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

not sure how enamored I am with obama for america when they spent their last days pimping the goddamn TPP

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/russia-hack-election-dnc.html?_r=0

the depth and breadth of incompetence is truly astounding

i don't really buy kevin drum's curiously fatalistic take on the election but it's worth considering

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/12/stop-it-there-are-no-big-lessons-2016-election

elite/well-connected/hillary-partisan dems really are trying to settle on a CW that everything was great except for comey and putin and the damned 'white working class'

we're just going to have an endless retread of the primary instead of any kind of honest self-examination from the party, aren't we.

p much

I dunno, blame game + zero self-examination seems to be working pretty well for the other side.

^^^

elite/well-connected/hillary-partisan dems really are trying to settle on a CW that everything was great except for comey and putin and the damned 'white working class'

we're just going to have an endless retread of the primary instead of any kind of honest self-examination from the party, aren't we.

― goole

until the 2016 dem primary when they get pounded to dust, yes.

yea it sucks but drum's not entirely wrong imo, in a few even very slightly different scenarios this would've been the clinton victory everybody predicted. a few more visits to WI, MI, PA, whatever, and that could've been that. doesn't change the picture for democrats in state governments though

elite/well-connected/___________ always are trying to settle on a CW that everything is great except for the boring and dumb 'working class'

that's not really how I read that, or the Levy piece that he references, at all. his endnote and his PS make the point pretty clear:

OK, fine, you want a big lesson? Here it is: our country is now so polarized at a partisan level that it almost literally doesn't matter who runs. Republicans will vote for the Republican and Democrats will vote for the Democrat. There's probably not much more than 3-4 percent of the population that's truly persuadable anymore.

POSTSCRIPT: This is all about national-level politics. I don't think there's any question that Democrats took a huge beating at the state and local level, where they were already weak. If you want to write a smart piece about what's wrong with Democrats, that's the place to start. Forget Hillary Clinton. Tell me instead why Democrats have such dismal prospects at the state level.

yea it sucks but drum's not entirely wrong imo, in a few even very slightly different scenarios this would've been the clinton victory everybody predicted. a few more visits to WI, MI, PA, whatever, and that could've been that. doesn't change the picture for democrats in state governments though

― marcos

the problem with basing your party around clintonian pragmatism is that it requires you to actually win in order to sustain it.

but I agree more with the twitter account Morbius linked to above (holy shit we're through the looking glass here people): treat poor people with actual respect by getting them programs that work and that they can use. Make it absolutely clear the reason we can't have nice things is all about the GOP still trying to drown government in the bathtub.

Twitter was told it was "bounced" from Wednesday's meeting between tech executives and President-elect Donald Trump in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary, according to a source close to the situation.

...

According to Coby, Dorsey personally intervened to block the Trump operation from deploying — as part of a $5 million deal between the social media company and the campaign — an emoji showing, in various renderings, small bags of money being given away or stolen. That emoji would have been offered to users as a replacement for the hashtag #CrookedHillary, a preferred Trump insult for his Democratic opponent.

please define "honest self-examination" because most of the iterations I've seen so far have all pivoted around "how can we make this white supremacy train work in our favor"

lmfao xp

pls trump destroy twitter somehow im begging you

holy shit at that twitter story

the thing that's wrong about the Drum analysis (it was so close that there are a million different reasons it could have gone clinton's way, therefore nothing fundamental needs to be re-examined) is that it shouldn't have been close in the first place. in 2012, romney talking about binders full of women and the 47 percent thing were the major scandals. trump said much worse things on a daily basis and had/has dozens of scandals swirling around him at any given moment. clinton was right when she openly wondered why she wasn't beating trump by 50 points. a sack of bloodstained shit should have been able to beat trump by a landslide. so it's not that the two candidates were evenly matched and that a couple things happened to go the wrong way and aw shucks we ended up with this living nightmare. it's more like there were a range of possible outcomes, and the one where trump even came close to winning was waaaaaaaaay off on the side of the bell curve. the fact that it happened suggests that it wasn't mere chance or bad luck, it was something more fundamental. whether those fundamentals (racism, economic inequality, the fact that democratic voters have pretty much zero direct participation in the party other than being asked to vote for them every 2/4 years) are something that can be effectively addressed by this particular crew of democrats is a different question.

Tell me instead why Democrats have such dismal prospects at the state level.

gerrymandering?

goddamn the 2010 midterms for real

honest self-examination.

ok: most white people behave with depraved indifference towards black lives. this includes not only all the trump voters who are not overt white nationalists, but most clinton voters, who supported her primarily out of tribal loyalty and only secondarily, if at all, out of concern for black lives.

how do we react to this understanding?

not by changing our policy proposals to the detriment of minority groups. this election was not lost on policy.

not by abandoning a political commitment to black lives. why abandon our values and principles when so much of the opposition to the democratic party centers on the perception that we are valueless and opportunistic?

maybe we should examine our tactics. maybe, just maybe, self-rightously huffing that we "don't imprison our political opponents" is not the best approach to take when your chief political opponent is a genuine criminal. maybe, while affirming that basically everything the republicans, trump supporting or no, believe is wrong, we should consider that effective tactics can be used in the service of sound principles as easily as they can be used in the service of unsound principles.

