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

[Trausti]

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.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

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.

Our you could bother to read.

Reasons for voting for Trump:

• 24 years of anti-Clinton propaganda
• misogyny
• racism
• ignorance

 

[Trausti]

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.

Our you could bother to read.

Reasons for voting for Trump:

• 24 years of anti-Clinton propaganda
• misogyny
• racism
• ignorance

Reasons for voting for Clinton:

• Ignorant About Policy Issues
• Misandry
• Easily Manipulated by the Media
• Just Plain Stupid

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Wow... so clever!

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

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.

Exactly,
Trying and failing doesn't get 30 million people covered
Trying and failing doesn't cap out of pocket expenses
Trying and failing won't provide coverage for your children through college
Trying and failing allows insurers to drop you as soon as you are sick and run loss ratios in the low 60s
Trying and failing puts you and your revisionist history lessons right back here telling everyone that Obama shouldn't have swung for the fences, but should have gotten reforms that were practical and achieveable.

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.

If that were true then how do you explain the republicans shutting down the government rather than work with him? You cannot simultaneously hold the position that Obama did nothing and that Obama tried too hard to please republicans. Either he's capitulating in an effort to get reforms passed, or he's standing up to the bullies and inflaming the gridlock.


aa

 

[Trausti]

Wow... so clever!

Yeah. Claiming that the folks on your team were smart while the folks on the other team are dumb [insert "ist" here] shows how much better of a person you are.

 

[prideandfall]

A woman with a resume as long as I-40 lost to the village idiot. No "Outside elements" should have mattered because Clinton should have been leading Trump (I mean REALLY leading) in the all the polls all the time 99 to 1. It was analogous to a race between Usain Bolt and a rock, with Bolt (HRC) starting two inches from the finish line in Central Park, NYC and the rock (the Donald) starting in Hawaii and I am being generous to the rock. Inside the bubble thinking, narrow vision, and hubris will lose you an election far more quickly and completely than Boris and Natasha and Fearless Leader ever will.

see this "should have" is the problem, because you are making two egregious presumptions:
1. that the overwhelmingly vast majority of the US population are not literally, physically, retarded.
2. that the positions and attitudes and behaviors of trump are seen as bad by people, or that anything he did could be counted as a negative or a reason not to vote for him.

americans are humans, and most (nearly all) humans are incomprehensibly stupid.
between the fucking idiots who looked at clinton and didn't see one of the best qualified presidential candidates we've had in this country in 40 or 50 years and the god damn morons who looked at trump and thought "this is totally a good idea to put this guy in charge" it was not only unsurprising but basically kind of inevitable that trump was going to win.

blaming the democratic party kind of proves the point to be honest, because their process nominated the experienced centrist (which is pretty much what the process is there to do) and the populace simply failed to recognize the quality of the candidate.
to say it's the fault of the democrats that hilary lost is tantamount to saying that the US population are jibbering dipshits who need to be spoon-fed a flashy song-and-dance show to be able to summon up the neuron firing required to understand who to vote for, and that US elections are nothing more than flamboyant charisma contests with zero acknowledgment of policy or competence.
(which is true, but establishment types of all stripes and the political body in general in this country like to take part in a vast fantasy that it isn't so)

 

[Tom Sawyer]

But that is the fault of the Democrats then, because that pretty much sums up the US population and the nature of your election contests. If you have a group, like a political party, who's only reason for existence is to get its party's candidates elected and they don't recognize this and account for it, then it's kind of their own damn fault when they lose on account of this oversight.

 

[Elixir]

Wow... so clever!

Yeah. Claiming that the folks on your team were smart while the folks on the other team are dumb [insert "ist" here] shows how much better of a person you are.

Such claims are superfluous - the fact that someone voted for the orange baboon speaks for itself.

 

[Trausti]

Yeah. Claiming that the folks on your team were smart while the folks on the other team are dumb [insert "ist" here] shows how much better of a person you are.

Such claims are superfluous - the fact that someone voted for the orange baboon speaks for itself.

Keep up that arrogance, and you'll give Trump a second term.

 

[prideandfall]

But that is the fault of the Democrats then, because that pretty much sums up the US population and the nature of your election contests. If you have a group, like a political party, who's only reason for existence is to get its party's candidates elected and they don't recognize this and account for it, then it's kind of their own damn fault when they lose on account of this oversight.

true, but that brings up interesting questions about the fundamental nature of politics and the real reasons that certain things exist.
and sure when you have this giant national party made up of thousands of people, motivation can be basically impossible to parse out so it's kind of somewhere between an effort in futility and simply projecting whatever intent you want on them that makes you feel smug in that moment.

if you're of a certain mind, you could actually argue that not "playing the game" is a philosophical notch in the belt of the democratic party, since at least on a surface level it implies that they were trying to operate from a place of actual policy and leadership, even if it meant losing because the proles were too stupid to understand that and were distracted by the shiny orange thing.

 

[Elixir]

Such claims are superfluous - the fact that someone voted for the orange baboon speaks for itself.

Keep up that arrogance, and you'll give Trump a second term.

Is that a threat? Lol! It would be pretty arrogant to think that my posts on some backwater internet forum are going to give Trump a second term. My name isn't even Vladimir!

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Wow... so clever!

Yeah. Claiming that the folks on your team were smart while the folks on the other team are dumb [insert "ist" here] shows how much better of a person you are.

I didn't claim people that voted for Clinton were smart.

