My Last Rant on the 2016 Presidential Election (until my next one)

[Loren Pechtel]

Listening to people's concerns and addressing those concerns seems to be what could beat a candidate who can't go too negative. The Deplorables were locked votes for Trump, what won him the election was people who voted based on the conditions they're living in, and the Clinton messaging to these people was as weak as the ground-game in the Midwest.

Indeed. People here speak as if pointing at Trump as bad somehow makes Clinton acceptable and able to get liberals out to vote for her. This is a country that is extremely polarized and partisan and has a rather low voter turn out. You are not really competing for the same votes on the left and on the right. Trump got his voters out, and not in record numbers. Hillary didn't get enough of her side out. Hillary didn't because of what you say here and because of the numerous things I have stated above. She was a flawed self-entitled corporate candidate and had Sanders up there in stark contrast which only further highlighted her flaws, and she did little to nothing to deal with them. Few actually wanted to vote for her. Most who did were doing so because of her riveting message of "I'm not Trump".

The problem with this logic is that we must pick something. Even though we were faced with only bad choices doesn't mean we can't make a sane choice.

Clinton: -100
Trump: -1000

Who do you choose?

 

[Rhea]

Exactly! You're catching on.

The party elite are not interested in the people and the party elite set the agenda and like all good believers, they wont care what independent reality shows them, they only see what their orthodoxy tells them to see. People in this country have been clamoring for a FDR for eight years now and what they got was some nice Calvin Coolidge with some JFK mixed in topped with heavy cream of oratory and a whole lot of icing made of just plain cool.

The Dems will continue to move to the right (until some sort of purge happens), and the GOP will continue to run to the right until both parties fall off a cliff.

I find this so weirdly bizarre.

"People in this country"

Let me pause here and say that I liked Sanders. I donated to his campaign. I got all the e-mails and attended parties.

But if the claim is that "People in this country have been clamoring for a FDR" where were their overwhelming clamorings during the primary? I mean, just reality speaking, for many, Sanders was "what all of America wanted," and he, what's the phrase, "fucked up a sure thing"? Losing the primaries by over 3 million votes?

I just don't get the claim that The Dems "didn't put up what the people want."

Now, of course the Dems are unlikely to put up who Republican voters want, right? Because the Dems and the Repubs don't want the same things. So the rest, the Dems and the Independents, they all wanted the FDR, yes? And there are those who think Bernie was that FDR? So how did he screw it up so badly? How did he NOT get his vast legions of fans to the polls? How did they not immediately sign up for Dem party status so they could flock to the primaries and caucuses? How did he not e-mail every supporter instructions on joining the Democratic party so they could vote for him? (Seriously, I never got an e-mail about how to be eligible for a primary from him. Not once. But I did get 40,000 findraiser requests.) How did he fuck that up so badly?

The DNC emails didn't do it
Wasserman didn't do it.
Closed Primaries didn't do it.
The sun didn't get in anyone's eyes
The dog didn't eat it.
And nothing was called on account of the weather.

The FDR lost this primary election because of the FDR involved and the choices he made. Period.


All sarcasm aside, I repeat that I like Bernie. But he lost because more people wanted Clinton. The claim that everyone wanted an FDR and not a Clinton one doesn't seem to ring true because no one voted in higher numbers for anyone besides Clinton.

And anyone who is upset about Trump and did not vote for Clinton is just weird.

- - - Updated - - -

Don't blame the coach when the players make an audible at the goal line and end up losing the game. There's only so much she could do, given the fickle nature of the American electorate. She went up against a reality TV star in a popularity contest.

The school nerd lost the school president because she assumed the stoners would simply vote for her when her opponent was a sexist, racist jock promising to end homework and put vending machines in every classroom.

That makes sense. Like the reason New Coke failed is because customers were unable to appreciate how great it was; customers being so fickle. It is folly to presume that if people decline to buy a product that the product is bad. No. No. Better to just blame the customers for not knowing any better. Anyway, who wants to buy my Pontiac Aztek?