Karl Malone tom

otm

the fact that it happened suggests that it wasn't mere chance or bad luck, it was something more fundamental.

it was the power of celebrity

there is no potential mutual interest, no comity, between the democratic party and the american right. the right's goal is absolute unquestioned rule, and they will not deviate from that goal. all dealings with the american right and its representatives must be undertaken with that truth foremost in the mind.

please define "honest self-examination"

how about self-examination that goes beyond looking at internal polls

KM and rushomancy OTM. I have no idea what impact it'll have in the short-term (particularly in 2020) but the left needs to focus on GOTV efforts (including going in hard on helping people maneuver state voting laws), and the white people who aren't already joyously slavering over the fact need to fully recognize the extent to which they've been complicit beneficiaries of white supremacy and figure out what they can do to help chip away at that behemoth.

the left needs to focus on GOTV efforts

Michigan operatives relay stories like one about an older woman in Flint who showed up at a Clinton campaign office, asking for a lawn sign and offering to canvass, being told these were not “scientifically” significant ways of increasing the vote, and leaving, never to return. A crew of building trade workers showed up at another office looking to canvass, but, confused after being told there was no literature to hand out like in most campaigns, also left and never looked back.

Yeah, kinda thinking there's gonna have to be a lot of independent effort on that front. Clearly, expecting the party or the candidates to get their shit together is often a losing proposition.

What was General Yellowcake saying about HRC and hubris?

So Clinton loses to Obama in '08 thanks to her complacency and her organization's arrogance, and she loses the gen election in 2016 thanks to her complacency and her organization's arrogance.

the silver lining is that at this rate in 2020 she'll lose the new world order global election due to her complacency and her organization's arrogance

Pretty much. Kevin Drum is an idiot for arguing that it was somehow acceptable for Clinton to totally ignore the people she most needed to vote for her. Xp

it's as if the Dems could see this coming

so I thought we'd read articles last fall and early spring about the Clinton campaign taking the Obama mode and improving it

Except for James Comey. Feel free to blame him all you want. Unfortunately, there aren't really any lessons to be drawn from that.

there's one pretty obvious lesson about appointments...

well, Henry Stimson's dead.

A lot of her campaign, at the end, was about emphasizing how dumb and uncouth Trump was. This was a good way to motivate people who might be on the fence about trump but HATE being talked down to to vote for Trump.

Frankly, a lot of the opposition to her -- the sense that she was a "scold" -- was due to sexism. But with the fate of civilization hanging in the balance you think she could have tried to counteract this, maybe by making her message about the voters instead of about her and Trump. Idk. Easy to say in hindsight I guess. I also think she could have been more aggressive in defending herself on the idiotic scandals instead of rolling her eyes, secure in the knowledge that All Good People knew they were idiotic.

She was true to who she was and that actually made her earn my affection in the end -- I liked that she maintained her dignity and didn't get in the muck of a real head to head with the Beast. But I was not the one she needed on her side.

i've said it before, but she had the entire rest of the world to rely on to deliver the "here's why trump is a fucking psychopath" message. only she could deliver a concise "vote for me because ____" message, and she never did

it wasn't about message (messages don't matter to people who don't read messages) god why are we still arguing about this

This was a good way to motivate people who might be on the fence about trump but HATE being talked down to to vote for Trump.

there's ne evidence that it worked other than make people already voting for her go "Hmm you know right"

I'm sure what they say about Michigan is true but I can tell you from firsthand experience there was tons of door-drop literature in Wisconsin and repeated knocking on doors and encouraging people to vote face to face. There was no visible difference between campaigning for HRC and campaigning for Obama.

vote for me because in 78% of simulations, my presidency leads to better results overall for the average voter, given the usual assumptions (see footnotes below) about economic and technological conditions

it wasn't about message (messages don't matter to people who don't read messages) god why are we still arguing about this

effective messages manage to break through to people who don't care about messages

still arguing about this because what the candidate says matters. i suppose democrats could run a picture of a hot dog in 2020 and win if they step up their GOTV game, but it'll help if the hot dog offers a compelling vision of why people should vote for it

I think she needed to fight back against the de-humanizing personal attacks more than 'deliver a concise message'. she could have done more to show some character e.g. talk off script, deliver her own zings on twitter instead of letting a team of 200 run the account, idk.

only problem is that politicians who aren't donald trump and stumble even a little bit when they do the above get punished pretty hard.

still arguing about this because what the candidate says matters.

lol it obviously doesn't

what matters is who the candidate is and how well they reflect/reinforce voters' preconceived notions