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PoliGAF 2016 |OT16| Unpresidented
- Thread starter ItWasMeantToBe19
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Donald Trump just pulled off an enormous con on this country to get himself elected president.
I think we should assume the worse in that Paul Ryan and co. will, somehow, convince their constituents that it's okay now to kill Medicare. Matt Bevin did this in Kentucky; he was elected governor on the promise of dismantling the state's health exchange by people who overwhelmingly benefit from that exchange. Republican voters gutted their own ability to purchase affordable health coverage because they saw an R next to the guy's name. I don't see why this would be any different.
shinra-bansho
Member
Her name is been in the mix. New names are thrown around literally every day.
Because they have no idea what the fuck they're doing in Trump tower.
When they won, people were momentarily fooled into thinking his team was anything but a shambolic group of degenerates and that they actually knew what they're doing.
Also from NYMag. The President-elect's company is suing Washington DC. (Again)
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/trump-suing-washington-dc-again.html
balladofwindfishes
Member
AARP is one of the strongest lobbies in Washington. It's not just voters they need to convince. AARP will crush them if they mess with medicare.
Brawly Likes to Brawl
Member
link is broken
Only halfway through it, but well worth reading. Bookmarked it, too. Cheers for posting it.
Edit: Finished it. A very good read. A reminder of how good things could've been. This:
Needs to be quoted by the DNC in marketing and promotional materials.
I think I'd have more confidence in their opinion if they were a lawyer, or if there were more than just "legal scholars refer". It's not quite hearsay, and I would like to believe it, but I'm with you in that I'm more cynical than the author.
Plasticine
Member
Here's a little more background on the source chain here:
Conrad Thompson is a guy who co-hosts a wrestling podcast with Ric Flair and is very good friends with Flair. He said on the MLW radio podcast this Wednesday that Flair texted him at 6 AM after Trump won saying Linda McMahon is going to be in Trump's cabinet as Commerce Secretary.
Ric Flair is best friends with Triple H, who's an executive Vice President at WWE and Linda McMahon's son-in-law. So he would be a position to know what's going on from that side of things.
Obviously things could change since Trump Tower is a cluster and someone might think it looks too bad to give a Cabinet position to someone who gave millions to the Trump Foundation/campaign, but Trump's been friends with the McMahons for decades.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
There are some bits of the article I disagree with. For example:
I don't think half the country did prefer this. This isn't any consolation mind, because I think if anything the alternative is just as terrifying - they were entirely apathetic. About a quarter of the country did vote for this, but the other quarter complicit in Trump's election voted to bring the jobs back and to drain the swamp - and that quarter contained about as many women as it did men. Everything else to them was just unfortunate casualties.
And I think that's something that Democrats have to maybe get to grips with. White women voted Trump. It's not clear to me that the average woman actually cares that much about Clinton being elected, or that an extra CEO is a woman. This is feminism for the top 1%. There's been a gross lack of focus on working class feminism, to the point that feminism has become so tainted with academic and middle class associations that it is wholesale rejected by the class that needs it the most. I think intersectional feminism has the answer to this, as long as it remembers the class dimension. You can't sell pay equality to people who don't even get pay, or not the pay they used to.
I think the article largely continues in that vein. I agree with how awful all of the things it says are. They're vile. But I think the article largely talks to people who already agree or sympathize with it. It doesn't really seek to explain why white women voted against Clinton, and it doesn't have a conclusion about what we should do in light of what just happened. For example:
Well, no. Some women did, and they are brave and courageous women. But Trump won the white women's vote. So the women who acted as the quote above describes? Well, they're liberal woman, rather than just women in general. And then when you add that into the equation, suddenly you feel like 'woman' begins to drop out altogether - you could have just said 'they're liberal voters'; adding woman doesn't add that much explanatory power. It's clear this election was more complicated than just: men vs. women, and constantly trying to frame it in those terms is missing the forest for the trees.
There's a paragraph where the author finally gets round to discussing this - why women only barely split for Clinton and how white women did not - and I thought it was going to be the good bit in the article. But then... she just sorts of brings up the idea and drops it again. There's some reasons thrown around as to why this might be the case, but none of them are looked at in depth, none of them subjected to any thought or examination. So what should have been the culmination of the article ends up being a howl of grief - which is entirely fair, in the circumstances, but grief only gets you so far. And then it ends with this paragraph:
which I think is just wrong in the entirety. These low-income white men and women overwhelmingly voted Obama, and I'm not at all convinced that sexism/perception of women in America is worse than racism/perception of men in America. I say this not to engage in oppression competition, but to point out that these groups are not innately sexist or racist. It is a product of their environment, their situation, their local culture, the political system - all sorts of things which have combined to make a violent and sickening cocktail of bigotry. But if they can vote for Obama, they can definitely vote for a women. They almost voted for Clinton - the margins were small, and yet I think by now most in this thread have concluded she was a bad candidate in ways other than her womanhood.
