Look at the poll numbers. They don’t bear this out at all.
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I don’t believe that, that nobody could have beaten Trump. There were plenty of states where the 3rd party got enough votes to swing the result plus the turn-out reports/comparisons show the Dems did not “get out the vote” enough. Do you really think there is nobody who could have gotten more Dems to vote?
I disagree, though I doubt Bernie would have been a winner. I know too many people who thought Bernie was too radical. I am not saying I know who could have beaten Trump but he could have been beaten (woulda, coulda, shoulda).
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would be the second time, after her dad in 2002
this sounds very similar to an event a couple of days ago. I resort to pessimism to dodge disappointments
the reasoning “the east is more racist, nothing can be done” is a very easy way out and is not seldom (ab)used to ignore problems in the west.
no state parliament election since 2014 was unsuccessful for the AfD, they cracked everywhere the 5 % threshold. the elections this year were all in the double figure region (between 12 % in Hesse and 24 % in Saxony-Anhalt). a Bundestag with a 10% AfD faction will look *very* different and the current coalation model for forming a government will not work anymore.
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Can we possibly explain the election by saying a bunch of rubes were taken by a flashy, big-city conman?
Speaking as someone who escaped the Midwest.
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My point is, that French voting system works differently, and might have lead to a different result in the US. It seems crazy to decide the democratically elected President by a few 100 thousand votes. More than one rounds and a clear majority would be a democratic improvement-me thinks.
Was not my argument. My argument is that Germany is a Federal System which creates a certain political balance which e.g. doesn’t exist in the UK. Also the Greens gained in Baden-Wüttenberg and Die Linke in Berlin in 2016. This should receive also more attention.
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I don’t know about you, but when I call my parents for the Holidays and they ask when I’ll be coming home, I’ll be telling them, “When you learn that people like Donald Trump are the cause of your problems, not the solution to them.”
I want people to make Thanksgiving Dinners the worst this year. I want people to get political. To refuse to be polite. To not just get through a night. To be prepared to pack up the kids and take 'em to Denny’s.
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Yeah, you look down on me.
I’m not from Massachusetts. I’m from parts of the country where nobody from Massachusetts would even stop for gas. They call it flyover country for a reason.
The coastal elite establishment looks down on us like we’re uneducated rubes, doesn’t do anything beyond the bare minimum pandering to get our votes, and then complains and calls us racist when we don’t fall in line. It’s one thing when the news actors on TV do it, but it’s another when real people whom I actually interact with pull this shit. You are actual human beings with consciences and the ability to reason, and nobody is paying you to suppress these abilities. I expect you all to be better than this.
Are there racists here? Yes, absolutely. Is racism and other bigotry the deciding factor here, and the sole deciding factor? Nope, not even close, and to say it is is only going off of guesswork and anecdotal evidence. It is dangerous. It is so dangerous that it cost the Democrats the election. They could have figured out why people didn’t want to vote for Clinton, and then made amends. Not a mid-election pivot, not pandering, but serious come-to-Jesus amends. If you give a damn about understanding the problem, you will look at it as a whole, not just the pieces that are convenient to you.
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The voter turn out not being at 2008 or 2004 levels doesn’t mean it wasn’t the 3rd highest turnout since 1968. People came out to vote, and white people flipped WI, MI, and PA for the first time since Reagan.
Voter turnout wasn’t the issue with the Democrats, it was Trump courting white people.
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I think it’s entirely sensisble that people attribute this to racism (especially people who can see clearly the racism that racists themselves often can’t see). Racism is a huge element, and any discussion of Trump would be incomplete without it. It can’t be repeated often enough - everyone who voted for Trump is 100% complicit in horrible acts of bigotry. They decided this was acceptable, and they should be looked down upon for that.
It being acceptable doesn’t make it a motivating factor, however, and I think understanding the reasons why people act (or fail to act) is key in strategically preventing this from happening again.
“Be ashamed of enabling racists” clearly doesn’t work, after all.
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That’s their own stupid fault. The facts were right there in front of them.
But, that technicality obscures the reality. What happened in the Democratic primary had nothing to do with this fact.
