Final tally: Clinton won popular vote by 2.86 million, with 48.1% of vote to Trump's 46.0%–only slightly better than Dukakis' 45.6% in 1988
— Steven Greenhouse (@greenhousenyt) December 19, 2016
NYT interviews 49 state election authorities: all but Kansas. Finds 1 confirmed case of noncitizen voting, in Oregon https://t.co/O5Kb5cmluO
— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 19, 2016
Apart from continuing to resist the firehose of Trumpdolyte lies and bullshit, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Trump won the popular vote if you only count the 3/5ths of the votes cast by non-white voters.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) December 21, 2016
There are more Trump voters in Los Angeles County than West Virginia, more Clinton voters in Texas than Massachusetts.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 19, 2016
Situation in NC has convinced me that if an R ever wins the pop vote but loses the Electoral College, the EC will be abolished 10 min later.
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) December 19, 2016
It seems weird at first that Trump can't stop whining but then you remember no one has ever liked him and everything he's ever tried failed. pic.twitter.com/tvyO3jJuav
— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) December 20, 2016
Pogonip
Has anyone heard from Soonergrunt or the other guy who was considering Trump-suicide (Archeopteryx?). I’m concerned about them.
patrick II
Trump: The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.
Putin: Oh, f*#k, what have I done.
Damien
What an incredible loser. Failed at business, mocked by the best society, and he not only managed to lose the popular vote but now he’s expected to actually work.
The only bigger losers are everyone who voted for him.
Cacti
To the surprise of none:
“Trust Vlad”
-Glenn Greenwald
Baud
I wonder how many third party voters would have voted for Clinton in a two way contest.
SiubhanDuinne
@Pogonip:
Pretty sure Soonergrunt posted or commented here a few days ago. And I know he posts on FB. I think he’s fine.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cacti:
Is there a compelling reason why the word “Journalist” isn’t in scare-quotes?
Roger Moore
@Pogonip:
Soonergrunt is still active on the Twitters, so he’s apparently OK.
aimai
A friend of mine told me her college age daughter (california) voted Jill Stein and her husband (a real asshole and ethnic white drunkard) voted Johnson. She voted for HRC and argued with both of them till she was blue in the face. Her daughter at least apologized afterwards. Its enough to make you cry thinking of the number of people (on both sides) who looked at the vote as a chance to piss off the hardworking mommy party while assuming that mommy would still win and pick up the pieces and run the government. Its a huge problem that people are so childish, spiteful, and stupid about voting and it is going to cost a lot of people in this country everything: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
rikyrah
@Cacti:
Phuck him
Mnemosyne
@Pogonip:
ArchTeryx is fine and has been commenting, but his remaining fine depends on whether New York State decides to end expanded Medicaid and/or change the rules post-Obamacare.
Mike Toreno
Look, raw numbers don’t matter; what matters is the moral substance of the voters. Let’s compare Charleston, West Virginia, with Inglewood, California. Inglewood is solid Clinton country, and it has some number of opioid addicts, who deliberately choose, or drift into that lifestyle, because they lack moral character. Charleston is solid Trump country, and it has people who are opioid addicts through no fault of their own, who have slipped into the habit as a reaction to economic anxiety.
Clearly, the people in Charleston deserve to have greater control over the path this country takes.
PLUS PLUS PLUS, if you take the West Coast and Northeast votes away from the total, Trump wins the popular vote in a landslide!
Baud
@aimai: This x 1000.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
I can say from unfortunate experience in 2000 that if you’re a liberal who voted third party when it counted, you feel like a real asshole when shit goes down, and casting that vote in a safe state like California doesn’t help that feeling.
Hopefully your friend’s daughter will only have to endure that guilty, sinking feeling every day for 4 years and not for 8 years like I did.
debbie
Trump will never, ever be legitimate.
MisterForkbeard
@aimai: Yep. I had a bunch of old highschool friends (from CA, so it mattered less) who were being spiteful and immature in their vote. As in, they thought voting for Hillary was wrong even though they agreed with her about most things, and were vastly resentful that people were “trying to tell them how to vote”.
ETA: What I’m saying is that they treated the election like a game instead of something real with consequences. You STILL see that from a lot of people, even after Trump. It’s baffling.
Pogonip
@SiubhanDuinne: Good! Does anyone know about the other guy?
mai naem mobile
I hope some network is smart enough to do some alternative programming to the inauguration because it’s a real opportunity .Like maybe ObaMas inauguration.
LesGS
@Pogonip: I’ve seen them both in the past few days, either here or at LGM.
Who I haven’t seen lately is Amir.
PsiFighter37
@Mnemosyne: My mom voted for Nader in 2000 in NY and really regretted it. She was a conservative before moving back to NY (she grew up in the middle of nowhere in CA), but that was the last time she did not vote Democratic all the way. I’m sure Trump winning is only going to reaffirm that behavior.
At this point, I can only hope that someone who passes as semi-sane in the incoming administration (which to me might be Gary Cohn – yes, know he’s the current president of Goldman, but he’s not an idiot or really all that partisan to begin with) gets ahold of Trump’s ear and does not let go. If he listens to Bannon and Flynn the whole time, we are all truly fucked. Tweeting about expanding our nuclear arsenal? What an asshole.
Pogonip
@Mnemosyne: Double good!
Juice Box
There were more Trump voters in LA county than in W. VA because LA county is actually bigger than 40 of the states. That is why we aren’t real Americans or something and our votes shouldn’t count.
NeenerNeener
@MisterForkbeard: I remember seeing interviews online with millenials who were thinking of voting for Trump because they thought his presidency would be “hilarious”. Sigh.
