Such charming people, those Trumpkins. Here’s a coffee shop owner who raged about Clinton:
“Before last week’s election, Heafner shared an image of Trump in the White House, with a caption that read, ‘If Trump wins the election, it’ll be the first time in history that a billionaire moves into public housing vacated by a black family.’
In an earlier post about Hillary Clinton, he wrote, ‘She needs f*cked with a bat! Right up her liberal f*cking ass!’”
The day before the election, when Heafner apparently thought Trump was going to lose, he posted this message: ‘The Coffee Tavern will never recognize a murdering whore for president!! Don’t like it, keep the fuck out!! We don’t tolerate scum!!!’”
Racist and misogynist…but now that people complained and threatened to boycott his shop, he’s singing a different tune.
“The people that know me know I’m not like that,” Heafner said in an interview after the incident. “I just hope that this community can overlook the stupid comments I made.”
Nope, sorry, that is what you are like, and now we do know you. Don’t worry about your business: this is America. The decent people might avoid your place, but you can always draw in the white power crowd. Enjoy your new company!
Here’s another example of a cowardly bully. This deplorable Trumpkin started an argument with a Clinton supporter in a bar and was separated from them, which you’d think would solve the problem. Then, after the “gentleman” paid up and was leaving
“The guy came back almost running, and he started pushing some customer and the high-chair next to him with the baby because he couldn’t reach the girl,” the manager told the Brooklyn Paper. “Then he punched the girl.”
…
Drost said staffers and locals chased after the man and eventually caught up to him. Leon told the Paper that the man yelled “You don’t know who I am!” before jumping into his car and driving off. The NYPD spokesman said the assailant escaped in a white car, and that no arrests were made. Love said it took at least 10 minutes for cops to arrive.
These are going to be the chickenshit years, aren’t they?
Now now PZ, we can’t go name calling. That would be rude.
These certainly do look like bad times for the likes of us. Look around the world. There are religious, right-wing nutjobs in control in more & more countries: India, Turkey, Philippines, Poland, Hungary, Russia, UK & the USA now.
The common thread seems to be populism. Populism might not be necessarily antithetical to liberal democracy, but the mendacious politicians of the religious right exploit it. Their views are antithetical to liberal democracy, & they con the gullible. Social media give them the tools they need.
I think we could be in for a rough ride.
The pendulum is swinging but it seems as if the clock was already tilted to the right. I have been avoiding reading the news and most blogs lately because I’m not ready to accept my nation is full of so much hatred.
SPLC lists over 200 reported hate incidents in the first 3 days after the election…
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/11/11/over-200-incidents-hateful-harassment-and-intimidation-election-day
Who’s rioting and beating people who voted the wrong way? Are you not watching the news from LA, Chicago, and Oakland?
@ PZ
Do not seek consolation in that. They migth be insecure cowards, but they are able to band together ad sooner orlater a group of chickenshits will kill someone. And Trump might lack real conviction of Hitlers, and he might be just a con man in it to further his personal agenda, but after he consolidates power, he will start forming or at covertly condone forming of paramilitary groups to keep that power. Some might think that “26 out of a possible 44 Benitos” means “In the fascist derby, Trump is a loser.” but lets not forget, that he has been building his fascism only about one year now. There is plenty of time for him to get better at it.
You (decent US Americans) must oppose him and his ilk at every turn. Do not lull yourself in false sense of “it could be worse”, because then it will be worse.
Clean up on aisle 5, clean up on aisle 5.
Siobhan
Remember we’Re the hateful ones. Our language is not gentle enough, our posture not demure and appeasing enough.
You know, just like gay people cause homophobia by existing while gay in public.
Nullifidian@2,
Quibble: there’s no noticeable religious component (at least as yet) to the right-wing regime in the UK.
Just as is now happening in the USA after Trump’s “victory”*, there has been an upsurge of hate crimes in the UK following the Brexit vote. The targets have certainly included Muslims (or those perceived as Muslims), but also anyone perceived as a “migrant”, including eastern Europeans. Even UKIP largely steers clear of religious rhetoric, although it opposed marriage equality on the spurious grounds that churches might be forced to marry same-sex couples.
