2016 USA Presidential election thread II: And. Here. We. Go!

[Quicklet]

Brief departure from my self-imposed depressive rage exile to respond to this.



The 19th Amendment.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Americans with Disabilities Act.

"I don’t believe you change hearts. I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate."

It's going to be fun when Republicans gain control of 5 more state legislatures and start amending the Constitution.

About what? That getting moderate voters is important? Pretty sure that's still true. If anything the problem is that the Democrats took a lot of moderate votes for granted -- unless you're about to tell me that whites in MI/WI/PA that went to Trump were progressives that would have gone for Bernie.

More seriously, I think you're wrong here.

Hillary made the play for moderate voters and IMO it was the right play, but she didn't get them and there are a lot of reasons for that, but I think the central miscalculation was the assumption that these voters valued decency and decorum over blowing up the system. I also frankly think Dems didn't play dirty enough with Trump but that's a story for another time.

The Overton window only works when most of the electorate resides in the middle. What happens when you have hyper polarization and one side has a structural advantage over the other?

There are no easy answers here except that all bets are off about what comes next.

[Gredival]

It's going to be fun when Republicans gain control of 5 more state legislatures and start amending the Constitution.

Stakes have always been huge which is why I was always adamant about using the Powell doctrine in politics.

Hillary made the play for moderate voters and IMO it was the right play, but she didn't get them and there are a lot of reasons for that,

I agree with you on this.

My support for Hillary has always been based off fundamental assessment that, due to the nature of the electoral system, it's safer to base an electoral strategy off the center. Even if it risks the fringe, a strategy based on the fringe and hoping the center stays disciplined is extremely volatile. Things were south for the Democrats on both ends; the left fringe strayed (see my chart on 3rd party numbers) and the right moderates stayed loyal. A lot of that was the GOP's character assassination job and Hillary's lack of natural charisma making it really easy for said assassination job to take root (not only in the right but in BernieOrBusters)

Usually when Democrats have needed to reinvent themselves it followed a liberal getting blown out (McGovern and Dukakis) and a moderate re-centering the party (Carter, Clinton). Obama seemed to have been an exception to that rule, being further to the left than Kerry (not counting Gore since he technically won) but succeeding despite the liberal label because of people being fed up with Bush 43. However perhaps the ideal strategy is an emulation of Obama, idealistic and charismatic campaigner with pragmatic governance.

For what it's worth though, I think Biden would have won.

[Aerin]

So Gerogetown University did a study of the jobs recovered since the recession and I think it's very telling for how/why places like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have voted the way they did. At the very least, I'm sure it's a part of the story.

America’s Divided Recovery: College Haves and Have-Nots reveals that those with at least some college education have captured 11.5 million of the 11.6 million jobs created during the recovery. While jobs are back, they are not the same jobs lost during the recession. The Great Recession decimated low-skill blue-collar and clerical jobs, whereas the recovery added primarily high-skill managerial and professional jobs.

https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-repor...ided-recovery/

Of the 11.6 million jobs added since the recovery, only 80,000 were for workers with a high school diploma or less. I think it's fair to say we all knew how important college is to getting a good paying job before all this, but that number is still shocking to me. Anyone familiar with even a cursory understanding Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (or, as I'm sure someone will point out, understanding of humanity in general) should be able to see that if you're scared of not being able to have a roof over your head or food on the table, you're not going to care if the candidate that's promising your job back is a sexist, racist bigot that is fanning the flames of fear wherever he goes.

[Quicklet]

Gee, maybe Republicans' refusal to help pass a substantial infrastructure bill under Obama has something to do with that.

I wonder though -- are those numbers skewed because people who enter the workforce are more likely to have a degree compared to those leaving the workforce?

[kuronosan]

I think it's a more simple issue.

The working class bought Trump's story, and not Hillary's.

They would have bought Bernie, but who's to say he wouldn't have lost votes elsewhere?