Lizzy L
@MisterForkbeard: When someone says “You can’t tell me how to vote,” what I hear is “You’re not the boss of me!” Whiny children, thinking that the election was all about their feelings.
germy
Juice Box
@MisterForkbeard: It was a game or a message, but not something that they thought would have consequences. There is a tweet today from some poor, dumb woman who tweeted DJT saying she campaigned and voted for him, but doesn’t want her O’care taken away because she has a pre-existing condition. She’s receiving a lot of twittery scorn.
germy
@NeenerNeener:
Wouldn’t the cinnamon challenge be more fun? And less risky?
hovercraft
@Pogonip:
He’s hanging in there.
Mnemosyne
@MisterForkbeard:
See also me at #14. If your friends don’t feel like gullible assholes yet, they will.
As I keep saying, a lot of people on the left didn’t realize that making people think that Hillary was untrustworthy was part of the con. Making them think that their vote didn’t matter because both Hillary and Trump were equally corrupt was part of the con.
Mnemosyne
@Juice Box:
Land masses should be allowed to vote, not people!
//
George
In response to an apparent Drudge-influenced meme that if you factor out California and New York, Trump won the popular vote in “real America” by a landslide, let me say this:
If you factor out the 11 terrorist turncoat states that voted to secede from the Union, along with Missouri and Kentucky which were symps during the War of Southern Tomfoolery, Clinton destroyed Trump by 7.5 million votes, or nine percent in a head-to-head comparison.
germy
@Mnemosyne: It would be the first time the GOP trusted the masses.
dmsilev
@MisterForkbeard:
I think once Jan 20 rolls around and things become real, it will sink in. Might take a while though; remember that it took 5ish years for Bush to become toxic. Trump is starting out at a much lower level of support than Bush did though, and I’m sure we all hope that there isn’t any sort of 9/11-ish event that causes the country to rally around Orange Shitgibbon. Especially since there’d be the entirely reasonable suspicion that such an event was staged.
SiubhanDuinne
@LesGS:
Yes, I was just wondering about him. Please, Amir, if you’re there — even in temporary lurk mode — let us know you’re okay.
MazeDancer
@SiubhanDuinne:
He posts on Twitter often. Including today. Here’s his feed, usually quite interesting.
Online, he seems as fine as any of us are in the post-Trump, pre-nuclear destruction world.
Yarrow
@Cacti: At this point I’m about to conclude that anyone who isn’t a Democrat or who hasn’t stated their opposition to Trump is working with the Russians. No exceptions.
germy
@SiubhanDuinne: I thought I saw him say he was stepping back and taking a break from commenting for a bit. (I could be wrong, mixing him up with someone else)
hovercraft
@Cacti:
Fuck GG.
Oh and look what his buddy is up to.
WORLD NEWS | Thu Dec 22, 2016 | 12:58pm EST
Snowden still has contacts with Russian intelligence: U.S. House Report
By Mark Hosenball and Jonathan Landay | WASHINGTON
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden “has had and continues to have contact” with Russian intelligence services, according to a newly declassified U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee report released on Thursday.
The Pentagon found 13 undisclosed “high risk” security issues caused by Snowden’s release to media outlets of tens of thousands of the U.S. eavesdropping agency’s most sensitive documents, the report said.
If China or Russia obtained access to information on eight of the 13 issues, “American troops will be at greater risk in any future conflict,” said the report, which contained a table outlining the “issues”, but like large portions of the document, was blacked out.
Snowden criticized the report on Twitter, saying it was “rifled with obvious falsehoods” and presented no evidence that his disclosures were made “with harmful intent, foreign influence, or harm. Wow.”
Snowden lives in Moscow under an asylum deal made after his leaks of classified information in 2013 triggered an international furor over the reach of U.S. spy operations. His defenders see him as a whistleblower who exposed the extend of U.S. government surveillance of citizens.
In a largely redacted section entitled “Foreign Influence,” the House report said that “since Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services.” The 37-page report was completed in September.
It called Snowden’s leaks “the largest and most damaging public release” of top-secret materials in U.S. intelligence history. The report was released at a tense time in Washington over U.S. government charges of Russia hacking of the U.S. presidential election.
The report also contained criticism of the U.S. intelligence community’s responses to Snowden’s disclosures, saying it failed to thoroughly review all of the documents he released or to implement sufficient safeguards against future unauthorized leakers.
“The committee remains concerned that more than three years after the start of the unauthorized disclosures, NSA, and the IC (Intelligence Community) as a whole, have not done enough to minimize the risk of another massive unauthorized disclosure,” the report said.
It noted that the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s defense and security committee said in June that Snowden, who worked for the CIA before being hired by an NSA contractor, “did share intelligence” with the Russian government.
Elizabelle
@George: Thank you!
Cacti
@Yarrow:
I think GG is starting to get a little sensitive about some of the well-earned criticism that he’s a Kremlin water carrier.
Lately he’s been saying that Democrats need to stop calling “everyone” a Putin stooge. By “everyone,” I’m pretty sure he means “me”.
Elie
@Mnemosyne:
This. Sigh.
I am still inconsolable that this happened. I see no easy way out of this. We are going to have to go through hell of uncertainty and it will take us a while to come up with an opposition strategy. He is endangering our government and our people. Right now all we can do is try to harden some of the more soft people and programs and resist best we can.
I truly never thought I would see this day….
NeenerNeener
@dmsilev: Would the country rally around Trump if the attack happened to one of his properties, whether here on overseas? By not divesting he’s just daring some radical whack job to make a statement. I won’t have any sympathy for him, but I’m not part of his base.
Mnemosyne
@dmsilev:
Gore won by a lot fewer popular votes than Hillary did. Like 2.4 million less.
That’s a whole lot of people who already hate Trump with a passion.
