Congratulations, Stupid.

[JackRiddler]

Candidates in the last three presidential elections, ranked in order of vote totals:

1. Obama 2008: 69.4 million
2. Obama 2012: 65.9 million
3. Romney 2012: 60.9 million
4. McCain 2008: 59.9 million
5. Clinton 2016: 59.8 million
6. Trump 2016: 59.6 million


Gentlepeople. This is RI, so just in case you want to argue those numbers are fabricated by machines: Fine. Then you have nothing to say on what or who Trump may or may not have "won."


You want to ignore those numbers? Fine. Then at least know that whatever you say is pulled straight out of your ass, and you know shit about what who Trump may or may not have "won." You're just participating on the lowest level of the spin and counter-spin machinery.


Trump didn't win shit in votes. I don't only mean that he got FEWER votes than Clinton, which is true. I mean that he did not gain any votes on prior Republicans. He did not win more of your precious white identity-politics voters than before. What happened is, millions of people who voted for Obama did not bother to vote at all for Clinton. This is not Trump's win. It is Clinton's loss.


Candidates in the last three presidential elections, ranked in order of vote totals:

1. Obama 2008: 69.4 million
2. Obama 2012: 65.9 million
3. Romney 2012: 60.9 million
4. McCain 2008: 59.9 million
5. Clinton 2016: 59.8 million
6. Trump 2016: 59.6 million


Cumulatively, about 10 million voters appear to have abandoned the Democrats since 2008. Republican vote totals have also declined but remain more stable, and still lower than the Democrats'. Only a small part of this can be blamed on vote suppression measures. The reality: More people are staying home than before, and more of them used to be Democrats.

It is not true that working class voters in the Midwest or elsewhere shifted toward Trump. That is a pernicious myth. It is being crafted right this moment and has two functions: For liberals, it shifts the blame for the DNC's self-made disaster on to "populist" sentiment. For Trump supporters, it legitimates the billionaire con artist's image as a man of the people.

What did Clinton have to offer to the working class voters of the Midwest, who are now falsely blamed for Trump? More of the same shit. More of them therefore stayed away from the ballot box. Trump won these battleground states without getting more votes in any of them than Romney did when he lost the same states in 2012.

In any case, out of the last six "major party" presidential candidates, Trump 2016 ranks sixth out of six. Dead last. He won because we do not have a democratic system in the United States. Rather, some long-dead rich guys from 1787 are still playing a joke on us.

(You can check state numbers for 2012 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... tion,_2012 and compare these to 2016 numbers. Remember the U.S. electorate has grown in the last eight years.)


I'm adding the following info for reference and framing, since of course we do not have the exact same people alive or eligible to vote in the three elections:

Voting age population (over 18), 2008: 227 million.*
Voting age population, 2016: about 255 million.*
Number of people in U.S. who turned 18 since 2008: about 31-34 million.
Who died: something under 20 million.
Naturalized citizens since 2008: about 5.6 million.
* - Resident aliens make up about 6% or 7% at any given time and cannot vote.

[JackRiddler]

Coffin Dodger, I don't hate you. Who the fuck are you, for me to hate?

You are a username that posts a lot of stupid shit on this board, and occasionally I throw it back in your virtual face.

I don't hate white men, I am one. Didn't get to choose, got no problem with'em. And white women! Love them, to tears. Almost everyone I ever fell in love with or had sex with was a white woman. Lovely ladies, all. Miss a lot of them. Anyway.

Yes I hate stupid white men, white women, and people of all colors who go for racist appeals. Sure. And I hate idiots who pretend that they didn't hear the racism coming from Trump.

Not too much, or it would be exhausting. They're all over the place and in my family too.

Now enough of you. Feel free to ban yourself, okay?

.

[coffin_dodger]

Nah, not going to be dismissed by you, mate.

The stats you posted are meaningless with regards to any of the claims you make.

You do hate white men, as does AD. When challenged, you deny - then say racist, racist, racist...stupid, stupid, stupid...idiot, idiot, idiot. It's wearing thin. Genuinely.

[stickdog99]

What did that old man many of you mocked as unelectable say, earlier this year? "We need a political revolution."