And then this leads to this:
which I think is entirely unfair. This is being poured over as we speak. But it's being rejected because, as I've pointed out above, it is woefully uncritical. It seeks to build a giant liberal bubble chamber, where everyone who disagrees with you is fundamentally evil, rather than unfortunately swayed by the other side because you could not reach them. And it's the thesis that would lead to the conclusion: there is no saving America (or indeed, the Western world). We are doomed to this, because these people are, at their basic level, evil. So it absolves liberals of any responsibility to make any effort at all to fight for their causes. Why bother? We already lost. Well, no. The one thing the article really was right about is the plight of women and minorities. And as long as there's even the slightest chance people can be swayed or cajoled into supporting that cause, there's work to be done, and we need to do it.
I think the most prescient and interesting point it makes is about why Clinton was the first female candidate to be so successful - because she worked so hard to become a member of the establishment, so that she didn't face the barriers from the establishment that other women candidates had faced, but by the time she got there, the establishment was dead. But, if anything, I think that carries a kernel of hope in it. If our political parties are susceptible to firebrands from outside the norm, and the norm is one which has historically excluded women, then perhaps our chances are better than ever. I'm pretty convinced that if you put Tim Kaine against Warren in the 2020 primary, Warren would defeat him so convincingly you'd have to change his name to Tim LaKaine just so he had somewhere to hold that L.
I don't think half the country did prefer this. This isn't any consolation mind, because I think if anything the alternative is just as terrifying - they were entirely apathetic. About a quarter of the country did vote for this, but the other quarter complicit in Trump's election voted to bring the jobs back and to drain the swamp - and that quarter contained about as many women as it did men. Everything else to them was just unfortunate casualties.
And I think that's something that Democrats have to maybe get to grips with. White women voted Trump. It's not clear to me that the average woman actually cares that much about Clinton being elected, or that an extra CEO is a woman. This is feminism for the top 1%. There's been a gross lack of focus on working class feminism, to the point that feminism has become so tainted with academic and middle class associations that it is wholesale rejected by the class that needs it the most. I think intersectional feminism has the answer to this, as long as it remembers the class dimension. You can't sell pay equality to people who don't even get pay, or not the pay they used to.
I think the article largely continues in that vein. I agree with how awful all of the things it says are. They're vile. But I think the article largely talks to people who already agree or sympathize with it. It doesn't really seek to explain why white women voted against Clinton, and it doesn't have a conclusion about what we should do in light of what just happened. For example:
Well, no. Some women did, and they are brave and courageous women. But Trump won the white women's vote. So the women who acted as the quote above describes? Well, they're liberal woman, rather than just women in general. And then when you add that into the equation, suddenly you feel like 'woman' begins to drop out altogether - you could have just said 'they're liberal voters'; adding woman doesn't add that much explanatory power. It's clear this election was more complicated than just: men vs. women, and constantly trying to frame it in those terms is missing the forest for the trees.
There's a paragraph where the author finally gets round to discussing this - why women only barely split for Clinton and how white women did not - and I thought it was going to be the good bit in the article. But then... she just sorts of brings up the idea and drops it again. There's some reasons thrown around as to why this might be the case, but none of them are looked at in depth, none of them subjected to any thought or examination. So what should have been the culmination of the article ends up being a howl of grief - which is entirely fair, in the circumstances, but grief only gets you so far. And then it ends with this paragraph:
which I think is just wrong in the entirety. These low-income white men and women overwhelmingly voted Obama, and I'm not at all convinced that sexism/perception of women in America is worse than racism/perception of men in America. I say this not to engage in oppression competition, but to point out that these groups are not innately sexist or racist. It is a product of their environment, their situation, their local culture, the political system - all sorts of things which have combined to make a violent and sickening cocktail of bigotry. But if they can vote for Obama, they can definitely vote for a women. They almost voted for Clinton - the margins were small, and yet I think by now most in this thread have concluded she was a bad candidate in ways other than her womanhood.
