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

There wasn't enough effort going toward addressing what Trump was actually saying and why it was wrong -- rather than just "illegitimate."

Treeship, she did this over and over again, especially in October.

candidates' party affiliation + race/ethnicity + gender = majority of voters' preferences predicted

xp

and the nonmajority is where the election's decided

still arguing about this because what the candidate says matters.

lol it obviously doesn't

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, December 14, 2016 1:34 PM (fifty-seven seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes we can vs i'm with her

which one of these is a far, far better political slogan?

one is an inspirational call to all americans, the other is a facebook status

it's practically a selfie in slogan form

Eduardo Porter of the NYT drills down into the metro/nonmetro economics of the vote:

There are almost nine million more jobs than there were at the previous peak in November 2007, just before the economy tumbled into recession. But the gains have not been evenly distributed.

Despite accounting for less than 15 percent of the labor force, Hispanics got more than half of the net additional jobs. Blacks and Asians also gained millions more jobs than they lost. But whites, who account for 78 percent of the labor force, lost more than 700,000 net jobs over the nine years.

The racial and ethnic divide is starker among workers in their prime. Whites ages 25 to 54 lost some 6.5 million jobs more than they gained over the period. Hispanics in their prime, by contrast, gained some three million jobs net, Asians 1.5 million and blacks one million....

Only 472 counties voted for Hillary Clinton on Election Day. But according to Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution, they account for 64 percent of the nation’s economic activity. The 2,584 counties where Mr. Trump won, by contrast, generated only 36 percent of America’s prosperity.

The political divide between high-output and low-output parts of the country also meshes with the cleavage between urban America — largely won by Mrs. Clinton — and the vast, less-populous rural stretches where Mr. Trump racked up large numbers of votes.

“It has been a good decade for metropolitan America,” said Mr. Muro, who heads the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings. By contrast, “you can’t underestimate the economic and social pain across the rural tier.”

Given such clear divisions — less-educated whites living in depressed rural areas, on one side, and minorities living in more vigorous big-city economies on the other — the social and racial animosity manifest during the election campaign is hardly a surprise.

So there is a clear economic argument for Mr. Trump’s angry voters to have bucked the establishment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/business/economy/jobs-economy-voters.html?_r=0

the interpretation that what the candidate says is meaningless and that instead elections are decided by predetermined measurable factors is, somewhat ironically, something the clinton campaign would probably agree with. no reason to motivate voters with a compelling vision for their country, instead increase allocation of resource X to sector Y by 15%, assuming that it is correct that sector Y's historical trend of voting on issue Z continues to increase by 5% per annum, an assumption based upon a number of factors tha

Aye

there's a reason that the only left-leaning people i knew that were PUMPED TO VOTE this year were bernie sanders voters during the primary, because he was actually saying cool stuff and, even though everyone knew the GOP would stonewall any ideas he had, when you listened to him you could easily visualize the country that he wanted to build and understand how it would be different and better than the status quo

the winning candidate spewed a never-ending stream of false, contradictory, inflammatory garbage and won handily. it's clear the content of what he said didn't matter as much as *how* he said it (belligerently and provocatively) and *who* said it (a celebrity whose main identifying factors are "rich", "obnoxious" and "white male")

That's called messaging

most privileged people behave with depraved indifference towards disadvantaged lives. it's not just a color or gender thing. ignore that and keep losing elections, gerrymandered democrats

The only thing not worthless that's come out of Joe Scarborough's mouth in the last few months was when he wondered why Hillary couldn't have responded to the first public "How do you feel?" question after her pneumonia with, "Like crap!" and laughed.

this was michael moore; no need to soften our posture on joe.

i know we've been litigating this forever but clearly there were some GOTV and campaigning mistakes made in MI, WI, PA, assuming the vote there was locked up when it wasn't. i don't think HRC actually did a bad job with messaging, it is clearly a reasonable thing when running against a monster to highlight how much that person is a monster, i don't think one should fault her campaign for that

clearly there were some GOTV and campaigning mistakes made in MI, WI, PA

yeah, I'm not denying this. My comments are more big-picture, "what is the big lesson" type stuff

yes we can vs i'm with her

which one of these is a far, far better political slogan?