Jack, last night we just had a revolution, and that unelectable old man was partly responsible.

Bernie never was going to happen.
Mmh, speaking of, I wonder what his latest tweet is?

Election Day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote. Nov. 7
https://twitter.com/SenSanders?ref_src= ... r%5Eauthor

Yes, another one for the dream drawer.
Hopefully, in four years we will actually still have an Election Day.
Thanks Bernie!

Yeah, it's all Bernie's fault! How dare he pester otherwise Queen Hillary with his modest notions of economic reform.

[stickdog99]

Nah, not going to be dismissed by you, mate.

The stats you posted are meaningless with regards to any of the claims you make.

You do hate white men, as does AD. When challenged, you deny - then say racist, racist, racist...stupid, stupid, stupid...idiot, idiot, idiot. It's wearing thin. Genuinely.

White men in the USA are politically retarded. In every case in which their voting patterns differ from the rest of populace, they expose their undeniable political retardation. Yes, their anger is just and insightful. Yet their designated scapegoats are always small minded and their designated saviors are always worst case studies.

[bks]

Yes, their anger is just and insightful. Yet their designated scapegoats are always small minded and their designated saviors are always worst case studies.

Yes. In fact their designated saviors are often the source of many of their injuries. You'd be hard-pressed to find a better example than Trump, who has made a living cheating the decent craftspeople who do work for him, and doing everything he can to generally depress wages and make his workers feel insecure.

[Sounder]

So true stickdog99 and bks, Trump has made sport of cheating the worker.

[JackRiddler]

I did not vote for Clinton and feared the danger that her nomination would bring of making the impossible possible: a Trump win!

Many here seem to be operating well within the personalized rendering of the presidential election as a matter of choosing among two individuals based on their rap sheets, as though no politics are involved. The "mass murder," for which Clinton is one responsible party among many Republicans and Democrats who should be prosecuted, belongs to a vast apparatus of state, not to any one person. Trump has promised to maintain that apparatus through increased military spending, promised to break the Iran deal, made many bellicose noises including "TAKE THEIR OIL," which he described as a literal occupation of oil fields in the Middle East.

Insofar as they have stated explicit politics, Clinton's are odious, Trump's are worse. For me, a preference between these two plagues served up as the choices in a rigged system (the rigging is in the duopoly, not necessarily the vote count) was based on the tactical belief that one provided far better conditions for the "battlespace," for the fight that must happen regardless no matter which of them won.

I challenge you to read the following and a) accept that each sentence is factual, and b) state whether it is a fair rendering of the news. A is true, b is my opinion.

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/11/9/headlines

Donald J. Trump was elected 45th president of the United States on Tuesday, defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton in a stunning upset that reverberated around the world. Trump carried at least 279 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 218, although Trump appears to have narrowly lost the popular vote. Around 2:50 a.m., Donald Trump took the stage at a New York City victory party, saying he had received a phone call by Hillary Clinton congratulating him on the win.

President-elect Donald Trump: "To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people. It’s time. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans, and this is so important to me. For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I am reaching out to you for your guidance and your help, so that we can work together and unify our great country."

The contest pitted the two most unpopular candidates in modern presidential history against one another, with a majority of Americans viewing both Trump and Clinton unfavorably. Donald Trump has never held elective office. He opened his campaign in 2015 with a speech calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists. Trump has proposed banning all Muslims from entering the United States. He openly mocked his opponents, reporters, Asians, African Americans and the disabled. More than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault, and he was heard in a 2005 videotape boasting about sexually assaulting women. Throughout the campaign, Trump drew the enthusiastic support of white nationalists and hate groups. Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, who ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat in Louisiana, cheered the outcome of the election. Duke tweeted, "This is one of the most exciting nights of my life -> make no mistake about it, our people have played a HUGE role in electing Trump! #MAGA.”

I submit the Ku Klux Klan is smarter in understanding what Trump actually said and intimated a lot better than many people on this board, who have been supporters of what he and Alex Jones stand for, or else in denial, or influenced by a personal hatred of Clinton that obscures the political story, or who basically welcome the apparent upheaval to "the establishment" that he pretends, but in no way embodies. He is diametrically the opposite: a worse faction of "the establishment" taking power with a monopoly on all branches. What's guaranteed is an acceleration of neoliberalism, regardless of which trade deals are passed.

