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[Totakeke]

I'm sick of people just blaming everything on these people being racists.

A black man won Indi fucking ana 8 years ago. Were they suddenly not overwhelmed with racists then?

The WWC in the rustbelt put their own needs, and desires for their cushy 80k jobs back, over the needs of everyone else. That is indisputable. But acting like they can't be taken back when a black man won most of them two times is just insane and sends us toward the path of irrelevance.

Personally I'm pretty sick of low-information voters and the need of half of the country to cater to them. I'm also pretty sick of media that exploits them. I'm pretty sick of social media that allows them to dig their heads into the sand even further. I'm not even talking about political strategy to here, it's just pretty sickening that we have to regress our discourse to their level.

 

[thepotatoman]

Fuck, this was my worst fear. It's easier to digest if they think she would have lost either way.

If it's really this? Fuck fuck fuck. Just adding to the reality of our national nightmare. Maybe they're exaggerating the Comey effect?

According to Trump's camp, the campaign's final push with undecided voters in MI and WI is what turned them.

It could be just them finding a blind spot in those two states and exploiting it while Clinton's campaign wasn't even paying attention, but hard to believe it'd be as effective without comey. Either way there definitely was movement in the last couple weeks of the election.

Still doesn't explain PA, NC, and FL though.

 

[Grexeno]

Obviously in 2020 we can only run on what a Trump administration actually did.

 

[BreezyLimbo]

I'm sick of people just blaming everything on these people being racists.

A black man won Indi fucking ana 8 years ago. Were they suddenly not overwhelmed with racists then?

The WWC in the rustbelt put their own needs, and desires for their cushy 80k jobs back, over the needs of everyone else. That is indisputable. But acting like they can't be taken back when a black man won most of them two times is just insane and sends us toward the path of irrelevance.

In a nutshell.

Their needs will not match the needs of coastal states. The states in the rustbelt are more or less, homogeneous areas. As such, things like BLM or rights for LGBT won't matter to them as much as they would in say, California or Chicago.

There has to be focus on them, and that focus has to be compromised of policies/ideas that will invigorate them. Don't even mention minorities to the rustbelt states, because that isn't their problem.

Yes, that is fucked up reasoning. Yes, that is a fucked up thing to do. But the reailty is that there are states that are really homogeneous in terms of ethnicity and race. When they hear that a candidate is mostly about minorities, then that doesn't represent them at all.

And like I said...HIllary ran an excellent campaign focusing on women and minorities. But that was never going to sway the rust belt. She needed to have another set of policies and ideas that she took to them exclusively.

 

[shinra-bansho]

I only have cursory observations, high level unsellable solutions and defeatism right now.

That's why I'm asking for the how.

How does one fund this massive fake industry making who knows what for who knows reasons? Taxes these people don't want to pay I assume.

 

[Yoda]

No.

Was referring to the overall vote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012

http://www.cnn.com/election/results/president

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Ding.

One of Clinton's biggest mistakes was banking on the decency of the American public.

She believed America would reject ovee white nationalism... that they would fight aka tick a fucking box to stop it

And she was wrong

Hillary and Obama both believed in some Republicans being good.

Psych! Joke's on them.

And everyone else...

 

[neurosisxeno]

Well that's what I'm asking.

Beyond the fantasyland notion that we're all coming together under some common socialist banner to fight the East and West coasts and that these people will be perfectly okay with sharing any gains with browns and blacks.

You're the one who noted that they don't want handouts. Presumably even handouts to retrain.

It was the last hurrah of the Blue Collar White Man. They have dreams of America going back to the pre-NAFTA days where we lead the world in manufacturing. Like somehow we're going to repeal NAFTA and the other Trade Agreements and companies will suddenly re-open those factories they closed. But the simple truth is that will never happen. The Genie of Free Trade does not go back into the bottle no matter what you do, short of taking a completely isoloationist approach.

