To get things out of the way: the way I feel right now is exactly the sensation — body and mind — I’ve only felt before when I got news that someone close to me died unexpectedly. I’m basically paralyzed, and my brain is moving…not much, and not in any coherent sequence.
That said, I’ve only one thought to add to all those below. I’m completely down with the core themes others have already written here: la lucha continua, the struggle continues, and in days like these the kindness we show each other is paramount. And I agree with the hints at a post-mortem below.
My sole notion is that whatever her formidable strengths and her evident vulnerabilities, Hillary Clinton ran right into an absolutely familiar trap. American politics is hostile to women. We saw it in Massachusetts recently enough. Martha Coakley was all kinds of not-great (read, terrible, especially her first time out) as a candidate for senator and governor. But in both cases she started up with a sixty pound rock on her back male candidates don’t have to carry. Massachusetts had, until Elizabeth Warren came along, never elected a woman to the top offices. (And it’s notable that Warren also seems to face a woman tax as measured in approval ratings, at least as compared with her perfectly solid but unspectacular male colleague, Ed Markey.) Several tried, but it’s clear that while women can aspire to state treasurer or AG or a House seat, gunning for the top slots engaged the fear/loathing-for-powerful-women, leading to the results we see.
That’s true nationwide, I believe. The old line goes white men before everyone else (got the vote in 1783); then other males (black men got the vote in 1665); then women (who got the vote in 1920), with, of course, white women gaining access to power and agency ahead of women of color.
Whatever else we may conclude about the Clinton campaign and this terrible outcome, one thing it reveals is that racism still powerfully motivates the revanchist white right, to a depth I certainly didn’t forsee. It also reminds us that misogyny strikes deep within our body politic. One more thing to deal with, as best we can.
One afterthought. Typing that sentence about racism above, I’m reminded of the ways privilege so subtly seeps into one’s bones. Y’all know my politics, I think, and I’ve come by them through life-long engagement from a childhood in Berkeley in the 60s. But I’m white, male, working in the elite, pretty secure, still pretty damn white-and-male setting that is an R 1 university. I’ve got a good friend , a Latino writer who has some of the same cocoon now, but certainly didn’t come up within those comforts and protections. He’d been freaking out about Trump’s rise, especially after the Comey ratfucking, and I kept reassuring him with the polling internals and the early vote stuff and all that.
I emailed him this morning to tell him the obvious: he’d been right and I wrong. He wrote back saying he’d known that disaster was looming — and that is was time to fight. On that last, of course, he’s right. It was the first half of that response that pulled me up, because I realized in that moment what should have been obvious: a nice liberal white guy like myself, whatever my politics and however deep my convictions doesn’t have the deep knowledge my friend does of just how much pure racial hate and resentment is out there. I can get glimpses, and through my friends can get to empathy (I certainly hope), but the truth remains: I don’t live in daily direct confrontation with that hate. And that, I think, as much as anything else, led me to miss whatever signs there might have been that our disaster was upon us.
As noted, that’s a penetrating glimpse of the obvious, of course. But it’s also key. I have no idea at this moment how to climb out of the deep hole we’re in. I hope its not a grave. But whatever else we do, we have to out work and out number the reserves of awful that have proved so potent this year.
And that’s all I got, rambling away, on this grim morning. To end mindful of Tim F.’s injunction, I’m deeply grateful for all who make Balloon Juice a community, from Blog Leader John (and animals) to all the rest of us. I’m going to try to duck away from the ‘net for a while, just to get my head clear. I’ve already deleted the Twitter app from my phone and iPad, and I’ll be trying not to surf anything more exciting than Sports Illustrated for a while. But I’ll be checking here, even if I don’t plan to post much, if at all (what’s new w. that — ed.). Jackals you/we may be. But we’re our jackals, and I love you all.
Image: John Singer Sargent, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit 1882.
lamh36
Mini rant here…sorry Tom…i did read ur post BTW and i def think i’ll be taking a break from politics for the next 4 years? or when is the midterms?
i figured certain folks would find a way to blame the Blacks, the Browns, etc. ya know the MINORITIES of this country for this election loss but I never figured it be this soon.
But i’ve seen enough commentary here and elsewhere that proves ima wrong.
We are a MINORITY of the population…we cannot offset a MAJORITY of white voters including white women overwhelmingly voting for “he who shall never again be named by me”.
So miss me with that BS this morning…we came out as best as we Fuqn against all the damn voter suppression tactics enabled by GOP…and still ya got folks trying to spread blame around to include people of colors…ya know what FUQ that…I completely reject that
The election of him go back to exactly what i said a long time ago…this election is about nosy how angry a late portion of white voters are about the diversification of this nation and last night showed just how angry they were.
and i get that you don’t want to think that a majority of ur fellow white folks are okay with the type of bigotry and hate Trump played in, but guess that cats out of the bag.
The almost nothing worse than a silent racist…last night election results showed that America has A LOt more of those silent racist than a lot of “good folks” expected.
But i’ve been Black now for 40 years and i am NEVER surprised by the inherent racism that sit underneath the fabric of this country. At this point we expect it and we continue in spite of it.
Cermet
Yes, racism won – big; but let us not forget who lost – Hillary. She was flagged as someone with terrible favorably ratings but hey, the other guy was a racist. Look what resulted – heavy blue states went for racism. Learn a powerful lesson – when a candidate has vast baggage – even if totally artificial like Hillary’s – you lose.
As I said last night – I will never use that small handed dick-head’s name again.
rp
I don’t suppose your friend is Junot Diaz…
Crashman06
Tom, I deeply love this painting. Every time I go to the MFA, I make a point to sit and look at it for a while. Years ago, my wife bought me a small print of it that’s framed above my desk at home. Seeing it is comforting. Thank you.
JMG
@lamh36: I sure hope I’m not blaming you.
cleek
@Cermet:
wanna know why this is 360% wrong?
do ya?
ok, i’ll tells ya.
Trump strongly implied he wanted to fuck his own daughter. baggage?
Trump said his celebrity entitles him to grab women by the pussy. baggage?
Trump is facing a RICO suit for organized fraud. baggage?
Trump is cozy with racists and bigots of all stripes, baggage?
Trump has no experience. baggage?
Trump is a serial adulterer and divorcee. baggage?
Trump is a misogynist, racist, idiot con-man current facing a suit for the rape of a minor. baggage?
Trump slandered the military, top to bottom. baggage?
Trump is arguably a tool of Russian intelligence. baggage?
Trump did all that to himself.
but people do not care. they simply don’t care about his “baggage”.
that leaves policy. and he offered essentially none.
people voted with their gut.
cleek
FYWP
Tom Levenson
@lamh36: a) no apologies necessary. Of course.
b) I have no intention of blaming minorities or minority voters. To the contrary: the point above is that this race shows how fucked up my fellow white folks are, and to kick myself for, once again, failing to see what’s obvious to you, to my friend, and so on. The privilege of being white and middle class is that the reality of oppression is too easily understood intellectually — and not at the kind of visceral level that’s necessary to power the struggle that should long since have been over, and brutally clearly isn’t.
So — I’m sorry if my post gave you the thought that I’m blaming black and brown and other minorities for what happened last night. I’m not. I’ve got more I think I’ll say later when my thoughts are more ordered about what white people horrified by this election and all that it implies must do to confront all this. But it’s clear to me where the obligation lies.
oldster
I’m glad to see this acknowledgment that misogyny played a large role in the outcome, as well as racism.
Mr. Mack
I’m old enough to just not care about getting flamed for saying this: Part of the problem is us. I’ve seen, right here on this blog that I have read for years and years, people with differing opinions than the pack get absolutely shut out. Not everyone who thinks we need critiquing is a concern troll. The Democratic party is the only thing that stands between the citizens of this country and those that intend to loot this country of it’s treasure. So, it needs to be rebuilt, and quickly. And honestly.
Last thought: Last night happened for a lot of reasons, but those of us who have experience with emigrating to the U.S. can tell you that xenophobia is powerful, and prevalent.
Barbara
@lamh36: Well, for the record, I don’t blame minorities. I actually don’t blame anyone. It’s counterproductive. I underestimated the level of misogyny, although not by much. I thought it would be closer than advertised because of it, but not quite that definitive. I think she would have been a good president, but she spoke to and for the past in too many ways. For Dems, that seems to be completely ineffective. Whereas, Rs seem to be perfectly fine with the idea of going back to some better past, so long as it puts certain people first. I do agree with some commentary I have seen that there should be no more anointing of candidates. We would have been better off with a reprise of 2008 and a bunch of upstarts duking it out with her. No one “deserves” the nomination.
RK
Hard to fault a candidate who wins the popular vote, but Hillary didn’t get the turnout Obama did unfortunately.
2004 (Bush) 62,040,610
2008 (McCain) 59,948,323
2012 (Romney) 60,933, 504
2016 (Trump) 59,041,303
2004 (Kerry) 59,028,444
2008 (Obama) 69,498,510
2102 (Obama) 65,915795
2016 (Clinton) 59,117,303
Redshift
@oldster: Me, too. Tim Kaine talked about it at our local office during the primary, pointing out the number of women in the Senate to make the point that no matter how well we seemed to be doing, this was not going to be easy.
piratedan
@cleek: and it appears that racism thrives in white people’s innards.
America finally is allowed to say NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! after the awful repression of the last 8 years.
Betty Cracker
Well said, Tom. And fuck anyone who tries to blame black or brown folks for this white nonsense. I’m one of those overly optimistic dunderheads who believed we were a better country than we are. Well, consider me whomped upside the head with a big orange clue-by-four, friends.
I am shaken to my core, and, as Kay expressed in less crude terms this morning, haunted by the reality that I didn’t prepare my child to live in a racist, sexist, xenophobic shithole led by a sociopath bolstered by a pack of rabid, bible-humping, kleptocratic hypocrites.