And then this leads to this:
which I think is entirely unfair. This is being poured over as we speak. But it's being rejected because, as I've pointed out above, it is woefully uncritical. It seeks to build a giant liberal bubble chamber, where everyone who disagrees with you is fundamentally evil, rather than unfortunately swayed by the other side because you could not reach them. And it's the thesis that would lead to the conclusion: there is no saving America (or indeed, the Western world). We are doomed to this, because these people are, at their basic level, evil. So it absolves liberals of any responsibility to make any effort at all to fight for their causes. Why bother? We already lost. Well, no. The one thing the article really was right about is the plight of women and minorities. And as long as there's even the slightest chance people can be swayed or cajoled into supporting that cause, there's work to be done, and we need to do it.
I think the most prescient and interesting point it makes is about why Clinton was the first female candidate to be so successful - because she worked so hard to become a member of the establishment, so that she didn't face the barriers from the establishment that other women candidates had faced, but by the time she got there, the establishment was dead. But, if anything, I think that carries a kernel of hope in it. If our political parties are susceptible to firebrands from outside the norm, and the norm is one which has historically excluded women, then perhaps our chances are better than ever. I'm pretty convinced that if you put Tim Kaine against Warren in the 2020 primary, Warren would defeat him so convincingly you'd have to change his name to Tim LaKaine just so he had somewhere to hold that L.
Slurpy2k20
Member
What has caused me some of the worst stress and anger over this election is how loathsome filth like Conway, and all these other despicable Trump surrogates who have been giving thousands of hours of air time to spread their never-ending lies and distortions, now get validated, elevated, and have even a larger megaphone, when my only consolation while listening to their verbal vomit throughout the election season was that they'd disappear forever on November 9.
But now, we're stuck with this kind of garbage for the long haul. There's something just horrifying and sociopathic how good Conway is at her job- lying, pivoting, deflecting, and distorting with such ease and with a massive fucking smile plastered about her face the entire time. I don't even know if she believes her horse-shit, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter. She's a despicable, irredeemable human being either way.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Given that turnout is always low what are we basing the idea that people who voted for Obama went Trump on? Is there a poll I missed that discredits the possibility that white workers who voted for Obama stayed home while those who voted for Trump came out but didn't in the past? Everyone just seems to be taking the "voter flip" as a given
gutter_trash
Banned
I am not jumping on the Bernie train.
Sanders was partly responsible for driving Clinton's negatives higher than what they were in comparison to 2008's Primaries
2016's Primaries, he was railing non-stop about corruption, Wall Street, speeches, donors against Clinton in a way that Obama never touched in '08.
Trump adopted all of Sanders's attack against Clinton as his own and continued Sanders' talking point.s
I am not on the Bernie train, you don't attack candidates within your own party the way he did that drove her Negatives through the roof
Sanders was partly responsible for driving Clinton's negatives higher than what they were in comparison to 2008's Primaries
2016's Primaries, he was railing non-stop about corruption, Wall Street, speeches, donors against Clinton in a way that Obama never touched in '08.
Trump adopted all of Sanders's attack against Clinton as his own and continued Sanders' talking point.s
I am not on the Bernie train, you don't attack candidates within your own party the way he did that drove her Negatives through the roof
I don't have a link at the moment but Nate Cohn's analysis over the past week has been what most of us are basing it on. He had charts and breakdowns of heavily white counties showing a significant shift in voting from Obama to Trump. I assume you can find most of it there and on The Upshot from NYTimes.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Hillary didn't lose because of her speeches or Wall Street.
Got the Shakes
Member
Remember that whole protesters paid to show up a Trump rallies thing?
"My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...s-in-the-white-house-because-of-me/?tid=sm_tw
"My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...s-in-the-white-house-because-of-me/?tid=sm_tw
White support for Donald Trump was driven by economic anxiety, but also by racism and sexism
Read whilst remembering that correlation is not causation. But it's still thought-provoking.
Read whilst remembering that correlation is not causation. But it's still thought-provoking.
I guess this just seems kind of implausible since afaik voter turnout doesn't really work where everyone is 65% likely to show up to vote in a given election - it's that 65% of people turn out to vote in almost every election and the other 35% hardly ever vote. Obviously there's going to be an effect on the margins but we're actually talking about a pretty high percentage of people if flipping wasn't a big deal. We saw a 20 point swing. For equal turnout, that's some combination of 10% flipping vs 10% deciding not to vote plus a somewhat larger percentage of non-voters deciding to vote.
balladofwindfishes
Member
Her speeches certainly didn't help with her serious trust issues. They were harmless, and could have brought in some good will had she just released them when it was a big deal.
When they leaked, nobody cared, but the damage to her trust had already happened.
shinra-bansho
Member
I don't really know much about what would be considered working class feminism. The Pew study posted early had people voting Trump only identifying in single digits as feminists, and even those voting Clinton at only ~40%, so perhaps there's something there that people can't get behind the idea of feminism, due to their perception of it.
