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41 minutes ago, YoThatLimp said:

 

in a related note Trump is going to let a climate-change skeptic to lead the EPA transition, so cool.

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-picks-top-climate-skeptic-to-lead-epa-transition/?wt.mc=SA_Twitter-Share

 

Progressives need to start looking locally, this vote once every 4 years thing is for the birds. 

For sure, there are probably city and/or statewide votes in most places next year, 2018 will be a chance to make more gains in congress and the senate.

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3 hours ago, clyde said:

 

No, I am not sure about that.

This claims it is so though.

 

 

Those projections were inaccurate. They assumed higher early vote turnout would correspond to higher election day turnout, and it seems the opposite was true. The turnout this year was the lowest since 2000. Clinton received about 6 million votes less than Obama in 2012 and Trump received about a million votes less than Romney in 2012.

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Perhaps low turnout was overconfidence on the part of Democratic voters across the country, thinking that the race was won? Maybe the narrative that the race was still close that we were all complaining about a few pages back was both correct, and maybe could have done some good if it was emphasized even more? 

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Honestly, fuck James Comey and fuck the media who ran so heavily with the emails story to generate a "both sides" narrative. We have a lot of barely informed voters (which is a problem in itself) and the media utterly failed those people by failing to give that story the proper context.

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I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do next, but here's some things that I am looking at to help me think about it.

A List of Pro-Women, Pro-Immigrant, Pro-Earth, Anti-Bigotry Organizations That Need Your Support

Internet Privacy 101: VPNs, Encrypted Messaging, and Anonymous Browsing

Mostly so far just watching game streams and other bullshit just to try to get to where I can think straight, though. One way or another, this is going to be some kind of war. Hopefully a relatively gentle sort, but there's already a death toll, and it's not clear yet how large it is or how much worse it will get.

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2 hours ago, rohlfinator said:

Honestly, fuck James Comey and fuck the media who ran so heavily with the emails story to generate a "both sides" narrative. We have a lot of barely informed voters (which is a problem in itself) and the media utterly failed those people by failing to give that story the proper context.

 

figuring out how to word this. the shocking thing isn't that this e-mail story thing happened, but that so many stories about Trump's explicit racism and misogyny got airtime and people were still fine voting for him with that information.

 

people imagined that this would be a repudiation of his ideas, but instead this was an affirmation of them. (though to be clear, for many people, this was merely the subtext of America brought forward and not a shock, though still disappointing.)

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As someone who thought he was on the other side of the political fence* all I can say is.  "I am so sorry for anything and everything that happens in the next 4 years."

 

I say 'thought' because while I might be personally conservative**, I voted for Clinton in a rust belt state that hadn't gone for a Republican since 1988, and yet.......it still did***.   I looked around at the people I knew and apparently I personally knew the sum total of right leaning people who were actually on the NeverTrump train.  I naively thought that number was much more substantial.  And I have frankly spent  the last 24 hours dumbfounded.  (With at least 6 hours aided by scotch)

 

*I suggested once that that political fence had moved 50 yards behind me at some point.   I believe that maybe it has moved 50 miles from where I thought it was.

**well personally conservative as in failed to vote for the republicans last time as well.....and changed voter registration to independent two elections before that........hmmm I'm bad at being a conservative......am I actually a blue dog democrat that doesn't realize it?

*** I can speak to one personal experience I did have and that was hearing the couple behind me in line, discuss voting as 'why bother, its not going to matter, let's just go' and I keep looking at there being 7 million less votes than 2012.  I can grasp going to the polls and doing a write in, or third party as a protest vote....but 7 million people each making the individual decision that the right to vote wasn't a burden they felt like dealing with is troubling.  (Even with any kind of voter suppression, that doesn't explain that many millions of votes compared to 2012.)

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Disheartening that so many people have switched off from such an important election.