Raven Onthill
Me, back in mid October (I may have posted an earlier version here): “The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy or the grey aliens or the 12 foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control. The truth is more frightening, nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”—Alan Moore
This election has seen widespread support for third party candidates, ceding the choice of officials to other voters who vote for one of the major-party candidates or, worse, the side which has better party discipline. There is much talk of “sending a message.” There is no-one to send a message to, only our peers. There is no-one to receive that message, no god, no king. If we do not set our hands to the tiller, the world goes adrift.
George
@Mnemosyne: And the idea that discouraging people from voting for Clinton was part of the con was so freaking transparent to so many of us, and yet many people were unable to understand it before the morning of November 9.
I grew weary of arguing with people who were on the fence about voting for Clinton because she wasn’t the perfect candidate–as if any candidate could be perfect.
I await the election in, say, 2028, when a Democratic president has rebuilt the economy, but many on the left simply cannot vote for the Democratic successor because s/he hasn’t “done enough to earn their support.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Elie:
That formulation, to me, suggests that you thought about the possibility and rejected it.
Me? I honestly never thought about the possibility.
I think I must be far more naïve than you are.
Mnemosyne
@Cacti:
Like I’ve been saying, the only question remaining in my mind about GG is “dupe or operative”?
hovercraft
@Mike Toreno:
I’m assuming that you are being sarcastic, right? You are channeling the right wing justification, at least their public one, cause you know they think their losers, for the opioid epidemic in “real America”.
If not DIAFF.
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
I hope it’s just that simple (I missed his saying that, but some of the post-election threads were so long I skipped a lot of the comments).
satby
@SiubhanDuinne: Then I am too because Donny Putinsbitch was just so obviously unfit, that the Republicans I do know weren’t admitting they would support him.I thought this was one time they wouldn’t fall in line. But party before country, always.
Mnemosyne
@Raven Onthill:
Here’s my one pushback on Moore: there’s a difference between conspiracies and conspiracy theories.
Watergate was a conspiracy. Iran-Contra was a conspiracy. Conspiracies happen all the time.
At this point, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that Russia conspired to tilt the election to Trump. There is plenty of credible evidence to show that, and no need to come up with “theories” to explain it.
At this point, denying that Russia meddled in our election is like denying that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War. People trying to claim otherwise have a motive for trying to distract us.
Baud
@hovercraft: I read it as snark.
debbie
@satby:
Other than my AHole brother (1 of 3) and one of his AHole kids, no one admitted to me they would be voting for Trump. I knew they didn’t like Clinton, but I couldn’t imagine they would think Trump was a good idea.
Elie
@SiubhanDuinne:
I had read historical novels and read about authoritarian governments “elsewhere”. I knew that the anti government racial messages were damaging to our public cohesiveness but I didn’t think we were this far gone. I didn’t think that a group of Americans would trust a foreign government more than their own – that facts were no longer driving their world. They are intractable -unapproachable They cannot be talked down or away.
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
I think he forgot the sarcasm tag.
For newish commenters’ future reference, if a comment seems like it might be a little too dry, a double slash after it will give the right impression. Like so: //
Captain C
@hovercraft:
Not even a nondenial denial. Basically, “I did it, but I meant well.”
Mike in NC
@NeenerNeener: Now I’m wondering if Trump will feel the need to beef up security at his private properties, and sticking the bill with us taxpayers.
JMG
It takes about six minutes and a dozen slides to show that the idea Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone is ridiculous (I know, in the ’70s I used to do it). But people HATED that my organization couldn’t tell them who was behind an obvious conspiracy. People want answers, and they’ll take a stupid, even obviously false one, over “we dunno.”
Captain C
@Cacti: I haven’t paid enough attention to GG to tell if he’s got a case of NPD, but if he does, this
is probably accurate.
Это курам на смех
@debbie:
Our system elected him legitimately. He will never be worthy of the office, or an iota of respect, but he did win the job. Had Hillary won with Russian and media help and three million fewer votes, the other side would be screaming that she had stolen it.
Let’s put our energy into the fight that’s ahead.
Captain C
@Raven Onthill:
I suspect that deep down, this is the actual target of the message, and the message is “I’m better than you.”
SiubhanDuinne
@satby:
Yup. A very bitter lesson.
dmsilev
@Mnemosyne: Trump is coming into office with the lowest approval ratings pretty much ever, and unlike even Bush, he isn’t even trying to pretend to care about all the people who didn’t vote for him. That’s not a recipe for gaining support outside his base, and if anything ever happens to shake his base support…
EBT
deadbeat donnie Got a real Z list line up for his event. http://heavy.com/news/2016/12/donald-trump-inauguration-ball-ceremony-musicians-performers-celebrities-performances-list-all-american/
Elie
I always thought and said Snowden was a traitor and that I hoped he never saw the US ever again unless in an orange jumpsuit. GG has always been an insufferable defender of Snowdens treason and it appears an apologist for Putin.
dmsilev
@Mike in NC: And what happens the first time an American soldier is killed protecting some Trump-branded hotel in East Carjackistan?
Baud
@EBT: Good. I want Day 1 to be shitty and also the best day of his term.
DCF
@George:
Hubris cost HRC the election. While there were a multiplicity of factors that contributed to her defeat, the dismissive overconfidence – and lack of initiative/action – emblematic of her campaign cost her dearly….