*Can anyone name me another country which elects an executive President, where the person receiving the largest popular vote (in the final round – many countries have run-offs) may lose? I couldn’t think of one.
Why would we be “PC” towards vile bastards like that? I thought they hate politeness. I’m just being considerate when I’m calling them out. Or are you suggesting that they’re thin-skinned bullies who can dish out the insults, but if anything comes flying their way, suddenly that’s too far? Pathetic.
I agree that the racist, misogynistic cafe owner ought not to be let off as lightly as he wants to be. Doing so would give him the message that his actions and opinions are tolerable and easily dismissed.
On the other hand, it is possible that he may change his mind. People do. I think he can be forgiven, and should be, once his mind has changed and he has made efforts to restore the harm he has caused (“I hope the community can overlook the stupid comments I made” is really not enough). Things are only going to get better if large numbers of Trump voters genuinely change their minds, and if we treat them all as utterly irredeemable then that’s not going to be easy.
Also – and correct me if I have this wrong – but I thought “chickenshit” was a farmyard-inspired American term for little problems that are easy to ignore (as opposed to “bullshit”, which is a big problem you can’t ignore easily).
@10
Chickenshit has multiple meanings. The most common simply is a more emphatic version of “chicken” (which is to say, “coward”). It can be used in the context you stated, but that’s less common. And I can’t say I’ve ever heard “bullshit” in your context. In my experience bullshit almost exclusively means either “lies” or a description of an unfair situation. (e.g. “Stop spewing bullshit” for context one and “It’s bullshit that we have to deal with this” for context two) The second one may approximate your definition in certain circumstances, but it has little to do with the size or scope of the issue at hand.
The more Trump himself mellows down, the more worried I get. It feels like a silence before the storm. I fear that once he gets everyone feeling at ease, he will clamp down as draconian as he can get away with. And he has proven that he can get away with a lot.
I see. So it has more meanings than just the one I learned about here
http://www.worldwar2history.info/Army/chickenshit.html
Interesting…
@13
75 years ago it may well have meant that exclusively. Languages changes, though, and I can’t say I’ve heard it more than a few times in that context in or out of the military. (Amusingly, the only specific usage I can recall was Hudson from Aliens: “how do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?”)
@12, petrander
I immediately thought of Frieza from DBZA
Though, in the case of Trump, I fully expect him to fuck off and leave actual governance to Pence and his cabinet. Which is worse.
“The pendulum is swinging but it seems as if the clock was already tilted to the right. I have been avoiding reading the news and most blogs lately because I’m not ready to accept my nation is full of so much hatred”
In a country of 320 million I think it is not proper to draw conclusions based on outliers. Yes there are a lot of all kinds of people but I don’t think those identified in such posts represent the typical Republican or Trump supporter. What does it say about the Democratic party that Trump won 30 states which contain a substantial majority of the U.S. population which is reflected in the Electoral College numbers – I believe it was 306 to 232? Yes the popular vote was very close and Clinton barely won it (which again says something about her), but the fact remains that a majority of people in a majority of states that contain a majority of the population who voted, voted for Trump. I think that says more about the Democratic party and Clinton than it does about half the population of the United States.
The Democrats have a problem:
President – Republican 1 Democrat 0
House – Republican 241 Democrat 194
Senate – Republican 52 Democrat 48
Governors: Republican 32 Democrat 18
State Legislative Chambers – Republican 68 Democrat 31
Okay some of the above may be slightly inaccurate because of claimed independents but the point remains. At some point the Democratic party needs some introspection and needs to stop pointing at others and saying how bad they are or how they are at fault. Something is seriously wrong and it’s not FBI director Comey. And it is not that half the population of the U.S. are racist/sexist/kooks either. Keeping up that theme will guarantee Democrats/Progressives/Etc. will continue to lose.