That would make sense if it weren't for all the people who didn't buy New Coke now complaining that they stopped selling New Coke.

That's the bizarre part.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

All sarcasm aside, I repeat that I like Bernie. But he lost because more people wanted Clinton. The claim that everyone wanted an FDR and not a Clinton one doesn't seem to ring true because no one voted in higher numbers for anyone besides Clinton.

Do you really honestly believe that so many liberals wanted a corporate sell out like Hillary instead of actual progress that Sanders was calling for? Are your liberals really that weak? So very pathetic if so.

Or could it maybe be that they saw her as the likely winner and the sure thing against the scary Republicans as she and the media pushed her hard as the candidate of destiny?

Remember how Obama didn't even try for single payer universal health care despite controlling congress initially? Why do you folks tell me that is? You say because it was unrealistic and it couldn't happen because of the political landscape. This was said just a page or so ago in this very thread. So why even try, right? Hillary said much the same during her campaign against Bernie and his policies. American liberals are so beaten down that even though in polls on the issues they did indeed want an FDR, they didn't think it was possible, and they bought Hillary's inch-by-inch-forward rhetoric instead of they'd really rather be so. I bet you were one of them. Hillary herself sold it this way as did almost all of US media.

And lets not pretend that the Democrat party didn't engage in shady dealings against Sanders, as was leaked... and then only talked about those horrible hackers instead of what the actual leak was or even trying to say it wasn't true.

Bernie picked up where occupy wall street left off, just as Trump tapped into much of the same sentiment on the right that created the tea party. It is a growing movement, and if fostered well, it could lead to a successful democratic progressive presidential candidate in 2020, now that Hillary and the politics as usual corporate hacks were shown to be such losers. After Trump's win, many have for the first time wondered if Bernie could have won after all (after previously dismissing it as a pipe dream and voting against him despite agreeing with him for fear of Trump).

 

[laughing dog]

People can wonder if Sanders or even Pee Wee Herman would have beaten Trump all they want. Sanders could not even get a majority of voters in the primaries to vote for him, so it is pretty much pie in the sky to think that someone to the left of HRC would have won.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

The party elite are not interested in the people and the party elite set the agenda and like all good believers, they wont care what independent reality shows them, they only see what their orthodoxy tells them to see. People in this country have been clamoring for a FDR for eight years now and what they got was some nice Calvin Coolidge with some JFK mixed in topped with heavy cream of oratory and a whole lot of icing made of just plain cool.

The Dems will continue to move to the right (until some sort of purge happens), and the GOP will continue to run to the right until both parties fall off a cliff.

I find this so weirdly bizarre.

"People in this country"

Let me pause here and say that I liked Sanders. I donated to his campaign. I got all the e-mails and attended parties.

But if the claim is that "People in this country have been clamoring for a FDR" where were their overwhelming clamorings during the primary? I mean, just reality speaking, for many, Sanders was "what all of America wanted," and he, what's the phrase, "fucked up a sure thing"? Losing the primaries by over 3 million votes?

I just don't get the claim that The Dems "didn't put up what the people want."

Now, of course the Dems are unlikely to put up who Republican voters want, right? Because the Dems and the Repubs don't want the same things. So the rest, the Dems and the Independents, they all wanted the FDR, yes? And there are those who think Bernie was that FDR? So how did he screw it up so badly? How did he NOT get his vast legions of fans to the polls? How did they not immediately sign up for Dem party status so they could flock to the primaries and caucuses? How did he not e-mail every supporter instructions on joining the Democratic party so they could vote for him? (Seriously, I never got an e-mail about how to be eligible for a primary from him. Not once. But I did get 40,000 findraiser requests.) How did he fuck that up so badly?