I think we have to look at the kind of things that lead to Senator Sanders and President-Elect Trump's success, and take some notes;

• Social Media presence is important, traditional ground game does not matter as much as we thought.
• America does not trust the DNC or even the Democratic Party. We need to purge the DNC of those affiliated with the 2016 Clinton Campaign and champion a more transparent DNC.
• We cannot run a candidate with image problems. Ever. Even the suggestion that they have had scandals on a major scale is unacceptable.
• The DNC needs to stop focusing so heavily on Party loyalty. I was shouted down during the primaries in this very forum for suggesting that the Democratic Party open the door to independents and even moderate Republicans.
• We cannot focus primarily on social policy. While it's nice to support women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and racial equality, it unfortunately alienates white voters, and the Democratic Party still needs some of their votes.
• Charisma is king. We need members that can give fiery speeches, draw massive crowds, and inspire people.
• Qualification != Electability. Hillary Clinton was undoubtedly more qualified than Donald Trump, but that meant fuck all.

This is just off the top of my head. I'm not 100% happy with this, but it's the reality we live in.

 

[Retromelon]

Poligaf 2016 |OT16| Trump Daddy gives us the cummies

 

[Totakeke]

Was referring to the overall vote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012

http://www.cnn.com/election/results/president

Nope. Nothing is definitive yet.

 

[VendettaRed07]

I'm sick of people just blaming everything on these people being racists.

A black man won Indi fucking ana 8 years ago. Were they suddenly not overwhelmed with racists then?

The WWC in the rustbelt put their own needs, and desires for their cushy 80k jobs back, over the needs of everyone else. That is indisputable. But acting like they can't be taken back when a black man won most of them two times is just insane and sends us toward the path of irrelevance.

I think people on here are frustrated and think that a democratic candidate can't be more open with minority communities and address their problems or talk about their issues without dissuading white voters. If that was true, then yeah they'd probably be right to think that. But that isn't what happened this election. At least I don't want to believe that it is. Hillary did well addressing the needs and concerns for minorities this election but it is not the reason why she lost.

 

[thehypocrite]

Unless you were planning to leave these people to die, you would have had to do something for them if you got elected anyway. So you need to tell them what it is.

I mean, what is our plan for the Rust Belt?

We need to revitalize their communities. Create jobs, yes even bullshit jobs, parks, whatever, invest in these areas a lot. Give them something real, ask them, ind out the things they want to see happening in their communities. Offer free college education and deliver it to them that will help to re-vitalize their communities, cheaper health care cost. There are many things to be done. They should be compensated for the harms that have destroyed a lot of their livelihood.

The whole purpose of the actual gov capturing taxes is to provide compensation to the voting blocs that win you elections. Offer and deliver to these people cause they probably need it, and you need it too.

 

[Zukkoyaki]

Given you haven't made any suggestions yet, my conclusion seems to be your plan actually was to just leave them to die? It's little wonder we lost if that genuinely was our attitude.

I think the actual answer is pretty complicated. It's weirdly a problem that's easier in the long-run than the short-run - no matter what kind of palliatives we put in, it will probably always be better to move to the cities than stay put. The more accessible you make the education process, the faster that happens - so free student tuition is a place to start.

The short run? You have to bring the jobs back. Instead of putting money towards benefits, put money towards subsidizing industry, at least in the short-run. That way they still get state handouts, it just comes through the intervening medium of something that gives them a little dignity. What's the difference between paying them $15 an hour to do nothing vs. paying them $15 an hour to build a car? At least in the second one you have a car at the end of it. A massive drive into rural infrastructure - particularly public transport. Try and capture some of these areas as satellites, so that businesses can spread from the cities to these outlying areas. An hour's travel compared to three hour's travel is a big difference in viability. Be immensely careful with free trade - sometimes cheaper consumer goods aren't worth livelihoods. Cheaper necessities are probably fine to come from abroad, but any free trade that outsources luxury good production means that you bankrupt rural America to provide wealthy America cheaper goods.

These are just part of something, but I think they're, at least, starting points.