Again, consider me thoroughly humbled by just how wrong I was.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
My biggest take is that nearly 59 million people in this country are Yahoos or are Yahoo-curious.
cokane
as the numbers continue to roll in, blaming this on racism or misogyny just isn’t good enough. trump is underperforming romney. yes racism exists, yes bigotry exists. as it did in 2012
but it’s in our hands, it always was. the key was that our voters did not show up at the levels they did last time
Adam L Silverman
@cleek: You’re free.
geg6
@lamh36:
I cannot say how ashamed I am of my fellow white people, especially the women. I, too, am appalled to see the blaming of minorities going on. We white people are horrible monsters. I don’t know what to do about it. I have tried my whole life to try to make my fellow white people see other humans the way I do. I don’t know what to do. That is my despair. I can’t see any way out of this. The majority of white Americans are simply horrible monsters. I wish I could change it but it is obvious I can’t. I am hating myself almost as much as I hate them because I’m so helpless.
Barbara
@cokane: Yes. Which means that not all hope is lost, it’s just that structurally, hope takes a holiday with the way our founders decided to do things.
Tom Levenson
@Betty Cracker: I know what you mean about one’s kids. I kept looking at my son this morning, and I just broke into tears thinking about how I’ve failed: the world I’m helping leave to him isn’t the one I ever imagined or hoped it would be.
I’m frankly paralyzed right now. I know I gotta get over that — there’s work to be done. But it’s going to take me some time I think.
jenn
@lamh36:
Sending a massive hug your way. God knows I need one.
I am still in shock. Overall, and at the forces of misogyny and racism and voter suppression and Comey and the overwhelming failure of the media to inform the public. God I hope SOMEONE in those damn media outlets is contemplating how they failed. Clinton wasn’t enough to defeat all of this (including Putin and Wikileaks).
Love and hugs to all.
cokane
per nyt exit polls, trump gained 7% african americans, 8% latinos and 11% asian americans.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html
angry white people did not decide this election anymore than they decided 2012. im not denying their existence. they exist. but they are not big enough by themselves to win. people are missing the real story of this election in a big way here. the story we can do something about. we cannot change racist voters.
eta: trump only gained 1% white voters
Davis X. Machina
@Cermet: This would explain the shellacking she took in the popular vote.
Keith P.
I’m watching a Trump bio on Today. It’s eerily similar to Biff Tannin’s bio fill in BTTF 2
Keith G
What little good news out there, is that there are still very entrenched institutional interests (both in and out of government, both profit and non) who will actively work against the worst scenarios that I have been reading today. That is not to say that some really bad crap isn’t on the horizon, but I see lamentations that are not going to be fulfilled. We are going to get through this. No need to lose our shit.
Davis X. Machina
@cleek:
“I don’t care. He hates the same people I hate. Hand me the goddam ballot.”
Darkrose
@Cermet:
I’m already so, so tired of this.
Because the bottom line is that scared white people voted for the most unqualified candidate ever to make a serious run at the highest office in the land, an ignorant, narcissistic, racist, misogynist, xenophobic fraud. He should never have gotten the nomination, let alone won the electoral college vote. That’s not on Hillary. That’s on the assholes who voted for him. Full stop.
gene108
@Cermet:
Trumps Favorable/Unfavorable split was just as bad or worse than Hillary’s in most polls I read.
But it’ll be interesting to see how younger people voted. Obama won the white youth vote in 2008, but lost it or at least whitle males, in 2012.
I think the demographic shift people keep talking about is overrated.
Edit: White people still vote Republican in large numbers regardless of age.
Barbara
@RK: Structurally, Dems have to win a lot more of the popular vote to have an outright win. The only comfort I take from the numbers is that Trump didn’t find a bunch of missing white voters — he didn’t even get to the number of the last three cycles of Republican nominees, if the above numbers hold up. People who voted for us in the past didn’t show up. And that is likely to cut across the board for all kinds of people.
Davis X. Machina
danielx
@piratedan:
Yep, they have finally achieved their dream – a return to the fifties, that imaginary golden age where white men ran everything and had good jobs for the asking, and when women, children, niggers, spics and other wogs knew their place and by god kept to it – or else.
Then there are the ones who want to go back to the 1850s.
Gindy51
@cokane: And the reason is they did not like the candidate that was chosen unlike last time. I live in IN and the level of ABSOLUTE HATRED for anything Clinton is unimaginable. I like her but my husband voted for her out of a last resort because to vote any R is unthinkable. His golf buddies would have voted for Saddam Hussein over Hillary Clinton, that is how much they hate her. Nothing she could say or do, even promise to make their taxes zero, would convince them to vote for her. A lot of Obama voters felt the same way, at least the ones I talked to here in IN.
Sorry but WE chose the wrong person to lead our party BIG TIME. I hate saying it but that is what I heard in the fucking dip shit “heartland”. Flyover people made their voices heard this time and they said FUCK NO to the Clinton’s and all who are like them.
If we ever want to be in any way, shape, or form, be in power again we have to listen to these folks who did not vote this time around and not dismiss them. We need to put up candidates they can feel good about voting for, not just as a last resort or not at all (which is what happened here).
JPL
@Barbara: Hillary Clinton had high approval ratings, when she first resigned as Secretary of State. With the help of the republican party, 24/7 news painted her as a flawed candidate. That and Comey caused people to stay home. As much as we would like to think another candidate would win, they would do so with any democratic candidate.
I do blame the republican congress and 24/7. If we can do anything, it should be turning off cable news. Support newspapers that have reporters, because Trump is going after them. (even the NYTimes)
Major Major Major Major
This is true.
Today, and probably for the foreseeable future, I have absolutely no interest in talking politics or working politically with people who won’t lay the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of the fifty-nine million people who voted for Donald Trump. Intra-coalition sniping is… fun, I guess, but there’s a much bigger and more obvious target out there for blame and reform. These people aren’t some undifferentiated mass of evil, they’re actual people who actually voted, and they’re the ones to blame.
RK
Trump and Clinton both surpassed Obama’s winning 2012 Florida vote total so looking at battleground counts may be more instructive than popular vote.
Barbara
@Darkrose: Can I suggest a slightly modified explanation: Looking at the year over year numbers, Trump’s voters are Romney’s and McCain’s voters. What happened is that not enough people voted against misogyny and racism. I have stopped wondering what I can do to change the existential view of white people who believe that they have somehow been wronged by the economic betterment of non-whites and women. What needs to happen is to persuade people who don’t have that view that they will lose if they don’t assert it in elections. It didn’t happen.
Singing Truth to Power
I saw part of a network interview of a very happy young white woman at the Trump celebration. She was asked why she supported Trump, and she said “for freedom and for liberty, and to take our country back.” Take it back from what, she was asked. Brief silence – “to make America great again.” I think that is the enemy – the unthinking uneducated incurious masses. I can survive Trump and the GOP congress, I think, but wonder how much damage they can do to our society. And I grieve the loss of Russ Feingold.
mai naem mobile
What I learned from this election is you just lie to people to win. Tell them what they want to hear in any form. Even if theirs tape proving you’re lying,lie about the tape. Just lie,lie,lie.
mali muso
My husband (black, African, Muslim immigrant) told me this morning that he had a bad feeling that this election would go this way the whole time. He is surrounded by a sea of white faces at his workplace that, although never overtly racist, inflict hundreds of little microaggression every day. He’s almost relieved to have it out in the open. As for me, I am horrified and sick and numb. My baby is due any day now, and I just can’t wrap my brain around bringing my precious little biracial daughter into this brave new world.
Keith G
@lamh36:
People might, but they are dumb fuckers whom I am beginning to detest due to their terminal need to over simplify.
When I read stuff like, “I cannot say how ashamed I am of my fellow white people, especially the women” I want to vomit. White people, especially the women did not do this. Individual voters made stupid choices. I thought we were trying to get away from the foolishness of blaming all for the behavior of a part. Such fallacious thinking will not help us get back up and do this better next time.
clay
@Barbara:
This is exactly right. The US may not be a center-right country by nature, but *structurally* it is weighted towards a center-right outcome. We see this in the House, and in state control as well.
It means liberals have to work that much harder, but it also means that we are vulnerable to a system that is very game-able, as we saw yesterday.
Singing Truth to Power
And hey, let’s celebrate Joe Arpaio’s defeat!
Peale
@mai naem mobile: but don’t lie about how many devices you have. That for some reason is the worst lie.
Major Major Major Major
@Singing Truth to Power: Shame he’s 84 years old and was going to be defeated by life soon anyway.
Caravelle
Continuing to throw out random thoughts about the election:
– I’m glad it appears Clinton will win the popular vote. It’s a razor-thin margin either way so substantively I guess it doesn’t change much (half the country voted for Trump anyway), but the symbolic value does warm my heart and validates the feeling that the country isn’t so against her that she *couldn’t* have won.
– I’m also glad of it because it gives a strong argument for getting rid of the electoral college. Is that plan to do it state-by-state by having the states pledge their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote something that can work with no scary side-effects ? If so it should probably become a priority. Because democracy is important. Because I noticed in a Vox piece about “why Americans don’t vote” they never brought up the electoral college, even though I’d think it’s pretty relevant – the US has this quirk where, depending on the state you are, your vote *actually might not* matter for any purpose other than symbolism. As opposed to countries with direct suffrage, where your vote “doesn’t matter” in the standard sense where it’s one of millions. So that’s bad. And the fact you’ve now had two elections in twenty years where the winner of the popular vote was different from the winner of the electoral college, with incredibly consequential impacts in both cases (mostly seen in hindsight in the first case but strongly anticipated in the second) suggests it’s a change that would matter.
– One aspect of all this that’s gutting me is that I really wanted to see how Hillary Clinton would do as president. I saw her as being within a standard deviation of Obama, meaning I’d probably disagree with a lot of the things she did and get frustrated but that overall things would happen in the right direction. And I was curious to find out how hawkish she’d be, how she’d manage Republicans (would we have the battle-tested Hillary who’s dealt with those people for decades and would give no quarter, or the freakishly good at finding common ground even with her enemies Hillary the campaign described ? And in either case, would it work out for good or for evil ?). Would she actually tack to the left of Obama on economic or social issues, given her apparent longstanding focus on helping the most vulnerable among us ? Would it be like her other public posts, where she’d suddenly be insanely popular once she wasn’t running, or would the press and the right-wing witch-hunters make sure it didn’t happen with her presidency ?