 

Also a weird thought is that apparently it didn't matter that Trump had the lousiest, most slapdash train wreck of a campaign ever. He screwed up wherever he could, the tv debates were embarrassing to watch and he insulted so many groups of people. And yet, none of it mattered. No matter how many millions Clinton spent on ground work and solid campaigning. It makes me think this was perhaps inevitable. Maybe people just vote for someone's face, their meat and bones and its strange seduction, after all, and all the stuff around it is superfluous. Maybe America just needed an orange face right now.

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If you think Clinton ran a solid campaign you should probably widen your sources of news consumption. There were weekly scandals and slip ups constantly and I think trying to write them all off  as "sensational" and mainstream media not doing their job is failing to see what went wrong here. Hillary Clinton is obsessed with power and fought the most dirty campaign fraught with corruption. They colluded with the DNC to fuck over a sweetheart like Bernie (who would have won). The upper echelon of the DNC is all out, and the interim chair had to resign from CNN after being caught floating multiple questions to the campaign  (major conflict of interest and a huge failure by the media this cycle). Hillary and the people around her have been so cavalier with their emails and it showed in the Wikileaks dumps.

 

This election was a referendum on Hillary and corruption and if all want to keep denying that then I'm not surprised you were all so shocked to see the obvious happen on Tuesday. 

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1 hour ago, Roderick said:

Disheartening that so many people have switched off from such an important election.

 

Also a weird thought is that apparently it didn't matter that Trump had the lousiest, most slapdash train wreck of a campaign ever. He screwed up wherever he could, the tv debates were embarrassing to watch and he insulted so many groups of people. And yet, none of it mattered. No matter how many millions Clinton spent on ground work and solid campaigning. It makes me think this was perhaps inevitable. Maybe people just vote for someone's face, their meat and bones and its strange seduction, after all, and all the stuff around it is superfluous. Maybe America just needed an orange face right now.

I think the takeaway is that the math is different for Democrats. Repubs can run anyone and they'll win because their people show up. Dems need Rockstars if we expect people in Ohio and Florida to get out of the house on Nov 8. Right now it's all about 2018, but in 2020 we need to run Beyonce or Bruce Springsteen.

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Things that passed in states that went for Trump:

Arizona raised its minimum wage to $12 an hour also
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a six term racist bigot lost his bid for relection.

Florida, North Carolina and Arkansas passed medical marijuana, Montana loosed its restrictions on it as well.


I think there is space for a liberal candidate who isn't tied to wall street and will focus on the real issue of growing inequality and dealing with the people left behind by globalization and automation.

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Please also don't underestimate the number of voters that weren't able to vote this election due to voter suppression efforts by the GOP in places like Wisconsin and North Carolina and all throughout the South now that the Voting Rights Act has been gutted.

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7 hours ago, xchen said:

If you think Clinton ran a solid campaign you should probably widen your sources of news consumption. There were weekly scandals and slip ups constantly and I think trying to write them all off  as "sensational" and mainstream media not doing their job is failing to see what went wrong here. Hillary Clinton is obsessed with power and fought the most dirty campaign fraught with corruption. They colluded with the DNC to fuck over a sweetheart like Bernie (who would have won). The upper echelon of the DNC is all out, and the interim chair had to resign from CNN after being caught floating multiple questions to the campaign  (major conflict of interest and a huge failure by the media this cycle). Hillary and the people around her have been so cavalier with their emails and it showed in the Wikileaks dumps.

 

This election was a referendum on Hillary and corruption and if all want to keep denying that then I'm not surprised you were all so shocked to see the obvious happen on Tuesday. 

 

For sure, Clinton has a ton of problems. But the way and the amount they were covered gave a lot of breathing room to the "both sides are just as bad" mentality that likely deterred a lot of centrist voters.

 

(Also, politics is ugly business. Not excusing what Clinton or her team did, but that stuff happens all over the political spectrum -- we just know about it because Clinton has been uniquely targeted by Wikileaks etc.)