Exaggeration, you say? Read this article from Tuesday (12/20), documenting the attempt(s) of the Sanders campaign to assist HRC in the critical swing states that ultimately led to her loss:
Team Bernie: Hillary ‘F*cking Ignored’ Us in Swing States
Hindsight is 20/20, but members of Bernie Sanders’s team in critical swing states say they knew Hillary Clinton was going to lose well before Election Day—and their warnings were ignored.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/12/20/team-bernie-hillary-fucking-ignored-us-in-swing-states.html
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Nothing is learned, no one reads history or has studied comparative politics, no one understands how fragile the rights we enjoy are and what it takes to ensure them, no one thinks of anything beyond satisfying their animal urges or how anything works on any level, on the left or the right, no one wants to understand context, nuance or appreciates complexity. This country has too many consumers and not enough citizens. I’m beyond disgusted, have become fatalistic, and although I’m not suicidal, I have no reason to hope for anything hopeful and feel like I’ve definitely lived too long.*
*even though there are more of us than them – which just makes it all just so much fucking worse.
Mnemosyne
@JMG:
I hope your slides showed the actual position that John Connolly was sitting in to show that there was no “magic bullet,” just a rifle shot that went on a perfectly straight trajectory from the window of the book depository.
Mike Toreno
@hovercraft: Of course I’m serious. Look at any David Brooks column on the subject. You either have to let yourself view David Brooks as an idiot, or you have to accept my analysis as correct.
Taylor
@NeenerNeener:
I hear Madame Lafarge has their names.
Mnemosyne
@DCF:
Oh, is that the same Daily Beast whose reporter went to a woman who had been raped as a child and erroneously told her that Hillary Clinton had mocked her while defending her rapist?
Cacti
@DCF:
The Russian interference –
EBT
@DCF: Why are you fine with voter suppression?
George
@DCF: The “blame Clinton” ship sailed long ago.
And maybe if Team Sanders hadn’t been so foolish to keep up the offensive on Clinton during the primaries after it became apparent that Sanders had no path to the nomination, and especially when he was mathematically eliminated, I might listen to what someone from Team Sanders had to say.
But as you’ll recall, Bernie and his minions said they’d keep fighting till the convention, even if it meant they had to coax superdelegates over to their side, despite all the hot air they blew in claiming from the start that superdelegates were bad mojo.
Why would Clinton really care what Team Sanders had to say if it had devoted so much time and effort and money stabbing her in the back?
You want hubris? Look to Team Sanders as well as the man himself and you’ll find it.
Это курам на смех
@DCF: Thank you for your concern.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@DCF:
and fuck that fucking bullshit – if your takeaway from this election was that there was an untapped groundswell of demand for a larger government role in everyone’s lives, higher tax rate, more Scandinavian style economy, you’re a fucking loon. If Bernie ever got around to having to embrace Black Lives Matter and affirming gay, women’s and immigrant rights like he would have needed to do to get the Democratic nomination, his left wing dictator loving past would have been hung on him like the millstone that it was. Bernie was Trump Lite – why would they choose him over the real deal? What was he hiding in his tax returns, anyway?
Baud
@George:
They’ll cling to it forever. How long have we heard about the “Dean Scream”?
DCF
@Mnemosyne:
Have you witnessed a news outlet that hasn’t gotten a story wrong? Don’t dismiss the legitimacy of a well-reported story because it doesn’t align with your neoliberal position(s) – reflected in the candidacy of HRC.
It’s cathartic to acknowledge the facts and move forward. If you want to engage in entropic denial and rationalization(s), you had better prepare yourself for a two-term Trump presidency. IMO, four years is four years too long….
Final thought…Donald Trump puts the ‘twit’ in Twitter….
dmsilev
@DCF:
Handy hint: Slamming random words together doesn’t make you insightful or anything like that, it makes you look really fucking stupid.
Yarrow
@NeenerNeener:
Honestly, I think this is because of lot of young people don’t have a lot of connection to just how bad it can be. The rise of fascism is happening as the WWII generation is leaving us. People don’t remember just how bad it was. How bad it can be. And those who do aren’t around to talk some sense into people who are talking about Trump and fascism as if it’s a joke.
If you or your parents or even grandparents, but you were young enough to really know them, remember those terrible things then Trump doesn’t seem like a joke. Otherwise it’s all just fun and games. And really, how bad can it be?
Sometimes I think people just have to experience it for themselves to know.
Cacti
@DCF:
It said neoliberal.
Drink!
DCF
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Articulate as always…given to emotional reactivity much?…dialogue with you is akin to escorting a burn victim to a fireworks show….
Sanders’ policy positions are simply extensions of the gains made by FDR. If you wish to be a ‘Third Way’ Democrat, have at it….
I offer this article – from the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog – for you perusal:
A false dichotomy
[ 178 ] December 15, 2016 | Paul Campos
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/12/a-false-dichotomy
Cacti
@DCF:
It said third way.
Drink!
Baud
@efgoldman: Or Trump voters.
Mnemosyne
@DCF:
Wevs, dude. Unless you show me a story that Bernie’s folks in WI and MI were working to get voter IDs for the voters of color who needed them, all of their polls and surveys were just more pissing in the wind.
Do you know what the #1 indicator was that someone was going to vote for Trump? Thinking that Black people are getting more than their share. If you think those people would have been swayed to Clinton, you’re living in the same dream world they are.
Here’s what I was told by someone I know who lives in the Detroit suburbs: all of the white people he knew voted for Trump because they were pissed at Black Lives Matter. They’re not “economically insecure.” They’re just racist assholes who recognized a kindred spirit in Trump.
Mnemosyne
Damn it. Front pagers, I think I have a comment that went to the trash. Please to retrieve?
Captain C
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
If I had to guess, a combination of him being a lot wealthier than a good revolutionary should be (plus the sources of that wealth) and stinginess when it comes to charitable giving.