As for the last part, I don't think it's unfair. I think you're assuming it refers to explicit sexism, the type noted in the article about NYSE traders, who are clearly not economically anxious, chanting lock her up and the witch is dead during her concession speech. Whereas there's literature showing the impact of gender in politics, and it's pretty impossible to disentangle Hillary Clinton's career as a politician from her also being a woman. We know sexism exists, we know it exists in politics, we know that people hold views of leadership based on gender norms. We should know that Hillary Clinton was not somehow immune to this for the past 30 years, nor for this election. Is it the sole reason, no, but it colours every other potential reason.
I think the likes of a Warren would beat a Kaine. But I'm not particularly convinced the likes of a Warren would fare well in a general election. Because I think she would then face that scrutiny in everything she does much more.
The extent to which the continued impact of gender norms will have on future female contenders, I think will depend on the extent to which these gender norms have shifted or still persist. I hope that Clinton's run has made the path easier for the next to come, as Chisholm did for her; and not the opposite though.
While in the immediate aftermath I was pretty down on the odds, the double binds may be broken, a woman may no longer need to build the resume of a Hillary Clinton to win the backing of the party and the money needed to run, and in the wide open field I'm sure there will be plenty that more than hold their own.
As for the last part, I don't think it's unfair. I think you're assuming it refers to explicit sexism, the type noted in the article about NYSE traders, who are clearly not economically anxious, chanting lock her up and the witch is dead during her concession speech. Whereas there's literature showing the impact of gender in politics, and it's pretty impossible to disentangle Hillary Clinton's career as a politician from her also being a woman. We know sexism exists, we know it exists in politics, we know that people hold views of leadership based on gender norms. We should know that Hillary Clinton was not somehow immune to this for the past 30 years, nor for this election. Is it the sole reason, no, but it colours every other potential reason.
I think the likes of a Warren would beat a Kaine. But I'm not particularly convinced the likes of a Warren would fare well in a general election. Because I think she would then face that scrutiny in everything she does much more.
The extent to which the continued impact of gender norms will have on future female contenders, I think will depend on the extent to which these gender norms have shifted or still persist. I hope that Clinton's run has made the path easier for the next to come, as Chisholm did for her; and not the opposite though.
While in the immediate aftermath I was pretty down on the odds, the double binds may be broken, a woman may no longer need to build the resume of a Hillary Clinton to win the backing of the party and the money needed to run, and in the wide open field I'm sure there will be plenty that more than hold their own.
She lost for a number of reasons. Sanders being a piece of crap in the primaries was definitely one of the factors. He pushed a Bloc of voters straight into Trump or nonvoterdom.
Marmaladefire
Member
If "Working Class" is code for white, working class feminism looks like this: "I don't want my husband to beat me, I don't want to be raped and blamed for it, maybe I find that cis gay male couple down the block endearing, but strange. Intersectionality doesn't mean shit to me." There's a lot of internalized stuff here too. "Hawkishness", "she should smile more" not talking out of turn, being "respectable" etc.
The idea floating around that sexism wasn't a huge factor in the way Clinton was perceived and covered, as well as the notion that the democratic party would dare serve up another promising female candidate to be eviscerated on the public stage in 2020 is ludicrous, honestly. Sanders got half of his voting base because "progressive" millennial men didn't want to vote for an older, no nonsense woman anyway. I say this as a woman who voted for him in the primaries.
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, submitted his letter of resignation.
gutter_trash
Banned
the cumulative amount of negatives piled on additvely, Bernie hurt her more in ways that Obama did not hurt her
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
I think this is a good bit of quantitative observation. It matches my intuitions of what the situation is.
dynamitejim
Member
Who else made Breitbart's 52 elitist coastal counties list? I feel so honored!
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
That I agree with. But the post I replied to blamed Bernie for just handing Trump a way to attack her, which I think is disingenuous. Trump would have attacked her that way no matter what. That's way down the list of reasons she lost.
Sexism is the main reason I said she needed to worry about the Midwest. There is a clear underlying current here that women should not be in power.
WootWho else made Breitbart's 52 elitist coastal counties list? I feel so honored!
I'm not going to quote you because of your (well argued) wall of text Crab, but I don't fully agree with your conclusion surrounding the voters who went for Obama and didn't come out for Clinton.
