Election 2016

[nockermensch]

Here's an interesting Cracked article about why Trump support was so much greater than expected: How Half of America Lost Its F*cking Mind

I found it entertaining.

It's 11PM. Do you know where your proletariat are?

[Voss]

Oh, I found it thoughtful as well.

It wasn't, particularly. There was enough truth and suffering to it to make it wrenching, but most of it? 80s tropes that were just smeared like shit across the page. Small towns aren't weird disconnected bubbles that interact with city culture like its some sort of alien virus. That time passed long ago, people are plugged in, get everything and can get in their damn cars and commute just like everyone else. There are a lot of people who deny it, and think 'people out there in the city/California/wherever are just different' but they have to spend a lot of time and cognitive dissonance ignore the differences right under their noses.

Unlike the successive blog post, which I find absolutely hilarious.

I'm not surprised by that, either. The amount of damage that can be done starting January 20th is fucking ridiculous, and can't be stopped by telling people not to panic. Nor is it, as the article implies, a matter of fairness for the shoe to be on the other foot.

[Occluded Sun]

Small towns aren't weird disconnected bubbles that interact with city culture like its some sort of alien virus. That time passed long ago, people are plugged in, get everything and can get in their damn cars and commute just like everyone else.

I don't think the article was saying that non-city people were isolated. But they ARE disconnected from urban culture. As you can tell by looking at election patterns at the county level.

I live smack in the middle of Pennsylvania, smack in the middle of a university town. I can assure you, there is most definitely a disconnect between the different cultures here, and they rub right up next to each other daily.

[Kaelik]

Nor is it, as the article implies, a matter of fairness for the shoe to be on the other foot.

Didn't read the article, but when has the shoe ever been on the other foot? We haven't see a Supreme Court in any of our lifetimes (you before we absolutely should have before partisan bullshit) and we got one 2 year stretch in 2008, but that was ruined by trying to compromise with idiots for ever, meanwhile, they got 4 years 2002-2006, and they fucked the country up mega hard. Fairness would be ever giving Democrats 4 years to actually pass legislation without a Court saying that the Voting Rights Act doesn't count because Congress didn't mean to pass it.

[DSMatticus]

What exactly do you want me to do here?

Call it like it fucking is. The reason you already see pundits making the call for unity is because they want you to forget what an existential fucking threat this is to our democracy, forget that Trump is a symptom of our broken electoral institutions and those very same pundits' bullshit, all so we can come together and build the centrist plutocracy they've secretly wanted for decades.

Outrage against Republicans is the only thing that ever has a chance of fixing the problems - with our electoral system, our media, and even our own spineless party - so keep your fucking outrage. This asymmetric situation where Republicans get to do whatever the fuck they want and still be treated as respectable while Democrats actually bend over backwards to let people shit in their mouths guarantees that that is what will continue to happen for the rest of your life. So don't fucking pretend Trump is a legitimate president - he's one you have to deal with, but this election was stolen, and reminding minority voters what the Republican party have done to rig the game against them is going to be a big part of 2020 and 2024. People actually have to care that they're being fucked if you want that to change, and if we spend the next 4-8 years holding hands with Republicans to undermine that notion then we won't change anything.

[Occluded Sun]

Voting for the oligarchs wearing Democrat hats, instead of the oligarchs wearing the Republican hats, is going to 'change' what exactly?

[DSMatticus]

Oligarchs who call for (and successfully enact) higher taxes on the top in order to pay for benefits at the bottom are quite possibly the world's shittiest oligarchs. Alternatively, you don't know what the word oligarch means, and it's just a cynical thing you bark into politics discussions as part of your Pavlovian conditioning. Though, hey, on the off chance you're right I would vote for the people who are so comically inept at plutocracy that they accidentally undermine it. That seems like an easy call.

[Occluded Sun]

A few very rich people and corporations calling the shots, with a vast horde of poor people who'll do anything to keep their awful jobs? And who will vote for whoever promises not to reduce their benefits?

What exactly do you think 'oligarchy' means, other than 'rule of the few', usually the richest and most powerful?

Why do you think the middle class keeps shrinking? The middle class is the group that restrains governmental power, and has been for centuries, going back to the Magna Carta.