KG @ 8, yeah, that was a bit over the top, I guess. I was referring to Theresa May’s campaign for 100% selection by faith in faith schools. (I recently signed a petition, on behalf of the British Humanist Association. It’s open to people from non-UK countries.) I also understand that there are moves to make parents attend church for at least two years to qualify, (to get the church attendance up, I guess). I also get the impression that the % of faith schools in the UK is increasing.
Segregation of kids by their parent’s faith is bound to be divisive, & is utterly stupid.
Off topic: It’s Openly Secular Day today, folks.
https://openlysecular.org/about/
millssg99
No, it’s not Comey – it’s Trump.
Same old song, different words. Oh no, wait, same old words, too.
Tell the Republicans to play nice, too, while you’re at it.
Heafner could blame it on Facebook Effect™
Facebook provides outlet for people to say whatever their immediate emotions are feeling without any need to consider before speaking. He says, paraphrasing, “people who know me, know I’m not like the impression you get from reading isolated FaceBurps”( ™ )
same excuse Drumph tries to pass off. “just words”, just tweets”, “just ___”.
“locker room talk” is not talk in the locker room. It’s talk one shouts into one’s locker, to express vocally, ones emotions, intending not to be heard.
millssg99:
I don’t know which “half” you’re talking about. Why do you think this?
Does Trump’s election say nothing about the people who voted for him (which isn’t really half of anything interesting), or is there anything coherent to say about it?
We can both introspect on our own mistakes and hold others responsible for theirs. There is no need to stop doing the latter.
Something is seriously wrong and it’s not FBI director Comey. And it is not that half the population of the U.S. are racist/sexist/kooks either.
Those are both wrong, as well as other things. A single logical error is one thing, but does it say anything that you’re making the same one repeatedly? Looks like emphasis to me, as if you really think that’s how it is.
Keeping up the theme that many people (I don’t know an exact proportion) are racist, sexist kooks will mean that we will lose? Okay. So what, if anything, do we do with the fact that many people are racist, sexist kooks? I’ll stick with the truth, and if I lose because of it, that doesn’t look like I’m making a mistake as a rational, moral person, who sees problems in this country and wants to resolve them with other rational, moral people as much as we can. What would we be winning and what would be the point of winning it, if we don’t hold on to that?
Sorry, this should’ve been in quotes above:
Why the fuck should the staggering amount of people make us believe that they cannot be horrible? That’s like claiming that Apple cannot do anything wrong because lots of people buy their shit. Or that XXL fast food meals aren’t unhealthy because they’re popular.
Blockquote fail
So, actually the majority of people voted for Clinton (2 million isn’t quite “barely”) but somehow majorities of majorities voted for Trump.
I want to see this kind of coverage of, say, the Iranian election: the moderate candidate gains more votes than the ultra conservative yet somehow the ultra conservative becomes president. Afterwards there are tons of incidences where women are told to wear a niqab, and people march the streets threading to behead all apostates and people like you go on telling us we shouldn’t judge the new regime based on that and should accept that they won the election.
millssg99, #16
So Clinton barely getting more votes says more about her than about the Trump voters. You understand that this assumes your conclusion (that Trump voters aren’t the problem), right?
Suppose it was Trump versus a very liberal, progressive, anti-war, anti-establishment candidate and the result was the same. Would your conclusion still be that the progressive candidate was the problem? Why not?
You know what all those allegedly not racist/sexist/homophobic/islamophobic Trump supporters could do to convince me that they are actually not horrible people? They could get off their asses and loudly condemn the hateful attacks happening right now. The swastikas on dorm rooms and churches, the “Lynching Lists”, the burned pride flags.
You know, the thing you people demand of every single muslim each and every time a muslim does something bad. There’s a difference there, of course: Muslims are a one billion strong diverse group of people while being a Trump supporter is a conscious action, so the responsibility is much stronger.
This election taught us a couple of things:
1) There are a lot of people in America who are sexist, bigoted and racist. They are a lot of those for even the most obvious, undeniable examples are a not a deal-breaker.