I think both sexism and racism played a part in how that group voted, it's just that Obama was both so charismatic and seemingly squeaky clean that there was nothing but his race that could motivate voting against him if they actually liked his ideas. For Hillary, who was a woman who had dared to be ambitious and try for a political career of her own instead of simply supporting her husband like a good wife, the odds were stacked against her from the start. Add to that a 30 year campaign to drag her name through the mud and people had more than enough excuses to not vote for her without having to explicity face that it was because of her gender. There exists a huge double standard towards both women and racial minorities when it comes to politics, where they have to be close to saint-like to be judged fairly to the average white man. Obama managed to surpass that level, Hillary didn't.
I think both sexism and racism played a part in how that group voted, it's just that Obama was both so charismatic and seemingly squeaky clean that there was nothing but his race that could motivate voting against him if they actually liked his ideas. For Hillary, who was a woman who had dared to be ambitious and try for a political career of her own instead of simply supporting her husband like a good wife, the odds were stacked against her from the start. Add to that a 30 year campaign to drag her name through the mud and people had more than enough excuses to not vote for her without having to explicity face that it was because of her gender. There exists a huge double standard towards both women and racial minorities when it comes to politics, where they have to be close to saint-like to be judged fairly to the average white man. Obama managed to surpass that level, Hillary didn't.
Manmademan
Member
Who else made Breitbart's 52 elitist coastal counties list? I feel so honored!
Lol! Delaware county PA as "coastal elite?" It's the poorest and least educated of the Philly suburbs by a mile.
Bucks, Montgomery, and Chester counties are far wealthier...but they don't have many minorities in them while Delco does.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
I was saying this a while back. Giving these people more education only has limited use. The reason we think that education has an influence on racial resentment is because we have the chain of causation wrong. If you're from an economically deprived background, you're less likely to get further education; you're also more likely to be persuaded that your situation is the black guy's fault. If you're from an economically secure background, you're more likely to get further education; you're also less likely to be swayed by racist rhetoric because all things considered your life is on the up. So education is correlated with less racial resentment... but there's no direct causal chain.
Apologies, I can't remember who I was arguing this with about whether education was more important or not, but I think I explained it better here than I remember doing when we had that discussion.
So it's Bernies fault that Hillary lost against Orange Hitler?
I knew people were gonna start blaming Bernie for her loss. Hillary was stupid, she lost because she did not take the rust belt seriously, cause she did not speak directly to the (white) middle class, cause she was a status quo candidate, not cause Bernie said mean things about her.
balladofwindfishes
Member
Distrust in her and the DNC was made more severe because of his petty grudges with people like DWS.
He turned the Democrats into the villains to his supporters. So on top of needing to actually campaign, she now had to help clean up the mess he made.
Free trade might have hurt her but everything else was pretty much what people expect from her.
I'm in the clubWho else made Breitbart's 52 elitist coastal counties list? I feel so honored!
Feels like Staten Island is the Florida of NYC
Philadelphia is coastal now?Who else made Breitbart's 52 elitist coastal counties list? I feel so honored!
I'm happy the whole Bay Area is on the list. Almost makes the insane cost of living worth it.
*Cal-i-forn-ia lo-ove*Who else made Breitbart's 52 elitist coastal counties list? I feel so honored!
Sacramento, Sacramento where you at?
[/Tupac]
Edit: god. Can you imagine if Pac were still here. What would he make of this?
Edit 2: Sacramento won't be costal in 100 years. It will be inside a fucking bay once all the glacial ice is melted.
What a tool. This is a guy desperately telling himself he writes satire when all he does is profit from delivering fake news that makes conservatives feel good. Hope he loses access to AdSense.
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
I agree that sexism and racism play a part in how voters vote, and that Obama was such a damn good candidate that he had an advantage that helped shield against the racism levelled at him, and I don't want people to think that's ever been something I've argued against. The key point that I am maing is that: "America is sexist -> Clinton lost" turns something as messy as the current situation into a story so simple it can't possibly be true. Even worse, if "America is sexist -> all non-sexist candidates will lose"/"if America is racist -> all non-racist candidates will lose" becomes the way all liberals think, we're beaten before we've begun. Some Trump voters must be convertible, or we won't win. Turning away from the chance that they are just says: I will not fight the good fight; I won't battle for minorities or women (or the poor or the sick or the elderly). That's the last thing anyone needs right now.
gutter_trash
Banned
Clinton's speech at the Children Defense Fund yesterday is like a ghost of what could have been a President who actually cared for children and would have done good things for them,
Trump's win is way more painful when considering would could have been
Trump's win is way more painful when considering would could have been
Trump used to threaten to people with lawsuit now he could be possibly wagging potential declarations of war.
Yeah exactly.
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