Do you think the answer to this is supposed to be obvious?

idk about "far, far" but yeah obviously obama's was better

the only left-leaning people i knew that were PUMPED TO VOTE this year were bernie sanders voters during the primary

they could have easily given him a VP position and pocketed that sweet enthusiasm. instead they used the DNC to mock his supporters! incredible

I mean, that's what drives me nuts, people keep saying "Clinton never said exactly what she was going to deliver, she just rolled out vague platitudes about national unity and pride and let people talk about the historic nature of her run, no wonder she lost" when the last two elections were won by large margins by a dude who did exactly that. What were Obama's campaign promises? Besides that we should feel hope and do change? I guess "close Guantanamo." But what else? In 2008 I guess there was some reasonable argument that Obama would draw down the war more quickly than McCain, but in 2012?

Elections are won by people with vague meaningless slogans and no concrete proposals except for "doesn't it feel good to vote for me" ALL THE TIME.

2008 Obama was a huge critic of the Iraq War.

the only left-leaning people i knew that were PUMPED TO VOTE this year were bernie sanders voters during the primary

also I don't know what kind of weird bubble you have to live in to not know people who were pumped to vote for hillary. or people who cried when she lost, not because they're scared of trump but because they were super psyched about hrc being president and then it all slipped away at the last moment.

were people as pumped as they were for obama? no, but it's not because of her slogan, it's because obama is better at this than she is, but obama is better at this than ANYBODY is.

obama benefited from not being hillary clinton, for starters. also uh healthcare xxp

I don't remember health care being a significant issue in 2008. Clinton had a plan too.

eephus otm

no, but it's not because of her slogan, it's because obama is better at this than she is

hence him coming up w a better slogan.

did you listen to many HRC speeches? i didn't hear all that many, but she openly admitted to being a rather uninspiring pol/speaker.

I don't remember health care being a significant issue in 2008. Clinton had a plan too.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, December 14, 2016 5:15 PM (four minutes ago)

thought we were talking about the general election

eephus otm

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, December 14, 2016 5:16 PM (three minutes ago)

guy from san francisco agrees that people were super excited about clinton this year, lmao

sorry

xpost

I live in Cleveland and knew plenty of people -- mostly women, all ethnicities -- who were insanely excited about voting for Clinton, and openly wept when she lost, so don't make this into some "lol COASTAL ELITES" thing.

well that just about proves it

so we agree, hillary clinton was a good candidate

I was referring more to this stuff k3vin

Elections are won by people with vague meaningless slogans and no concrete proposals except for "doesn't it feel good to vote for me" ALL THE TIME.

were people as pumped as they were for obama? no, but it's not because of her slogan, it's because obama is better at this than she is, but obama is better at this than ANYBODY is.

personally most people I knew were pumped for Bernie

I live in Wisconsin. Surrounded by people who were pumped for Bernie and then subsequently pumped for Hillary. It's not some kind of computer-killing paradox, we're talking about two people who are just not very far from each other in their vision of governance

so we agree, hillary clinton was a good candidate

as good as obama? hell no

as good as bernie sanders or joe biden or martin o'malley would have been? yes

as good as john kerry? substantially better

hence him coming up w a better slogan

why do you think obama "came up with" that slogan? i would be shocked if it weren't generated by the same dem party pros who came up with "i'm with her" and "stronger together." that's their job. "yes we can" is borrowed from chavez of course and axelrod says obama didn't even like it

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/11414185/Barack-Obama-thought-Yes-We-Can-slogan-was-too-corny.html

Lake Erie coastal elites

as good as bernie sanders or joe biden or martin o'malley would have been? yes

could we stop this, bcz it seems we simply have different definitions/views of reality

Just heard someone posit that perhaps Trump doesn't even know what the department of energy does - nuclear arsenal and all that - and that is why he picked Rick Perry, thinking it was about drilling and oil and stuff like that.

it wouldn't surprise me

as good as bernie sanders or joe biden or martin o'malley would have been? yes

yes, very likely that bernie would have also lost michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania

entirely possible

hypotheticals can't be proven

#stillwithher

as I've said many times on this very thread already, post-mortems and straw-grasping are of next to no interest to me, would prefer we were talking about Trump's presidency

Bernie won WI 56 to 43 BTW

xp: why do that when we could spend time talking shit about Clinton

god you guys are fucking tiresome. primary /= general election, Bernie was never really attacked w negative ads/Trump tweets/GOP noise machine yadda yadda yadda why are we having this argument you already know are the counter-arguments

all the counter-arguments