2) There is no point in appealing to the “mushy middle”. They don’t exist any more. http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/section-1-growing-ideological-consistency/#interactive You’re either liberal or conservative or basically irrelevant.
3) The president is now going to be the one with the best ability to inspire non-policy wonks to come vote. It doesn’t matter if you have any experience. It doesn’t matter if you have legislative accomplishments. It is all about whether you mouth the right words. If you can convince enough of the people in the primary, that’s that. Most other people will join up with the “D” or “R” behind the name (see 2). So even if you think that the Democrats are hopelessly corrupt, go register with them and primary the candidate you think is better. For me, I think I’m going to primary with the Republicans from now on, so that I don’t have to cry on election day.
4) The electoral college has to go. I say this, and I say this as someone who if even the Hail Mary play of trying to convince the electors to vote against Donald Trump have their way. It’s undemocratic, it’s pointless in the modern area, and it doesn’t even do the job it’s supposed to do.
5) Voting infrastructure absolutely does matter. Minnesota had the highest turnout in the state because we don’t have voter ID laws and because we opened more polling places instead of closing them, and because we expanded and advertised early voting. Wisconsin, right next to us, with a pretty similar back ground did the exact opposite, and they had the lowest voting turnout in 50 years. Trump won there with less than 28,000 votes.
In the spirit of not tearing each other apart, I have deleted my rant about purity ponies.
Is that the the new SJW? Can I be a unicorn?
Naw, purity ponies are the ones who “just couldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton” because she wasn’t liberal enough. Congratulations- YOU didn’t vote for someone who wasn’t perfect, and look how well that turned out.
Weird point of order- anyone else getting a bizarre timestamp for comments?
It is 11:11 MST.
I disagree. Third party voters were not at all irrelevant. If wiki’s figures are reasonably accurate, they (Libertarians, Greens, and Independents for McMullin) were about 4.7% of the people who came out to vote.
Clinton won the popular vote without them, of course, which is what should matter here. Although you rightly say we should abolish the electoral college, you’re acting as if Clinton was unpopular, in some meaningful sense of not getting enough actual support from real people who voted, which simply isn’t true. So we should be complaining about something else, which is real problem that we really know about based on real facts.
If they had all voted for Clinton (because, for instance, they understood that the only other viable candidate was an unqualified thoroughly repugnant fuckwit), then the electoral college numbers would be radically different. You may look at 4%+change and tell yourself it’s a small number, but many state-level races were close and third party popular votes were distributed in a way which will make a difference to 93 electoral votes by my count. Specifically, from largest to smallest, that’s FL, PA, MI, AZ, WI, UT, and the NE 2nd district. With them, Clinton would be at 325 to Trump’s 213. That’s not irrelevant. It’s very relevant here, as is the much larger group of people who decided not to vote at all, despite knowing there was an unqualified thoroughly repugnant fuckwit who had a significant chance of becoming president.
Do all of those people have some special sauce, unlike both Clinton and Trump voters, which makes it impossible to appeal to them? I can’t think of any reason to believe that. I’m sure Trump voters are practically unreachable in a whole lot of ways, at least in part because of how stubborn and privileged and delusional they apparently are about a diverse array of subjects. So that doesn’t strike me as the right distinction to make between them and third party voters. Third party voters (and non-voters for that matter) had all sorts of reasons to actually think about what they were doing and what they hoped to accomplish with their irresponsible voting, and they could come to make better decisions about that in the future. Why don’t we encourage them to do that, instead of implying they’re an even more hopeless case than Trump voters?
Thanks for clearing that up.
Still, I like ponies, though not that particular kind.
Greens aren’t moderate- they are very liberal. Appealing to them by moderating a liberal policy position won’t work.
I have no idea how to appeal to Libertarian votes without forgoing liberal values. They are closer in worldview to conservatives then they ever will be to liberals.
That would explain the behavior of some of the commenters here.