.

[JackRiddler]

Henceforth anything I have to say on the election is in this thread. You don't have to engage if you don't want to. So here's a crosspost.

.

Kiddies, this was a banana republic (without bananas) long before the term was coined. Like, back when the people were all in uproar about debt and taxes, and 55 guys who included the country's richest, a bunch of slave-owners, and holders of Continental bond notes they bought for pennies on the dollar, got together in Philadelphia to write themselves a constitution. They even threw in a Roman Senate for patricians like themselves. Now at times it's risen above the banana republic level, absolutely, it's even been world-inspirational for good government and great society and doing the right thing and shit. But banana's mostly been the normal. Now we get to explore a whole new depth, with literally the most piratical crew of outcasts from within the billionaire and political class gathered around a fucking actor playing a billionire playing a post-modern Hitler for the Christianist and gun-toting rubes, and no one's sure if he's serious or it's just a show. It's almost the political definition of banana. (Oh wait, I'm not supposed to call the old white male demographic who just embraced racism, misogyny and an authoritarian solution (again) mean names. The liberal meanness is what got them so angry, right? If only Lena Dunham and I had been nicer!)

Obviously a special prosecutor going after Clinton only is a fabulously banana republic move. If it was one of a dozen appointments, and these included special prosecutors for the planning of aggressive war, for war crimes, for violations by the surveillance state, for Wall Street and the 2007 scams, etc., fine. But this? A totaly partisan show for Rubesville. Also, distraction from the rape civil suit, Trump U, etc. Enjoy, kids.

.

[overcoming hope]

Nah, not going to be dismissed by you, mate.

The stats you posted are meaningless with regards to any of the claims you make.

You do hate white men, as does AD. When challenged, you deny - then say racist, racist, racist...stupid, stupid, stupid...idiot, idiot, idiot. It's wearing thin. Genuinely.

Trump supporters belong to two groups; open racists and people who aren’t really bothered all that much by open racists. Also many of them are stupid.

[JackRiddler]

Amen. It's bad news when the KKK understands it better than 1/3 of the frequent posters on RI.

[JackRiddler]

Again, breaking from my self-imposed self-ban...

I basically predicted this almost a year ago, in that thread that got me labeled a "psychopath": the tone-deafness evident in the rhetoric from the left was going to result in violent swing of the pendulum to the right. In the meantime, I see a number of RI members have come over to basically the same kind of thinking.

It's not exactly a full swing to the right, but it's telling.

Jack, as you know I love numbers, but my interpretation is that they only reinforce the dynamic I predicted. Many voters checked out because although HRC could not / would not speak to their core issues, they were not quite racist enough to vote for Trump. It's as much a failing of the DNC as it is the rottenness of Trump's core base.

Of course the numbers say it is more a failing of the DNC than anything else. Clinton should have never been nominated, or have been anointed the nominee years in advance.

But there simply has NOT been a "violent swing" when Trump can't outpoint Romney or McCain, but basically captures even lower proportions of the same demographics (eight years on, for the whole 31 million turned 18 and <20 million died, so these numbers are all against a larger electorate). And it's ludicrous to blame it on the "tone-deafness in the rhetoric from the left." Which left? Who's tone-deafness, when we have the power to choose anyone we prefer to be our "representative." There is no controlling what 10 or 20 million people say on the Internet. Others can choose to hear what they like, social media makes it more possible than ever, so they can form whatever picture they like of large ideologically labeled agglomerations (as opposed to individuals). Did you vote for Trump because I was mean or tone-deaf to you? (I presume you didn't vote for Trump, but you see what I mean?) Notwithstanding this place, in r/l I sound a lot more like Bernie Sanders. And Sanders is much more indicative of the left in r/l than whatever image you -- we all -- are free to construct by selecting whatever statements we feel like, out of millions. So if you want to pretend Lena Dunham and Rude Pundit are "the left," and their "tone-deafness" makes the Trump supporters hate "the left," : no problem. None of that makes anyone vote for Trump, it's just an excuse. Anyway, what kind of kid gloves are we all supposed to put on for these delicate white flowers intimidating by every sign of deviance from some nostalgic norm that never was? Talk about a form of political correctness run wild!