All things I’ll never know now, because she won’t be president this term, I can’t imagine she’ll want to run again (SNL notwithstanding) and it’s not like she could run for president of another country…
– Finally, what will happen with Trump’s threats to jail Clinton ? I rather expect it all to disappear now that he got what he wanted (beat her and won the election), but what if he actually carries it through and sics his AG on her ? I think it would say a lot about what we can expect from his presidency, and whether it will be closer to the “incompetent puppet” end of the possibility spectrum or plumb in the “actual incipient fascism” zone.
Gin & Tonic
@JPL: Trump got nearly 2 million fewer popular votes than Romney and still won. Our side stayed home in droves.
cokane
@Caravelle: god this last point… it’s terrifying
Shalimar
@lamh36: I don’t blame minorities, or Clinton, or anyone else on the Democratic side. For me, Trump supporter equals evil now. Fuck all of them forever. No forgiveness without repentance.
Major Major Major Major
@Shalimar: I don’t even know if I’ll accept repentance. They knew what they were voting for.
cokane
@Gin & Tonic: you wonder if it was complacency (looked solid even on monday) or disliking the candidate. but this is the question that must be addressed moving forward imo, this is the key to winning in 2020. And we already know it’s the major hurdle to the midterms
geg6
@Keith G:
Bullshit. I am ashamed of my fellow white people and especially white women. Tell me exactly why I shouldn’t be?
kindness
I’m numb. I’m trying real hard not to be scared but it isn’t working.
catclub
@cleek: You left taxes out of the baggage.
schrodinger's cat
I am sad and mad and shaken to the core.
The Moar You Know
My father, a lifelong Republican until this election, told me the same thing. Trump scared him shitless. He was 100% all in for Hillary, but he kept telling me “this isn’t going to fly”. I told him the same thing you told your friend. Looks like I owe him an apology.
Gin & Tonic
@cokane: Total turnout was the lowest since 2000.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@cokane:
I’m feeling a bit of anger with the people who felt “the two main candidates are just the same and only super-bright special snowflakes like me can see it… Therefore I’m voting for Dr. Jill Stein or Gary ‘What is Aleppo’ Johnson.”
Kropadope
Well, on the plus side, 2020 looks a lot better now (if we’re still allowed to vote).
Lizzy L
I am still trying to wrap my head around this.
Shalimar
@Major Major Major Major: They were voting for a magician who promised to make their lives better with a wave of the wand. I am fine with acknowledgement that they didn’t see Trump for the charlatan and conman he clearly is. Considering we are talking about Republicans, recognition of that simple reality is never going to happen though.
Aimai
@lamh36: I could not agree more. I was very sceptical of the continued invocation of AA voters as able to save the country from the choices white voters were bound and determined to make. Because I knew it would turn into instant insults and blame shifting when the bulk of white voters voted their rage and spite against Obama and the democratic party.
There are more of them–trump voters–than there are of the Obama coalition. Thats just the fact. And a white voter voting out if spite and infantile rage is mire likely to vote than one voting altruistically, or romantically, or in solidarity.
rikyrah
@lamh36:
Tell the truth, lamh.
Tell that truth.
catclub
@Gin & Tonic:
That is really horrifying. How could they? What were they thinking?
rikyrah
A whole lotta Ferret Head’s supporters think they’re gonna party like it’s 1948.
When they get hit with that POC have no intention of doing that…
Well….
liberal
But the fact remains that she was just a horrible candidate.
Same thing with Hillary. She’s simply not a good retail candidate. That doesn’t mean I think people who supported her are evil, stupid, etc; of course, the evil and stupid people are the people who would vote for a narcissistic sociopath over her. (Ditto the stupid douchebags in my new home of MA who voted for Baker over Coakley.)
But the fact is that it’s like a war, and in a war we need to bring the best people to the field. Bitching about it being unfair isn’t going to go far in war.
Corner Stone
@Keith G:
But white people absolutely *did* do this. There is simply no way of parsing the truth into something else.
D. Mason
Aren’t all of you party faithfuls glad the DNC pushed their anointed candidate on us by hook and by crook?
jenn
It’s time to start thinking about 2018 and 2020. I’d say give it some time, except that I’m already thinking about it.
I’m probably going to be unemployed by then (part of the GOP party platform will eliminate the basis for my career, if they go through with it), so I’ll have plenty of time to work on it.
The only silver lining that I can see is that Dems are now more likely to win in 2020, a census year. And that will go a long way towards reducing gerrymandering for the next decade. But it’s a pretty darn dark cloud.
I cannot see how it’s possible that the country has elected someone worse than W. But we have. Nihilistic bigots. I’d comfort myself that they’re going to end up regretting this, but unfortunately their lack of melanin means that they’re going to be buffered for longer from the impacts.
Love and hugs to you all.
cokane
@West of the Rockies (been a while): yeah this is legit too. its too early to check vote totals that include 3rd parties… so we’ll have to see. johnson did seem to do okay nationwide ~4%, which is way more than any recent 3rd.
again, i encourage people to not focus on racist, bigoted whites. there’s NOTHING there that helps us. those people existed in 2008 and 2012 and we still won.
Mzinformation
Tom I’m mostly a lurker but this is the one place I go daily. It’s like family and today we are holding a wake. My heart is so heavy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The be-baggaged Hillary Clinton significantly outperformed the purer than snow, Sandersesque Russ Feingold, former Republican Patrick Murphy, and the (AFAIK) clean and boring Ted Strickland– and to anyone who says “Establishment!”, the answer is “Rob Portman”. This election was about bitter old white people who liked the guy who spoke to their lizard brains.
Caravelle
@Keith G: Could you give details as to what those are, which events they would stop and how they would do it ? Because I badly need that validation right now; I can’t wrap my brain around the idea that the Republicans could actually pull off all the things they want to do, but I also can’t figure out why they *couldn’t*.
Cermet
@cleek: Want to know why it is correct? Because Hillary was running against her baggage and judged by both demorats and thugs; the small handed dick head was running against all that thugs hate, but of late, what too many demorats hate – the elitism of the democratic party (again, where does this come from? Well, try fifty years of lies that have never been seriously countered.) This mattered because most democrats care about the issues but that isn’t enough to win an election if your base isn’t motivated. Hillary failed big time – look at MI, PA, and WI.
Finally, where in the fuck were our people? Why did they sit out – oh, because you blame the small handed dick head as having too much baggage. Right
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Oh, and I hope the most super-duper specialist snowflake of all, Julian Assange, experiences genuine misery.
Brachiator
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Stein and Johnson only got a small percentage of the vote, not enough to make a big difference.
Shalimar
@Keith G: It’s a lot easier to apologize to the rare non-Trump-supporting white exception than to give all of them the benefit of the doubt.
enplaned
I’m in the same nightmare I have been in since I first realized that Hillary was actually likely to run in 2016. In other words, I’ve been in a waking nightmare for more than two years. Had she won, I’d have been bathed in relief and emerged from the nightmare blinking in the daylight. As it is, the nightmare is just getting worse.
But there hasn’t been a second, for over two years, when I didn’t think she could find a way to lose. Ask any of my friends, family, etc. Two friends, one on the right, one on the left, both said there wasn’t a hope in hell that Trump would be president. I disagreed. Both feel gut-punched today. She was just too damaged, too compromised, too inept, too lackluster, just so clearly the wrong person to follow Obama. She was yesterday’s news, a symbol of a past the country did not want to return to — in a country that almost always wants to go forward, wants to try something different, wants change.
What does it say that a person who wants to be president gratuitously accepts big speaking fees from Goldman Fucking Sachs? How fucking stupid do you have to be to do that? What goes thru your mind? The Clintons didn’t lack for cash, so did she do it just to prove to herself she could, that she could take down fees of that magnitude? I mean, fucking why?
I gave the max to her, and I basically bullied my parents (retired, late 70s) into doing the same, because when the choice is Hillary or Trump, then whatever our misgivings of Hillary, it had to be her, all the way.
My mom gave to other Democrats as well, voted for H, regards the outcome as a complete disaster. But she said to me this AM, shamefacedly, that notwithstanding the complete catastrophe, a little voice in the back of her mind told her, well, at least we won’t have to deal with Hillary Clinton for four years.
Whatever it is that makes a politician, Hillary ain’t got it. And what she has got is something that gives people pause. Whatever it is that drove her to insist on running a second time, even approaching 70, has caused an incredible tragedy. For her family too. Bill was clearly backing her because he thought (accurately) that he owed her. I’d love to know what his actual, unvarnished opinion of her political skills are. He’s too smart not to see her deficiencies, but he had to support her and watch her now crater, taking the future of the US with her, utterly destroying the legacy of Obama.
You think Trump damaged his brand? Man, think about the damage to the Clinton Foundation, which actually has done a lot of good around the world.
Major Major Major Major
@Aimai: Remember “black voters caused Prop 8 to pass!!1”?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I’ll keep working toward the greater good but to be honest it’s kind of a forlorn hope at this point. Trump’s fans elected him to fix Washington, but he’s a symptom that Washington is broken, not a solution to the fact that it’s broken. Their side broke it and will break it further, but the wool is never coming off their eyes. I guess eventually things got so bad under W that no one could hide the fact…but that wasn’t that long ago and people seem already to have forgotten how badly things can go wrong with the wrong guy in charge. This guy is wronger, so things will go wronger faster.
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
Look at the states that went for Obama in 2012.
Now look at the states that have passed restrictive voter ID laws since then.
Note that both WI and MI are on that list,
“Stayed home.” Right.
JPL
@Gin & Tonic: I know, but I don’t blame the candidate. The Republican Congress encouraged MSM to paint her as a flawed candidate. If I were an hourly worker, I’m not sure that I’d stay in line for such a flawed candidate. This is not to say that I think she was a flawed candidate, because I don’t. The investigations were bullshit.
liberal
@West of the Rockies (been a while): That probably played a very small role. There’s no way that can explain the wave that did it for Trump.
