DOOM, or The Official 2016 US Election Thread

[baboon2004]

Re the transfer of power, that should apply only if the incoming president is not racist, sexist, ableist etc etc (and has specifically used these to win the election). You can't welcome someone who has employed hate speech all the way through the campaign - Democrats should continue to register their disgust at the things Trump has said, and to the extent to which they don't, we can only conclude that their apparent disgust before was more functional than real. Far from making Bernie Sanders look bad, his remarks make him look like a person with actual principles, an honourable and decent person. Continuing to criticise Trump is not about parties at all, it's about basic morality.And US democracy is broken anyways at this point.

 

[Leo]

from david brooks.

Trump’s bigotry, dishonesty and promise-breaking will have to be denounced. We can’t go morally numb. But he needs to be replaced with a program that addresses the problems that fueled his ascent.

After all, the guy will probably resign or be impeached within a year. The future is closer than you think.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/o...version=Full&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

100% right to describe the Dem campaign as an unmitigated disaster. They lost an election that most people thought was unloseable...to only poll 400,000 votes more (in a nation of 235m potential voters)

This is why. The popular vote thing is dumb but it was basically a draw. If you can't easily crush Trump, you don't deserve to win, even if in practical terms of course it would better if HRC had won.

& I mean really the campaign itself wasn't even that bad. Not great either, but not a disaster. The real disaster is all the many, many long-term issues with the Democratic Party and the huge, growing disassociation between the ruling classes and the country they rule

 

[Leo]

hindsight is 20/20, i don't recall anyone calling the clinton campaign a disaster before november 8.

looking back, the clinton camp made a decision to portray trump as unhinged, thin-skinned, volatile, too risky a choice with the nuclear codes, etc., and spent untold hours and millions of ad dollars reinforcing that narrative. it was all about what to vote AGAINST and little about giving voters something to vote FOR.

those voters were willing to overlook trump's gross vulgarity, misogyny, racism, etc. because he heard them and pledged to help them. even though his promises will largely be impossible to keep, voters at least felt a candidate was paying attention to them. clinton proposed plans that would have helped a lot of voters in need, but she chose to spend the campaign hammering away at the "he's bad" message as opposed to the "i hear you and here's how i will help you" message.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I guess for me detesting the current liberal establishment really boils down to the unholy union of complete unearned smugness and complete inability to back that smugness up in any way. At least once upon a time smug assholes stood for things and sometimes accomplished things.

I live in Chicago, whose mayor is the king of smug oblivious liberal elite bullshit. It's kind of instructive for viewing the Dems on a national level. He has no popular base; his main constituency is investment bankers (which he used to be ofc) and big real estate developers. He's old buds w our shitty ex-private equity guy GOP governor, tho a la Clinton/Trump they make a pretense of being enemies. His main accomplishments in office are shutting down public schools in favor of charter schools (often owned by his friends/allies), fighting with/blaming everything on the teachers union, and using real estate tax money to build a sports complex no one wants. The only reasons he's still mayor (besides suppressing the Laquan Mcdonald tape, I mean) is that unlike New York it is and would be impossible for a GOP candidate to win here, which ofc doesn't hold true at the national level.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

hindsight is 20/20, i don't recall anyone calling the clinton campaign a disaster before november 8

see my above comment. Disaster is much larger than just one mediocre campaign.

 

[Leo]

see my above comment. Disaster is much larger than just one mediocre campaign.

yeah, we're in agreement.

 

[Leo]

common practice at newspapers to plan ahead in order to meet deadlines but this image says so much:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/insider/madam-president-an-iconic-front-page-that-wasnt-to-be.html

 

[droid]

This is why. The popular vote thing is dumb but it was basically a draw. If you can't easily crush Trump, you don't deserve to win, even if in practical terms of course it would better if HRC had won.

Popular vote margin is heading towards 2 million now.

 

[droid]

hindsight is 20/20, i don't recall anyone calling the clinton campaign a disaster before november 8.

You mean apart from the tens of thousands of people who thought Sanders could do better, the likes of Michael Moore, and the many criticisms of her tactics?