Mnemosyne
@George:
Shhh. We’re not supposed to mention that St. Bernie the Incorruptible damaged the Democratic Party with his incessant whining about how the DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schultz were plotting against him — see,
the RussiansWikileaks released emails proving that they were right all along that the Democrats are totally corrupt and no better than the Republicans!As I keep saying, people like this troll are very proud of themselves because they only fell for the first part of the con, and they get mad when you tell them that some of us never fell for the con at all.
Captain C
@dmsilev: “Entropic Denial” sounds like it should be an Ozric Tentacles song title.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Captain C:
My guess is it showed the benefits accrued to being married to his grifting fraud of a wife.
trollhattan
@EBT:
Jesus, actual lounge acts and wedding bands. That’s some gold-plated inaugural turds right there.
Which congresscritter gets to yell “You lie!” this time?
Cacti
@Captain C:
I laugh bitterly when thinking that Bernie’s reward to himself for his fight for the proletariat was buying his third house.
DCF
@efgoldman:
How does it feel to be a relic?
misterpuff
@Raven Onthill: Even if the message is clear, The Elite invariably misinterpret it.
Messages don’t work, The Powerful have self serving myopia regarding the needs of the masses.
That is why I’ve come to see if you want change, you make it happen. Make it happen in your personal life, and put it out to the public by taking initiative, whether that is blogging, donating or taking it to the streets.
trollhattan
@DCF:
It’s just like being a vapid douchenozzle only more aches and pains, so you’ll certainly recognize it when you arrive.
DCF
@efgoldman:
HRC’s weaknesses fed into every one of Trump’s ‘strengths’….
It’s high time to learn from our accumulated mistakes, and move forward…it’s clear to me that this commentariat can justifiably be characterized as an ‘HRC hive’, but denial only goes so far…OTOH, it can be entrenched and persistent…
Captain C
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I wouldn’t be surprised at that.
weaselone
@DCF:
Hillary’s actual policy platform was not “third way democrat”. This makes the argument invalid.
DCF
@trollhattan:
Why wait when I have you for a template?
Cacti
Another hero of the hair on fire left has made no secret of selling out for some of that sweet Russian loot.
How Ed Schultz transformed from MSNBC lefty to the American face of Moscow media
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Captain C:
..in addition to the things you mentioned.
Mnemosyne
@DCF:
She had the support of Black people, he didn’t.
He has a peni$, she doesn’t.
You’re right, there are lots of things about her that Trump voters hated.
Cacti
@DCF:
Why did Zephyr Teachout lose?
Major Major Major Major
@DCF: god, what a hopeless bore you are.
Where do we pick up these assholes?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Cacti:
Why is there a new Republican governor in Vermont?
That’s some fucking revolutionary shit right there, amirite?
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: At the asshole emporium?
Cacti
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Why did Russ Feingold lose to Ron Johnson for the second time?
Patricia Kayden
@Yarrow: But didn’t Trump get more of the senior citizen vote while millennial voters went for Secretary Clinton? Surely those oldsters remember the bad times you mention and yet still eagerly voted for a fascist.
Miss Bianca
@weaselone:
Oh, why let facts get in the way of a good story?
Except that it’s not a good story – it’s the same nauseous cant that these BernieBoyz can’t seem to let go of – ever. The fault lies not in the horrendous interplay of sexism, racism and classism that made white people spite-vote the Shitgibbon into office – not in the machinations of a GOP which actively suppressed minority votes – no, it’s the fault of “Third Way Democratism”, which hasn’t been a fucking factor in an election in over 20 years.
The BernieBoyz remind me of the Communists I read about who were still beating up on the Social Democrats for not being “lefty” enough – in the Nazi concentration camps, while they were all waiting to be gassed to death.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: oh, down in the asshole district. Makes sense.
weaselone
@DCF:
She did nothing of the sort. She had numerous progressive planks in her platform including support for higher education and the minimum wage even prior to Bernie posting his platform. Also things like gun control, mental health and racial justice.
As for the inability of individuals who have received financial support from Wall Street being unable to regulate them. That’s absolute BS. The two presidents who clamped down on big business the hardest were both Roosevelts. Hillary’s the only candidate who incorporated regulating the shadow banking industry into her platform while the current President elect who did not take much money from Wall Street going to place more than a half dozen vampire squid tentacles in his cabinet or key positions in his administration.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: have you noticed they all write the same? Sort of the counterpart to the “college republican” tenor.
Matt McIrvin
@MisterForkbeard: I think I am beginning to understand it. (There was a conversation about this on LGM a while ago, in which some of the commenters had good insights about the psychology.)
It’s not that they’re treating it as a game; it’s that they treat voting as an expressive act. They do this because that’s what we tell them, in PSAs and in school: that “your vote is your voice,” that you vote to make yourself heard to the mighty.
If that’s what you’ve internalized, you could think that voting for a candidate you don’t think is the best one is morally wrong. It’s some kind of cheat, or a lie. You have a moral obligation to vote for the candidate who is closest to your preferences and ideals, and if the system creates a bad outcome as a result, that’s the bad system’s fault, not yours.
And maybe on some level they’re right, that what we really need is a better voting system that isn’t so susceptible to spoiler effects from third-party/independent candidates (there are many choices). It’s probably too much to ask that people do this kind of strategic gaming-out of the election before voting. It’s a design flaw.
Notice how the Democrats couldn’t even get all of their electors to vote in a sensible strategic way; some of them made strange expression-motivated votes or were involved in some kind of hopeless plan to do something other than vote for Clinton. If you can’t even get the Electoral College to behave strategically, what hope do we have with the general population?
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: exactly this.