I saw Joe Biden speak a few weeks ago and he said similar things. His big pitch was to get these people who are used to labor working in the energy sector. You know, manufacturing and maintaining solar panels and wind turbines and of course the infrastructure spending bill. Rural areas have ample land and space for energy production.

 

[sphagnum]

I only have cursory observations, high level unsellable solutions and defeatism right now.

That's why I'm asking for the how.

How does one fund this massive fake industry making who knows what for who knows reasons? Taxes these people don't want to pay I assume.

There's a pretty rich class out there who can afford to be bilked.

 

[Shao Kahn on the Lawn]

The problem here is the conflation of certain types of work with dignity. You do massively inefficient welfare via military spending on stuff the military often doesn't want, spread out over states in ways that make no sense. But very few people view it that way because they see the resulting jobs as dignified despite the fact they are effectively digging holes and filling them in again in terms of use.

So you could wrap you're assistance appropriately. Use the money that would be spent on assistance , take the efficiency hit and wrap it in "jobs'. Hell, you might even get some productive use out if it eg infrastructure repair/creation.

Exactly. Pretty much every rural area in the country is just as starved for a massive infrastructure overhaul as our urban centers are. Water, electrical, transportation, all of it. That's not even talking about going the next step further and working on revitalization projects that restore distressed areas to their former glory.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I only have cursory observations, high level unsellable solutions and defeatism right now.

That's why I'm asking for the how.

How does one fund this massive fake industry making who knows what for who knows reasons? Taxes these people don't want to pay I assume.

Levy the taxes on Wall Street. On the elite, on the 1%. They're looking for someone to blame. Blaming it on a group actually partially culpable for once might be a good start. Even Trump used this rhetoric, and he didn't mean it at all.

 

[Totakeke]

Exactly. Pretty much every rural area in the country is just as starved for a massive infrastructure overhaul as our urban centers are. Water, electrical, transportation, all of it. That's not even talking about going the next step further and working on revitalization projects that restore distressed areas to their former glory.

All the while while cutting taxes to everyone (but the rich) unfortunately.

 

[BanGy.nz]

Poligaf 2016 |OT16| Trump Daddy gives us the cummies

I hate you so much right now

 

[Yoda]

This is basically a "we're fucked" post. Do you have any ideas about how to move forward (this a genuine question, not a snarky question)?

I guess I could have alluded to it more in the post. Democrats need to stop pretending the country wants center left politicians. Whatever you think of polling, it's VERY clear that left-leaning social and economic policies are popular among the broader electorate. True progressives like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Tulsi Gabbard need to drive the ship. Democratic insiders will rationalize that we need to find a pro-business, long-term insiders who may or may not appeal to X demographic. This kind of bullshit political consultant speak is what convinced the dems that anointing HRC was a path to victory. The days of small government liberals such as Bill Clinton is dead, and it needs to stay that way.

 

[Diablos]

Trump says they discussed different situations... some wonderful and some difficult.

I wonder what those situations were.

 

[Retromelon]

I hate you so much right now

you are still my favorite gay

 

[GoldenEye 007]

That's just the issue I have though. What if there isn't? What if republicans have found the formula to gain their votes continually at the levels we have seen? And this was with a hated candidate who people lacked the experience to be president. They didn't care and when he has 4 years under his belt and they forget about his sexual scandals why are they going to believe us over him?

You're completely right. Our level of success will depend on Trump's success. If he actually delivers, we're fucked socially at least, because it further validates his mandate. If he fails, there might be a window. I'm not saying I hope he fails, but I just don't have confidence he can bring back manufacturing jobs. And infrastructure? Will he get that budget through Congress?

I guess unless he proposes to privatize and deregulate everything..... Like private water lines, electric grids/energy, roads, wired communication, etc.

 

[Yoda]

Nope. Nothing is definitive yet.

I like how you aren't quoting the part where I specifically mention that?

