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

I mean that I'm less than convinced of the current party leadership's commitments to these things.

you know who is convinced of their commitment though? GOP voters. and who can blame them - the last time the Dems controlled both houses and the Presidency they passed a brand new healthcare entitlement.

I don't see any reason to believe that the GOP is scared of leading or of the consequences of their policies. They seem to be pretty eager to tear things up as much as possible.

moodles otm, i get the feeling that whatever reservations they have about trump they are still seeing this as a golden ticket, i mean within days of the election happening they started talking about phasing out medicare

I was thinking a lot during the election about whether the Democrats have a clear idea of what they'd do if they ever actually took the presidency and both houses again, not sure they do.

eh that's crazy. there was tons of unfinished business after obama's first 2 years. and those 2 years were very productive.

I don't buy that they 'fear the consequences of the trainwreck that they've been promoting' but I think if congressional republicans could all press a button to replace trump w/ clinton, the vast majority would. a clinton in office would make their future elections go a lot smoother + it is better to both hold power and have a way to deflect all responsibility.

The cause for hope, in so much as there is one, is that the GOP is (like the Democrats) a coalition of different interests and several of them are very activist in very different directions. AND they're now yoked to someone who talks an activist game in directions that lie largely outside of the generally agreed common ground, and who is supposed to be repulsive to some of those coalitions.

Just a few weeks ago, pretty much every smart smartypants person who thought they knew stuff about politics (myself included) turned out to be heartbreakingly, tragically wrong. All the smart people who spoke smartly about ground game and advertising and endorsements and poll aggregation... it was all wrong. Wrong in the only way that matters: who wins and who gets power. The people who we thought were dumb deluded hick-ass cousin-fucker dummies turned out to be glowingly, gloat-worthily right.

So I personally am still mentally downvoting every statement of the form "here's what I think is going to happen" said by a smartypants leftyperson, myself included.

But I do think the Democratic Party is the a better direction, if only because they still tend to believe in government as a potential force for good and have less desire to tear it down.

most deluded hick-ass cousin-fucker dummies also did not think trump would win the election. they did turn out to vote in high numbers however.

^^^

Lots of GOP voters told friends/family/pollsters they were going to skip the presidential vote and just vote down-ticket but when it came to it, they voted for the top of the ticket as well.

Alas, that is so. Personally I think that the base was already plenty Deplorable before trompe showed up, because I believe an anti-government politics (as practiced by Gingrich/Contract crowd, Tea Party doodz, militia/prepper doodz, and the obstructionist Ryan crowd) is already implicitly racist. Trompe added the explicit racists and it turned out to be a winning coalition.

it feels useless/pointless but it is kind of weird that we now live in a world where you can directly, personally insult the president via the internet

The only thing I can say with any certainty re: going forward is that we desperately need to GOTV and to do everything we can to ease that process for as many people as possible.

Hear hear on voter access, OL.

Otherwise I'm coming down to an opinion voiced above by man alive/lord Alfred: the buffoonish and cartoonish aspects of trump are now like fiftieth through seventieth on my list of objections.

I've been as guilty as anyone of mocking the man's hair and hands and taste. His brazen lying and shit personality. But RN I'm a lot more concerned about the societal shitstorms the campaign's already unleashed, and the policy shitstorms his administration are likely to unleash.

is likely, gah

most deluded hick-ass cousin-fucker dummies also did not think trump would win the election. they did turn out to vote in high numbers however.

― iatee, Tuesday, November 29, 2016 11:34 AM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, November 29, 2016 11:43 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lots of GOP voters told friends/family/pollsters they were going to skip the presidential vote and just vote down-ticket but when it came to it, they voted for the top of the ticket as well.

― jane burkini (suzy), Tuesday, November 29, 2016 11:43 AM (seven minutes ago)

this seems like bubble talk to me. lots of trump voters genuinely believed he would win/that the polls were wrong. and they were right!

idk if Suzy's otm but iatee is - it was clear Trump didn't even expect to win. GOP pollsters didn't expect to win. But turnout carried the day.

see Bill Mitchell tweeting stuff like "I 100% GUARANTEE Trump will win!!" with his comic book looking visage grinning back @ you

xp

trump voters didn't think he would lose the popular vote by 2% but win because he managed to swing a few midwestern states by 1%. trump voters thought he would win big, which was not even close to being true. final polls weren't off by much, they were just off by a little bit + in a unfortunate way geographically. this was a close election that was won on what most people consider a technicality, the only one bringing up that possibility was nate silver.

...and nate silver was regarded as a wackily overcautious outlier, here and elsewhere. The nyt upshot showed other aggregators at 99% certainty.

