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

[kisada]

Heard Canada will take CA in that case I'm all in

[Byrthnoth]

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.

Because Democrats and Republicans have been trading the presidency back and forth since the inception of "trickle down economics," so obviously those meddling Dems have prevented it from reaching you.

[Aerin]

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.

I'll premise all of this with again stating that I don't think jobs was the sole factor in Hillary's loss. I also think it's safe to say that most people of color weren't buying that Trump had their best interests in mind, even when it came to him saying he'd bring back jobs. For those rustbelt states that are predominantly white though, I think the message got through. I don't think people cared about the history of Republicans/lobbyists, they just saw a candidate that was going to help them and that was that.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I remember mentioning things like how Clinton wasn't focusing as much on Ohio as the Dems had the last few elections. I also remember her saying something to the effect of putting the coal industry out of business. Later, in a debate (with Mr. Ken Bone) she said that she wanted workers to be retrained while fighting climate change, but I think the damage had already been done there. Still, I think it's fair to say that Clinton did try to reach those voters but one of Trumps big messages was jobs jobs jobs. Especially bringing back those manufacturing jobs that the rust belt states have lost and not gotten back. I know we're all wary of polls now, but I believe nearly every poll taken up until the election had Trump beating Hillary on the economy. For that person, I don't agree with it, but I can certainly understand it. It's an area the Dems need to get much better at with their messaging.

[Olo401]

Ayn Rand's still really popular

To the point where we have almost half the voting population declaring a "strike" from their civic duties. Sigh...

[Fiye]

Ohio has shifting demographics.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ics-altering-/

Less college grads, more blue collar workers means the shift favored trump (And by extent republicans.)

Edit: I need to do some research on how many democrats jumped ship to the republican side. Outside of the support that collapsed underneath Clinton.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...-trump/499577/

This could also be another point that helped Trump. Though that support will collapse on Trump hard and fast when his team realizes that Natural Gas is going to undercut the shit out of coal.

[Aerin]

Sure, but even with the shifting demographics I think it might've behooved her to go after those voters more.

[kisada]

i could definitely see hard on their luck dems switching sides as of more recently. unfortunately if they were dumb enough to vote red because they thought they were gonna get jobs back, they'll be too dumb to realize when they don't get jack shit that it'll be trump's fault.

[Tyrath]

It's all gonna be blamed on Obama.

[Fiye]

But how to you get those voters when Obama has imposed carbon taxes on coal.
The republican party has blamed those taxes on coal failing.
You support natural gas because that's where the next energy boom is and is cheaper than coal.
And your opponent is saying "We'll make clean coal and get rid of those taxes" which is nothing more than fantasy (@ clean coal).

I'm recalling during the democrat primary where she literally told a coal worker his job would be gone and replaced with newer technologies, but she wanted to help them transition to the newer technologies. That message doesn't sound so great when the other guy promises you the world.

[Daydreamer]

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.

I'm from small town USA and see this all the time and quite frankly it pisses me off. People there just assume that their life will be great if they get some job straight out of high school and just work for the rest of their life without ever even attempting to try to better themselves via school or just moving up in the company. Basically everyone who never moved away has 3+ unplanned kids now while complaining about insurance premiums and all kinds of other stuff that is literally their fault but they refuse to admit it.

Someone recently had the audacity to tell me that maybe it's because I'm more privileged than he is and maybe that's why I am able to start to make something out of my life when he's just scraping by. We both went to the same high school, had the same teachers, and had parents that had working class jobs. The main difference is he decided to have 4 kids and almost immediately got fired from his position as a police officer because he posted online about how cops don't give other cops speeding tickets, but nope, I'm totally privileged over him.

/rant - but seriously this mentality really pisses me off.

[kisada]

of course. completely agree. that's just the nature of how shitty people are

[Gredival]

Blue collar voters jumping ship because they feel the Democrats have abandoned them in favor of pushing a progressive agenda that puts marginalized minorities first, instead of helping them, isn't anything new. Look up "Reagan Democrat."

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

It was a given and it's the nature of the beast when you take a stand when it comes to these threads; I just didn't have the heart to deal with it in the immediate aftermath.

Also given that my coping mechanisms are sarcasm and mockery, I probably would have forced Bane to ban me if I had been posting during my immediate outrage.

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.

This is actually my experience too. There's a lot of people I've met that were extremely far away from Obama's magic tax number of 200k that still thought they would be getting increased taxes if he were elected. Now they think that they're in for a big payday now with Trump's tax breaks.

These people do not make six digits. They apparently also did not compare their tax returns from 2000 - 2008 vs. 2009 - 2016.

[Fiye]

Love you gred. Make BG Great again.

Edit: http://gizmodo.com/google-joins-face...n-n-1788950876

A lot of lessons being learned.

[arus2001]

Even if we were to magically make college available to everyone without burdening them with debt, the end result some of you guys seem to envision would be a case of too many chiefs and not enough indians, in that there simply wouldn't be enough jobs to match the needs of the newly qualified population without some settling for whatever is technically beneath them. At which point, why force it if they'd actually be content with the lesser jobs? Yeah, in the case of the one mentioned friend, his inability to keep it in his pants has no doubt made life more difficult for him, but we honestly can't pretend he has control over the healthcare system or the general pay scale of what jobs he could land.

Ultimately, I can't help but feel it comes back to making the minimum wage one that allows comfortable living, presuming the 40 hour week. That would mean a single individual should be able to afford a small apartment, various insurances, and other basic needs of living with a bit to spare to make life more enjoyable or raise a kid or two should they happen to be in that position. And I realize this isn't something that can be done overnight, in part because smaller businesses would need time to adjust. Nonetheless, it's hard to ignore the fact that older America grew up with one parent working while the other stayed at home, while today you have people struggling even with both parents working. So, not only is money an issue, but simple family building suffers--which could potentially curb some of the "me me me" shit you guys are hung up on with millennials if mom/dad wasn't always tired and stuck devoting weekends to just keeping their homes from falling apart.