Not that I have any sympathy for Assange, after he started fucking with things.
danielx
Quote from a FB comment….
“Sorry. I cannot find any humor right now. People in Texas are flying confederate flags on their way to work. Fascism wins and the KKK are celebrating.”
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: It was larger than the Trump vs. Clinton margin in several close states. (Mostly Johnson’s.)
Which is not to say that all of those people would ever have voted for Clinton.
Shalimar
@Cermet: MI, WI and PA have a lot of white racists who normally vote Democrat. Trump went out of his way to appeal to their racism. It isn’t Clinton’s fault she couldn’t come up with a better argument to motivate them.
Phylllis
@cleek: Yes. Actual statement by a co-worker on Monday: “How is it okay to wait for a man to run for president to dig up all this dirt on him?”
liberal
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Agreed, but I think the main goal for us is to make sure that people who is responsible.
Now that they control/will soon control all three branches of government, you’d think it would be obvious, but the people are f*cking stupid, and the press will still pull their “Congress did X…” instead of the more accurate “The Republican controlled Congress did X.”
That means people paying for ads pointing these things out. And NOT waiting to do it until an election year.
cokane
@Brachiator: not true, 3rd parties did better than any election since Perot!
Mike in NC
Most of us of a certain age (60+) understand what a sick, racist, fucked up country we live in. Add a healthy dose of sexism and what you reap is Herr Drumpf, who will consolidate his power until the day he dies. Putin is delirious. Democracy was good til it lasted, folks.
PeakVT
This is important:
Over 10 million voters less.
I don’t know what they look like but I sure as hell am going to apportion some blame to them for not showing up. The contrast between the candidates was far more stark this year than it was in either 2008 or 2012. Sure, the media failed immensely at covering policy (or at least covering it as such – Trump’s “policy” utterances were often front and center), but still: Why did 10,000,000 voters think nothing was at stake?
ALurkSupreme
We were discussing the lack of turnout in a thread earlier this morning. It’s dumbfounding.
Emma
@D. Mason: Aren’t you glad you can go to hell with the rest of us but pure and clean as a newly-washed saint?
GrandJury
I don’t get why people are playing the blame game already. You have 2-4 years to do that.
Also the Bernie bros thinking Hillary was a mistake…lol. Would have only been worse with Bernie. So STFU about that.
Hillary ran with a record against someone who has no record. Not even tax returns. Also she has a vagina.
Anyways, playing the blame game is so futile.
Keith G
@geg6: So you are ashamed of you? You are ashamed of Betty and AL? My two sisters voted for Clinton? Were they being shameful?
It’s such a silly and ineffective way to organize one’s thinking.
Mnemosyne
Contrary to state law, some Pennsylvania poll workers insisting on photo ID
But the problem was that Obama’s voters just happened to not show up in three states with restrictive Voter ID laws.
You fucking morons.
liberal
@enplaned: Agreed. Even if you think she’s not that corrupt—I, myself, think she’s mildly corrupt, but nothing on the scale of Trump and the other Republicans—she’s simply not a talented politician.
If all you needed to be a good politician was smarts and good policy sense, a lot of people would be politicians who, in reality, aren’t cut out to be politicians. It’s stupid—I myself pretty much just vote on the issues—but that’s the way humans are constructed.
liberal
@PeakVT: Frankly, because they’re fucking stupid, that’s why.
Juice Box
I’m staying in a hotel right now. This morning, as I went out, I heard the man in the next room shouting into a telephone. He spoke English with a German accent and and was explaining that Germany, before Hitler, was the most progressive country in Europe. That didn’t make me feel any better.
Every single person that I’ve come in contact with today has been non-white. I keep wanting to apologize. I need a knee replacement and now I may lose my insurance. I’m devastated.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Thank you. The destruction of the VRA and the voter infringement/suppression laws passed in those states accounts for lower turnout. Those laws were designed to do just that.
ALurkSupreme
Definitely a fair point, Mnemosyne.
liberal
@GrandJury: It’s not about the blame game. It’s about what direction the party should take.
schrodinger's cat
The constitutional coup that the Republicans attempted since Obama came to power is complete. Trump is the result.
Elizabelle
@mali muso: Hugs. Good luck to you. We have a little time to clean up the mess before your daughter en route clues in on what’s around her. We must, and we will. Best wishes for a safe and rapid delivery.
enplaned
@catclub: We didn’t give them anything to get excited about. Hillary’s campaign was almost entirely that she wasn’t Trump. She picked a total snoozefest as VP (nice guy, but nothing to get excited about). Compare — Obama (or Biden) on the one hand, Hillary on the other.
And then we told everyone that she was leading in the polls and she was going to win. Many voters had no affirmative reason to vote for her. It was a vote against Trump. If that was assured, that marginal voter will think, hey, why bother, it’s in the bag and I don’t care about her anyway, just want to keep that Trump guy out.
Shalimar
@ALurkSupreme: It isn’t dumbfounding. Republicans have spent the last 8 years disenfranchising every non-Republican group they could target. It’s hard to vote if you aren’t eligible anymore.
Major Major Major Major
I sure hope I or my husband don’t have to go to a Catholic hospital after Trump’s First Amendment Restoration Act becomes law.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
Yes, I am ashamed of being white today. I am ashamed of my relatives who either voted for Trump themselves, or are desperately flailing around for an alternate explanation for why white people voted for an open white supremacist. Because it couldn’t possibly be racism! No, no, that can’t explain why white people would vote for the guy who was literally endorsed by the KKK.
Nope, it was economic insecurity. Certainly not racism.
CindyH
@lamh36: AMEN AMEN AMEN (I’m a white woman and can’t stand to see one mention of blaming Latinos or African Americans for not coming out in enough numbers. This race turned out on White Supremacy. end of story. No bullshit about flawed candidate, etc. etc. The white supremacists got their candidate and they came out everywhere to put the rest down.
D. Mason
I must admit I love watching you guys twist and turn to blame anyone but yourselves. This isn’t the fault of ugly old evil white men you love to blame for everything. There simply aren’t enough of us to elect a President on our own. This is the fault of the Democrats, Democrats like you bunch that sit around bloviating about how Hillary’s sins didn’t matter, not the ones out on the streets. Here’s a fun fact: My mom, who was an Obama voting, union employed, white house picketing, dyed in the wool Democrat since before I was born stayed home yesterday. Was it because she was sexist and racist? No. It was because the Democrats put up a candidate bad enough to get beaten by Donald Fucking Trump. Enjoy the world your kind created because the rest of us are nauseated by it.
P.S. I see a lot of talk here about being ashamed to be white. Is that what you bunch really think will attract voters? A party that tells them they should be ashamed for their race?? Jesus Christ, the stupid, it burns.
Amaranthine RBG
Hillary 2020!
Let’s keep running uninspiring moderates until America realizes its mistakes!
Kropadope
@GrandJury:
The mistake was that the Dems were so busy trying to make Hillary the nominee that they didn’t put up a real candidate and Bernie had to punch above his weight class to fill that role.
gene108
@Mr. Mack:
True.
**************
One thing pointed out earlier is people voted for Obama more so than the Democratic Party.
The same holds true now.
People voted for Trump. They do not care about free trade, favorable treatment of bankers, etc. Many Trump voters would be happy to see a few bankers in jail.
The Trump win is not an admission of explicit support for McConnell and Ryan’s agenda.
liberal
@Singing Truth to Power: Yeah, I saw that, too.
I think racism and sexism are a thing, but I really think people need to wake up to the fact that a major, major force here is just human stupidity.
Against stupidity/The gods themselves/Contend in vain. –Goethe
Corner Stone
If HRC voter turnout was down, and overall voter turnout was down, then why did we have all the long lines at voting locations? Hmmmmm…
Tokyokie
@Caravelle: Of course he will go after Clinton. Maybe Obama, too. Never mind that he’s squeaky clean; he’s black and he made fun of THE DONALD, so he has to pay. He’ll hand policy-making over to his dimwitted faux Christian running mate, then use the power of the state to exact revenge upon his enemies, real and perceived. He will make Tricky Dick Nixon look like a fucking ACLU official. And as part of that, he will use his capacity to persecute his enemies to shake down fat cats for donations to retire his campaign debt, which will largely go straight into his pocket. He’s an authoritarian, vindictive kleptocrat, and to expect him to act any other way is absurd.
And those poor dumb bastards who think he’ll make life better for them are going to see the GOP shitheels in Congress perform a colonectomy on them. Earned Income Credit? Gone. Medicaid? Gone. Social Security disability payments? Gone. Social Security retirement benefits? Gone. Those programs will slashed to the bone, opened for looting by the very Wall Street sharpies THE DONALD was pretending to oppose, or turned into block grants that the likes of Sam Brownback can use for creationism theme parks rather than helping the poor. But the evil shits who voted for this horror will just blame the economic ruin that follows on Mexicans or Muslims or whoever else doesn’t seem like them, and besides, a lot of them will be placated just by seeing Clinton in handcuffs.
I said this in another post, but I’ll repeat it here: I can think of no historical precedent in which a psychotic fascist was elevated to head of state of a major power that didn’t end in ruin and an incalculably high death toll.
Darkrose
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Why should he? His fellow rapist is now running America.
jenn
Misogyny plus
Racism (including voter suppression) plus
Derelict media focusing on fucking emails to the exclusion if everything else plus
FBI and Comey plus
Putin and Wikileaks and the unprecedented attack on Democrats
.
.
.
Any baggage Hillary’s carrying around
I’m honestly not sure whether any candidate could have survived *all* those factors at the top.
Mary G
I do not believe that even a reincarnated JFK would’ve beat Trump. This was all about paying back the black man who dared to be a great president with an exemplary family. How uppity of him. He had to be put in his place.
liberal
@Kropadope: Yes, I’m a big Bernie fan, but the fact of the matter is that he was really just a protest candidate. Clinton has been sucking the air out of the thing for eight years now.
catclub
@PeakVT:
I am still appalled at that. How? Why?
