Post-election Post-mortem Prior Prognostication Thread

I was pretty sure Trump was done in the primaries when he had an anti-Carson meltdown. I was sure that republicans would write him off as a big baby, and that would be it for him. I have been repeatedly wrong, but this was probably my wrongest take on Trump

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I didn’t predict any of this. I thought good would prevail. That more Americans would see through party affiliations, cross the aisle rather than vote for a nightmare’s wet dream. I was wrong.

I’ll call this here and now. Barring impeachment or death while (or before) office, Cory Booker will succeed Donald Trump. If you’re down and out today, look at what he has put on Facebook.

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While we Happy Mutants love you, it seems most of America doesn’t.

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Seems like lots of the happy mutants here don’t love me either.

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Emotions are going to be running pretty high today, and we (bb commenters, the left, etc) are often faster to attack our almost-allies than our enemies, and it sucks.

You are loved. I hope everything else goes as right as it can for you today.

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I guess we’ve had our catastrophe.

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What he said…I second.

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Yeah well… those of us that do, really do.

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Going back through my old posts has distracted me from ranting, so it may have done some good.

First, let’s start with a sadly appropriate post brexit vote post:

And some horribly prescient ones:

And the increasingly accurate:

But don’t think I had this all sussed from the get-go. My actual prediction was wildly off.

To be fair, it was a prediction well within the polling range before the FBI leak. And before we knew the polling error would go trump-wards.

So to end this narcissistic quote fest, I give you three possible reactions.

  1. Exasperation.
  1. Some hope for the future (reposted rather than quoted, because of broken links)
  1. And finally a call to action.
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Sorry; I’ve come to believe that it’s just a myth.

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I ain’t gonna bother to dig up my old wild-ass-wrong posts.

I was wrong, wrong, wrong. I didn’t think there was any way this election could go worse than the 2012 one did. Never dreamed that Hillary Clinton would have been more unpopular now than Obama was after his first term.

All I can say is this: I’m wrong several times a day, every day, about all kinds of shit. But I haven’t been this completely wrong since 1997, when I thought Cameron’s Titanic would be the biggest financial flop in Hollywood history.

I have way, way, way too much faith in the sense and sensibility of my fellow Americans.

Turns out once again, they’re mostly mindless turd-burglars.

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It’s not from a BBS post, but I basically “this”'d this article on Twitter 8 months ago after failing to sum up my own similar thinking in a sufficiently pithy number of characters. It’s like reading a post-mortem of the election now.

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Where to begin. Most basically, I predicted Clinton would win (the whole time), and moreover get more than 300 electoral votes (pre-Comey). It was Trump that did so. Earlier on, I said that the “normal” Republicans would organize to take the nomination away from him at the convention, when actually they were all too eager to roll over. One thing I think I avoided claiming was that the Hillary ground game in the states would win it for her. But, I pretty much believed it. So still feel wrong there.

I didn’t post about this, but pretty late in the evening I read from a couple sources that turnout was modestly up, about 5%. I should have questioned this more, like so many other things. We know today that turnout was way down, and especially among Democrats (generally how one side loses…).
All that said, I’m trying not to place blame too much, even myself. Error is acknowledged.

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Greenwald’s “Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit”

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To add to that:

He represents the incoherent, inchoate and ill-informed rage against the fallout of neoliberal globalisation that has found a home in a newly mobilised and racialised nationalism across the west. His victory will provide momentary solace to his supporters but no lasting remedy. Clinton will not be jailed; no wall will be built; he will not defeat Isis, but he will appoint supreme court justices, he can start wars. In short, he will not deliver on his most outlandish promises precisely because they are outlandish. He exemplifies the problem; he has no solutions.
Electing Trump: the moment America laid waste to democracy as we know it | US elections 2016 | The Guardian

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One more, slightly more contentious:

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I remember that post!

Naomi Klein’s comment on the election:

People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger where it belongs, while fighting for holistic solutions that will bring a frayed society together… So let’s get out of shock as fast as we can and build the kind of radical movement that has a genuine answer to the hate and fear represented by the Trumps of this world. Let’s set aside whatever is keeping us apart and start right now.
It was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump | Naomi Klein | The Guardian

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