It’s not clear how liberal they are on a number of items. But Green votes aren’t necessary for the point anyway. You can blame UT on the McMullinites. In the rest of the states, the Libertarian vote was enough. Sometimes Greens by themselves were enough, but they were less numerous than their Libertarian “allies” in those states. So there were less Greens doing it, but the fact is that both groups were making the same mistake.
I wasn’t saying we should be moderating our position. If anything, the Democratic party platform should be much less moderate (although there isn’t anything I can do about that when the choice in front of me is between two people). But if it’s a good position and you call it “liberal,” then you should have that “liberal” position or whatever else it might be called.
One way of appealing to them would be to say their third-party voting gave us a much worse result. They are responsible for that bad shit which is certainly going to happen (or will continue to happen) when Trump becomes president. Thus, they should change their voting patterns, because they’re responsible for that bad shit. We certainly can appeal to them to do that, without changing a single thing about a policy that falls somewhere on some political spectrum, because not everything affecting people’s votes is a policy which falls somewhere on a political spectrum. If in fact your candidate can’t win (like Johnson, Stein, McMullin, write-ins, etc.), then you should realize which decision you’re actually making about the candidates who can actually win, then make that decision better rather than worse. You figure out which is better or worse by thinking politically, but the fact that your candidate can’t win is not derivable from any political platform. You need to know that kind of stuff when you vote. They didn’t know it, were in denial, or had in one way or another confused themselves about it. That’s something we can address without changing a policy (or while making ours even more liberal or better in any other way).
I have no reliable way of predicting what they will always be, no matter what. Perhaps you should stick with the facts: what are those facts and how do you know them?
for all those advocating a wider appeal by trying to appeal to those voters who did not vote progressive.
How did MLK and Malcolm X appeal to the Racists in the furtherance of civil rights?
By that strategy we will get some progressive movement on climate change when Miami disappears into the sea. maybe!
I have heard that left wing libertarians are a theoretical possibility but have never actually heard from any.
uncle frogy
We are all going to find out that one can in fact make chicken salad out of chicken shit.
Which was said over, and over, and over again and convinced apparently not the 4.7% who voted for third party.
Well, you could check voting patterns- who do libertarians vote for when they don’t for libertarians? Or you could look at the underlying belief or value underpinning political philosophy. Liberals are in the “We’re all in this together”. Conservatives are “It’s best if you stay in your place” and libertarians are “I am, in fact, an island”. Which sounds closer to you?
And, as unclefroggy said- I have never actually heard from any liberal libertarian.
Some people here keep missing the 80,000-pound Godzilla knocking over the Washington Monument en route to the White House.
Beating Trump by 2 million votes doesn’t prove Clinton was popular. She should have had millions more votes, given how vile, unqualified and loathsome Trump is. She should have won 55-45, or even 60-40 percent of the vote. To me, that shows me she’s unpopular enough to turn off millions of people who would have voted for any half-way decent Democrat to keep Trump out of the White House.
Also, there’s an implicit claim in some statements that everyone who voted for Clinton did so because they liked her. We can be certain a lot of people voted for her only because they considered her the “lesser evil.” Which means they thought she was evil and were simply holding their noses. To me, winning more votes than Trump does not prove she’s popular, it proves she was very unpopular not to have just blown him away.
That’s why I think, and have said on other comment threads, that until the Democrats honestly address why she lost so many potential voters, this could well happen again. And, no, just saying that everyone who voted for Trump was racist or sexist is not a useful analysis. Taking a good look at why Sanders was so popular as to mount a major challenge to Clinton would be a useful analysis. Also, it would be a big help to do some good, indepth, quality polling on whether a significant number of people who would have voted for Sanders against Trump – and by significant I mean enough for him to win, not lose – did not vote for Clinton. I strongly suspect that’s the key to understanding why this disaster happen.
wsierichs:
It does prove she was more popular than Trump, though.
So what? By your own claim, the ineluctable reality is that she was less unpopular than Trump.
