Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

Yep -- Poppy Bush was the last gasp for that kind of Eastern dilettante.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/clinton-campaign-neglect_us_582cacb0e4b058ce7aa8b861?mfnm5yh9t7bhjjor

holy shit:

In politics, much like anything else, victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan. A senior official from Clinton’s campaign noted that they did have a large staff presence in Michigan and Wisconsin (200 and 180 people respectively) while also stressing that one of the reasons they didn’t do more was, in part, because of psychological games they were playing with the Trump campaign. They recognized that Michigan, for example, was a vulnerable state and felt that if they could keep Trump away ― by acting overly confident about their chances ― they would win it by a small margin and with a marginal resource allocation.
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), 17. november 2016 01:15 (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, that article also points to why I think Sanders would have won. Based on the same data, he would have been in the Midwest anyway. The problem isn't just what Clinton did wrong, the problem is that nobody knew she was doing anything wrong until it was too late.

I've thought at bit about it and have another idea: Her staff was probably too old. Her loyalty meant that she relied on the same people she's relied on for decades, with Podesta, chief of staff to Bill, as the biggest example. They did rely on old ideas, failed to account for the uncertainty in the Midwest, thought they knew. It's worth noting that Trump went through three campaign managers until he found a team that worked, they ironically ended up finding something that worked because their early failures were so spectacular.

were they though? i mean he did get through the primaries with the earlier ones

I guess the reason I said I would join a liberal republican party is because I do believe in a free market and competition of business, the role of government being to ensure business is not discriminatory or abusive. The moral majority type republican party is what has kept me from ever voting right. Gay marriage, equal rights, choices are a given and shouldn't be a problem for anyone. Happy people and a happy society benefits business and overall market forces. Which is why I get baffled by republicans and have to think they are just mean.

the democratic party isn't about to dismantle capitalism or the free market though

And if you take away the mild government restraints on the market the result is unmitigated brutality and horror

one of the less-remarked on reasons (I wonder why...) why Nixon lost in 1960: he didn't call Coretta Scott King after MLK was jailed; JFK did. It cost him hundreds of thousands of black votes that had gone Republican in 1956.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, November 17, 2016 12:55 AM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's some interesting stuff about that in this article on Jackie Robinson's relationship with Nixon:

Anything might have happened to Dr. King while in the hands of the Georgia penal system, but it was an election year, and the nation was on notice as to how the two major candidates responded to issues affecting minorities and civil rights. Senator Kennedy called King's wife to express his support. Subsequently, when Judge Mitchell told Vandiver that he would release King if the Kennedys provided him with political cover, Robert Kennedy telephoned and asked him to release King. The judge acceded to the request, freeing King on $2000 bail.

Nixon did nothing -- not for Robinson's lack of trying. He begged Nixon to call King. Nixon refused. "He thinks calling Martin would be ‘grandstanding,'" Robinson told Nixon speechwriter William Safire, "Nixon doesn't deserve to win." In his autobiography, Robinson said that he came close to quitting the campaign and denouncing Nixon on several occasions. He did not, perhaps because of his antipathy for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket. Robinson himself had a hard time explaining why he stayed. "It has something to do with stubbornness," he wrote, "about continuing to want to believe in people even when everything indicates they are no longer worthy of support."

After King was released, his father, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. announced he would vote for Kennedy "because the Democratic nominee had called his son's wife to express sympathy on his imprisonment. The elder Mr. King, a Baptist, said he had planned to vote against Kennedy because of his religion." Said Governor Vandiver, "It is a sad commentary on the year 1960 when the Democratic nominee for the presidency makes a phone call to the home of the foremost racial agitator in the country."

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2013/4/15/4225534/jackie-robinson-richard-nixon-42-movie-civil-rights

I guess this is an xxxxxxp to deej.

Binary thinking is endemic to humans and while it always results in clarity, which makes it enduringly popular, it rarely results in an accurate perception of reality, so that when you act upon conclusions derived from binaries you end up with a plenty of certainty, which feels great, but usually get crappy results.

I'll probably get grief for pointing this out, but the same bullshit thinking that gave us the "having one drop of black blood makes you black" is strangely mirrored by the bullshit thinking that "having participated in one thought, word or action with racist content makes you a racist". It appeals to our innate desire for and worship of purity, but applying purity as the standard to be met by verifiable human beings is only ever going to be good as a stick to beat them with.

Beating all Trump voters with that stick is a feel good move, because they have all participated in an action with undeniable racist content, so you can easily justify the beating. But, as a strategy to deal with this reality, it sucks.