The DNC emails didn't do it
Wasserman didn't do it.
Closed Primaries didn't do it.
The sun didn't get in anyone's eyes
The dog didn't eat it.
And nothing was called on account of the weather.

The FDR lost this primary election because of the FDR involved and the choices he made. Period.


All sarcasm aside, I repeat that I like Bernie. But he lost because more people wanted Clinton. The claim that everyone wanted an FDR and not a Clinton one doesn't seem to ring true because no one voted in higher numbers for anyone besides Clinton.

And anyone who is upset about Trump and did not vote for Clinton is just weird.

- - - Updated - - -

Don't blame the coach when the players make an audible at the goal line and end up losing the game. There's only so much she could do, given the fickle nature of the American electorate. She went up against a reality TV star in a popularity contest.

The school nerd lost the school president because she assumed the stoners would simply vote for her when her opponent was a sexist, racist jock promising to end homework and put vending machines in every classroom.

That makes sense. Like the reason New Coke failed is because customers were unable to appreciate how great it was; customers being so fickle. It is folly to presume that if people decline to buy a product that the product is bad. No. No. Better to just blame the customers for not knowing any better. Anyway, who wants to buy my Pontiac Aztek?

That would make sense if it weren't for all the people who didn't buy New Coke now complaining that they stopped selling New Coke.

That's the bizarre part.

Actually, Wasserman did do it.
And the DNC, and the news media and her own campaign.

HRC is not beloved by the multitudes. Millions did not vote FOR her but AGAINST Trump. That is not a victory of confidence in her but a rushed defense against him.

in the primaries, for example, black folk remembered everything she said about us and about Obama back in 08 and before, but again, as an act of defense against the GOP, and with full faith in conventional wisdom, HRC was supposed to be this juggernaut that could not lose. Bernie, although with a much better plan for the party and the country was too unknown a quantity to risk. So black folk voted HRC. She was the default. She was not her husband, not Obama and not able to sell the tide of history and be the first woman president. She didn't have to be.

HRC is not a gladhander and all those just weird phrases she tried to sell as cute talking points, and all the fundraisers in CA, and the cruelest cut of all and I think the most unfair to her and i wish I could have fixed it for her, ...

she looked and sounded her age. That should not have mattered, but it did.

She was not the candidate for this election, but she could have been the candidate for those very people in purple states that didn't vote for her if she had embraced the very characteristics she tried to minimize.

"Yes I am pushing 70. The hair is gray and the lines on my face are real. I own the hair and wrinkles because I earned every one of them. A lot of people have a lot invested in having people hate me. Not my policies, not my record, but me. I am not Satan nor is he my husband. I am running for president not because it is my turn, not because I want bigger speaking fees, not because I think I am better than you. I am running for president because change comes slow but if you keep working at it, it does come. The work has begun. Let's keep it going."

And she should have said those words in the union halls of rust belt, the white evangelical churches in the south and Midwest. She should have said them walking the fresh turned soil of a family farm. And she should have said no more and just listened. Not talk down to people and call them deplorables, but really listen to them not in charity but solidarity.

WI MI OH and PA were not the states she should have taken for granted. CA, NY, OR and WA were. And if her people had been more interested in the campaign in meeting halls and not so much the champagne in the ballrooms, they could have told her that and she could have won.

She could have been Eleanor Roosevelt and gotten past being seen as a rich woman divorced from regular people and only interested in her what she felt she was entitled to. I am not say that is who she is, but how she was seen. And had the DNC and DWS been as cagey about getting the press to deny Trump air time as they were about denying Sanders, none of us would be having this conversation.

Now anyone can hate me for anything I say. I'll survive. But if no one involved in the Clinton campaign will own up to their complicity in its failure and just accept that this was on them minus the "but that guy over there was really to blame" nonsense, the fourth Reich may get its thousand year reign after all.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Oh, BTW

remember this?



It became this



Which was totally unfair and historically wrong. Obama is not Hoover. He has been Coolidge. The next president gets to be Hoover.