(This focus on her alleged unpopularity without taking into account her actual proportionally greater popularity than her opponent is either stupid or perverse)
Heh. What you should be thinking about is why the (by your own claim!) more popular candidate did not actually win.
Your suspicion is only valid if you hold the system to be fair in the sense that the more popular candidate will win. Clearly, that is not the case.
“Beating Trump by 2 million votes doesn’t prove Clinton was popular.”
797,724 votes (0.62 percent of” voters) – according to AP.
“It does prove she was more popular than Trump, though.”
Wow 0.62 percent higher. So much more popular. That’s impressive. Keep holding on to that. Yes she WAS more popular by vote count. That is technically correct. You win. People who talk about her unpopularity can’t have any point whatsoever. She won the popular vote. If it had been by 1 single vote out of 100 million she is technically more popular. Whoopeee. Throw a party. Her candidacy caused the Democrats to lose up ad down the line. Give her a crown.
“I have heard that left wing libertarians are a theoretical possibility but have never actually heard from any.
uncle frogy”
Maybe you ought to try and find one. They make “progressives” like Bernie Sanders sound right-wing. You don’t have to agree with somebody to acknowledge their existence.
@#12, petrander
I have a sneaking suspicion that now that he has won, he has realized that pretty much the only positive action the President can take on his own is to start wars*. And if the reports leaking out from the White House staff about his briefings are true, he, like Boris Johnson and the rest of that merry crew, was not expecting to win and is unprepared to actually deal with the job. All those times he contradicted himself were because he thought he’d get 40% of the vote at best, so he was just shooting for whatever sounded good at the time, and didn’t mean very much of it.
Insofar as he had any idea of what the job actually was, he was picturing kicking back behind the desk in the Oval Office, passing all the responsibilities on to other people by delegation at a very high level — “go prepare a budget and get it passed” — and is now realizing that no matter how much support he has with the base, he won’t be able to accomplish any of the things he said he would without Congress, and not even the Republicans in Congress want the stuff he said he would do.
That doesn’t mean he won’t try — it just means he’s trying to adjust expectations right now. Hence things like the announcement that the Clintons “are good people” (actual quote), or that he doesn’t mind gay marriage (not a direct quote, but something he has said since the election), or that maybe he doesn’t want to repeal the ACA (ditto). If he repeats his new “positions” for a while, the segment of the population which supports him, personally, rather than the Republican Party, will forget everything he said to the contrary, and the segment which supports the Republican Party, rather than him personally, doesn’t want the things he wants anyway and will cheer.
The only real question is: how many people voted for him specifically because they hated Hillary Clinton and effectively for no other reason? Those are the people who are going to be the most disgusted when he turns out to be a rubber stamp for the Republican Party’s typical policies.
*The Constitution says otherwise, but until someone challenges Obama over Libya, or until it is repealed, then the 2001 AUMF Against Terrorism means that a president can simply declare a foreign government terrorists and immediately go to war; the argument has been made out loud — specifically by Hillary Clinton — and nobody has rejected it, and there is a built-in precedent, as I say, in Libya which would otherwise have been an impeachment-worthy cause and therefore would have been seized by Congress, so unfortunately the Constitutional separation of powers itself has been rendered moot in this case.
@#43, millssg99
They must be pretty rare, as compared to Libertarians in general. I’ve met a fair number of Libertarians, both in person and online, and the only rights they care about to any significant extent are property rights, which is not a left-wing position by any measure. (The ones who are most entertaining are the ones who believe in intellectual property, which has no existence outside of law enforcement… excuse me, sorry, “coercion”.) I suspect uncle frogy has had much the same experience.
I keep hearing about these left-wing Libertarians, but the only Libertarians I actually meet are right-wing ones. Most of them assure me they really really are left-wingers, they’re really in sympathy with all the left-wing goals, in fact they’re more left-wing than I am, they scoff at me for my naive willingness to believe in government which is corrupt and authoritarian… but they always believe that property rights trump everything else, and they always vote for these incredibly right-wing politicians, either in their own party or in the Republicans, who usually turn out to be corrupt and authoritarian after they get into office. Johnson in this last election, for example, was very far to the right on everything except drugs and war, and IIRC a couple of his policy proposals were only compatible with being anti-war if you really didn’t think about them at all, or assumed that some very common, basic human tendencies were going to magically vanish.
