One thing to keep in mind: in your hypothetical, Trunp has millions more people supporting him. When you say “huge lead,” given the actual results, we’re talking many millions. (3 million to make up the deficit, plus whatever brings it to a “huge” margin.)
So he’d also have many million fewer opponents. No, you wouldn’t see such big protests, because those people wouldn’t “exist.”
Now, if the polls had accurately predicted he’d win in the way he did - losing the popular vote? That’s an interesting hypothetical. I personally (as a Democrat) would have been much less traumatized on election night, and probably less motivated to protest right off the bat. I’m not ashamed to admit that seeing fellow anti-Trumpers turn out in big numbers, and joining them, has been partly motivated by the trauma of 11/9. (Insert “snowflake” insult here.)
(Remember, too - the Women’s March was kicked off by women who were planning to attend HRC’s inauguration - including people who had bought plane tickets, I think!)
Respectfully and slightly hyperbolically, I couldn’t disagree more - but that’s kind of OT, so if you really want to defend it we should take it to a new thread.
Again, disagree, although since you’re not talking about Obama here you’re slightly less wrong.
I don’t think this is the case, mathematically. Suppose Hillary got 50 million votes rather than 65 million. She would have lost in a landslide. But you can still source plenty of protesters out of those 50 million. Protesters are typically the more radicalized, angrier, more motivated fringe of a political party; those would have showed up to vote for Hillary no matter what.
50 million is a plenty large enough pool of protesters to draw a million-man-march-on-Washington DC out of.
I seem to recall something about a Tea Party? Maybe I’m mis-remembering. Granted, the scale was much much MUCH smaller, but the reaction was widespread an quite passionate.
Yeah, that’s a legit point - also taking place in a very different hypothetical USA than the one we live in. That’s why I tried to redirect the hypothetical towards the more realistic situation where Trump’s win took place, but wasn’t such a surprise.
Thanks for the responses. I agree that the element of surprise has people more whipped-up this time around. I also agree that social media/echo chambers only strengthened that surprise for a lot more people.
Most of my relatives and a fair chunk of my friends are pretty right-wing, and mostly all I remember since 2008 is a lot of grumping about having a Democrat in the White House, along with some silly glurgey stuff about various non-issues that Obama purportedly did. Not very much of it was Obama-specific; Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton would have incurred the same ire that he did.
But nothing like what’s going on anywhere left of and including center-right these days… while nobody in that crowd liked Obama, nobody would deny that he was appropriately Presidential and dignified, and it was more of a grumpy difference of opinion than anything else.
These days, there’s literal fear almost anywhere left of the far-right wing of the GOP. Fear that Trump may do something unpredictable and dangerous, driven by petty and vindictive personal motives. Fear that his cabinet picks and staff picks are going to be crazy ideologues, even if he himself isn’t one. Fear that he’ll be more concerned with his personal image and interests than those of the nation as a whole.
I doubt that, by any rational measure, the reaction to Trump’s election is remotely close to the reaction to Obama. Part is that Trump’s win was completely unexpected. Part is the normal “worstest President evah!” that we got when Bush won, although more when Bush was re-elected than when he won in 2000. Part of it is the baffled fury at finding out that the White House was not permanently in Democratic hands, and the sinking feeling at the realization that the Supreme Court is shifting back to the right.
None of those really applied in 2009. Obama was expected to win, even by Republicans, and he did. Racism in the GOP is grossly overstated by the Left, so apart from the usual fringe, nobody lamented that a black guy was in the White House. Given Obama’s lack of relevant experience, we on the Right didn’t share the Left’s hopes that he was going to end the recession/tax the hell out of the rich/eliminate corruption in government/usher in a Golden Age of income equality and affordable health care for all.
I and the GOP have lived thru enough elections where the wrong guy won not to lose our shit when it happens again. “This too shall pass” is a lesson the Dems seem to be having trouble internalizing.
That’s exactly what the Tea Party was worried about. The Tea Party formed due to rapid expansion of the government, government spending, higher taxes, intrusive regulations and improving the economy.
Somehow, I don’t remember Tea Party activists breaking windows, starting fires and inciting violence, though. So, I’d say the current Anti-Trumpers are absolutely winning the “losing their shit” contest.
They didn’t seem worried about it in 2008 when we were at war with Iraq and Afghanistan and the economy nearly collapsed.
In all fairness, Obama didn’t threaten to put them on a registry, have them deported, forbid them from marrying or take away their health care. I imagine if he did, the Tea Party would be quick to exercise their “2nd Amendment right” to fight tyranny.
The Tea Party was in response to the first budget the Democrats passed. That happened in late February. Until then the response was relatively muted. Republicans tend not to get as hysterical as Democrats.
In 2008 McCain was a huge underdog and the choice was mainly between Obama and Hillary. Personally I was glad he beat her partly because it was her but mostly because I thought he was a neophyte who would not be able to get anything done and she still had access to her husband’s connections and would have been able to do more damage to the country.
Except that is all completely incorrect. The Tea Party formed after Obama was elected, not in response to any of the above things, because none of it is accurate.
In any case, if the current reaction to Trump is a 6/10, the right-wing reaction to Obama was more like a 3/10. The reaction to Lincoln’s election was 10/10, given that the Civil War broke out.
And the reason is that although the right-wing hated Obama, that was only because he was a Democrat. They’d have hated any Democrat just as much, just for not being a Republican. And the objective fact is that Obama is a prudent pragmatic centrist who believed in incremental improvements. Obama was actually the most conservative president since Eisenhower, which only goes to show you that the current right-wing movement cares nothing about conservatism.
In contrast, Trump is a loathsome reptile who cares nothing for anything except feeding his own ego and destroying his enemies, no matter the cost. He’ll gladly destroy anything and everything, not for political gain, but because making other people lose is the only thing he cares about.
The good thing about this is that Trump is going to destroy movement conservatism as it has existed since the Reagan era, and discredit it for a generation. The bad news is that in doing so he’s going to cause a lot of hardship and ruination for America and the rest of the world that will take a generation to repair.
I would say the “birther” movement is an example of “losing their shit”.
“Damage the country” how? By funding things like education and infrastructure, advocating equal rights for women, gays and minorities and not going to war with every third world country that yells “Death to America”?
As a registered Independent, I try to look at both sides as objectively as possible. But it’s a bit difficult for me to understand the cognitive dissonance on the Right. Because to an untrained observer like myself, it would appear that the Conservative ideology consists of a fanatical devotion to God, guns, and Corporate America.
I was disappointed when Obama won in 2008 and I think that was the general attitude of the Right. But to use the word disappointment in relation to liberal reaction to Trump’s victory would be an absolute misnomer. Hysteria would be a far apter term.
And now Trump has actually begun carrying out the actions he promised he would whilst campaigning the hysteria has increased. It’s almost as if they didnt believe he was serious, and of course he was. Whatever faults he may have, unlike most politicians the man really does mean what he says.
There has been talk of the liberal bubble being responsible for much of the utter shock felt by most when Trump won and I think that’s true. I know all about bubbles. During the 2008 campaign I was getting most of my news via Drudge which I realized after Obama’s victory had completely misled me into believing that McCain would win. I have never made that mistake again and I have made certain since that I get my news from both liberal and conservative sources. I was still surprised by Trump’s victory but this time at least it wasn’t owing to any bubble effect.