 

2 hours ago, jennegatron said:

Please also don't underestimate the number of voters that weren't able to vote this election due to voter suppression efforts by the GOP in places like Wisconsin and North Carolina and all throughout the South now that the Voting Rights Act has been gutted.

 

Yes, definitely. Will be interesting/sad to see just how much of effect that had.

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2 hours ago, jennegatron said:

Please also don't underestimate the number of voters that weren't able to vote this election due to voter suppression efforts by the GOP in places like Wisconsin and North Carolina and all throughout the South now that the Voting Rights Act has been gutted.

 

9 minutes ago, rohlfinator said:

Yes, definitely. Will be interesting/sad to see just how much of effect that had.

 

Missouri, my state, passed a voting ID amendment by 57% that is sure going to make the incredibly long lines and multi-hour waits that people from both parties were complaining about a lot better. It also passed an incredibly stupid "no new taxes" amendment, so it's enshrined in the state constitution that the government can levy no new taxes on goods or services without _another_ amendment. Ugh!

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It also passed an incredibly stupid "no new taxes" amendment, so it's enshrined in the state constitution that the government can levy no new taxes on goods or services without _another_ amendment. Ugh!

lol what

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IMO this shows what a poor candidate Hillary was. All that money, all those celebrities and support from all over. All the opportunities afforded by fuck-ups by Trump. You couldn't do more to get her elected. This was such a winnable election if only you had a candidate people liked at all. 

 

BTW, I'm not saying Bernie was that candidate. 

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I think Hillary could have been much better as a candidate if they'd ever tried to actually sell her as a candidate -- But they never really did, they just talked about what a massive shitgoblin Trump is. Which, you know, true, but it doesn't really get people excited to vote for the alternative. And, lo and behold, we see low turnout for both candidates, but ESPECIALLY for the candidate who was sold on the sole point that she was an alternative to the other. Never actually fighting back against the bullshit accusations, never actually trying to get people excited over a vision of Hillary's America, just harping on how terrible Trump is and hoping that would be enough.

 

It turns out the largest effect of negative campaigning is that it gets fewer people to the polls. And it turns out that when fewer people vote, democratic candidates lose. Neither of these are really new information, yet they were so confident that Trump was SO BAD that it would play out differently this time. So, yes, I'm pretty angry at Hillary's campaign, and the greater democratic political strategy.

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52 minutes ago, Problem Machine said:

I think Hillary could have been much better as a candidate if they'd ever tried to actually sell her as a candidate -- But they never really did, they just talked about what a massive shitgoblin Trump is. Which, you know, true, but it doesn't really get people excited to vote for the alternative. And, lo and behold, we see low turnout for both candidates, but ESPECIALLY for the candidate who was sold on the sole point that she was an alternative to the other. Never actually fighting back against the bullshit accusations, never actually trying to get people excited over a vision of Hillary's America, just harping on how terrible Trump is and hoping that would be enough.

 

This is similar to the conclusion I've come to since the end of the election, but with one caveat.  It wasn't necessarily that the democrats lost, its that they were playing the wrong game.  Trump understands that on social media, the usefulness of a statement is far more important than it's actual content, and while his campaign was often negative and disparaging of people they made incredible use of the handful of times Clinton was overtly negative.  Trump's ability to identify with anger, however vaguely or paradoxical that relation was, turned out to be incredibly effective where it was needed.  Clinton's strategy of selling a similarly vague message of hope and shaming Trump played directly into this strategy.  I think what the internet, and more broadly social media has shown us in recent years is that things like anger, fear and hate are far more effective motivators than hope and conciliation.  Ironically she may have had more success if she had ran a more radically feminist campaign--one that spoke to the anger we're now seeing in protests from the left and was more willing to turn on it's own establishment like Trump did.  Trump was able to speak effectively to the anger people felt for both the political system and the establishment that ultimately birthed him, while Clinton didn't really run a campaign that appealed to people's feelings in the same way or at all.  As much as it sucks to say, political campaigns in recent years that appealed to some sense of morality have been utter failures and Trump is just the most recent.  I don't know how long we've been here, or how long it'll last, but what's clear to me is that "Fuck that person because I'm angry" is a far more effective message than "This person is great because XYZ".  For most people the election decision came down to 1 particular thing that irked them more so than a complete assessment of the whole.