JacobSanders the Republican economic ideology is rooted in the idea that people who are useless to the market as wage earners/lanorers are truly useless and they should just die already to decrease the surplus population. That's why they want to destroy medicare.

Hillary is talking rn on msnbc

man she has aged in a week -- and I don't mean it as a pejorative. Reminds me of how Poppy Bush suddenly looked 80 two days after losing.

I learned to like her over the course of the campaign, having before just admired her tenacity and endurance. It is so fucked up to me that she is not the president right now.

well, Obama is right now

Hopefully i'll die before january for some reason

I guess we'll just have to throw your body onto the barricade and carry on.

it's sad that if people had been behind her and liked her more she wouldn't have had to work so hard and have so much tenacity. i got weary just hearing about her tenacity for months. but that is mostly because as a woman she had to work harder to be taken seriously. also, people just tended to not like her much...for various reasons. it was a double whammy.

*Trample the weak, Hurdle the dead* - Trump/Pence 2016

i don't understand these arguments about whether trump supporters are racist or not. i don't think accusations of racism carry any moral force with trump supporters.

there are definitely some old-fashioned economic conservatives in the GOP, but most of them seem p bloodthirsty to me ya

i don't know how many times i've heard over the past week some variation of "racism is just something to liberals bring up when they can't win an argument honestly". why even bother arguing about it if hearing about it just gives people an excuse to stop listening?

Because it's wrong?

we don't get extra votes for being right

has this been covered yet? I didn't see it but thread moves fast

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/11/16/report-3-nba-teams-won-t-stay-at-trump-hotels.html?via=desktop&source=copyurl

http://gizmodo.com/twitter-just-banned-a-bunch-of-alt-right-mouthpieces-1789038236

i don't know how many times i've heard over the past week some variation of "racism is just something to liberals bring up when they can't win an argument honestly". why even bother arguing about it if hearing about it just gives people an excuse to stop listening?

― the late great, Wednesday, November 16, 2016 7:56 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well even the left can't agree that it *is* racism & contra the ... implications of your point? which i don't think you believe. being able to observably identify things as "racist" is discursively valuable

i also just ... disagree. i have relatives in OH who work at Ford plants & are comfortably that middle-working class & they sometimes vote D & sometimes (more often) vote R but they are definitely racist. And in conversation with them, I'm not going to soft-pedal that I think their actions are racist, because I'm not sure what kind of purpose that evasion would serve. I see the evidence of it in the articles they share & the way they rationalize their votes; they don't *consider* themselves racist, but they do racist things. I am not sure how to address that while tip-toeing around the notion that they are being racist, and it feels fundamentally dishonest to pretend otherwise. This doesn't mean I just do drive-by facebook comments saying "You're just racist!!!" and uhh "consigning them to racism forever"—as much as its possible I'd like to engage them in some kind of constructive conversation bc if I don't let them know where I stand I feel like I'm letting them have a kind of power over me. They can agree to disagree but they're not going to be let off the hook

Like, they exist in bubbles where sharing these kinds of ideas is "OK" and "acceptable" & there should be some social cost, IMO, to sharing shit that is offensive to me, and that will include me saying, "I know you think it isn't, but what you just did is racist, and here's why." I don't see any other way out of that

honestly that seems like the best possible response

(& FWIW I think voting for Trump qualifies.)

include me saying, "I know you think it isn't, but what you just did is racist, and here's why."

sleeve otm. This is x100 better than your simply announcing that because of what they did they are racists and leaving it at that.

"and that's OK"

sleeve otm. This is x100 better than your simply announcing that because of what they did they are racists and leaving it at that.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Wednesday, November 16, 2016 9:57 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OK but I wasn't talking about interpersonal strategies for addressing racism amongst persuadables, i was just stating the facts: voting for trump is racist, and we need to be able to say that. This was met w/ a bunch of "the liberals will never win pointing out that things are racist!" which is ridiculous

"Sorry your humanity is a negotiable virtue because we're more likely to win if we only talk about economics" is a shitty ideological position, IMHO, and makes the whole effort of "winning" kind of ... pointless

This was met w/ a bunch of "the liberals will never win pointing out that things are racist!" which is ridiculous

Uh. I'm pretty sure this was your reaction to the content, not the content. Putting it in quote marks when you are not actually quoting anyone on the thread kind of implies you are quoting yourself.

discursively valuable

not sure what this means ... not saying it's meaningless just that I am pretty dense and don't get what it means

