The most astonishing thing about this election is the number of people who evidently weren’t paying attention to what was going on around them. There were a LOT of people who were confidently predicting a big Clinton win.
538’s final prediction was that Clinton would most likely get 302 electoral votes. That’s not a small margin.
Predictwise though she would probably get 322 votes.
I agree it was very well said. I expressed my concern about how the Bernie folks were being treated and how I was considering not voting and I got a taste of what the “other side” deals with every day. It was eye opening but not mind blowing. Just a little bit of knowing where they’re coming from.
So, as I see it, my warning was not heeded or even acknowledged as important and I didn’t vote. Apparenly, there were a whole lot of folks like me so I’m not surprised the election went as it did. I really hated my parties arrogance.
Not that my not voting mattered. It didn’t ( as I knew it wouldn’t ). Even if my state has flipped she still lost the election. No, anecdotes aren’t data so one vote doesn’t mean jack but the fact that the election turned on democrats not turning out to vote the warning sure meant a lot. Not to the posters here surely but on whoever is trying to guage the pulse of the people, they dropped the ball.
I don’t want to dwell on it though. Either the lesson was learned or it was not; we’ll know better in 2019 I suppose. For now, we have bigger issues to worry about and like the democratic party did not believe in 2015, we need to all be together to do this. It remains to be seen if this is something the democratic leadership wants won’t we?
Note, I made my statement before I even realized exactly what the party was really doing to Bernie. That little revelation certainly didn’t help matters.
There’s only one poll that matters, and that happened on election day.
However, it was apparent the polls were being slanted in an attempt to influence the election. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. I remember seeing a poll that indicated Texas was going to go for Hillary. Turns out that the poll was conducted in the Austin area, which the rest of the state refers to as The People’s Republic of Austin because it tilts so far left. Had it been a true poll, the result would have been a helluva lot more different.
This election was not a misogynist election, not a rejection of a possible female president, it was Hillary’s to lose. Almost any other woman would have had a better chance. It was Hillary hatred.
It was not some kind of Republican sweep. The established Republican party was never in favor of, or even willing to help Trump. It was Hillary’s to lose. The loss belongs to Hillary.
The Bernie people were dismissed by the DNC who actively worked against them. Their campaign was scorned by the DNC as whining children. Hillary was going to be the DNC candidate no matter what happened in the primary election. This was decided in 2008 or before. Assuming that all these disenfranchised voters would just fall in behind the party line was a tactical mistake. They began to hate Hillary as much as the Republicans. And they did not follow, for they saw this as what it was, machine politics in the style of the old Daley Chicago machine.
The election was not about racism. Hispanic American citizens were not a given to promote the endless influx of illegals. Hispanics who are here legally, gained citizenship and followed through with the process were not in favor of unrestricted illegal immigration. The so called Black vote has been solidly Democratic for soo long that they were ignored, and the DNC candidates have done very little for them other than words. Chicago with 20 to 30 shooting deaths in the black community each week just draws a shrug of that’s the way it is. Look to Detroit. It is not only the white, non-college jobs that have been lost.
The Blue Wall, the Rust Belt, these are not white only enclaves. They woke up to see themselves as ignored, flyover country and it isn’t going to get any better, and they know that. So they voted to disrupt the established system that is in place.
This is part of the worldwide backlash against globalization, and it is real. Brexit was the symptom, this election is a continuation of that frustration and should not be ignored.
But in the end it comes down to Hillary hatred, not wanting to let the Clintons anywhere near the White House again. The DNC should have realized the level of Hillary hate and instead they just plowed ahead with her and her only.
It was Hillary, and her only who put Trump in the White House.
Voters chose a slightly trained monkey flinging poo to putting Hillary back into the White House. Chew on that for awhile.
Then some of the responsibility for Trump’s election is yours. You could have opposed him, but it was more important to you to spite Clinton. Congratulations to you, and to all who thought like you, for helping get us President Trump.
It’s possible there is a different lesson that different people have not yet learned from, isn’t it?
Thank you, Dallas Jones and Disgruntled Penguin. All I can say is, word!
I know you have me blocked, but I’m going to respond anyway, if nothing else, for the peanut gallery.
Absolutely freaking not.
You are operating under the utterly false premise that nonvoters have any obligation to vote for your preferred candidate. Wrong. Completely, totally wrong. Candidates aren’t entitled to anyone’s vote; they have to earn that privilege.
Just because we may not have wanted Trump, doesn’t mean we also didn’t want Hillary and were willing to let the rest of you decide among yourself which asshole was going to win.
Frankly, I’m in the camp that much preferred Trump for four years than cementing the Oligarchic rule indefinitely, with that warmongering, two-faced (public and private), lying corporate whore who was ready to sell our democracy down the shitter with the TPP and the secret, unelectable, unimpeachable World Trade Court that would govern it, at the helm for eight!
I’m thrilled war with Russia is no longer on the table because now that sociopathic woman won’t get a chance to implement her dangerous, ridiculous no-fly zone over Syria.