I’ll keep an eye out for left-wing Libertarians. I’ll keep an eye out for unicorns, too, just in case. But you’ll pardon me if I don’t spend a lot of time on looking.
“If you compare their complaints to the complaints of the marginalized people they criticize, they’re completely asymmetrical. Women in hijabs have to worry about being verbally and physically assaulted when they leave their homes. Unarmed black people have to worry about being shot in the back and having drop guns planted on their bodies, or being killed in “nickel rides” by sadistic cops. Gay and trans people have to worry about being stomped to death.
So if you think you’re living in a totalitarian nightmare because you have to worry about somebody giving you a dirty look for saying the n-word, or because you’re expected not to throw a tantrum when you see a woman in a hijab or two men kissing, I’ve got the world’s smallest violin. And if you think that’s a sufficient grievance to justify voting for a crypto-fascist just to “teach ’em a lesson,” then yes, you are deplorable.”
Hmmm. I wonder who wrote that today? Perhaps a non-existing left-wing libertarian?
Sure they could. So are you going to tell us? What is your point?
I could also have a mystery object in my refrigerator. Should I give you any evidence of it or tell you anything about it, or will you be happy just knowing that it’s a possibility?
Why would we do that? She’s not going to be elected by the electoral college. Was that your point? Will you be getting to the point eventually?
Is this the point? Explain how you think you know it, or explain why you think pulling this information out of your ass is helpful.
It’s true that quite a few Democratic candidates lost the popular vote, unlike Clinton. (You know there are no electors for non-presidential races, right? So they just plain lost, full stop, not because of some anti-democratic bullshit written into the Constitution.) Why didn’t they cause their own losses? Why aren’t they the ones who caused Clinton to win by a margin which for some reason you consider too small?
Is there anything in particular which makes you tell your story, other than you thinking it was the story you were supposed to tell? Are we only getting your personal views of Clinton, and if so then why pretend as if you could speak for millions of other people?
consiousnessrazor,
Perhaps I made a point, at one point. Perhaps it was just in my imagination like the non-existent left-wing libertarians.
millssg99:
Actual data differs from your alleged source, though not by much — 0.89% of people who voted.
Bear in mind the point being made, that being the proportion of eligible voters of the population, and the proportion of the actual voters of the eligible voters.
Well, yes. By your own figures, 797,724 votes more popular.
(By mine, 1,161,562 votes more popular)
Indeed. By nearly 800 thousand votes, by your own figures.
You endeavour so very hard to be unimpressed by the truth.
(heh)
You have entirely missed the point, as I alluded to above.
Salient fact is that the USA electoral system patently does not elect the most popular candidate, as measured by the popular vote. Salient fact is that the candidate with the more popular votes got 306 electorate votes, the candidate with the lesser popular votes got 232.
Therefore, had another candidate been even more more popular, under that system it would still not entail a win for that other candidate. The geographic distribution of those votes matters significantly.
Therefore, arguing about the popularity or otherwise of candidates is not the relevant aspect — the relevant aspect is the electoral system itself.
[erratum]
My above should read:
(bah)
Presidents can make thousands of appointments. They can pardon and commute sentences. They can veto opponents’ bills and sign bills into law without the need for such a majority. They can lead their party in numerous ways. They can enforce laws according their interpretation of them. They can claim to have privilege over information they don’t want released. And so forth.
When I saw the asterisk there at the end, I expected you to mention things like that, because you made it sound like the president can’t do anything except start wars.