.

[JackRiddler]

slomo » Wed Nov 09, 2016 11:09 pm wrote:
I will grant that there is no monolithic left in real life, but there tends to be a centralization of a "progressive" message amplified by what is (has been) considered to be the legitimate media.

So who is doing that? You're saying it: The media. It's an old story, they pick who is representative.

This message has tended to downplay the concerns of the shrinking middle class, including (in particular) white men who are feeling marginalized. Whether or not the concerns of this demographic bloc are valid (some of them are, in my opinion as a mixed-race gay guy, but some of them are not), they have been left unaddressed by the major Democratic presidential candidate of 2016.

Wait, now Clinton is the left? The left just never catches a break in centrist American discourse. No matter how far to the right the D's move, they still get blamed on the "left."

Surely the whole point is that she didn't for a moment consider being "left" even in the moderate mode of Sanders. Or she would have talked about the shrinking middle class, and offered something other than an image.

Lena Dunham is a symbol of that messaging, she is symbolic of the tone-deafness of this (somewhat artificially constructed) brand of "progressivism"

Very artificially constructed, very much "progressivism" as opposed to anything progressive.

and she is the symbolic target of the ire of many (possibly reluctant) Trump supporters.

And that's mainly a matter of convenience. The more reluctant, the more they need such a symbolic target, which (my point) can always, always be found & pumped up as though significant. I don't think many unreluctant Trump supporters even have a clue who she is. They don't need her. They know what they think.

She is not the only symbol, but she's a pretty rich one (in many senses of the word "rich"). Dunham is the symbolic poster-girl for the DNC this election cycle.

Sure. And neither is "left." Actually we're agreeing. I'm just not seeing Trump votes (the usual Republican vote, minus a bit) as reaction formation to "liberal" "elite" snootiness. I am seeing that as a big part of the failure to appeal to six or seven million who went for Obama last time, but not Clinton this time. Or to very many outside that circle. It's hard to imagine Clinton being handed a better opponent to beat than Trump (the DNC wanted him!), so the fuck-up is hers and the DNC's.

Human behavior is largely based on emotion, and emotion is based on symbols and archetypes.

So we're fucked. Since the media can run this effortlessly.

This is particularly true of elections. So to discount the effect of symbols on the outcome of this election

I don't, but clearly they are an intermediary step. People choose the "symbols" they need to reinforce the direction they're already tending in. The symbols don't generally prompt the choice. They allow one to make that claim after the fact. "Yeah, I voted for Trump, but only because that Lena Dunham was so irritating." You believe that? The "reluctant" Trump voter does, in the end, but that's not what happened. Dunham's the totemic after-the-fact excuse.

simply because the symbols don't quite align with a complex and prosaic reality

Not quite. They barely align at all. At least half of the 59.6 million (those who aren't the Christianist base, another story) are basically patsies who, out of anger and scapegoating of the racial other, just voted to be fucked (even worse than before) along with everyone else.

In any case, even the uninspiring candidate (you think I disagree?!) just beat Trump in actual votes. We're having this discussion because of the continuing joke pulled on us by the 55 dead men from 1787.

[dada]

Morty posted this in the quote thread, thought I'd comment on it here:

"WikiLeaks ‏@wikileaks 4h4 hours ago

Remember how you legalized
✔Assassinating anyone
✔NSA mass spying
✔Prosecuting publishers
✔CIA drones everywhere

It's all Trumps in 71 days"

Who is wikileaks talking to here? Is it supposed to be like, 'take that, Clinton-supporting liberals!'

I kind of like Assange and the wikileakers. This makes 'em seem kind of petulant, if I'm interpreting it correctly. But I understand.

Maybe it's directed at politicians and not regular people? I can't tell, I'm not up on this stuff, not familiar enough to place it in context.

[slomo]

slomo » Wed Nov 09, 2016 11:09 pm wrote:
I will grant that there is no monolithic left in real life, but there tends to be a centralization of a "progressive" message amplified by what is (has been) considered to be the legitimate media.