 

[Elaugaufein]

Also lost in all this is the prospect that 8 years of a black President, galvanised the bigotry. And the perfect person to harness it was the man who tried to delegitimise his Presidency.

Why would 8 years galvanize it more than 4 ? Especially given Obama is more popular now than he was in 2012. And if it was just plain old bigotry voting against Obama should have been way more motivating than Trump but it wasn't.

 

[Totakeke]

I like how you aren't quoting the part where I specifically mention that?

Quoting what part? I quoted your whole post.

 

[Wilsongt]

PoliGAF2016|OT 17| The Orange Horseman of the Apocalypse as arrived

 

[kirblar]

Guys... What is The Rock ran for president?

You'd want Cena, based on what I've heard about their politics.

 

[Diablos]

Protests are starting in even smaller cities. I hope things don't get too insane.

The Democratic party is effectively dead right now. They don't have any control, anywhere. Insane.

 

[Dubbedinenglish]

Levy the taxes on Wall Street. On the elite, on the 1%.

At the same time we need to plan to get the middle class re-invested in Wall Street. The core problem we are facing is that economic growth is only tied to the rich. We need to fight that division long term. I don't even know how to get policy to move that needle but that needs to be a long term goal. Bring people back to Wall Street.

 

[SexyFish]

Poligaf 2016 |OT16| Trump Daddy gives us the cummies

What the fuck dude.

It isn't "Trump Daddy". It's "Daddy Donald".

 

[shinra-bansho]

Levy the taxes on Wall Street. On the elite, on the 1%. They're looking for someone to blame. Blaming it on a group actually partially culpable for once might be a good start. Even Trump used this rhetoric, and he didn't mean it at all.

Blaming it on the browns vs blaming it on rich people. You think the latter wins out. I think the former. Impasse.

They want to be the rich people. They will never be the browns.

And I don't even know if that would pay for your America Works program.

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Why would 8 years galvanize it more than 4 ? Especially given Obama is more popular now than he was in 2012. And if it was just plain old bigotry voting against Obama should have been way more motivating than Trump but it wasn't.

exactly! Obama won because he actually did some of the stuff I'm talking about above. Another poster in an OT topic was posting all of Obama's campaign posters from '08 talking about how he opposed NAFTA and Clinton didn't, and '12 ones about how he protected the auto industry when Romney was going to let it die.

I'm not proposing anything massively radical here. I'm saying that: Obama showed us at least part of the way, but times have changed and we need to follow that path further. Clinton, if anything, walked it back.

 

[Shao Kahn on the Lawn]

Another infrastructure project: Internet connectivity. Every city in America should be rolling out a fiber backbone to enable the innovations of tomorrow. Connecting the last mile of every community would be an extraordinarily large endeavor and it's something private enterprise will never take on.

 

[kirblar]

Blaming it on the browns vs blaming it on rich people. You think the latter wins out. I think the former. Impasse.

They want to be the rich people. They will never be the browns.

And I don't even know if that would pay for your America Works program.

That it always ends up in National Socialism isn't an accident.

 

[Yoda]

Quoting what part? I quoted your whole post.

You must have missed the second sentence:

* Voter turnout was low across the board. Neither candidate is above the loser of the previous election, there are still outstanding ballots

 

[Totakeke]

Another infrastructure project: Internet connectivity. Every city in America should be rolling out a fiber backbone to enable the innovations of tomorrow. Connecting the last mile of every community would be an extraordinarily large endeavor and it's something private enterprise will never take on.

Problem is $$$.

You must have missed the second sentence:

I actually quoted that part in my earlier post which you responded to.

 

[Crocodile]

It was the last hurrah of the Blue Collar White Man. They have dreams of America going back to the pre-NAFTA days where we lead the world in manufacturing. Like somehow we're going to repeal NAFTA and the other Trade Agreements and companies will suddenly re-open those factories they closed. But the simple truth is that will never happen. The Genie of Free Trade does not go back into the bottle no matter what you do, short of taking a completely isoloationist approach.