Has Sam Wang eaten a bug yet?

xp - my thoughts exactly. everyone patting themselves on the back right now for "predicting" Trump are not quite understanding the reality - outside of Nate I don't think any of them predicted a result like this. not that they care, Scott Adams is still braying "landslide" over and over (even though his EC victory is only 42nd out of 52 historically), but for us rational folk, it's the same as predicting the Cubs were gonna win it for sure even when they were down 3-1...sure, it happened, but it was so damn close, and so many factors had to fall their way for it to happen

It's a landslide only in the sense that it's a disaster.

idk if Suzy's otm but iatee is - it was clear Trump didn't even expect to win. GOP pollsters didn't expect to win. But turnout carried the day.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, November 29, 2016 11:56 AM (nineteen minutes ago)

you're right about the trump campaign's honest assessment of its chances, but trump publicly questioned the polls numerous times and i don't doubt that many of his supporters bought it

Silver's issue is that his readership was almost unanimously terrified of a Trump presidency (as I imagine anyone visiting a website big on statistical analysis would be) and didn't understand why his model seemed to inject so much uncertainty into it, especially when all the "intangibles" seemed to favor Clinton.

If the world ended around the same time some homeless guys happened to have been predicting, it doesn't mean that we should have listened to them. I feel like the confidence of the Trump voters was independent of any inside knowledge they had, they are just very loyal. Trump won due to how energized his supporters were for whatever reasons they had to vote for him. Hillary supporters were not energized enough in the places that mattered to offset it. But we don't have to treat all of his surrogates like "they were right" the whole time in hindsight... it's still true that they were talking out of their asses and navigating Trump's messes with unprecedented levels of spin, delusion and defensive aggression.

Has Sam Wang eaten a bug yet?

Takes him forever, but:

http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/11/12/pollster-eats-bug-after-trump-win-smerconish.cnn

On the subject of landslides, from last night--ludicrous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YcZtzVvI-0

god, i want to tear my eyeballs and ears off

Mr. Landslide reminds me of the cop in this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HktV2yGtLv8

how much of a craven shitbag to you have to be to get schooled by don fucking lemon of all people smdh

this feels pretty otm to me:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/29/opinions/trump-the-sore-winner-sklar/index.html

how likely is it the GOP will try to defund Planned Parenthood via Medicare/Title X? Trump has seemed to waffle on that and the election wasn't driven by that as much as it usually is but I suppose Ryan/etc see this as their chance

and Pence is basically a psycho on the issue

Trump suggests loss of citizenship or jail for those who burn U.S. flags

ok so dude is now more or less encouraging people who protest him to burn flags. awesome. is this bannon at work?

this is an obvious provocation, just like all his tweets. dnftt

Someone pointed out that Fox News had a report on flag burning right before Trump tweeted. He's not a provocateur, nor a machiavellian genius who uses social media to distract from his true agenda. He's an idiot with no attention span.

One thing I'm definitely not wasting a lot of time or energy on in the next four years is overanalyzing Trump's tweets. Deliberate distraction, telegraphing his plans, 11-dimensional chess or stupid childish outburst -- what difference does any of this make to organizing against his agenda?

yeah I just saw this. he's a moron. trump's razor strikes again.

Katherine Faulders (KFaulders)
Timing of Trump's tweet lines up w/ Fox segment at 6:25AM on students burning the flag foxnews.com/us/2016/11/28/… twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…

that is pretty funny though

Sabrina Siddiqui Verified account

‏@SabrinaSiddiqui

A testy John McCain to reporters: "I will not speak about Donald Trump, and I do not want to be asked again."

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PTX-uLKMqV8/Ubt_sOSKTjI/AAAAAAAAMWs/ZPfoSvq54rs/s1600/respond-to-it.gif

that is hilarious xp

it almost seemss like he's a right-wing chauncey gardner, speaking from the heart with childlike simplicity and having everyone read in deep strategizing

obviously ben carson is the right wing chauncey gardner

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 8m 8 minutes ago
New Rogue One Trailer has Darth Vader. Thought he died in Return of the Jedi. Confusing!

If Dan Quayle is coming back to Washington, we need Candice Bergen back on TV posthaste. And with more than a voice cameo on Bojack Horseman.

New York Times subscription growth soars tenfold, adding 132,000, after Trump's win

This is heartening (our household just became NYT and WaPo subscribers this weekend), and it's something I'd love to see happen wrt every entity that opposes the Trump administration or that the Trump administration opposes. Like, expect the worst (e.g. Planned Parenthood being totally defunded) and put your money toward offsetting the worst. When the holidays are over and I can budget for it, I'm setting up automatic monthly donations for PP (among others).

And maybe everyone can just, like, refuse to pay federal taxes for the next four years, as well? That'd be cool.

no need to refuse when they're gonna be slashed in half anyway

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 8m 8 minutes ago
New Rogue One Trailer has Darth Vader. Thought he died in Return of the Jedi. Confusing!

― nomar, Tuesday, November 29, 2016 3:30 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Donald Trump just telegraphed a terrifying plan to rebuild the Death Star. --Vox

ACLU, PP, WaPo, NYT have been my focus also. also thinking about contributing to the LA senate race- anybody see that as viable? xxp

TBF 132,000 is really not a lot of people.

I gave to the LA senate race. While it is seen as a longshot by "typical" election standards, this is not a typical election at all. And past LA senate runoff elections have been won with fewer votes than Hillary lost LA with.