I think the real thing to consider is whether those votes lost would have made as much of a difference.

[archibaldcrane]

I think it's a more simple issue.

The working class bought Trump's story, and not Hillary's.

Then why did she easily win people earning under 30k and 30-50k?

[Fiye]

Its not a simple issue. You can't pin Clinton's loss on one issue.

There's voter restrictions, james comey, ongoing benghazi and email accusations, clinton being clinton, the foundation, wiki leaks, campaigning to republicans, not visiting safe democratic stats in jeopardy of turning over, the polling data that completely missed the upset etc... etc...

The honest truth is Clinton, by extension of the DNC hacks, essentially ran the most open campaign to date.

I've had to berate an ex co-worker who voted for johnson in florida (Who supported bernie in the primary).

[Boyiee]

Then why did she easily win people earning under 30k and 30-50k?

Everyone I know or have met between 30-80k was so fucking diehard Trump, extremely vocal and belligerent, and bullied Hillary supporters. Everyone I know above 150k did the same thing as well.

I don't understand why all these middle class people are so gungho repubs sometimes.

[Kincard]

I don't understand why all these middle class people are so gungho repubs sometimes.

Ayn Rand's still really popular

[archibaldcrane]

To answer what I thought was an obvious rhetorical question is "black and hispanic people" are why she won the under 50k demos. Do they not need good jobs as well?

[Salodin]

Man, people wasted no time at all jumping on Gred as soon as he showed back up in here lol.

[kuronosan]

Then why did she easily win people earning under 30k and 30-50k?

Wat

Have you lived in a rural area dude?

[6souls]

Wat

Have you lived in a rural area dude?

To be fair, all of Wisconsin can be considered a rural area, same goes for Iowa.

[Ragnus]

Everyone I know or have met between 30-80k was so fucking diehard Trump, extremely vocal and belligerent, and bullied Hillary supporters. Everyone I know above 150k did the same thing as well.

I don't understand why all these middle class people are so gungho repubs sometimes.

It's the general lie that Americans have bought into that they should favor leaders that are lenient on the rich because everyone in the country is one big break away from joining the top earners in the country.

It must be the area you live in. I'm at 50K/year and I couldn't touch Trump with a 40ft pole. Even with how crappy of a choice Clinton was. Crappy as a candidate in this climate, not crappy as in bad for the office.

[Boyiee]

It's the general lie that Americans have bought into that they should favor leaders that are lenient on the rich because everyone in the country is one big break away from joining the top earners in the country.

It must be the area you live in. I'm at 50K/year and I couldn't touch Trump with a 40ft pole. Even with how crappy of a choice Clinton was. Crappy as a candidate in this climate, not crappy as in bad for the office.

I'm in jersey which is super Dem outside of like 2 counties.

[kuronosan]

Burlington is one of them!

[Boyiee]

I'm in Ocean.

[Byrthnoth]

It's the general lie that Americans have bought into that they should favor leaders that are lenient on the rich because everyone in the country is one big break away from joining the top earners in the country.

The largest cruelty of this joke is that the consistent expectation of eventually rising up the economic totem poll created the dissatisfaction with the status quo that led to Trump's election.

Imagine spending 40 years feeling like you're waiting in line for your big break. The economy crashed in 2009, and it has gotten better, but you're still waiting in line and now you're old. Would you vote for the "business as usual" candidate, or vote for a psychopath the likes of which has not previously been seen in a presidential race? If your goal is to shake up the system so you finally get your big break, you might vote for the latter.

[archibaldcrane]

Wat

Have you lived in a rural area dude?

Wut

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

Scroll down to income

[zoobernut]

I still don't understand how you can dislike a system that was set up by Republicans and maintained by lobbyists and big business and think the answer is more Republicans and voting in a big businessman.

At this rate things will stay the same or get worse until the country collapses into chaos and splits into many tinier countries like the collapse of the USSR.