My husband had a good quip about it I like to use. Voting can either be seen as a means of personal expression or a way of preventing bad things. Both are legitimate views, but only one prevents bad things.
hovercraft
@EBT:
You just know that the z-list he’s got is just chafing him. For the birther in chief to not be able to top the celebrities who flocked to around the Obama’s. All those performances at the White House, the birthday parties, they had the everyone there for free, no bribes needed. I wonder how much pressure foreign leaders are going to be under to prove that they love the Emperor more than they loved the imposter. Wil and Kate had them over for a private dinner at their house, King Abdullah personally drove him to the airport in Jordan, people around the world were excited to be around that one, will the shitgibbon demand more, and more importantly what will he do if they don’t show him the same adulation?
Keith G
@George: At the end the the day, it was up to Hillary and her team to nail this thing down…to win. She had a few years to get her ducks in a row . She did not win. She took my money and lost. It is on her. Yes she faced rough times…Presidents face rough times too…But she lost the plot and seemed to have not gotten a smart read on what this election was about…or iF she did, she never changed her course to meet the different needs. Hillary’s completely regrettable slogan was, “I’m with Her” Pfffft!. Which means she set the goal of the game…make Her toxic. Seems to me that given that, that some time ago, she would have had all her flight decks cleared and ready to do combat. But…no. She never could find an authentic voice to speak to those who were tired of insiders and insider rhetoric.
Dan Pfeiffer:
.
Jon Favreau:
Blaming Sanders is stupid and will cost us in the future. Not because he is the future, but because it is time to let it go and build to that future instead of being bone-headed about the past. And…. Sanders is not to blame. He forged a message that many voters wanted to hear and were hopeful to find a warrior to advance into battle.
By the way, both Pfeiffer and Favereau feel that given who voted and why they voted, that Sanders might have gotten the Dem voters who voted for Clinton and picked up some who strayed.
magurakurin
@Raven Onthill:
This, is very well said in my opinion. Worthy of highlighting.
hovercraft
@Mike Toreno:
Since David Brooks has never been wrong about any single thing ever, I’m going to have to go with him. I’ve been told that he is one of the nations best colunists, and one of the most reasonable, so he must be right. All of our problems are because of our moral failings, if we could just get back to our godly ways, and listen to heartland America, all our problems would just magically dissapear.
zhena gogolia
@EBT:
Gee, and all Obama had was Aretha and Beyonce and 1000 other A-listers, Yo-Yo Ma, anyone?
Baud
@Keith G:
Yet the entire rest of your comment is about blaming Hillary. Interesting.
Tom Q
@George: Ever since the break-up of the Roosevelt coalition, a contingent of leftier-than-thou’s has periodically persuaded enough voters that the Democratic nominee isn’t worthy of their votes. In 1968, Gene McCarthy helped make Hubert Humphrey — one of the greatest Civil Rights champions the country had known to that point — into a pariah, which might well have been all the difference in a super-tight election. In 1980, Ted Kennedy thought Jimmy Carter was a betrayer of the left (Jimmy Carter! now a hero to those same people who campaigned against him in 1980), trashing him in the primaries and opening the door to John Anderson siphoning off liberal votes in the Fall. We all know what Ralph Nader did to Gore. And Jill Stein repeated his effort this year. in the name of Bernie (even though without Bernie’ support).
Those last two examples hurt worst, because in each case, Dems finally seemed to be grabbing hold of the country’s direction again, after the long Reagan dominance. A third term in either case would have accomplished what Bush the Father’s did in ’88: ratified the people’s preference for one party’s vision. But a dissatisfied minority on the left thought it was more important to make a statement (amounting to “I didn’t get everything I dreamed of”), and each time we ended up with a set-back that not only delayed potential Democratic dominance, but dug a further hole from which the next Dem president (god willing) will need to spend much of his energy just extracting us from, rather than moving us ahead.
Someone explain to me how this qualifies as a strategy. And how many times do we need to repeat it before people stop listening to the false prophets?
George
@Major Major Major Major: Even the finest cashmere sweaters often pick up a bit of nasty cat hair.
EBT
@trollhattan: Outside of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir there isn’t an actual group or musician there.
Aleta
@Keith G: She took your money?
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
I still don’t see the Jewish Socialist doing better against the white supremacist anti-Semite. YMMV.
I’m also skeptical of the white guys telling us they totally know why other white guys didn’t vote for Hillary, and it definitely wasn’t because of racism or misogyny. As I said in the previous thread, those guys are starting to sound to me like the people who insist that slavery wasn’t really the root cause of the Civil War.
I still believe that the main reason this election was lost in those four states was that the Republicans deliberately gamed it out that way, led by Karl Rove, starting in 2011. Trump benefited from the plan, but it was basically a dead-man switch that any Republican would be able to trigger.
EBT
@hovercraft: And he can’t get people with offers of ambassadorships.
hovercraft
@Cacti:
Not shocking, TPP sent him over the edge, he tramsformed from being somewhat annoying and barely watchable to being completely unwatchable. But it’s nice to see that he’s gone full circle, he started off as a winger sportscaster, to being a purer than thou lefty. He was also one of the purity ponies who exhorted democrats to not vote in 2010, to punish the for Obamacare and it’s lack of a public option.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: sanders might have got more of the lunchpail types, but considering they were mainly mad about immigration and other social-ish changes (voters who cited the economy went Clinton) not a lot. Meanwhile I just don’t see nearly as many POC turning out for Sanders.
Miss Bianca
@Keith G: Except once again…God, you guys are a bore…someone has to point out that Sanders COULDN’T EVEN WIN THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY. He lost, not by a margin of 80,000 votes, but by 3 million. So this “oh, he *totally* could have won a bunch of “missing Democratic votes” in the general election!” is beyond wishful thinking. You, and all these guys who believe this shit, have to stop huffing glue or whatever it is that’s affecting your brains so badly. Ot at least stop yapping about your delusions here.