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne: I’ll give voter ID some of that. But she got almost 7 million fewer than Obama 2. That’s not all voter suppression.
Jeffro
@jake the antisoshul soshulist:
Yup. We thought we had them beat just because we’ve had an African-American president. We Dems need to stay tuned in every election and vote like we’re about to get deported, get our p____ grabbed, get our Social Security privatized…whatever it takes to motivate people. No more staying home.
And since we’re talking about those 59M…
I’ve mentioned many times about sparring back and forth with my RW dad and brother this election. Today I got a kind of shell-shocked email from my brother, whose only comment was he was “glad the Dems were stopped but not really celebrating that the Republicans won”, whatever that means.
From my 70-year-old dad, however, I got a ton of bs about how Hispanics were about to take the country even further into an entitlement society, followed by a laundry list of crazy-a$$ shit he hopes Trump & Co manage to get accomplished between Inauguration Day and 2018/2020. I won’t bore you with the list, but here’s what I told him back:
And since I can’t say this to my own dad, I’ll just say it here: for the sake of the country, I look forward to him & his Boomer cohort shuffling off of this mortal coil, in the hopes of embracing a more diverse, less racist, less sexist tomorrow for my kids. For. Real.
gogol's wife
Again, I’m going to say something that may bring some flak, but I had a bad feeling watching the Springsteen rally Monday night. Springsteen himself was just going through the motions; he read his statement in a flat, insincere voice. Then we had Chelsea and Bill, and even I’m kind of sick of both of them. Then things perked up when Michelle Obama came out, and then Barack Obama, and then, what should have been the big climax — Hillary — and she was just blah. I immediately turned away from the television. I was not thrilled back when I realized she’d be the nominee, but she totally won me over during the campaign with her great DNC and her wonderful performance at the debates. But that rally struck a chill into my heart. I just thought, she’s not grabbing the audience (and it’s not because she’s a woman, because Michelle Obama had them spellbound). I know it was just one event, but it worried me about her overall performance — and it turns out I was right to be worried. forgive me if this is a vacuous comment, I’m just in shock and having to talk out loud about all the horrific thoughts going through my head
ALurkSupreme
Yes, I understand. But did all the Republican measures really chip away 10 million votes from our side? I’m not trying to be argumentative, and I value the opinions here. Also, I need sleep.
liberal
@Mary G: I don’t think so. IIRC the map shows that Hillary did poorly in places Obama did relatively well.
cleek
@enplaned:
this is utter nonsense.
Corner Stone
@D. Mason:
Fuck you and fuck your mother.
liberal
@ALurkSupreme: Yeah, I don’t buy it. And I’m someone who thinks the people pulling that shit are traitors who should be…ahem.
Shalimar
@D. Mason: I’m perfectly willing to blame people like your mom who were too special to vote.
Cermet
@Shalimar: Then who is at fault!? The small handed dick head for being so good at racism? The turn out was terrible compared to what demorats can do – why? Who is responsible for turn out? NOT Hillary? Really?
catclub
@Corner Stone: But Florida vote was record high, wasn’t it? Extremely strategic voting totals.
liberal
@Corner Stone: Yeah. I myself think Hillary was a very uninspiring candidate, but you can bet your ass I got my goddamn self to the voting booth yesterday.
Darkrose
@D. Mason: So do you feel good about yourself now, knowing that people that you’re talking to right now, aren’t sure how we’re going to survive the next four years? Are you cool with knowing that the tiny window we had to possibly mitigate the worst effects of climate change has just slammed shut, so you can pat yourself on the back for being “right”?
Good for you.
Hill Dweller
@Corner Stone: That’s the first time I’ve laughed all morning. No offense to D. Mason’s mother.
Caravelle
I like this StackExchange comment about why the polling was so off. I’m especially interested in the trend it points out that I wasn’t aware of, which is that polling all over the world seems to have been becoming less reliable in favor of conservatives over the last year or so. I find this really interesting.
http://politics.stackexchange.com/a/13083
LAC
@lamh36: amen.
I do not think I could cry anymore but when your 22 year old baby calls you in tears this morning, it happened again. She jumped through hoops to get her absentee ballot in on time.
I took my mother, who has Alzheimer’s, to the polls yesterday. She was so proud of herself. I early voted and felt so damn good. I took today off – I can’t look at people today. Tomorrow ….
Gelfling 545
Just finished a long text message thread with my sister. She teaches in a high school. Her kids are in shock. One of her muslim students has cried all morning. She has no idea what to tell them. Hard to comfort without lying. My very non- agressive 11 year old niece got into a fight on the school bus this morning with kids yelling “build the wall”. I think the schools need to bring in counselors – like for any other national tragedy.
D. Mason
Guess my comment hit a little close to home. If it makes you feel any better I didn’t vote yesterday either, they both disgusted me to the point that I didn’t care, and still don’t. These comments are delicious though.
enplaned
@Corner Stone: Sur@Shalimar: Hard to believe the magnitude of that is 10mm people (down from Obama in 2008).
liberal
@cleek: No it’s not. We’ve been saying this all along.
Yeah, she had a web site full of issue briefs. BFD. She’s a bad retail politician who went into this this with sky-high negatives.
That said, the ultimate responsibility falls on the people who voted for Trump or didn’t vote.
Mary G
@liberal: Like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio? All with Republican governors turning red. I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Karsinogen
At least Republicans can get their people out to vote. They saw the stakes (SCOTUS) and voted. The Democrats whinged and whined and stayed home because Hillary wasn’t “pure” enough. Gee, just like in 2010. And 2014. It’s no surprise why Democrats can’t stay in power for extended periods of time.
gogol's wife
@Gelfling 545:
Yeah, I’m about to face a bunch of students, and “hard to comfort without lying” about sums it up.
gene108
@Kropadope:
Bush, Jr gobbled up all the institutional support among Republicans in 1999/2000 and cleared the field for what should have been a hotly contested primary to replace Bill Clinton.
I do not think it is strange Democrats wanted to get behind Hillary, because she has the instutional support and people in the Democratic Party like her.
LAC
@Corner Stone: bravo! Seriously, thank you!??
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
She won the popular vote, but that doesn’t matter if you can successfully suppress the vote in key states.
Basically, the Republicans successfully gerrymandered the entire country. They won with a minority by picking the states to suppress the vote. It would almost be admirable if it wasn’t so fucking evil.
enplaned
@Kropadope: Correct. Exactly right. Bernie was not a real candidate as such — he’d have lasted about two seconds in the general — he was just the canary in a coalmine telling us that Hillary was an extremely weak candidate.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
I’m considering this thread one of many needed for venting. I may not even believe what I say at this point. Did Stein voters and Assange alone produce Drumpf? No.
Was there a massive wave of whites who voted T? He got fewer votes than Romney.
I think we’re looking at a witch’s brew of misogyny, hate-talk radio and Fox News non-sense, lazy-ass people who couldn’t be arsed to vote, AND YES, enough voter restriction laws, gerrymandering, the usual god-bothering crap.
No single, simple answers.
Aimai
@enplaned: fuck off.
enplaned
@Mnemosyne: You need to show this effect was 10mm people (down from Obama in 2008). Hard to believe, but if you have the data, I’m open to it.
Weaselone
@liberal:
I agree, but I’m not particularly optimistic. Think of how Wisconsin voted. They’ve been getting flushed down the tubes for the last 4 years courtesy of Republican dominance at all levels of government, yet they turned out and not only voted against Clinton, but also even more strongly voted against Feingold. These people directly experience this level of dysfunction at the state level and not only are they willing to keeping voting for Republicans at the state level, they want to replicate their experiment at the national level.
Darkrose
The one point I think is correct about Hillary’s baggage is that people–self-included–underestimated the sheer loathing that white evangelical Christians had for her, to the point where they’d vote for an adulterous lecher who brags about wanting to bone his own daughter. I honestly thought those people would stay home. Turns out the fear of a woman they literally think is the Whore of Babylon is stronger than pretty much anything else.
Amaranthine RBG
@Gin & Tonic: @Gin & Tonic:
No, see, there is a simple explanation that lines up perfectly with Menosynes prejudices, How could it be wrong?
Same with Mr Levinsons blame sexism approach.
D. Mason
@Darkrose: I don’t see it that way, it wasn’t some tiny window to save humanity, just a tiny window to choose an alternate doom. The DNC caused this situation by forcing a candidate that nobody wanted down the peoples throats and the Republicans did the same to their side. The difference is that the Republicans will get out and pull the lever for satan if he has an (R) next to his name and Dems aren’t the same way. Everyone knew this going into the election and they still pushed Hillary on us, and lost for their efforts. Now you bunch are here blaming evil old white men and tbh it’s hilarious to me. Failure to identify the real cause will simply give us 8 years of trump not 4. So these next 4 years are a tiny window of sorts too. Hope the Dems figure it out.
Shalimar
@enplaned: It was 5 million down for Obama himself in 2012. How much of that was unrelenting attacks on him and how much was the first round of voter suppression laws, I have no idea.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Trouble is: Who was the better retail politician on the Dem side? Biden, maybe, but he’s fucked it up before, and his “uninspiring” ‘moderate’ history dwarfs Clintons. Warren? maybe, but I kind of doubt her mass appeal. O’Malley couldn’t even get Sirota-Kos white boy caucus motivated on paper.
also, from what I’ve seen we’ve all focused on domestic policy. For all the ignorant braying of Tweety and a few dingbats here, Trump was and is not against “stupid wars”, he’s gonna bomb the shit out of em. That kind of meat-headed strong-and-wrong has a lot of appeal to people for whom those ISIS beheading porn videos from two years ago are more relevant than Mosul or even DRONZE!
Gelfling 545
@Cermet: The voters wanted bullshit and bigotry. Ther weren’t going to get that from any Dem.
Juice Box
@liberal: She actually went into the election with an approval rating in the mid-60s. Hardly a “sky high negative”.