 

[angelo]

What's often not mentioned is the fact that most Americans didn't want an Obama third term and the continuation of political correctness!

 

[Tom Sawyer]

What's often not mentioned is the fact that most Americans didn't want an Obama third term and the continuation of political correctness!

No, most of them did. Just not most of them in the right places.

 

[Harry Bosch]

All sarcasm aside, I repeat that I like Bernie. But he lost because more people wanted Clinton. The claim that everyone wanted an FDR and not a Clinton one doesn't seem to ring true because no one voted in higher numbers for anyone besides Clinton.

Do you really honestly believe that so many liberals wanted a corporate sell out like Hillary instead of actual progress that Sanders was calling for? Are your liberals really that weak? So very pathetic if so.

Or could it maybe be that they saw her as the likely winner and the sure thing against the scary Republicans as she and the media pushed her hard as the candidate of destiny?

Remember how Obama didn't even try for single payer universal health care despite controlling congress initially? Why do you folks tell me that is? You say because it was unrealistic and it couldn't happen because of the political landscape. This was said just a page or so ago in this very thread. So why even try, right? Hillary said much the same during her campaign against Bernie and his policies. American liberals are so beaten down that even though in polls on the issues they did indeed want an FDR, they didn't think it was possible, and they bought Hillary's inch-by-inch-forward rhetoric instead of they'd really rather be so. I bet you were one of them. Hillary herself sold it this way as did almost all of US media.

And lets not pretend that the Democrat party didn't engage in shady dealings against Sanders, as was leaked... and then only talked about those horrible hackers instead of what the actual leak was or even trying to say it wasn't true.

Bernie picked up where occupy wall street left off, just as Trump tapped into much of the same sentiment on the right that created the tea party. It is a growing movement, and if fostered well, it could lead to a successful democratic progressive presidential candidate in 2020, now that Hillary and the politics as usual corporate hacks were shown to be such losers. After Trump's win, many have for the first time wondered if Bernie could have won after all (after previously dismissing it as a pipe dream and voting against him despite agreeing with him for fear of Trump).

I hate to keep pointing out the obvious, but yes, HRC won the majority vote against Obama, against Sanders, and against Trump.

 

[Playball40]

Do you really still believe that the voting system isn't rigged by the states? I don't.

So a foreign government hacking and then altering (no matter how small) our election doesn't bother you at all? I'll bet if the same had happened to Sanders you would have been outraged.

Let's say Boris, Natasha, and Fearless Leader were hacking away all the live long day

If Clinton had been crushing Trump throughout the election as she should have been, had the news media been covering the issues and not Trump's empty podium, if so many Clinton surrogates has not been senior citizens and professional talking heads with all the endearing qualities of pit of cobras and serious media over exposure problems, and had the DNC ran a campaign to delegitimize the empty rhetoric of the Trump campaign instead of trying to stage a coronation of Clinton, would the Russian govt have given a 4% fool like Trump the time of day?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What's often not mentioned is the fact that most Americans didn't want an Obama third term and the continuation of political correctness!

Well, at least you are consistent in not knowing much of anything about the US.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, BTW

remember this?

View attachment 9066

It became this

View attachment 9067

Which was totally unfair and historically wrong. Obama is not Hoover. He has been Coolidge. The next president gets to be Hoover.

Especially seeing he was more like FDR.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

People can wonder if Sanders or even Pee Wee Herman would have beaten Trump all they want. Sanders could not even get a majority of voters in the primaries to vote for him, so it is pretty much pie in the sky to think that someone to the left of HRC would have won.

I think the theory would be founded in that Clinton fought with an arm tied behind her. She couldn't call out too much on his corruption because she has a corruption issue. Sanders could have fought all out. The question, however, is would a Sanders candidacy gotten enough millennials and blacks out. Despite actually being a person involved in the Civil Rights movement, blacks stuck with Clinton. And while millennials would have supported Sanders, we don't know how many votes would have flopped to Trump because Sanders is "an evil commie".