I think we have to look at the kind of things that lead to Senator Sanders and President-Elect Trump's success, and take some notes;

• Social Media presence is important, traditional ground game does not matter as much as we thought.
• America does not trust the DNC or even the Democratic Party. We need to purge the DNC of those affiliated with the 2016 Clinton Campaign and champion a more transparent DNC.
• We cannot run a candidate with image problems. Ever. Even the suggestion that they have had scandals on a major scale is unacceptable.
  [*]The DNC needs to stop focusing so heavily on Party loyalty. I was shouted down during the primaries in this very forum for suggesting that the Democratic Party open the door to independents and even moderate Republicans.
  [*]We cannot focus primarily on social policy. While it's nice to support women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and racial equality, it unfortunately alienates white voters, and the Democratic Party still needs some of their votes.
• Charisma is king. We need members that can give fiery speeches, draw massive crowds, and inspire people.
• Qualification != Electability. Hillary Clinton was undoubtedly more qualified than Donald Trump, but that meant fuck all.

This is just off the top of my head. I'm not 100% happy with this, but it's the reality we live in.

I agree with most of this but I'll speak to the bolded:

• The DNC system could have prevented a Trump. We all assumed Trump was a bad thing since he so thoroughly disgusted us and had no policy. We were working under the assumption that decent and policy mattered
• Like I agree that you don't need to mention stuff like BLM in the middle of Wisconson but you can't backburner social issues when talking on the national stage. You will turn off minorities and millennials. A minority that connects to the WWC may be a good route to go because as others have said, being a minority at least gives them some credibility with that group that may make pushing more on the WWC more palatable to others

 

[Deleted member 231381]

Blaming it on the browns vs blaming it on rich people. You think the latter wins out. I think the former. Impasse.

Then why did these people vote for Obama!? Why did people in Wisconsin who voted trump in '16 vote Obama in '08 and '12!?

 

[thehypocrite]

Given you haven't made any suggestions yet, my conclusion seems to be your plan actually was to just leave them to die? It's little wonder we lost if that genuinely was our attitude.

I think the actual answer is pretty complicated. It's weirdly a problem that's easier in the long-run than the short-run - no matter what kind of palliatives we put in, it will probably always be better to move to the cities than stay put. The more accessible you make the education process, the faster that happens - so free student tuition is a place to start.

The short run? You have to bring the jobs back. Instead of putting money towards benefits, put money towards subsidizing industry, at least in the short-run. That way they still get state handouts, it just comes through the intervening medium of something that gives them a little dignity. What's the difference between paying them $15 an hour to do nothing vs. paying them $15 an hour to build a car? At least in the second one you have a car at the end of it. A massive drive into rural infrastructure - particularly public transport. Try and capture some of these areas as satellites, so that businesses can spread from the cities to these outlying areas. An hour's travel compared to three hour's travel is a big difference in viability. Be immensely careful with free trade - sometimes cheaper consumer goods aren't worth livelihoods. Cheaper necessities are probably fine to come from abroad, but any free trade that outsources luxury good production means that you bankrupt rural America to provide wealthy America cheaper goods.

These are just part of something, but I think they're, at least, starting points.

I agree with a lot of what posted there.

I only have cursory observations, high level unsellable solutions and defeatism right now.

That's why I'm asking for the how.

How does one fund this massive fake industry making who knows what for who knows reasons? Taxes these people don't want to pay I assume.

You legalize and tax weed at a federal level. Is the easy solution.

 

[Diablos]

Another infrastructure project: Internet connectivity. Every city in America should be rolling out a fiber backbone to enable the innovations of tomorrow. Connecting the last mile of every community would be an extraordinarily large endeavor and it's something private enterprise will never take on.

Like Trump is going to do that. If anything he'll let net neutrality go to hell and the Internet as we know it is dead.

 

[Dominican Power]

Another infrastructure project: Internet connectivity. Every city in America should be rolling out a fiber backbone to enable the innovations of tomorrow. Connecting the last mile of every community would be an extraordinarily large endeavor and it's something private enterprise will never take on.