Aimai
@D. Mason: absolutely fuck you too. This epicurean attitude towards voting is disgusting. You sat back and wanted everyone else to do the heavy lifting and now complain that you dont like the meal that was served.
SenyorDave
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Oh, and I hope the most super-duper specialist snowflake of all, Julian Assange, experiences genuine misery.
Since he’s an accused rapist who is holed up in an embassy rather than face the music, I hope Ecuador decides to kick his sorry ass out. But at this point a President Trump (I feel dirty just typing that phrase) would not take kindly to that action, and I have heard he can be on the petty side. So I won’t blamer Ecuador for keeping the welcome mat out, but they should permanently rescind his internet privileges.
gogol's wife
@Darkrose:
I agree, but I’d substitute “hatred” for “fear.” I don’t think they sincerely fear her.
Gelfling 545
@lamh36: I’ve been embarrassed to face my black neighbors this morning. I wonder why they would trust me anymore.
The Truffle
The Democrats need to bring back Howard Dean and his 50-state strategy. Either that or put a Warren/Sanders in charge of the DNC and pour money into down ticket races as well as national ones.
i hope Obama stays in the US and continues to campaign for Democrats. We’re gonna need him and others like him.
liberal
@gene108: It’s not at all strange. It’s simply a strategic error.
enplaned
@Aimai: No, you fuck off. I was entirely right that Hillary would find a way to lose — assholes like you p*ssed all over folks like me prior to the vote, that we were flop-sweaters and bedwetters. You were fucking wrong.
I know you’re hurting. You’re hurting for a good reason. The country is fucked. But you could stand to have a little fucking humility because, let me repeat, you were fucking wrong. My instincts were right, yours were wrong. Again, I am sorry you are hurting, I would desperately like to have been the one who was wrong. But if anyone needs to stand down, it’s you, not me.
Kropadope
@gene108:
I do seem to remember mentioning something about Democrats nominating Hillary was them embracing the Republican approach at the political (not policy) level. I also remember warning you they’d be better at that game.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
My husband is Native American and when I kept expressing shock last night he just quietly said, “I knew this was going to happen”. Of course he did and of course I didn’t. I’m white. I’m so dejected today and my mind just can’t cope with shit right now. gahhhh
liberal
@Juice Box: Her negatives were some of the highest in history.
Mnemosyne
@Cermet:
I keep pointing to the restrictive Voter ID laws that just happened to have been passed since 2012 in states that Obama won and Hillary lost. Do you need it in interpretive dance?
And, yes, it’s also racist fucktards like D. Mason and his mother who were more interested in being special snowflakes than in preventing Trump from winning. After all, they’re white, how is Trump going to hurt them?
I hope D. Mason’s mother wasn’t planning to retire soon, because her retirement savings ain’t looking too good this morning. But, hey, who cares about losing a big chunk of your savings as long as Hillary didn’t win, amrite?
enplaned
@The Truffle: This. Yes. A million times this.
cokane
@Amaranthine RBG: And she doesn’t have to marshal a single fact to prove it!
Betty Cracker
@Corner Stone: Thank you. I usually adhere to the “no mothers” rule, but in this case, it’s warranted.
D. Mason
@Aimai: Yes Aimai, when the menu reads “Shit sandwich with a side of economic ruin or Turd Burger with a side of economic ruin” I don’t eat. Sorry it offends you.
SenyorDave
This is pathetc:
“Big winners are insurers, brokers, and asset managers since this increases the chances that the DOL’s fiduciary rule is delayed, rewritten or even scrapped. Smaller banks should still do better in Washington than big banks,” Gardner wrote.
Basically, this was the rule that these people have to act in their customers best interests. God forbid that your broker should represent you on a fiduciary basis.
Goblue72
@Mnemosyne: you keep telling yourself that is all it is. You keep telling yourself it wasn’t a shitty candidate. Or a party that claims it’s a working people’s party but is run by centrist fuckstains beholden to financial elites. You keep telling yourself that while you lose and lose and lose.
GOP actually made gains in state legislatures last night. Gains.
cleek
@D. Mason:
well then, fuck you.
enplaned
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sometimes you need to clear the field and see who shows up. In 1975 a little known Georgia governor started making the rounds on the edge of a massive field of Democrats. Jimmy Carter. Turned out he had some micromanagement issues, but he won in 76.
Shalimar
@D. Mason: What about Clinton’s policy objectives would have led to economic ruin for you?
cleek
@liberal:
as were his.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@cleek: exactly so; in fact, that “baggage” was attractive to them.
This was the white backlash against the black President, period full stop.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/books/review/white-rage-by-carol-anderson.html
Mnemosyne
@enplaned:
The effect doesn’t have to be 10 million people. It only has to be just enough in selected states that went for Obama in 2012.
African-American turnout in Wisconsin was down 6 percent over 2012. But I’m sure that was just a coincidence and totally unrelated to the voter ID law.
Betty Cracker
@Darkrose: Yep.
Goblue72
@Shalimar: it is her fault. She was the fucking candidate. That was precisely her JOB.
Major Major Major Major
I see we have a new troll. Good for us.
Gelfling 545
@D. Mason: And if that isn’t the essence of privilege I don’t know what is. Too special to vote to keep your country from being taken over by an incompetent lunatic.
Weaselone
@D. Mason:
Let me see if I get this straight. I went and voted for Hillary, who would have held the line if not advanced many of the issues that Democrats, liberals and liberal leaning independents supposedly care about. Your mother stayed home and didn’t vote because apparently all these issues were outweighed by the indignity of voting for Hillary. Trump being elected is therefore my fault.
Mnemosyne
@D. Mason:
Unless you’re planning to flee the country, you’re eating that shit sandwich along with everyone else. I’m guessing you’re too young to remember 2000, George W Bush, the war in Iraq. I didn’t want to start a war in Iraq, but guess what? I didn’t have a choice.
Enjoy your shit sandwich. It’s not going to taste any better because it was given to you by Republicans.
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@lamh36: I live in a deep red state, and you’re right. Completely correct, and the person who wants to argue with it can talk to my closed door. Stay well, and look out for yourself, because you’re a wonderful and valuable person.
D. Mason
Haha I love this, you guys can keep heaping on the insults because I’m right and you’re wrong and all of the fuck you’s might as well read “I agree but don’t know how to admit it”. Hillary was the worst candidate the Dems could have put up, literally, the worst human being they could have chosen, yet those chose her anyway. They pushed that loser for 12 years while everyone screamed “NO! STAHP!” at the top of their voice. All this racism you’re saying cost Hillary the election didn’t seem to hurt Obama, the black guy, when he stomped her ass in 2008. And here we are, blaming white men like Democrats tend to do these days, instead of admitting that Bobo the clown could beat Hillary, because he did.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@liberal: Fabulous quote! I’d not encountered it before.
cokane
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: it wasn’t about white backlash though.
1. trump is going to get fewer votes than romney
2. trump is going to get higher minority support than romney
ergo, literally fewer white people voted for trump than romney. this election was the same problem as the midterms, only less magnified, dem voters didn’t show up.
Paul in KY
@D. Mason: You and your mom are both dips.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
Well I didn’t expect that…
Was listing to some Soul Station on the drive in (blues you know) and the black DJ was playing this segement from Fox News were the pannel was just as horrified as we all are. They were going on about no one knows what Trump is going to do and Trump was Democrat up until a few years ago.
Dog catches car.
Mnemosyne
@Goblue72:
You keep telling yourself that white voters chose the candidate who was endorsed by the KKK because of “economic insecurity,” because white people aren’t racist.
White men threw a temper tantrum because they didn’t get their way and, as usual, the rest of us have to pay for it.
Major Major Major Major
@Goblue72:
Hillary wasn’t running for statewide office, so I have no idea how this ties into your theory that this is her fault.
Paul in KY
@Tokyokie: England made it through Henry VIII & then his daughter, Mary. About the only time I can think of off the top of my head.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Mary G:
Respectfully, I disagree. Fewer people voted for T than Romney. Those enraged hordes could have hate-voted in ’12.
ellie
@D. Mason: And there it is! How proud you must be!
D. Mason
@Gelfling 545: No. My country was going to be taken over by an incompetent lunatic either way, my only option was to choose the name of that lunatic and I didn’t bother. That’s what the liberal blog crowd isn’t getting, Hillary may seem like the Golden Girl to you, but to the average American it was a Fool’s choice. I know military veterans who didn’t bother to go vote and I know people who did go vote but chose not to select a Presidential candidate. The turnout numbers should tell the whole tale but you zealots don’t want that story, because it doesn’t give you any room to blame the evil white man like you want to do. This isn’t the fault of “racism” or “white privilege” (lol), it’s the fault of absolute incompetence and corruption inside of the DNC.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
And, thanks to voter ID laws in key states, that doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t absolve white people for voting for Trump, either.
RareSanity
Dr. Levenson, as a black man let me say that I do not wish for anyone…including a white person of any political persuasion…to know what it feels like for almost 60 million people to say, “I would rather elect a degenerate like Donald Trump, than to see ‘you people‘ continue to be treated as my equal.”
I look at my mother and father, whom both participated in the March on Washington and think about how ultimately shallow the “gains” of minorities have been over the past several decades, and it makes me sad for my 9 year old son. He will still have to grow up and live in a country that is openly hostile to him, just because of his race.
I wish there was somewhere I could go to “get away” from all this madness. But, unfortunately, while there’s always places white people can go to “escape” the issues of race, there is no way for me to take a break from my physical characteristics.
Jinchi
@PeakVT:
enplaned
They shifted to temperament — it wasn’t enough. As I said, she tried making it almost entirely about the fact she wasn’t Trump.
hueyplong
@Major Major Major Major: It’s a once-in-a-generation trolling opportunity, so it would be odd if this place were not thick with them. Just another of the negative side effects of losing, and it ranks pretty far below the real world effects we’ll see in January.
