly) got it right: "Most of the people in this world are fools, and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion."
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I think that's dangerous talk. It smacks of that 'de haut en bas' (looking down from a great height), that has added fuel to the attack by the right wing on the 'liberal elite'. We, who are intelligent, deprecate those who are not. Scary stuff.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Going back to the misogyny ...
See, just the one word is needed, not 10 pages.
And you're right, she couldn't rebut successfully on trade, because it has so manifestly not worked out well for a lot of Americans. The good jobs went away, they were only partially replaced by crappy service industry jobs, and people my age are trying to figure out how to get by until they are old enough to draw Social Security, while their grown kids lead lives are less prosperous than their grandparents' were.
I don't even live in flyover country, but I see similar things here in Los Angeles County, where the post Cold War military draw down closed the local naval base, shipyard and hospital and simultaneously gutted the aerospace industry. So now in my town there are some affluent developers, there are some middle class professionals who are doing okay, and there are a whole lot of people crammed into substandard housing with sky high rents they are barely covering with their inadequate pay. There are a few really excellent blue collar jobs at oil refineries and in longshoring at the ports. These are union jobs and their pay is awesome. But the guys who drive the trucks with the containers coming off the ships make very little. If global trade takes a hit because of Trump's policies, Los Angeles County will be one of the hardest hit places in the country, because there are so many jobs here directly tied to it. The irony is that there are tens of thousands of people living within a few miles of the ports that bring in about 40% of this nation's imports who are just flat-out poor. All that global trade is right here, and all the ports' neighbors get is the diesel fumes and high rates of pulmonary disease.
I will point out, though, that these folks haven't all decided to blame women, black people, gays, immigrants, a global Jewish cabal, or Muslims for their problems. They voted Democrat. Of course a lot of them are themselves immigrants, native-born American Latinos, and black people. Funny thing about the "elite" coastal areas of the country - a whole lot of non-elite people choose to live here.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Patronizing, much?
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Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
A friend just pointed out that if Trump had lost, but had won the popular vote, he would be tearing up and down making a great fuss, that it was all rigged. And his supporters would probably be shouting and bawling and firing their fucking guns in the air, blah blah blah.
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