However, to deny that alt-right-ists didn't flock to Trump and that 24 years of anti-Clinton propaganda had no effect would be terribly ignorant.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I am curious what becomes of the "alt-right" now that Trump will actually be president. Much of the alt-right until now has been trolling and backlash to the PC folks and regressives, but once Trump actually takes power.... he isn't a protest or troll thing anymore and we may see a shift.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

But that is the fault of the Democrats then, because that pretty much sums up the US population and the nature of your election contests. If you have a group, like a political party, who's only reason for existence is to get its party's candidates elected and they don't recognize this and account for it, then it's kind of their own damn fault when they lose on account of this oversight.

true, but that brings up interesting questions about the fundamental nature of politics and the real reasons that certain things exist.
and sure when you have this giant national party made up of thousands of people, motivation can be basically impossible to parse out so it's kind of somewhere between an effort in futility and simply projecting whatever intent you want on them that makes you feel smug in that moment.

if you're of a certain mind, you could actually argue that not "playing the game" is a philosophical notch in the belt of the democratic party, since at least on a surface level it implies that they were trying to operate from a place of actual policy and leadership, even if it meant losing because the proles were too stupid to understand that and were distracted by the shiny orange thing.

Well, philosophical notches in the belt don't appoint Supreme Court Justices. They also don't appoint heads of major government agencies, decide how a country's foreign policy operates or allocate trillions of dollars of a nation's resources. People who win elections do that. It wasn't the job of the Democratic Party to do what it took to get a philosophical notch in their belt. It was their job to do what it took to win and that's what they failed at.

You know who never talks about how they won a moral victory? Actual victors.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

A woman with a resume as long as I-40 lost to the village idiot. No "Outside elements" should have mattered because Clinton should have been leading Trump (I mean REALLY leading) in the all the polls all the time 99 to 1. It was analogous to a race between Usain Bolt and a rock, with Bolt (HRC) starting two inches from the finish line in Central Park, NYC and the rock (the Donald) starting in Hawaii and I am being generous to the rock. Inside the bubble thinking, narrow vision, and hubris will lose you an election far more quickly and completely than Boris and Natasha and Fearless Leader ever will.

see this "should have" is the problem, because you are making two egregious presumptions:
1. that the overwhelmingly vast majority of the US population are not literally, physically, retarded.
2. that the positions and attitudes and behaviors of trump are seen as bad by people, or that anything he did could be counted as a negative or a reason not to vote for him.

americans are humans, and most (nearly all) humans are incomprehensibly stupid.
between the fucking idiots who looked at clinton and didn't see one of the best qualified presidential candidates we've had in this country in 40 or 50 years and the god damn morons who looked at trump and thought "this is totally a good idea to put this guy in charge" it was not only unsurprising but basically kind of inevitable that trump was going to win.

blaming the democratic party kind of proves the point to be honest, because their process nominated the experienced centrist (which is pretty much what the process is there to do) and the populace simply failed to recognize the quality of the candidate.
to say it's the fault of the democrats that hilary lost is tantamount to saying that the US population are jibbering dipshits who need to be spoon-fed a flashy song-and-dance show to be able to summon up the neuron firing required to understand who to vote for, and that US elections are nothing more than flamboyant charisma contests with zero acknowledgment of policy or competence.
(which is true, but establishment types of all stripes and the political body in general in this country like to take part in a vast fantasy that it isn't so)

uh, no.

If the country is full of dipshits, shouldn't all those really smart democrats be able to manipulate them? And do keep in mind, some of these same dipshits voted for Obama, twice.

The wrong candidate, a poor read of where the country is, bullying tactics used against the party's own people and a media that won't taste the steak but will cover the hell out of sizzle.

But if I am wrong, which I am not, Just tell the Dems to run the same (or same kinds of) candidates and the same campaigns, with the same strategies in '20, '24 and on and on. See how many wins you get.

 

[prideandfall]

Well, philosophical notches in the belt don't appoint Supreme Court Justices. They also don't appoint heads of major government agencies, decide how a country's foreign policy operates or allocate trillions of dollars of a nation's resources. People who win elections do that. It wasn't the job of the Democratic Party to do what it took to get a philosophical notch in their belt. It was their job to do what it took to win and that's what they failed at.

You know who never talks about how they won a moral victory? Actual victors.

true but another way to look at it would be to say that if the party were willing to devolve into the kind of song-and-dance BS required to garner the idiot vote and pander to their interests, then it wouldn't be the party that we're discussing now as being worth voting for in the first place.

i get where you're coming from, that from a practical stand-point a political party that doesn't win doesn't exist, but in the US it's ALWAYS the democrat or the republican no matter what, so individual races really don't matter.

 

[prideandfall]

uh, no.

uh, yes.

If the country is full of dipshits, shouldn't all those really smart democrats be able to manipulate them?

assuming that A. there are any "really smart" democrats (which is pretty unlikely) and B. they have the inclination to manipulate people into voting for them in the first place.

And do keep in mind, some of these same dipshits voted for Obama, twice.

okay, and?
either the democrat or the republican wins, every time. there is no exception to this.
the democrat won that time. twice. this proves nothing.

The wrong candidate, a poor read of where the country is, bullying tactics used against the party's own people and a media that won't taste the steak but will cover the hell out of sizzle.

true, and this comes down to the fact that either the democrat or the republican wins every time, and which one wins just comes down to the side that is having the biggest rage attack that election.

But if I am wrong, which I am not, Just tell the Dems to run the same (or same kinds of) candidates and the same campaigns, with the same strategies in '20, '24 and on and on. See how many wins you get.

you're not wrong that the democrats are idiots, but they're idiots by the fact that most everyone is an idiot and the democrats aren't exempt from the umbrella of "everyone."

the last 16 years in the US has shown that 3 times out of 5 stupidity wins over moderately intelligent self interest.
that's simply a population statistic that it's unreasonable to hold the democrats accountable for.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Why HRC Lost

(Thanks to John Belushi)

 

[Rhea]

My opnion is the simple math: HRC lost because people in critical states thought Trump would deliver something they wanted.

I believe he'll let them down.