It should be like how they laid down the tracks for the railroads from coast to coast and our highway system. America is so complacent on infrastructure.

 

[pigeon]

Then why did these people vote for Obama!? Why did people in Wisconsin who voted trump in '16 vote Obama in '08 and '12!?

I already responded to this.

He told them racism was over and everything was fine now.

 

[Valhelm]

This isn't true. Trump outpaced Romney in literally every swing state he won in. This isn't a story about turnout, Trump actually did something here.

Trump offered specific economic solutions that Romney and McCain didn't.

We need to recognize that this orange fuck was a hope and change candidate for many voters in the same way as Obama. This, paired with Republican propaganda and low millennial turnout, let Trump be president.

We would be crushed by the Freikorps. We should, however, seriously consider the possibility of street brawls.

I hate accelerationism, but one benefit of a Trump presidency is the near inevitable rise of the American hard left. You didn't see thousands of young people waving red flags in marches organized by explicitly communist groups after Bush won in 2000 or

 

[sphagnum]

Blaming it on the browns vs blaming it on rich people. You think the latter wins out. I think the former. Impasse.

Probably, but the goal is to drive up Dem turnout and pick off some Trump voters, not to get all WWC on our side, which is impossible. And that would help. Certainly more than the lack of a narrative that HRC had.

 

[StoOgE]

So,

I think I want to run for Congress.

My post history will probably destroy me, but screw it. Lamar Smith needs someone to take him down, and this pro business, mid-30s, socially liberal hipster ex Goldman VP small business owner is in.

Fuck it. We ain't changing shit unless we do it ourselves.

 

[Shao Kahn on the Lawn]

Like Trump is going to do that. If anything he'll let net neutrality go to hell and the Internet as we know it is dead.

Trump isn't going to be President forever. We're talking about the kinds of projects that can get distressed communities back to work.

So,

I think I want to run for Congress.

My post history will probably destroy me, but screw it. Lamar Smith needs someone to take him down, and this pro business, mid-30s, socially liberal hipster ex Goldman VP small business owner is in.

Fuck it. We ain't changing shit unless we do it ourselves.

It looks very much like you're joking but I honestly had the same thought this afternoon.

 

[FloydtheFathead]

So,

I think I want to run for Congress.

My post history will probably destroy me, but screw it. Lamar Smith needs someone to take him down, and this pro business, mid-30s, socially liberal hipster ex Goldman VP small business owner is in.

Fuck it. We ain't changing shit unless we do it ourselves.

I'll donate sto0ge..

 

[Deleted member 231381]

I already responded to this.

He told them racism was over and everything was fine now.

Racism. We are not cured of it. And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say 'nigger' in public. That's not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don't overnight completely erase everything that happened 200-300 years prior.
So what I tried to describe in the Selma speech that I gave, commemorating the march there, was, again, a notion that progress is real, and we have to take hope from that progress. But what is also real is that the march isn't over, and the work is not yet completed. And then our job is to try in very concrete ways to figure out, what more can we do?

That's from earlier this year. I can trawl through the archives finding dozens of Obama speeches on racism. He might not have gone as far as you wanted, but he literally never denied racism existed.

 

[Grexeno]

So,

I think I want to run for Congress.

My post history will probably destroy me, but screw it. Lamar Smith needs someone to take him down, and this pro business, mid-30s, socially liberal hipster ex Goldman VP small business owner is in.

Fuck it. We ain't changing shit unless we do it ourselves.

I wish you luck. That district is R+12

 

[sphagnum]

So,

I think I want to run for Congress.

My post history will probably destroy me, but screw it. Lamar Smith needs someone to take him down, and this pro business, mid-30s, socially liberal hipster ex Goldman VP small business owner is in.

Fuck it. We ain't changing shit unless we do it ourselves.

Look, all you have to do is point to me and say "My posts were totally reasonable compared to that guy."