I can’t wait to have millions of undocumented immigrants legalized instead of deported like Obama’s been doing for eight years, and which Trump has now set a path for.
Will he make some terrible laws? Of course he will.
But so would Hillary have. More fracking, more dirty oil pipelines, more unfettered free trade, deeper income inequality, and worst of all, more wars and millions more dead people.
I am immeasurably grateful she isn’t our president, even if Trump is an idiot. He can’t do nearly the long-term damage she could have done. Yes, even with the ability to stack the Supreme Court. At least we know who’s sitting on it!
I’ll accept that the results of the election are mine when we get mandatory elections. Until then I am under absolutely zero obligation to vote. Period. Until then this is just more alienation of those who did not choose to vote with you. Nothing more.
It had zero to do with spiting her but being uncomfortable supporting assholes. I am not required to support any assholes and well, I chose not to play the which asshole was worse game. I’m not responsible for how an entire country voted. I am responsible for who I am comfortable with. And I was set to vote for Clinton until she crossed a threshold I was uncomfortable with. As far as I’m concerned, my karma is clean.
Absolutely. This is why you haven’t and won’t see me thrashing the other side, calling them vile names or berating them. Those few days during that initial posting as I said gave me a glimpse of what being on “the other side” of a Clinton campaign feels like and I have no idea how a Trump supporter or just a regular republican perserveres under such immediate and strong antipathy to try and explain it to those who think otherwise.
I already knew how it felt to be against a republican Clinton now I know that it’s pretty universal that if you don’t agree 100% with someone politically then there is no chance for a dialog. So, y’all have to excuse me for not towing your party line and respecting the only opinion that matters to me, my own and I’m going to vote based on that opinion.
Anyway, since it looks like the old arguments are going to start all over again and I’m not inclined to fight them again, let me say I posted this data point not to say I told you so. I’m too gutted for that. I wanted to let people know who feel that the world is coming to an end that the election doesn’t mean that the republican party has grown stronger but the days of my vote being a gimme because the other guy is worse is over.
To me, it’s the universe vs me not democrats vs republicans and when and if those interests align I will again vote for that party. You might say I am a one virtue trumps all kind of voter and that is civil equality. This issue has pushed me so far away from the republican party that I can’t realistically imagine seeing me and them agree in my lifetime but when the democrats considered me and those of like views as inconveniences and people who need to shut up and vote for someone they’re not comfortable with it is one of the worst kinds of rights violations as it’s people you trusted not to be of a certain color revealing their true colors.
Please reread this last sentence before replying with the reply I know is coming. Equality is my issue but I’m not currently being oppressed nor will I under a Trump. I don’t tick the right buttons. I already know I was being oppressed by the democrats by how they cavalierly rigged their primary ( that honestly they probably didn’t need to do ) making it crystal clear what they thought of my value tp them. I’m not someone whose opinion needs to be respected I’m a chip that is expected to not have issues but rather rubber stamp theirs. That made it personal and I can’t vote for someone who openly thinks that little of me.
it’s a relatively easy fix for the democrats to win me back but I’m not hearing any attempts at this. Just how all the bad in the country is my fault because I didn’t voluntarily give up my own ideals and vote against my major core issue because frankly inequality under the democrats is no more palatable to me than under the republicans and this one was inequality against me. Shit became personal.
I’ll say one more thing about Trump supporters. I’ve seen way less rubbing it in your face you lost suckers coming from them than from either the republicans or the democrats the last few elections and frankly that is the one glimmer of hope I have in the sea of negativity right now.
Maybe if we, I don’t know, reached out to them we could form a consensus that did not include the more odious parts of their agenda because frankly they only had one choice too and they felt they had to take the bad with the good. I think it entirely reasonable that most of them would prefer not to have to do that. I dunno, just a thought.
I envy you and your sheltered life. It must be nice living in an echo chamber. You might want to try reality sometimes. The crap you’ll hear and see will positively make your head explode.
Actually, no. About 60-70% of Trump’s supporters and a third of Barack Obama’s 2012 voters disagree with at least some standard liberal claims about race, gender, religion, etc… (For a start, about a third of Obama voters supported a Muslim immigration ban, about a third think ‘Black people are more violent than white people’, probably between a quarter and a third are pro-life, etc…) Obama won a lot of people who qualify as “deplorable” (your words, not mine), either because they agreed with Democratic positions on taxes / economics / the welfare state, because they personally liked Obama, or more likely both. Hillary lost their votes largely because this election turned into a referendum on how bad racism / sexism / religious bigotry are, instead of “do you think rich people should be paying 33% in taxes or 50%”.
If you decide to alienate a third of the people you want to vote for you, then you can’t exactly be upset when you lose the election.
Well, my ability to pay attention to what is literally being said served me pretty well this time around. I’m not the one who took “A High Probability Of Hillary Clinton Winning Doesn’t Mean It Will Be A Blowout” to mean “This Will Totally Be A Blowout for Hillary!”