[DSMatticus]

Oh, you want to know what's happened to the middle class? That's easy. Unemployment and the decline of unions have removed any upwards pressure on wages that would ordinarily result from competition and employee-employer bargaining, causing an era of stagnant wages despite booming productivity.

Now, where did our latest batch of unemployment come from? Oh yeah, a banking crisis largely caused by over-leveraging and a lack of transparency. Who passed laws addressing those flaws in our banking system? Democrats. Who's blocking their enactment while threatening to dismantle them? Republicans.

Now, what happened to the unions? Well, that's a little more complicated, but the short answer is (spoiler) Republicans. Again.

Any other stupid questions?

[Voss]

Small towns aren't weird disconnected bubbles that interact with city culture like its some sort of alien virus. That time passed long ago, people are plugged in, get everything and can get in their damn cars and commute just like everyone else.

I don't think the article was saying that non-city people were isolated. But they ARE disconnected from urban culture. As you can tell by looking at election patterns at the county level.

No, that can be explained by a lot of other factors, education among them. And yes, by focusing on how long it took to get Chinese food and Starbucks out in the ol hometown, isolation is exactly what was being covered. But again, that was a different decade's problem - it has very little to do with now.

I live smack in the middle of Pennsylvania, smack in the middle of a university town. I can assure you, there is most definitely a disconnect between the different cultures here, and they rub right up next to each other daily.

Smack in the middle of PA? As in State College? Been there, lived there. That isn't an urban/rural culture divide. That is an education divide, and an income divide. Hell, that's a shops at Wegmans/ shops at Walmart divide. But it isn't traceable to fucking 'urban culture' no matter what sense you mean by that phrase.

It's also definitely not the typical picture of small town America, or a rural town with a dead industry. The university keeps that town and the people in it with a lot of jobs and cash flows, both directly and from all the businesses that cater to the college kids, the immense faculty and even larger staff.

[Mask_De_H]

Okay Voss, what are you actually trying to prove/say here? Because if it's "Occluded Sun is a fucking moron", you really need to work on your brevity.

[Longes]

You have to deal with Trump. You don't have to pretend he won a fair and free election, because he fucking didn't, unless you've suddenly decided minority votes don't count and we should use the FBI as an arm of our political campaigns in which case 1) yes, I guess this election was fair, and 2) of course Trump is your president.

So when Trump was talking about rigged election he was right? Except he was the one rigging it?

[Shatner]

Re: Rigging - How to Rig an Election by Paul Krugman (written on Monday).

[Kaelik]

You have to deal with Trump. You don't have to pretend he won a fair and free election, because he fucking didn't, unless you've suddenly decided minority votes don't count and we should use the FBI as an arm of our political campaigns in which case 1) yes, I guess this election was fair, and 2) of course Trump is your president.

So when Trump was talking about rigged election he was right? Except he was the one rigging it?

I'm pretty sure you can find me, in this thread, complaining about Trump's claim and Paul Ryan's response at the time it was made, specifically because of this. Rigged is probably not the right word for it, but yes, Republicans have been cheating the system for years, and this election is no different. in 2000 Democrats got more votes for President and lost, again yesterday. Meanwhile, in 2012, and dollars to donuts this year too, Democratic House candidates got more votes than Republican House candidates while the Republicans get the House. The Senate provides the same representation to Wyoming as it does it California.

And all this is with the illegal voter suppression that was instituted in a wave by southern Republican State Legislatures within the first month after the Voting Rights Act was found unconstitutional because "I Principled Justice Scalia who believes we should defer to the legislature, know that when the Legislature said that it found continuing evidence of racial animus and attempt to suppress minority voters in the south, what it really meant was'there's no evidence, and we don't want to renew the Voting Rights Act!'"

If someone just walks up to you and says "Hey one party got 51% of the Presidential Votes, 53% of the House votes, and 56% of the Senate votes, and the other party go 48% of the Presidential Votes, 47% of the House votes, and 44% of the Senate votes, so obviously party 2 should get control over all the branches right?" Anyone with any brains can see that the system is flawed, and if one party is actively opposing changing the system, or created parts of the system that favor it, then yeah, that's not a "legitimate" election under some definitions.

[PhoneLobster]

You know as this devolves into elitist liberal lite panic I just want to recommend that a few sheltered Americans watch this excellent little rambling interview with John Pilger, one of the few truly great independent documentary journalists out there and frankly one of the only surviving genuine leftist voices on international politics.