My 82 year old mother (who voted on the first day of early voting) went to bed at 8 pm last night and got the word via the morning paper. She called and summed up the result by saying, “People are no damn good.” Best laugh I’ve had in the last 24 hours.
Call it a coping mechanism. Best to develop a few if you can.
cleek
@D. Mason:
poor little snowflake
Mary G
@D. Mason: Go away. If you’re new or a troll, fuck off. If you’re a long-term lurker, go back to doing that.
Mnemosyne
@D. Mason:
Shorter D. Mason: Baby didn’t get his bottle, so now everyone else has to pay.
But as long as he has a sparrow and a curtain rod while the rest of us don’t, that’s all he needs to make him happy..
cokane
@Mnemosyne: you need to prove that there was a disparity in voting drop off in these states vs non-restrictive states. you have been running through these threads all day shouting down people who have actually presented data to buttress their arguments.
hueyplong
@D. Mason: Damn, Jill, you seem a little grumpy today.
PeakVT
@Mnemosyne: Sure, suppression in your choice of WI, MI, PA, and/or FL could have turned the election. I’m willing to buy that if the change in turnout rates among Dem-leaning groups in those states is different from the change in turnout rates for the same groups in states that didn’t pass vote restriction laws.
I still don’t see that adding up to 10 million votes, or even 6, though. I’d like to know where the majority of those voters were yesterday.
craigie
@Keith G:
I hope you are right. But I think you are wrong. People think that everything will just work out – somebody will take care of it. But there’s no inherent reason why things should work out. And your modern GOP has demonstrated over and over again that it’s party over country, fuck precedence or political norms. So why, exactly, should we expect to find the same country we have now, four years from now?
I thought Bush was bad, but he was merely incompetent. This new guy is actively evil, and totally without shame. We have a big, big problem on our hands.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@D. Mason: I’ve read this “they cleared the field for Hillary” stuff in several spots…but cleared it of who? Martin O’Malley? Do we think he was the answer? Bernie? He lost, to Hillary, fair and square. There’s Warren but she was pretty strongly against running this cycle from the beginning, so I just don’t think she was an option. After that, who did the Democrats have that actually could have run? Deval Patrick, outgoing governor of Massachusetts? A possibility, but I know a guy who was high up in his administration and he assures me Deval was not, and is not, interested in running for POTUS. Maybe he changes his mind but that was where he was at this election cycle, so he wasn’t an option.
I don’t really see any other Democratic heroes out there. The bottom line is our bench has been getting thin for years and is getting nothing but thinner. We have to win down ballot, where we’ve been getting our butts kicked, to build that bench back up. Either that or we have to find our own performance artist billionaire outsider to “shake up the system” after Trump’s shakeup fails. I guess this is a long way of saying that I don’t think the DNC “cleared the way for her” because there wasn’t anyone else that needed clearing out. We basically had one option.
Amaranthine RBG
The 5 year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is 37%
RBG was diagnosed in 2009.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh Christ. Deaniacs
Where do you think that money comes from, and who are these candidates you want to “pour money into”?
D. Mason
@Shalimar: Her stated policy objectives? Probably nothing, but I don’t trust her to do anything besides sell out to the big banks, exactly like Trump will do. On the matter of economic Policy I consider those two exactly the same despite what she *said* because her actions over the years tell a different story. Maybe that’s the heart of the matter, we can trust Trump to grab some pussy and cozy up with Putin just like he said he would do but Clinton is a big ole “?” – a total wild card because her words are of no value and her actions are all over the place.
sunny raines
A Moment of Silence (by dave cadaqu)
Before continuing the war between good vs evil
And to give despair its due
A moment of silence (payers if you have them)
Seems most appropriate to me
Silence and prayers
For the increased unnecessary suffering to come;
The millions additional held down and back,
And millions of additional innocents who will die.
Silence and prayers
For the increase in the searing injustices that will reign.
The additional oppressed and discriminated against
That will be ground-up in the machinery
Their cries unheard; a river of tears flowing unseen
Silence and prayers
For the stolen hopes of those earnestly seeking
Their birthright of a brighter tomorrow;
For themselves and their children;
The additional children’s dreams deferred or never lived
The futures never arrived.
Silence and prayers
For the added environmental destruction
The additional lost ecosystems and species gone extinct
And the additional millions ravaged by nature’s fury
Silence and prayers
For America’s democracy continuing to be laid waste
The additional loss of the promise of liberty and justice for all
Buried deep in the grave of fear and hate
Silence and prayers
For the decades of effort it will take
Just to get back to where we were on November 8, 2016
A place not so proud to be, but a place with brighter hope
Than today.
November 8, 2016 is a day that should ever blaze disgraced
Under the microscope of history – never forget the added unnecessary suffering.
Long mourn the opportunity lost.
A day, once again,
Not enough good people stood
To prevent the triumph of evil.
Mnemosyne
@PeakVT:
We were never going to see Obama 2008 numbers. I love Hillary, but by definition she is not a once in a lifetime candidate.
@cokane:
IOW, you actually think that minority voters just happened to decide not to show up to the polls in those states?
Alrighty then. I’m sure that unicorn will be by any minute now.
Vhh
@danielx: The Trump voters want is 1950s era well paid low skill jobs in a white welfare state,which in the era of globalization only come via government subsidy, tariff barriers and entitlements. Those things require higher taxes or govt debts,and lead to lower profits, competitive failure, or trade wars, all anathema to the business wing of the GOP. Trump can be a pretend Prez and let Congress run things, or he can actually try to push his big govt agenda thru Congress. Either way, if his Admin policies lead to higher unempyment, lower growth or economic crisis, he and GOP must be made to wear the mess by the Dems. A smart guy might see this and leave the status quo in place. This is why MEDICARE, SOC SEC and all but one federal agency remain in place despite Reagan. We ‘ll see what happens.
D. Mason
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: They railroaded Bernie who had the youth vote energized. You can say she beat him fair and square, and you can say Hillary isn’t in the pocket of Wall-Street, but just saying shit doesn’t make it true.
Major Major Major Major
@hueyplong: one of the benefits of depression, I guess, is that a lot of real-world occurrences don’t hold a candle to some of the things that live inside your head. I’m good, but thanks for the advice.
enplaned
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Horseshit. The idea that she was somehow irreplaceable, etc, is nonsense. If the field had been open, folks would have shown up. How they would have performed, who knows — but Kirsten Gillibrand, for instance, wrote a book, and that’s the usual signal that she was ready to throw her hat in the ring. I bet Andrew Cuomo would have tried (I hate the guy, but you didn’t say they had to be people worth a damn). As I said before, in 75, Jimmy Carter came out of the underbrush, won thru the primaries, and won the election.
And in 2016, a dark horse by the name of Donald Trump suddenly came to the fore in the crowded GOP primaries and, shockingly, won the general election. Shit like that happens.
LurkerExtraordinaire
@Tom Levenson: I look at my sweet little girl, and weep for her today, too.
cokane
@Mnemosyne: for just one example, Wayne County, Michigan, gave Obama 590,000 votes in 2012. Clinton, 500,00 votes. Trump is winning Michigan by less than 20,000 votes.
enplaned
@Amaranthine RBG: She had no business doing anything other than allowing Obama to replace her once she had her diagnosis.
Vhh
@danielx: The Trump voters want is 1950s era well paid low skill jobs in a white welfare state,which in the era of globalization only come via government subsidy, tariff barriers and entitlements. Those things require higher taxes or govt debts,and lead to lower profits, competitive failure, or trade wars, all anathema to the business wing of the GOP. Trump can be a pretend Prez and let Congress run things, or he can actually try to push his big govt agenda thru Congress. Either way, if his Admin policies lead to higher unempyment, lower growth or economic crisis, he and GOP must be made to wear the mess by the Dems. A smart guy might see this and leave the status quo in place. This is why MEDICARE, SOC SEC and all but one federal agency remain in place despite Reagan. We ‘ll see what happens.@Cermet: don’t forget that Hills won the popular vote.
Darkrose
@D. Mason: So can I come crash with you when they kill SSDI and my wife and I have nowhere to live? What about the folks here who are going to lose their health insurance? Or will you sill be congratulating youself and not have time to worry about those of us who are going to be hurt by this?
Major Major Major Major
@enplaned: this is a controversial opinion for some reason, but I agree. Retiring would have been the ethical thing to do.
Betty Cracker
@hueyplong:
You got that right.
rikyrah
@kindness:
Scared?
no
Nervous?
Yes.
It’s the beginning of the 3rd Reconstruction.
cokane
an interesting case study in michigan:
in Washetenaw county (University of Michigan): 122k votes Clinton, 121k votes Obama
Wayne Country (Detroit): 500k votes Clinton, 590k votes Obama
So, at least in MI it appears that minority dropoff may have been the bigger issue than youth dropoff
hueyplong
@Major Major Major Major: I didn’t mean to be patronizing. Sometimes I’m not as articulate as I’d like.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: The voting patterns are starting to seem too strategic.
Trump won with fewer votes than Romney got, but his vote in the critical states was much higher than Romney got – so rural voters in THOSE
states were enthusiastic voters – but rural voters in all the red states that the GOP wins anyway were less enthusiastic for Trump. I am getting suspicious.
catclub
@rikyrah:
Is that the thing that Rick Moranis is describing as happening with a giant slorg in Ghostbusters?
LurkerExtraordinaire
@Mnemosyne: Shit, I didn’t want to start a war in Iraq, and I HAD TO GO TO THERE.
Lots of people keep saying how we’re gonna be okay. Then I think back to the over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in arms and God knows how many Iraqis that didn’t make it, and I go, yeah, no, lots of people are not gonna be okay.
All I can do right now is self-care self-care self-care. To my people of color, please stay safe out there, as much as you can, especially black folks. Every time you die at the hands of police for no reason other than your existence, we will be there as your witness! To LGBT folks, especially youth, look for the helpers. There are tiny lights everywhere willing to help. My fellow ladies, stay vigilant. Protect your children, especially your daughters. Let them know that this fight, our fight, isn’t over. To my Muslim neighbors, I’ll stand up for you. You won’t be harassed or hurt without intervention from me. I’ll stand beside you.