Clinton won the popular vote convincingly. She lost the EC in aggregate, but by only 5% of her popular vote win. Trump has become the first technical winner of the EC, where a person barely wins states, but barely wins the right states and technically wins the EC despite losing handily in the popular vote.

Clinton did just about everything right in the campaign otherwise. The fact remains, independents voted for Trump because of 24 years of anti-Clinton propaganda, misogyny, and racism... or in some smaller cases ignorance.

 

[Rhea]

HRC is not beloved by the multitudes. Millions did not vote FOR her but AGAINST Trump. That is not a victory of confidence in her but a rushed defense against him.

Not able to answer all right now, but... you are saying Trump was in the Dem primary? That one that Clinton won by 3 million votes?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

HRC is not beloved by the multitudes. Millions did not vote FOR her but AGAINST Trump. That is not a victory of confidence in her but a rushed defense against him.

Not able to answer all right now, but... you are saying Trump was in the Dem primary? That one that Clinton won by 3 million votes?

Currently 2.8+ million votes and 2.1% margin of victory.

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

Remember how Obama didn't even try for single payer universal health care despite controlling congress initially? Why do you folks tell me that is? You say because it was unrealistic and it couldn't happen because of the political landscape. This was said just a page or so ago in this very thread. So why even try, right?

You keep saying this like it's some kind of fact. I don't know how old you were in 2009, but you are speaking as if you were born yesterday. Democrats didn't "control" congress. They had exactly 60 votes needed to break the filibuster by Republicans in the senate - 2 of whom were independents - 1 of which was Joe Leiberman, who insisted that the public option be removed. The very next month they lost the Ted Kennedy seat in MA to a republican.

Obama was lucky to get any reform done.

aa

 

[dismal]

The Russians didn't do it
Comey didn't do it.
Hackers didn't do it.

Yabut fake news!

[YOUTUBE]J65w80T_9EI[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

And the Democrats wouldn't have 60 seats until around June due to the prolonged recount in Minnesota.

 

[Elixir]

we don't know how many votes would have flopped to Trump because Sanders is "an evil commie".

He also would have been targeted by teh Pugs as wanting to repeal the 2nd amendment, and by Dems as being "pro-guns". Nonetheless, I caucused for him, not only because his positions were closer to my own, but because I knew that the ONLY chance HRC would have would be if the Pugs nominated a total jerk like Trump. Turns out she didn't even have that chance.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Clinton did just about everything right in the campaign otherwise. The fact remains, independents voted for Trump because of 24 years of anti-Clinton propaganda, misogyny, and racism... or in some smaller cases ignorance.

If you really want to know why independents voted for Trump, maybe you could actually ask them rather than assuming they are misogynists and racists. Do keep in mind that quite a number of women and minorities voted for Trump. You may have to adjust your paradigm a little.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Remember how Obama didn't even try for single payer universal health care despite controlling congress initially? Why do you folks tell me that is? You say because it was unrealistic and it couldn't happen because of the political landscape. This was said just a page or so ago in this very thread. So why even try, right?

You keep saying this like it's some kind of fact. I don't know how old you were in 2009, but you are speaking as if you were born yesterday. Democrats didn't "control" congress. They had exactly 60 votes needed to break the filibuster by Republicans in the senate - 2 of whom were independents - 1 of which was Joe Leiberman, who insisted that the public option be removed. The very next month they lost the Ted Kennedy seat in MA to a republican.

Obama was lucky to get any reform done.

aa

I repeat: For single payer he didn't even try. Trying and failing is one thing. Not trying at all because you presume it impossible is quite another. Obama the candidate was great. Obama the president wasn't. He became all about bending over to service the Republicans hoping they would "work with him" rather than standing up to them and forcing them or at least attempting to force them.