I was at an election party last night, and had brought champagne for victory and bourbon for defeat, assuming I would get wasted in either scenario. But when the results came in I found myself too despondent to partake of either, and went home dead sober. I’m currently aspiring to be miserable enough to drink my problems away.
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Because even today the GOP has announced how united they are behind Trump while a Democratic super majority was absolutely not?
People keep saying the GOP is fractured, but how? Because Ted Cruz - the other anti-establishment candidate - isn’t president? Or is it because Rubio the other, other anti-establishment candidate isn’t president?
Did Paul Ryan break away from Trump in the last hour and I miss it?
My experience in the South is that when my Mom has a flat tire on some country road, she knows that if she just sits there for a little while, some young man will probably happen along and change her tire for her. There is good and bad everywhere, but Overall, it is a safe place where strangers wave to each other when passing. You are engaging in negative stereotypes, and I just don’t often see the people you imagine populate this place. Our winter place is in Western North Carolina, and it is a nice, safe, clean place to live.
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How black is your mom?
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That’s called anywhere in the US outside the very few dangerous areas.
Also being white helps.
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That would have just reduced Hillary’s votes even more. The way our system works, if a third party or write-in has similar views to one of the big two parties, it reduces the big party’s chance of winning by siphoning away votes, which is why the big parties go through roundabout means of supporting opposing third parties. It takes votes from the opponent… but it also ends up pulling everyone to the center.
Jill Stein was Hillary’s spoiler and Gary Johnson was Trump’s spoiler. This election, we ended up with a bit of a weird situation where Jill Stein was worried about Hillary starting WW3 with Russia over the Syrian no-fly zone and started hammering Hillary hard before the election while Gary Johnson somehow ended up taking about an even number of votes form both candidates, becoming nobody’s spoiler. The result seems to be a wash, even though Gary Johnson took a much larger vote share than Jill Stein. Trump and Hillary played so close to the center that it’s hard to really account for it. I’m curious to find out what numbers Bernie Sanders had as a write-in.
I’ll say again we really need some form of ranked voting to break the stranglehold, but of course, that would require the big two parties to support it. I don’t see how we could ever get there.
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I like his Water Music.
His music is exactly the sort of thing I need to help calm myself down right now.
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Ha ha ha! I’d completely forgotten about May 
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Don’t mistake cronyism and opportunism for unity; it’s not the same.
I’m done talking about this for right now; it’s too fucking disheartening, and this conversation isn’t helping.
Have a good day.
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Not at all. But my experience is that does not matter. I was taught to pull over and change tires for old ladies, regardless. I taught my kids the same thing.
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I am not so sure. If Trump is not interested in day-to-day business and leans heavily on his VP… Pence fits the bill for a Religious Right and it’s not impossible that he will be effectively the US president.
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We had a chance to vote on a version of Proportional Representation over here in the UK. It was a policy of the 3rd Party, and got hammered from all sides by the two main parties and the media. Few people seemed to realise or care that it would mean they could actually vote for their first choice, and have their spoiler as there second choice.
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I’m not reading it all. I’m just going to say that Obama ran proudly as the first black man, reminding people that he was representative of a group of American citizens who had no idea what it was like to be “left behind” because they’d never been allowed to catch up in the first place. That was missing from this race. The majority of this country – women, people of color, LGBTQ, etc. – were finally going to be able to solidify some early gains getting us into the same ballpark as the dominant minority who have had a multitude of advantages as their birthright for generations.
Having a candidate who was born on third base but then spent his entire career losing ground because he didn’t have the gumption to work as hard or as smart as his ancestors – and then blaming everyone else for his own mistakes and misdeeds – is a perfect match to those citizens who think that having to compete fairly now instead of being handed every advantage means they’re “being left behind”.
It’s just the same old lie, to keep the real victims in this country down for another 4 years.
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Republicans specifically went after the racist and religious vote after the Civil Rights Act with the “Southern Strategy.” They used the dog whistle for decades to win elections. What would have happened if they had instead embraced civil rights (which seems to me to be the ethical choice) along with the Democrats, and then tried to compete on their other issues (business, low taxes, deregulation). Democrats might not have lost the south completely, and might have seen merit in continuing to fight for labor rights. Perhaps some of the white voters would have stayed with the Democrats.
Note: I’m not blaming this on Republicans; there’s enough blame to go around. Perhaps they could have found other issues to compete with – perhaps more sensible tax policies or something.
It just seems to me that the right made an unethical choice at a historic time in this country. The Democrats reacted with another choice – abandoning the white middle and lower class.
I dunno.
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Think of him as the US CEO. Trump will want to be playing golf with other (shudder) world leaders.
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I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you don’t think the lived experience of someone in the South who isn’t as white as your family just might be a bit different than yours.
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I would not discount anyone’s lived experience. But what I see of most of the rabidly anti-southern comments seem to be about how those people imagine life is like here. But those projections do not match what I observe by living here.
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I live in Texas. People are nice everywhere. Deal with it.
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Mexico has its problems but it’s one 6 year term and DONE. We need that. Badly.
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That’s hard to do if you lose the local elections as well. How many Democratic state legislatures are there? (Doesn’t need to be 100% Democratic, like in my state where the only Republican in the state legislature lost yesterday.)
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