Tomorrow the real work starts. Today is a day for grief.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@JPL:
And a whole lot of people ostensibly on our side were all to happy to go along with it, endlessly trumpeting ridiculous caricatures of the Dem nominee, because hey what harm could it possibly do? Despite everyone with half a brain knowing that turnout would be the key to stopping Agent Orange.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@rikyrah:
I hope you stay so strong and focused. I hope you keep commenting here. We need strength and positivity now more than ever.
geg6
@D. Mason:
Go fuck yourself asshole. Just go fuck yourself. I’ve had it with people like you, too.
geg6
@Keith G:
Whatever, dickhead. It’s not black or brown people who brought this on. Yes, I am ashamed to be white. My race is evil. I truly believe all of that today.
Singing Truth to Power
@Major Major Major Major: I’ll settle for some humiliation for him, and will hope that he lives to 104 remembering his defeat clearly.
RareSanity
@lamh36: As usual, everything negative in this country has in some way, directly or indirectly, been our fault since the first slave ships docked in this place. That is never going to change, because the more years that pass, the easier it is for each successive generation to forget the original sins of “the greatest country in the world”…genocide, slavery, and oppression.
These conservatives love to talk about the budget deficit, and how it’s is being left to their children. But they never talk about the moral debt incurred by this country, starting 400 years ago, that is still outstanding.
Looks like they’ve elected Trump to just declare bankruptcy on that too.
geg6
@D. Mason:
I hope you die a horrible and painful death. Today, you hateful piece of shit.
Caravelle
@catclub: Heh. I’m really having trouble wrapping my head around how the polling could have been so wrong, and part of me feels there could be something underhanded going on here, and hopes that it can be discovered and the country put back on the path of history I thought it was going on… though if there were vote rigging and fraud the actual consequence would be a clusterfuck of massive proportions, and even if Clinton did end up president she’d have huge legitimacy issues. Then again, she’d have those anyway wouldn’t she.
But all those articles about “here’s why it’s pretty much impossible to rig the elections” seemed pretty convincing, so I don’t know what underhanded thing could have happened exactly. Other than voter suppression and intimidation of course (has anyone considered if the shootings in California had an effect on turnout ? That news was pretty early wasn’t it ?).
D. Mason
@Darkrose: I am going to be hurt by this, but I was going to be hurt either way. Once again, I saw this election as a losers choice and decided to not bother. You can’t brow beat me by telling me how bad it’s going to be, bad was guaranteed from the start.
Shalimar
@Darkrose: Don’t waste your time. He thinks Hillary Clinton is every bit as irrational, crazy, corrupt and evil as Trump. Anything that happens in a Trump presidency, his mind will invent some way Clinton might have been worse. There is no reasoning with that kind of arrogant obliviousness.
lofgren
It’s impossible for me to blame Clinton. People keep talking about how flawed she is, but she is no more flawed and I would say considerably less flawed than any candidate we have ever run. And the fact is no candidate would ever have been perfect enough to avoid the problems she had to deal with, because most of it was imaginary bullshit. Obama has been a great President but the fact is he was elected on raw charisma. Not to say he wasn’t qualified on the merits, but ultimately it came down to the fact that he was handsome, young, and articulate. Faced with a choice between a granma who constantly needs our help with her emails and Eric Cartman, America chose the guy who will at least be funny.
I’ve heard from a couple of sources that racism alone can’t explain this. Racism should have been a good enough reason to reject Trump, but it wasn’t the only thing that got his voters to the polls. According to NPR some ridiculous percentage of them voted for Obama. Misogyny obviously played a huge role as well (I think probably more than racism but if ever there was a moot point it’s whether Trump voters were motivated more by hating this group vs. that group). But even the racists and misogynists combined can’t explain the absurdity of exit poll after exit poll showing that people thought Clinton would be a better President by every metric including agreeing with her policies and yet still voted for Donald Trump. That’s flat out insane. There is no way to combat insanity. The only thing we could have done differently would be nominate a White man because he is a White man and therefore doesn’t have the “flaws” that Clinton had. Arguably it would have been worth it, but it’s a tough sell for a party that wants to be progressive.
I observed this exchange on Facebook, paraphrased:
“I’m willing to be grabbed by the pussy if it gets our jobs back.”
“That won’t bring the jobs back.”
“THAT’S NOT THE POINT.”
You can’t argue with that. It’s pure crazy.
liberal
@PeakVT: That’s exactly where I’m coming from. _Millions_ of people? And like I said upthread, I think the voter suppression crap is treasonous.
liberal
@enplaned:
Yes.
Not only was the air sucked out of the room, it was sucked out of the room for the preceding 8 years.
D. Mason
@Shalimar: I guess your mind would have invented some way that Trump would have been worse when bad things happened under Clinton? Or did you imagine she was going to usher in a utopian liberal paradise? HAHA.
liberal
@Vhh:
Agree…that’s key. I don’t think the Dems messaging is typically very good or aggressive enough, though.
The problem is that Congress is chock full of real free market absolutists. They really do think that the private sector can provide health insurance and retirement benefits better than government. AFAICT, they probably even think education should be privatized. The only thing they’d be against privatizing is the military.
liberal
@D. Mason: Look, honestly, I hate Clinton myself. But Trump is orders of magnitude different. And the biggest difference is that the Republicans now have all three branches of government (or will have the USSC soon).
Neoliberalism is a slow, slow death, but it gives time for solutions for those of us opposed to it. These Republican f*cks are going to gut government, and quickly.
catclub
@Caravelle: I really want to look at how 2012 and 2016 compare in red states versus those few states that flipped. How do you selectively motivate those rural voters in the swing states?
D. Mason
@liberal: I disagree on the orders of magnitude. I think they’re cut from the same cloth but she’s a politician with an image to maintain and he’s a celebrity who’s unashamed of what he is. They were friends before they were enemies. Most importantly in my eyes she was foisted upon an America that’s been saying “NO!” for years and this is the conclusion. Obama was a decent but not great President and his coattails weren’t big enough for a stinker like Clinton to ride in on, partly because of her own actions 8 years ago. Let that sink in Balloon Juicers, the damage Clinton did to Obama in 2008 may have cost her the election of 2016, or should I say handed it to Trump? That’s all speculation but truthfully, how could the DNC have made such a huge gamble when the nation has been rejecting Hillary Clinto for so long? None of you are asking that question because you’re all pretending she won fair and square as someone said earlier.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
Ready to think a little more about the effect of their voter ID law, or does that still get dismissed out of hand?
dogwood
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t think people are saying that the voter I’d laws didn’t have an effect, it just does not completely account for the dramatic drop off in participation.
catclub
in texas, trump got 52.5% of the vote, Romney got 57.2% of the vote, so Trump is down 5% relative to Romney
but in Michigan he gets almost 3% more voters than Romney got, from 44.8 to 47.6% – relative to Texas he does 8% better than Romney.
Huh?
Jonathan Holland Becnel
@Mr. Mack:
This. This. This.
First things first: PAY ATTENTION TO THE LEFT WING.
2nd: PAY ATTENTION TO POOR PEOPLE
That’s it. BOOM.
And, Tom, idk how it looks from ur ivory fuckin tower, but you need to do some fuckin research.
the economy sucks. It’s not good. Obama hasn’t been good to poor people.
You have been in the Clinton bubble for so long you have no idea what’s going on.
SOOOOO LAZY, TOM. Blame it on racism and misogyny! I voted for Stein, so I must be wrong somehow!
So disappointed in Balloon Juice these past few months.
SFAW
@D. Mason:
@Jonathan Holland Becnel:
Oh, goody. The “I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO” crowd is here.
Anyone who thinks Trump and Clinton are even in the same state, never mind ballpark, vis-a-vis the damage they would do to the country is either not paying attention, or is so consumed with their “I FUCKING HATE HITLARY!” mindset that discussion is pointless. The only way Trump comes anywhere near Hillary is if he disavows everything he’s said to get the RWNJs on board with him. Although that’s still a possibility, it seems pretty unlikely. Barring that disavowal, the destruction that he can and probably will wreak on what some of us used to think of as the American ideal will be significant, to put it mildly.
Or are you thinking that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan will somehow work to control Trump’s excesses? Or maybe you’re of the Ralph Nader school of “thought” that said that “things will get so bad, the backlash will usher in a new generation of liberalism.” Let us know how that works out.
PIGL
@Caravelle: You are not going to get rid of the electoral college any more than you will get rid of gerrymandering and voter suppression. You need political power to do that, and you/we have none. And GOP are well-placed to ensure things stay that way. There are no do-overs this time.
The only way forward is the dissolution of the Union. The USA is a lost cause.
SFAW
@PIGL:
So fucking move. I don’t care where, as long as it’s outside the US and its territories.
And, no, it’s not snark. Shit like yours is why the Confederacy gets (justly) labeled “traitors.” So, I repeat: fucking move.
Davis X. Machina
@enplaned: As I said before, in 75, Jimmy Carter came out of the underbrush, won thru the primaries, and won the election. A year and a half after the resignation in disgrace, and pardon, of the incumbent president. That’s Trump-sized baggage.
PIGL
@SFAW: I don’t have to move. I’m Canadian, and don’t plan to ever cross your borders again.
I stated my considered opinion about what will be the long term consequences of this electoral catastrophe, and what I think is the best possible outcome. The failures that led to this situation can not, in my opinion, be repaired. The state that has withered, said Sun Tzu, can not be restored. I am sorry that you find this “treasonous” or unacceptable, and I know that many Americans love and are deeply loyal to their country. But at some point you have to ask if that love and loyalty are misplaced. And once that question is asked, it is answered, and things can fall apart very quickly. That is what I think is going to happen.
SFAW
@PIGL:
OK, so you’re Canadian, so I imagine you can’t be a traitor (which is the term I actually used, not “treasonous,” and there is a difference) to the US.
But you can still be a moran, even if Canadian. But thanks so much for gracing us with your highly-regarded opinion in this matter