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I dunno, Obama won on hope. I think that more generally that candidates need to focus on selling a narrative that people can believe in rather than just poking holes in other people's narratives. That narrative can be based on anger or hope or anything, really, as long as it's something that's appealing to a large number of people. Bernie had that and Trump had that; Hillary never did. With a vision that pallid, all people could see when they looked at Hillary were the vague and specious accusations, which would have faded to irrelevance if she'd been presented as anything but pure grey overcooked politics as usual.

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Obama's slogan was hope, but his message was anger at the republicans for getting us involved in wars and letting infrastructure crumble.  He challenged the political doctrine of the time, whereas 8 years later that doctrine had changed and was being supported by the new democratic nominee.  I know we tend to look back at things through the lens of history and it's easy to lose sight of this, so here's one quick example from a speech Obama gave in 2008 when describing how Bush handled the office of the presidency:

 

"That's not part of his power, but this is part of the whole theory of George Bush that he can make laws as he goes along. I disagree with that. I taught the Constitution for 10 years. I believe in the Constitution and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We're not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress," 

 

or another statement where Obama accuses Bush of negligence in his duties regarding the FEMA effort in New Orleans:

 

"When the people of New Orleans and Gulf Coast extended their hand for help, help was not there. When people looked up from the rooftops, for too long they saw an empty sky. When the winds blew and the flood waters came, we learned for all of our wealth and our power, something wasn’t right with America. We can talk about what happened for a few days in 2005, and we should. We can talk about levies that couldn’t hold, about a FEMA that seem not just incompetent but paralyzed and powerless, about a president who only saw the people from a window on an airplane instead of down here on the ground, trying to provide comfort and aid,” Obama said then. “We can talk about a trust that was broken, the promise that our government would be prepared, will protect us, and will respond in a catastrophe.”

 

Obama's campaign, while defined as hopeful and along racial lines in most respects, still had a large portion of it that was a backlash to the previous administration.  Clinton on the other hand found herself selling more of the same, which doesn't really work in a country as distrustful of it's institutions as the US.  Imagine how different the response to Clinton would have been if her message had been that she was fighting the establishment her entire career, she'd been stymied at every turn, made to support things that were wrong because of the culture of Washington, and finally sought the office of the president because she was tired of politics as usual and wanted to finally have the influence to flip the system on it's head.

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Clinton's been reviled by the right since the 90's. Nominating her precluded almost any chance of swaying a single voter in the Fox News / conservative talk radio ecosystem.

 

She had basically no credibility with the portion of the Democratic coalition that traces its roots to the labor movement. She's a former Wal-mart board member. Her husband was the standard-bearer in the party's abandonment of the New Deal in favor of Reagan's economic polices, campaigned on ending welfare in 1992, oversaw the negotiations for NAFTA, and signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Since 2000, her family has massively enriched themselves via corporate speaking fees, many of them from enormous financial institutions whose very existence would have been illegal prior to her husband's presidency.

 

This election was a gamble by the Democratic Party that the party's social progressivism would be enough to carry the day all by its lonesome. It wasn't, even against a Republican nominee that 60% of the population has an unfavorable view of. Think of how badly she would have lost against a Republican that didn't bleed 3 million more votes to the Libertarian Party than Romney. I really hope the Democratic party leadership does some soul-searching after this.

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I don't think it's very helpful to define agitating for necessary change as basing a movement upon anger. Sure, anger tends to be a component of any assault on the status quo, but the way the lines are split there you basically have "everything's okay" and "burn it down"

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