Why is that you Team Sanders guys always seem to think the lesson “going forward” is not “wow, we really have to look at what the GOP is doing to kill democracy in this country and fight it” but “wow, we have to be more like the Democrats who lost this election *far more decisively than Clinton*”?
schrodingers_cat
@hovercraft: MT is DougJ trying out a new troll persona.
Mnemosyne
@Tom Q:
I’ve just been straight up calling it a con. The con is Both candidates are corrupt, so it doesn’t matter who you vote for. Not surprisingly, this always benefits Republicans, who don’t give a shit whether or not their candidate is corrupt.
Some people love to quote Benjamin Franklin about security, but there’s a more important one to keep in mind:
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: Everybody seems to forget that Trump picked up the missing Republicans who didn’t show in 2008 and 2012.
Miss Bianca
@Tom Q: yeah, what you said.
@Mnemosyne: yeah, what you said, too.
hovercraft
@schrodingers_cat:
Thanks, I try to ignore the trolls, but since it was a new name, I thought I’d try to engage.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: that, and… Trump won in no small part because he was perceived as “strong”, on the economy and on foreign policy. Sanders did not speak to voters looking for strength, even if it was presented through meaningless and often self-contradictory gibberish.
FP is actually one area where I actually liked what Sanders said, and those comments on Israel/Palestine would have been disastrous for him.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Yep. And they would have been thrilled to vote against the Jewish Socialist from elitist Vermont.
EBT
Now that the state department complied with an order to name the positions of people who worked on women’s rights and gender equality I worry that changing my name with social security will ultimately come back to bite me on the ass.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
You’re so wrong.
His fulsome praise of Fidel Castro would have been a huge hit in Florida.
His anti-immigration votes would have really gone over well with the Mexican-American voters in New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. Ditto his vote to dump Vermont’s toxic waste in a Texas border town.
And his Moscow honeymoon and Central American rally appearances where the crowds chanted “Here, there, everywhere the Yankee will die” would have really won over the heartland types.
Sanders voters imagine a fantasy general election where he’d have gotten the same kid gloves treatment that Hillary gave him.
Mike Toreno
@hovercraft: Let’s sit down together and resolve our differences over lunch at the salad bar at Applebees. No matter how far apart we are, I’m sure we can meet in the middle. The most important thing to do is to find common ground, to eschew identity politics, and to free ourselves from the tyranny of labels.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major:
Maybe not, but my impression was that Sanders actually got more support than Clinton from younger POC. It was a similar generational split as with white Democrats, only maybe more extreme.
geg6
@Keith G:
I probably would not have voted for president for the first time since coming of age. I considered, and still do, that loser Sanders only marginally a better choice than Trump. I think he’s a lazy, grifting know nothing who cares nothing at all about women and minority rights and concerns and who I wouldn’t vote for for dog catcher. Besides, he wouldn’t have beaten That Man. If you believe he would have, you don’t know any actual people who voted for him.
SFBayAreaGal
Is DCF and NR the same repetitive boorish person? Me thinks so.
Nora
@George: This. So much this.
EBT
@SFBayAreaGal: I could see NR realizing that no one will reply to his trump voting ass means he needs a new screen name.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: I believe that is the case, but keep in mind that younger POC are very much in the minority of POC voters.
Cacti
@SFBayAreaGal:
I don’t think so.
DCF is more verbose while saying nothing of substance.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
From an objective perspective, that was some quality ratfuckery by the Republicans. Enlisting a Russian autocrat and an anarchist asshole to
screw the Democrats was impressive. They couldn’t have sold that idea on House of Cards.
geg6
@Cacti:
My thought exactly.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
the most telling moment at that “town hall” Chris Hayes held with Sanders was the voter who said “free college” was the moment she quit listening to anything that came out of Sanders’ mouth. That’s what would’ve happened to Sanders self-indulgent (and I’ll always think, more than a little calculated) over-promising in a general election.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Matt McIrvin:
Sanders strategy for winning the primaries by appealing to white “economic anxiety” was to split the Obama coalition along fault lines – young from old, black from white, north from south, all while feeding the Clinton is corrupt and rigging the process against him, poor beset old white male messiah Bernie Sanders (unless he won, which was of course totally legit). When he couldn’t accept losing to a girl, he amped up the “I was robbed” narrative, which his cultists swallowed up whole, just like the con Trump ran, except on white male cultural resentment steroids.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: Yes, young people in general are less likely to turn out, which always blunts the effect of having a political youth movement.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Jesus, so much this.
Yeah, and their whole newfound creed that “we need to dial back on the Identity Politics and reach out to all those poor White Working Class voters!” sounds a lot to me like the people who insisted that after the Civil War the really important thing was for white Yankees and white Rebels to hug it out and were totally okay throwing black people under the bus for seventy years in order to make that happen.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He got such a free pass on all his fucking bullshit, it was ridiculous.
ETA: Just like Trump did, btw. Which is why Bernie would never have out-Trumped Trump, because Trump is a much bigger and better bullshitter for white male supremacy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cacti: DCF is more verbose while saying nothing of substance.
Oh, so now links to the Young Turks and things someone said once on the internet dot com are “nothing of substance”
I guess you were too blinded by your cowardly bougie devotion to Hiterly to notice that those links are boldfaced. Bold Faced.
Miss Bianca
@Cacti: You know, I almost…*almost*…wish sometimes that Bernie Sanders *had* gone head-to-head with Trump. If only so that, once he had gotten his clock cleaned decisively by the Shitgibbon, we could have had the dubious satisfaction of listening to all these pundits gravely opining that the American people just weren’t ready for such a radical candidate, and if *only* Hillary Clinton had been the Democratic candidate, she *totally* could have won. Look, these polls show it!