So who is doing that? You're saying it: The media. It's an old story, they pick who is representative.

This message has tended to downplay the concerns of the shrinking middle class, including (in particular) white men who are feeling marginalized. Whether or not the concerns of this demographic bloc are valid (some of them are, in my opinion as a mixed-race gay guy, but some of them are not), they have been left unaddressed by the major Democratic presidential candidate of 2016.

Wait, now Clinton is the left? The left just never catches a break in centrist American discourse. No matter how far to the right the D's move, they still get blamed on the "left."

Surely the whole point is that she didn't for a moment consider being "left" even in the moderate mode of Sanders. Or she would have talked about the shrinking middle class, and offered something other than an image.

Lena Dunham is a symbol of that messaging, she is symbolic of the tone-deafness of this (somewhat artificially constructed) brand of "progressivism"

Very artificially constructed, very much "progressivism" as opposed to anything progressive.

and she is the symbolic target of the ire of many (possibly reluctant) Trump supporters.

And that's mainly a matter of convenience. The more reluctant, the more they need such a symbolic target, which (my point) can always, always be found & pumped up as though significant. I don't think many unreluctant Trump supporters even have a clue who she is. They don't need her. They know what they think.

She is not the only symbol, but she's a pretty rich one (in many senses of the word "rich"). Dunham is the symbolic poster-girl for the DNC this election cycle.

Sure. And neither is "left." Actually we're agreeing. I'm just not seeing Trump votes (the usual Republican vote, minus a bit) as reaction formation to "liberal" "elite" snootiness. I am seeing that as a big part of the failure to appeal to six or seven million who went for Obama last time, but not Clinton this time. Or to very many outside that circle. It's hard to imagine Clinton being handed a better opponent to beat than Trump (the DNC wanted him!), so the fuck-up is hers and the DNC's.

Human behavior is largely based on emotion, and emotion is based on symbols and archetypes.

So we're fucked. Since the media can run this effortlessly.

This is particularly true of elections. So to discount the effect of symbols on the outcome of this election

I don't, but clearly they are an intermediary step. People choose the "symbols" they need to reinforce the direction they're already tending in. The symbols don't generally prompt the choice. They allow one to make that claim after the fact. "Yeah, I voted for Trump, but only because that Lena Dunham was so irritating." You believe that? The "reluctant" Trump voter does, in the end, but that's not what happened. Dunham's the totemic after-the-fact excuse.

simply because the symbols don't quite align with a complex and prosaic reality

Not quite. They barely align at all. At least half of the 59.6 million (those who aren't the Christianist base, another story) are basically patsies who, out of anger and scapegoating of the racial other, just voted to be fucked (even worse than before) along with everyone else.

In any case, even the uninspiring candidate (you think I disagree?!) just beat Trump in actual votes. We're having this discussion because of the continuing joke pulled on us by the 55 dead men from 1787.

I responded in the other thread, but I'll copy+paste here again:

I don't believe Lena Dunham was directly responsible, no.

But she is one of maybe 10 symbols that are representative of a larger dynamic that is responsible. I've been lurking on r/kotakuinaction (and similar places) for about a year and seen what motivates the folks there. I would characterize that place as largely consisting of the kind of people who would have voted for Obama in 2008, who were cautiously supportive of Sanders, but felt completely alienated by Clinton. You may dismiss them as simply misogynistic GamerGaters, but their views represent the shift in the national mood that led to the results of yesterday. And dismissing them is part of the point of this whole thread, isn't it?

No, of course HRC is not "left", whatever that means anyway. But any election has its dualism, and right/left is as convenient a way to characterize this one as any.

And, no, we probably aren't disagreeing on too much. The distance between us is probably smaller than the distance between myself and just about anybody in my real-life social network, though I tend to keep my mouth shut when real relationships are at stake. (Sad to say, most people can't handle the truth, even those I care about.) I even took your numbers and distributed them to my "peeps", after confirming that I could source them independently.

On the fact that HRC won the popular vote: yes she did. But, by your own numbers, a lot of people stayed at home because they couldn't bring themselves to vote for either one. Their votes may have mattered in the archaic accounting on which the decision is actually made.