Technicality? It disproves the ridiculous notion that the DNC controls who runs and who doesn’t. And note that Sanders was one of your ‘randos’. He’s a backbench Senator from a tiny state, with no name recognition, and no significant legislative achievements to his name. When he started his campaign, there was absolutely no reason to think he wasn’t going to be this year’s Mike Gravel. That he did so well conclusively proves that any rando can in fact jump in and, possibly, win. He did great, given where he started.
If all the folks around you who Know A Lot About Politics think HRC will
win and that Sanders is unelectable and whatnot, and they’re all
operatives and senators and chairpeople and whatnot, sure, you trust
their opinion.
But this is just basic human nature. Hillary Clinton didn’t invent political punditry. She made good use of it, as a good politician must.
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That’s not even close to true!
the second round is a simple winner-takes-it-all. so far the two other important parties/party groups (socialists and republicans) have no named candidates but it is impossible to predict the result. all bets are off.
not crucial for nation-wide elections, if the faction consists of more Saxons or Bavarians does not change the result
I strongly feel that Sanders was chosen by the DNC because they wanted his base to shift towards Hillary. The DNC and the Hillary campaign were the same organization. He was never going to be allowed to be a serious contender. By bringing him into the DNC, they could control the process.
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“Trumparian the Golden Assassin is Chaotic Evil. That makes me smart. I get +5 on luck rolls. etc.”
(pic from here)
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They were right in front of Hillary’s campaign, too. But the polls didn’t capture them, so, you know, Garbage In, Garbage Out.
I wasn’t asserting that notion, so we can be on the same page about that. 
We’ve got President Trump. She didn’t make good enough use of it. Or it failed to work in the national in the same places it failed to work in the primary, and she didn’t learn from that failure.
I want to learn from this failure, from America’s failure. That is my response to tragedy: to get educated. One of the places you start with that is in finding out who ELSE got this result, and figuring out why. Sanders got the Trump result. That experiment happened twice now. What might be creating that effect?
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http://www.electproject.org/2016g
And WI and MI, and Pa had 68.1% and 64.6% turnout respectively which hovers about right for those areas. PA, on the otherhand, saw a jump to 61.4% which hasn’t been that high other than 2008 and 2004 and is ~10% higher than 2012.
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OK. I went to High School in Utah. Does that qualify as fly over country? As I remember Salt Lake was served by a single train a week and the nearest urban centre was 12 hours drive away. So I do have some experience of the US outside of the Coasts. I really don’t look down on you or people from your part of the world or who knows who.
I am trying to share some learning from history, which was rather painfully achieved for my people, who were Central European German speaking Jews let down by good people, some of whom happened to be their neighbours. And don’t get me wrong, were the tables turned, I am not convinced that my ancestors, also good people, would have acted all too differently.
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the relevant bit here, is that there are 6x more voters in the West of Germany than in the East and that will have an impact in the national elections.
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Sanders was chosen by the DNC because they wanted his base to shift towards Hillary
Evidence?
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I voted for Clinton. I agonized about voting for Clinton. I drove everyone here crazy with my agonizing about voting for Clinton instead of shutting up and just doing the adult thing and taking my Hobson’s choice. I could shut up or not shut up, that’s up to me, but my feelings are symptomatic of a general mood. It was the people who weren’t really feeling Clinton, who may have voted third party or not voted at all, who decided this election.
Some of the Trump supporters are overt racists. Many are implicit racists. All (by definition?) are complicit implicit racists, meaning that they’re fine with implicit racism existing. But what about the people who voted third party or stayed home? What does that make them? Is it racists all the way down? Is it vote Clinton and do it gladly and shut up about it or else you’re an evil racist 100% complicit in horrible acts of bigotry?
What about the people who seriously bought into the propaganda that this race was between a Dumb Trump and Smart Trump (i.e., Clinton), or who were reached more by right-wing fear propaganda than centrist (a.k.a left wing*) propaganda?
*I feel dirty calling the Clinton camp left-wing. I can’t do it with a straight face. They’re really just less right-wing authoritarian than Trump.
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