—
I don’t doubt the existence of Left-Libertarians. I’ve had a few good friends who would count, but they’ve made some progress over the years. What I doubt is the premise that people (of any political persuasion or of any other description) cannot change their minds. All of the people I’ve ever heard of have done that. So show me a Right-Libertarian (if you really must), and I’ll show you a person who can change. People are complicated and hard to work with, but these are people we’re talking about, not a faceless ideology that can’t be anything other than what we define it to be.
Yes, the fact that Sanders won so many more votes in the primary than Clinton certainly proves he would have blown Trump out of the water.
Oh, wait…
Now admittedly, polls taken during the primaries indicated that Sanders would do better against Trump (or Cruz, or Kasich) than Clinton did. Maybe he would. And maybe he wouldn’t – we don’t, and can’t know. Asking people who didn’t vote for Clinton now whether they would have voted for Sanders in a contest that didn’t take place is pretty near the epitome of pointless polling – because there’s absolutely no way of knowing whether the result is accurate. What we do know is that Sanders wasn’t able to arouse enough enthusiam, bring out enough new voters, to beat Clinton.
Point of information: While as a non-American I didn’t have a vote at any stage, I was rooting for Sanders until it became obvious he wasn’t going to beat Clinton.
I supported Sanders, too, until Clinton got the lead in the primaries. The game of pretending that maybe Sanders would have won is a mug’s game. Don’t do it.
I’m also really annoyed by those stupid polls that postulate imaginary competitions and ask who you think would win. That’s pointless and stupid. “Who would you vote for?” polls in general are a waste of time.
I’d rather see policy polls. Do you favor gun control? Abortion restrictions? Invading Syria? Health care for everyone? Raising the minimum wage? Focus on those. Candidates can use that information to hone their platforms, and voters can use policy information to rationally choose their preferred candidate, rather than relying entirely on the clash of personalities and worse, voting for whoever other voters have put in first place, because they’re in first place.
I suspect Chump and the far right would rather turn the US into (or will end up like) apartheid-era South African fascism, rather than Nazi Germany. They will create corrupt laws to keep power in the hands of fewer and fewer whites as they are outnumbered, and using military and paramilitary force to do it. Whites who don’t participate will be “banned”, and violence against non-whites will be supported, not just ignored.
Things aren’t far from that now.
re mentions of Apartheid @54:
Trevor Noah last night on The Daily Show, did an amazing comparison of Drumph to South African politics. can’t link, recommend looking it up on CC.com [paraphrased]
re 55:
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/t6o6ck/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-how-south-africa-could-prepare-the-u-s–for-president-trump
I agree about all of that.
One problem we had this year was that turnout was low for people who would probably vote for Clinton, which is partly because most polls agreed she was “in first place” (or likely to win). Many people, including myself, have been shocked by the thought of Trump as president, ever since he announced he was running. Some believed it couldn’t be a serious possibility, was some kind of marketing scheme for the Trump brand or whatever, that he had no chance of being nominated much less a chance of winning. Polling seemed to confirm this impression, if you don’t think hard about it and have convinced yourself somehow that 10/20/30/40% is a small enough chance that you shouldn’t worry enough to do anything about it.
Of course they shouldn’t have thought that way, because it’s not a 30% chance of rain that we’re brushing off and deciding not to carry an umbrella, but a chance of this terrifying asshole anointing himself as our supreme leader and turning this country into even more of a clusterfuck than it already was. Nonetheless, that presumably is more or less how they thought.
Why bother with registering or voting, if you think the rest of the country has taken care of this silly non-problem for you? (Obvious answer: because there are many other people/things to vote on besides the presidency. But this is unimpressive to some, as they’ve been told again and again that it is a presidential election and nothing else really matters or is even worth mentioning.)
Maybe you’re talking about the Democratic primaries here (not really clear), but I wouldn’t have said the problem is that too many people are encouraged to vote for the person in first place because they’re (apparently) in first place…. The opposite seems to happen more often, because there’s this sort of tragedy of the commons effect when it comes to voting. I guess there were also Trump supporters who were more motivated to get out to vote, because they thought he’s an underdog and really needed more support than he seemed to be getting.