Obviously, just upping the MW isn't the only solution. Like others believe, and even Obama, single payer health should be a goal. Big Pharma also needs a good kick to the jimmies when you consider all they dump into into advertising relative to actual research. The importance here being health, that'd also tie into making healthier foods more available so related diseases can be trimmed back. Not everyone will eat healthy, of course. Such is choice. Things could be better, either way.

[Aerin]

Blue collar voters jumping ship because they feel the Democrats have abandoned them in favor of pushing a progressive agenda that puts marginalized minorities first, instead of helping them, isn't anything new. Look up "Reagan Democrat."

Would you not agree that those voters should've been reached out to more though? Assuming the numbers in that study is accurate, over the last 8 years having only 5% of all jobs gained go to those with a high school education or less (which I'm associating with blue collar jobs) can leave a person in that situation feeling forgotten. While that may not be a new thing for blue collar voters, the recession and lack of the few jobs that were there coming back surely would've exacerbated those viewpoints.

[archibaldcrane]

Hilldog over 61M votes now, passing Romney 2012, about a 650k popular vote margin, still growing.

[Olo401]

And Gwen Ifill just died from cancer. I wondered why she hadn't moderated any of the debates.

[Gredival]

Even if we were to magically make college available to everyone without burdening them with debt, the end result some of you guys seem to envision would be a case of too many chiefs and not enough indians, in that there simply wouldn't be enough jobs to match the needs of the newly qualified population without some settling for whatever is technically beneath them. At which point, why force it if they'd actually be content with the lesser jobs? Yeah, in the case of the one mentioned friend, his inability to keep it in his pants has no doubt made life more difficult for him, but we honestly can't pretend he has control over the healthcare system or the general pay scale of what jobs he could land.

Ultimately, I can't help but feel it comes back to making the minimum wage one that allows comfortable living, presuming the 40 hour week. That would mean a single individual should be able to afford a small apartment, various insurances, and other basic needs of living with a bit to spare to make life more enjoyable or raise a kid or two should they happen to be in that position. And I realize this isn't something that can be done overnight, in part because smaller businesses would need time to adjust. Nonetheless, it's hard to ignore the fact that older America grew up with one parent working while the other stayed at home, while today you have people struggling even with both parents working. So, not only is money an issue, but simple family building suffers--which could potentially curb some of the "me me me" shit you guys are hung up on with millennials if mom/dad wasn't always tired and stuck devoting weekends to just keeping their homes from falling apart.

I definitely agree with that. I've mentioned several times before that one of my biggest problems with Bernie is how he promises to make college free for everyone as if that's a panacea for our economy.

That's not what we should be aiming for. The economy can, and will, never function entirely on jobs that (should) require a college degree. You need construction workers along with architects. You need car mechanics as well as automotive engineers.

The Bachelor's is becoming the new HS diploma, but it SHOULDN'T be that way.

Would you not agree that those voters should've been reached out to more though? Assuming the numbers in that study is accurate, over the last 8 years having only 5% of all jobs gained go to those with a high school education or less (which I'm associating with blue collar jobs) can leave a person in that situation feeling forgotten. While that may not be a new thing for blue collar voters, the recession and lack of the few jobs that were there coming back surely would've exacerbated those viewpoints.

But what do you offer them?

I think we agree that politics comes down to coalition building and the magic is all in which demographics you target. You want as big a tent as possible, but sometimes certain demographics come at the cost of others.

The big fear for the GOP has been that the angry white voter traded off with the Latino voter, and that exchange was a terrible investment due to the latter being on pace to outstrip the former.

In the Democrats' case, it's hard to be the party of science with regards to climate change and to keep the coal worker. I mean Hillary is right that if you want to combat global warming (i.e. court the far left and the millennials) coal needs to go. So how do you keep both camps?

The answer is probably to lie. Say shit like you'll only invest in "clean coal," which is a total farce, and hope you get away with it. Be a politician. However that would get Hillary crucified for that by the Bernie coalition (even though Obama got away with it). She decided to be honest and say that coal jobs would need to transform into new types of energy jobs.

This election plus the Reagan Democrats showed that a lot of these voters feel threatened by an overt focus by the Democrats on social justice because they perceive it as part of the overall shift that has left them marginalized instead. The cure for that is to shift back to the center and go after them hard, even harder than Hillary did. But I don't think that's on the table. Look at the rage of the far left against Hillary already, blaming this loss on not courting the progressive wing.

The fact is that you need party unity and discipline; you need people to vote for your side, even if they aren't completely happy with it, for the sake of beating the other side. That is how the GOP won this round. Without it, the Democrats are stuck simply hoping that relative population growth between different demographics combined with a more liberal nominee can make up the bleeding from losing more and more whites.

I basically hope that this was the Nader moment for this batch of millennials and after four years of Trump they mature enough to realize that when you have to deal with how the rest of America votes consequence comes before purity.

[Tyrath]

I basically hope that this was the Nader moment for this batch of millennials and after four years of Trump they mature enough to realize that when you have to deal with how the rest of America votes consequence comes before purity.

I really hope the actual DNC takes a lot more away from this than you do. Because if not we're gonna see 8 years of Trump.

[Fiye]

I doubt it'll be a nader moment for them. Right now those outlets (looking at Jimmy Dore especially) are saying that this will ensure they get a progressive nominee. They just got their way and right now they're just staring at 2020 with starry eyes, not bothering to pay attention to the bullshit that'll happen inbetween now and then.