I can't say I 100% agree with all of his opinions and analysis, though it is pretty excellent, but the simple fact is he at the very least talks about important topics and facts, and entertains some very reasonable and fuck it important avenues of analysis you will NOT be seeing from the mainstream US press or from the centrist consensus Hillary shills as they have an existential meltdown over Trump winning the election, I won't say totally fair and square, but lets face it by the rules of the game that Hillary and her establishment supporters, agreed to, never fucking challenged, and somehow totally expected to win under.

I'll also note he also did a very excellent little interview with Julian Assange recently that people really should watch. And his upcoming China/US documentary should be pretty informative. But fuck it the man has a history of excellent documentary making longer than my lifetime I'm sure a lot of it would be informative even if a lot of it is now rather dated.

[tussock]

So, basically, the electoral college favours the Republicans very heavily, at the moment, while in later years, post 2024 or so, is expected to favour the Democrats instead. Demographic shifts and such, but pretty heavily Republican right now.

And, basically, the Republicans fucked up their primary system to try and make it so their party-favoured choice would win even if most Republican voters hated them, and then, oops, it also elected Trump even though most Republicans hated him.

And, basically, the voters are tribalist and Republicans think Fox News is real and the Democrats are right instead. So Republicans vote Trump because he won their fucked-up primary, and that's their man even if they are embarrassed as fuck about it, and Democrats vote Clinton even though she's not that inspirational or anything, and numbers for both sides are pretty low because ...

Well, basically, there's really heavy voter suppression on poor black people in those swing states. Trump's down because people hate him, and Clinton's down because it's a four hour queue and people have jobs, and a lot of black people are felons for no particular reason so can't vote anyway.

But Clinton got more votes and the system elected Trump because a bunch of little 49-47 beats a few big 10-85 the other way, and while he mobilised the old Dixiecrat vote he also lost more than that overall. And thus a fascist hated and feared by his own party, entirely rejected by the establishment and his predecessors, just won the next presidency of the United States of America.

Crap. That's really bad. Like, so bad.


The polling was apparently most likely off because people were too embarrassed to admit to another human being out loud that they were going to vote Trump, especially wealthier white women voting for tax cuts. Often said "undecided" and then voted "Trump".

[DSMatticus]

Trump winning the election, I won't say totally fair and square, but lets face it by the rules of the game that Hillary and her establishment supporters, agreed to, never fucking challenged, and somehow totally expected to win under.

I... are you seriously retarded?

Hillary did not agree to the rules. Trump did not agree to the rules. Absolutely no one alive agreed to the rules, because that is not how the system works. The rules were written literally hundreds of years ago, modified a few times here and there, and no one has the power to change them without overwhelming control of the government. Okay, that's not true. The last big change to the rules was the nullification of the Voting Rights Act by conservatives on the Supreme Court. That was definitely a change to the rules, in that minority access to the ballot used to be protected in some states and now it isn't.

There is a limit to how far you can stretch "I blame everything on Hillary" before you look fucking absurd, and you have gone way past that limit. I mean, seriously, what the fuck are you actually suggesting here? That she should have sued to abolish the electoral college? A case that would have gone to a 4-4 Supreme Court and probably still lost 0-8 because holy shit what? To spearhead a violent revolution? Also, you are saying "somehow totally expected to win" mockingly, but this election was almost certainly decided by Comey's decision to put the email bullshit back in the news. A lot of the battleground states were really fucking close.

I do not think you understand enough about U.S. politics to offer any real insight, thanks.

[PhoneLobster]

What has the Democratic party establishment done about Republican voter suppression and gerrymandering?

EVER. I don't give a shit if they inherited it all from the days of yore, and fuck you they didn't, some bits of it are new. What the fuck have they tried to do to change it? Exactly how much effort have they put in on the issue? Because fuck it doesn't look like they tried hard. Doesn't look like they though it would be a major issue in this election until it came to post disaster finger pointing.

They could at the very least tried to talk about it some more in public, amplify it through their media. Express an endless outrage at this vast vast injustice. Did they? Where was their outrage, where was the desperate bid to save the US from this rigging that was so bad that it would surely steal, god damn steal this election that was oh soooo rightfully belonging to the anointed representative of the centrist establishment that has never cared about changing the rigged system !