Cacti
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
It wasn’t just that Hillary beat his ass by 3 million votes. She did it while barely laying a glove on any of the easy or obvious attack points.
On what planet would he have been a stronger GE candidate?
Kropadope
I don’t see this happening, though, because the electoral college seems to be a pretty reliable boon to the party of the Old Confederacy. So if that ever happens, it will be because the Ds and Rs switched regions again and the electoral college still won’t be abolished, because it will be the same unethical, racist, sewage piles benefitting.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
how many Rachel Maddow show viewers want to watch Kellyanne Conway sneer and demagogue her way in circles around too kindly Doc Maddow? This is an odd programming decision.
Joy Reid would probably call her out on her nonsense, and I think even Lawrence O’Donnell would be more likely to push back.
Chris
@Cacti:
You win the thread.
But seriously, the Sandinista/Castro shit alone would have sunk him like a stone even in the Democratic primaries. The guy was treated with absolute kid gloves throughout the entire process.
Matt McIrvin
@Kropadope: The interesting thing, though, is that back during the late 19th century when the Democratic Party was the party of the old Confederacy, there were two other presidential elections in which there was an EV/PV split, and they still both went to the benefit of the Republicans.
(Granted, one of those was basically the result of a bargain in which the South got the last bits of Reconstruction lifted in exchange for Rutherford B. Hayes getting in.)
Chris
@geg6:
You’ve probably noticed that I too consider Sanders to be a fucking turd and make no bones about it. But if he were the one being inaugurated next January, then Social Security, Medicare, the ACA, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act would all be safe for at least another four years. At least from all the elected parts of the government – the courts are always a wild card, but there again, Sanders in the White House would’ve meant some kind of left-of-center ninth judge on the Supreme Court.
Eye on the ball. I would’ve considered him a terrible candidate, but I’d still have crawled over broken glass to vote and campaign for him, and not just against Trump but against any Republican candidate up to and including Very Serious Super Moderates like Kasich.
Kropadope
@Matt McIrvin: Huh, I didn’t know that. Were they decided by the EC or was the decision passed to the House of Representatives? Like how does the EC negotiate Reconstruction policy?
Iowa Old Lady
I used to think voters would be put off by Sanders honeymooning the in the Soviet Union but given what we see with Trump, perhaps that would have been a plus.
Chris
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
And that was almost certainly because Hillary She-Witch and the Corrupt Neoliberal Establishment were trying to avoid the unhealable rift and long term bad blood that would’ve resulted if they’d waged a scorched earth campaign against Bernie. (The kind that his past would’ve made ridiculously easy to wage).
Naturally, the little shit was too self-absorbed to realize they were doing that, and certainly too self-absorbed to do the same thing himself.
Matt McIrvin
@Kropadope: 1876 was the closest previous analogue to the fucked-up mess that was the 2000 election. Samuel Tilden (the Democrat) won the popular vote, but several states’ electoral votes were disputed, and instead of the Supreme Court shutting down a recount, Congress ended up setting up a weird ad-hoc commission to settle the matter, basically by horse-trading–it was completely extraconstitutional and arguably unconstitutional. “Rutherfraud B. Hayes” was a popular epithet.
1888 was more like 2016, I guess–relatively straightforward, but incumbent Grover Cleveland won a narrow plurality of the popular vote while Benjamin Harrison beat him in the electoral vote by narrowly carrying a couple of significant swing states (with help from Tammany Hall). Cleveland came back four years later and won.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Iowa Old Lady:
No one cared about that with Trump – they voted for him because he expressly stated the people he wanted to inflict pain on were the same people they want to see suffer. Not one of Trump’s voters cared about economic inequality. Trump ran on white supremacy, and they came out of the woodwork to vote for that.
Chris
@Iowa Old Lady:
Sanders speaks to the only part of the Soviet Union the right wing ever really objected to – the word “socialist” in “USSR.”
Trump speaks to pretty much everything else about it – the KGB thug squads, the Red Army marching into Hungary and Afghanistan, and the corrupt apparatchiks robbing their country blind. All things that’re the right wing’s wet dream.
Captain C
@Kropadope: IIRC there were disputed electoral votes. The House awarded them to Hayes in exchange for the end of Reconstruction and the removal of Federal troops from the former Confederacy, and a promise that Hayes would not run for reelection in 1880.
Kropadope
@Captain C: @Matt McIrvin: Interesting how the EC was supposed to be a check on the populace and winds up, in these cases, actively promoting corruption. Now it’s just undermining voters in all but a handful of states. I mean, we might as well only hold the election in Ohio.
Mnemosyne
@SFBayAreaGal:
Nah. Different assholes cut from the same cloth.
frosty
@Mnemosyne:
i still regret that vote for John Anderson. Not that it would have made much difference.
Wag
@Mnemosyne:
This.
I threw away my first Presidential vote in 1980 on Barry Commoner instead of voting for Carter. I lived I. Colorado, which was solid Reagan country, but still regret not voting for Carter.
Chet Murthy
@Baud: yes, but oh-so-subtly done, no? Lovely.
leeleeFl
@George: More and more, in the last decade or two, I have wished we Northerners had hanged the Confederate leaders and disenfranchised the southern rebels for a century. Union my a–! Crush em,we should have.
Chris
@leeleeFl:
I keep wishing we’d treated the post-1865 South the way we treated post-1945 Germany. Alas, we did just about the opposite. I’m not sure I see any alternative either, because the sad fact is that there were simply too many Northerners who just wanted to move on and didn’t care about the black people left behind.
rachel
And his mom dresses him funny.