 

[firefinga]

In response to barty, I think a lot of people are outraged at the conciliatory way most of the Democratic Party has acted towards Trump after the result,

Absolutley. It's like "please, fuck us up the ass even more, and now without lube".

 

[Leo]

You mean apart from the tens of thousands of people who thought Sanders could do better, the likes of Michael Moore, and the many criticisms of her tactics?

i mean people here during the general election, after the primaries once sanders was out. not talking about sanders, just the clinton-trump race of the past couple of months. we were all enthralled with talking about trump's campaign, not a lot of chatter here about clinton's (unless i missed a thread).

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think a lot are angry now bc they see that the Democrats are not (at least less so) the worker's party any more. That they should have voted Dems but to a large proportion didn't. And thats confusing for many.

Without wishing to make a very American issue into a UK issue, this surely has an analogue in the Tories' reinvention of themselves as the true "workers' party" in distinction to Labour being the party of 'skivers', I.e. benefits spongers ('welfare queens' in Reagan's terms).

 

[you]

btw, dynasties never die:



http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...-reportedly-planning-a-congressional-run.html

Shriver has a line in her Mandibles book (near future USA in economic meltdown) about how the Chelsea Clinton administration replaced the Mexican-born Alvarado as president.

 

[droid]

i mean people here during the general election, after the primaries once sanders was out. not talking about sanders, just the clinton-trump race of the past couple of months. we were all enthralled with talking about trump's campaign, not a lot of chatter here about clinton's (unless i missed a thread).

Not sure a music forum with a couple of dozen regulars is much of a bellweather to be honest. I guess we all thought/hoped it was going OK. It seemed to be going OK - just about.

Personally, I also avoided all the wikileaks stuff as I didnt see the point, and there were a lot of signs buried in there.

 

[Leo]

Not sure a music forum with a couple of dozen regulars is much of a bellweather to be honest. I guess we all thought/hoped it was going OK. It seemed to be going OK - just about.

Personally, I also avoided all the wikileaks stuff as I didnt see the point, and there were a lot of signs buried in there.

i hear you. i was just reacting to all the cries of unmitigated disaster here over the past day or so. and in fairness, the trump campaign was such a circus that it would have overshadowed the faults of any opponent's campaign.

 

[vimothy]

The ridiculous overconfidence that many people approached the election with is surely one issue. It was only days ago that we were hearing about how victory was impossible for Trump. Now it seems almost like his victory was never implausible and no one is surprised.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Popular vote margin is heading towards 2 million now.

Still ~400k from what I see. Even 2 mil would be >1% total electorate. Either way my point was that even if the system is dumb it's hard to feel a great injustice has been done, esp as everyone knew the system's dumb rules going in.

 

[Benny Bunter]

good stuff from shaun king here
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-not-wait-trump-administration-article-1.2869073

and he's been collecting stories of hate crimes in the wake of the election on his twitter, many of them happening inside high schools and universities, some seriously disturbing stuff going down right now.
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing

 

[Leo]

The ridiculous overconfidence that many people approached the election with is surely one issue. It was only days ago that we were hearing about how victory was impossible for Trump. Now it seems almost like his victory was never implausible and no one is surprised.

i suspect that confidence was based on polling data. polls have historically been accurate, taking into account the margin of error, so there was reason to believe them. the polls were wrong this time.

the other factor was the democratic party's blindness (willful or otherwise) to hillary's obvious faults and baggage: history of questionable ethics, the foundation, the ultimate establishment candidate during a change election year, etc. but perhaps most of all, the democrats just rolled over and surrendered to the "it's her time" mindset and were too intimidated to question the logic of her as the candidate. bernie's 22 primary state victories and fervent supporter base were obvious signs of trouble, but the democrats ignored them and steamrolled ahead with clinton anyway because she's party royalty.

the thing that was new for this election (to me, anyway) was all these predictor percentage sites: 538 stating clinton with a 71.6% (or whatever) chance of winning, the ny times gauging it at 89%, etc. they come off as so declarative, people started to get hung up on them and seemed to convince themselves that the election was one way when it was really quite another way. i know those percentages are based on an aggregate of polling data but it's different from just seeing poll results.