Democratic systems aren't perfect, commonly they result in governments that did NOT win the popular vote by bare margins. This IS an injustice. And the USA is somewhat worse than other nations. But you are wildly misrepresenting both the degree of the rigging and the degree of Trumps victory.

The establishment fucked up. Period. It fucked up long term permitting the long term rigging without sufficient resistance, but mostly it fucked up near term because it thought it had this election in the bag despite that.

[PhoneLobster]

... but this election was almost certainly decided by Comey's decision to put the email bullshit back in the news.

You are deluding yourself looking for another scape goat.

The election polled far too close from the beginning and much of the "unexpected" swing beyond that polling was somewhat predictable risk in an era where "outsider" candidates and issues routinely exceed polled expectations among a rebellious populace angry at the status quo.

It was virtually ONLY during the pussy grabber scandal did Clinton EVER pulled ahead in any serious manner, it was the best and ONLY positive development that occurred and likely not even at her incompetent campaign's instigation.

More mere email noise, entirely predictable, and entirely consistent throughout the election and Hillary's entire career didn't turn that around, the Trump video scandal just broke too early, wore off too quick and may never have been big enough to make the difference.

In fact dare I say WITHOUT the convenience of a video of Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women the disastrous results Hillary got would have been god damn apocalyptic instead and instead of talking about a firm defeat and it's consequences the talk would instead be "The Democratic party. Is it now dead forever?"

And if the democratic establishment doesn't get it's shit together fast, and Trump doesn't spectacularly self destruct fast that very well may be the talk you will be having NEXT election.

[Kaelik]

So, basically, the electoral college favours the Republicans very heavily, at the moment, while in later years, post 2024 or so, is expected to favour the Democrats instead. Demographic shifts and such, but pretty heavily Republican right now.

No, the electoral college will never ever favor democrats. What is expected is that demographic shifts will eventually make it so that democrats can overcome the fact of electoral favoring always.

The Electoral college punishes: 1) having solid states instead of marginal states. But much more than that it punishes 2) Having big states that like you.

Clinton won 61% of California votes, but Trump actually won 71% of Wyoming Votes. It wasn't that Trump had fewer solid states and more barely victories, it was that Trump had more states where votes are worth more electoral votes.

To Demonstrate, I will take Virginia, a state Clinton won with 49.9 percent of the vote, and Wyoming, a state where Trump won with 70%, and show how still, each individual vote in Wyoming was worth more than each individual vote in Virginia, even accounting for "waste" from running up the score.

In Wyoming, 174,248 people voted for Trump, securing him .0000172 electors per vote. In Virginia 1,916,845 million people voted for Clinton, securing her 13 electors or .00000678 electors per vote. So each Wyoming vote was worth 2.5 times each Virginia vote.

It wasn't demographically unfair to Trump that he ran up the score in Wyoming, it was demographically unfair to Clinton that Wyoming voted for Trump, because people in Wyoming are worth more than people in Virginia. Being able to do nothing but say "There's an R in front of my name, and I hate black people" and automatically win all the states with the highest value of votes to electors is a demographic advantage that Republicans will continue to hold until the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact comes into effect.

Hey quick check, who's approved that? California, Washington, Illinois, New York, Mass, New Jersey, Vermont, and Maryland? All democratic state legislatures? Weird. Why don't republicans want to ensure that the winner of the popular vote becomes President? I mean, after all, Texas voters are always being devalued by this electoral college.... oh right, because the system favors one party, and that party will reject anything that hurts it's interest, even if it helps their state.

[Prak]

So, I read something about the Electoral College not actually voting till mid December. A quick google seems to confirm.

It's very unusual for the EC electors to not give all the votes for their state to the candidate who won their state's popular vote, admittedly, but I guess there is at least the option for some states to not do so?

[Grek]

Faithless electors have never altered who the president is before and are unlikely to do so this time.

[Maj]

Who's worse in the position of President: Donald Trump, or Mike Pence?

[Kaelik]

Who's worse in the position of President: Donald Trump, or Mike Pence?

Trump is uncertainty, he could in fact be worse, because he could be literal fascist dictator, but he could also just try for infrastructure the whole term.

Pence is guaranteed horrific monstrous worse than Bush 2 repub president.

I think the average of Trump is basically the same place as Pence.

[Maj]

So I'm not crazy for thinking that? Thanks.