"the liberals will never win pointing out that things are racist!" which is ridiculous

is it? i don't know about that. as you know, i work with children. one of the things i have learned from working with children is that children don't respond well to abstract concepts. for example, if a kid is talking when i am talking, and i want them to stop, i don't say "please stop, that is rude". because kids don't understand social niceties the way adults do. they don't understand rude (well, it's closer to the truth to say they have different standards for rude from 40 year. olds). instead i say "if you talk while i talk, you will miss what i am saying, and if you miss what i am saying, you will not understand how to do the assignment, and then you will get a bad grade, and your parents won't buy you the playstation you want for christmas, etc". they understand consequences better than they understand abstractions. i can only assume racists are the same way, in as much as they don't understand or respond to abstract concepts like "social justice"

I'm not going to soft-pedal that I think their actions are racist, because I'm not sure what kind of purpose that evasion would serve. I see the evidence of it in the articles they share & the way they rationalize their votes; they don't *consider* themselves racist, but they do racist things. I am not sure how to address that while tip-toeing around the notion that they are being racist, and it feels fundamentally dishonest to pretend otherwise.

i have super-racist relatives too, so i sympathize. i don't tell my racist relatives they are racist, because they don't respond to that. they get defensive and dismissive. serious qn: do your relatives respond thoughtfully to "what you just did is racist, and here's why"? does it work?

No they get super defensive, of course. Because they don't want to be racist. They think that's a bad thing to be.

Obviously it depends on the nature of the conversation: how we ease into the conversation, or if it starts in person or on facebook (sometimes easier on facebook), or who kicked off the topic. But it's still a useful rhetorical tool at a certain point: "That's a racist statement. This article is designed to dehumanize people." "Do you really think its cool to wish the death penalty on someone for punching someone else? [they answer] Does that not seem racist to you?" I mean these things can go a million different ways, it's not like im indiscriminately just saying "that's racist" like the GIF. But it still feels like a useful way of making a point: many times it just says "You wouldn't say this if this person was white."

we don't need to cure racism in each individual mind in order to defeat it as a political force. you just need to emphasize shared interests across race lines. make people hate the koch brothers so much they forget about minorities when they go into the voting booth.

i know that is crude. i think people should get yelled at for being racist as much as possible and the fact that the taboo against racism was shattered this year is one of the most horrifying developments i've seen in this country in my lifetime. however, the democrats are just not going to win by scolding people.

i think treeship and i are on the same page

i consider myself lucky to live in a tolerant state, but i don't think we are especially tolerant because the civics classes in our public schools are super great or because our college students are super woke or whatever. i think we are lucky to have a strong economy and its totally obvious to most people here that that economy depends in large part on immigrants, people on visas, etc. and that makes it easier for people not to be racist, because it's in their self-interest not to be.

i mean i honestly don't know much about the economy of the rust belt or the south or the bible belt, so i don't know if it's possible to convince people there that immigration and diversity will benefit them.

however, the democrats are just not going to win by scolding people.

― Treeship, Wednesday, November 16, 2016 11:41 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Forget winning for now. There's a president-elect proposing brutally racist policies while in control of both houses. Getting people to recognize *that* racism seems to me a far greater priority than having them do some serious soul-searching atm about their own.

ok well i'm not pro ... scolding people (except people on ilx, obv)

i get what you're saying BUT if i had trump's ear (which i don't) i would probably advocate against a muslim registry (for example) by arguing that it will make muslims less likely to cooperate with the govt in counterterrorism efforts rather than arguing that it's an affront on human decency and fairness or whatever (which it certainly is!)

xp to lion in winter

make people hate the koch brothers so much they forget about minorities when they go into the voting booth.

― Treeship, Wednesday, November 16, 2016 10:36 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure this works when a candidate actively churns up this level radioactivity, i mean half the country believes that inner cities are hell holes and that all muslims want to destroy them so....why would they buy that the koch brothers are a bigger threat? speaking of things that seem abstract

xp to the late great - it's not really his ear i'd want. a lot of his proposed policies -- mass deportation, daca repeal -- aren't actually popular with a majority of americans. i can't imagine sinking social security or medicare is either. i'd like to keep them that way.

deej otm throughout the thread

I don't know what causes racism but it's sure as hell not economics. way deeper than that. economics does not cure, or even paper over, racism. and economics is not a problem with a <<solution>>, where we just make The Good Economy and then all other problems melt away because that's of some base superstructure or somesuch stoner Marxist shit. the state economy itself will always be in contention, under socialism capitalism whatever; and as long as race is a salient dimension people will contest it along those lines, too. it's just wishing the problem away to say, let's just solve the economics

also I disagree with vahids economic reason for saying california is non-racist. I highly double Californians can all form a chain of arguments starting with "lots of immigrants and black people in my state" and ending with "more money in my pocket". maybe it's not civics class either but it's not that imo

*the state of the economy itself

¯\_(ツ)_/¯