Donald Trump, the road that might not lead to the White House!

[Orang Utan]

A lot of the downtrodden working class couldn't make it to the polling booth. Because voting takes place in a Tuesday and they have to get to work. Can't afford to miss it or be late.

If they really want to make elections fair across the rich poor divide they either need to make it a national holiday or move it to a weekend.

People can vote before or after work, you dimwit

 

[bluescreen]

People can vote before or after work, you dimwit

Depends how long it takes them to get to work and how long they have to queue. Tbh, this seems the most sensible post from plasticene for a long while.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

A white backlash against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and the racial and gender power shift they represented, has upended everything that progressives believe about the country. At this moment, it feels like everything we know about politics is wrong. With almost no ground game, trailing in every poll at the national level and in the crucial swing states, Trump won beyond anyone’s advance projections except his own. I’d call his projections delusional, except he turned out to be right. (The effect of FBI Director James Comey’s unconscionable intervention into the election 11 days out cannot be measured.)

As a person of the left, it is my responsibility to look at the Trump phenomenon and acknowledge the economic and political revolt it represented. Trump voters believe politics is broken, and the economy is rigged. So did Sanders voters—and so did many Clinton voters, including this one. But Republicans voted for a man with no ideas about how to fix it, except to scapegoat immigrants and Muslims and blacks who live in ghetto hellscapes where they’re either victims or perpetrators of violence. He knows nothing about the potential power of the diversity that now distinguishes this country, which will now be treated like a curse and not a blessing.

Everything We Thought We Knew About Politics Was Wrong

 

[butchersapron]

Everything the bubble thought was wrong. Not we.

 

[J Ed]

Hillary Clinton’s Celebrity Feminism Was a Failure

Why didn't they release this article during the primaries when an awful lot of people could have told you the exact same thing?

Clinton’s campaign strategy, especially when it came to appealing to white women, indicates that she and her staffers didn’t quite grasp these dynamics. Her campaign employed a candy-colored brand of female empowerment seemingly based on the assumption that white women’s political priorities are influenced by the pop culture they consume. White working-class women weren’t going to vote for Clinton just because Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Lena Dunham, and Sheryl Sandberg were.

These celebrity overtures were out of step with the priorities and concerns of white working-class women. How can you “lean in,” as Sandberg implores working women to do, when it’ll cost you your minimum-wage job? And if you can’t afford HBO, how likely is it you even know who Lena Dunham is, much less care about her political opinions?

Yet Clinton’s campaign relied heavily on these endorsement gimmicks. It saturated its messaging with the same superficial celebrity feminism that anoints everyone from Taylor Swift to Madeline Albright as role models for would-be girl bosses. It assumed that this branding, and Clinton’s bid to make history, would be enough to attract the white women she needed to win. Not only did this tactic fail in that regard, but it alienated some queer women, women of color, and even millennials.

 

[J Ed]

I posted this earlier but it is worth posting again. On the eve of the election, Clinton campaign surrogate Lena Dunham released a video where she and her father positively discussed 'the extinction' of 'white men, straight white men'. This is while many of the areas which went from Obama to Trump are ravaged by opiate addiction and the life expectancy is falling.

 

[Lord Camomile]

Eight years, and this is how it ends

 

[Casually Red]

which is what I said. "(she was) part of a poltical establishment that ignored and exacerbated inequality".

Actually I'd just like to apologise for my over exuberant response to your post yesterday . Had a few pints and also got you mixed up with somebody else . See your point .

Sorry .

 

[J Ed]

This is the product of a very sick and stupid culture

‘Parks and Recreation’: Leslie Knope Writes Letter to America Following Donald Trump’s Victory

Dear America,

Amidst the confusion, and despair, and disbelief, it was suggested to me by a very close friend of mine (I won’t say her name, to protect her identity) (Ann. It was Ann) that perhaps a few people would enjoy hearing my thoughts on this election. So I sat down at my computer, cleared my head, and opened a document. Then I started crying. So I had some hot chocolate, and my close friend (Ann) rubbed my back for a while, and I got myself together, and sat down. And started crying. Then more Ann comforting me, and more hot chocolate, and back and forth like that for about six hours or so, the chain of hot-chocolate-and-back-rubs only interrupted briefly when I had to run to the store for more hot chocolate packets (“Just give me all of them, all the boxes,” I remember saying, through tears, to a very scared stockroom boy) and now I am ready to go.

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Kolphner taught us a social studies lesson. The seventeen students in our class were introduced to two fictional candidates: a smart if slightly bookish-looking cartoon tortoise named Greenie, and a cool-looking jaguar named Speedy. Rick Dissellio read a speech from Speedy, in which he promised that if elected he would end school early, have extra recess, and provide endless lunches of chocolate pizzandy. (A local Pawnee delicacy at the time — deep fried pizza where the crust was candy bars.) Then I read a speech from Greenie, who promised to go slow and steady, think about the problems of our school, and try her best to solve them in a way that would benefit the most people. Then Mrs. Kolphner had us vote on who should be Class President.

I think you know where this is going.

Except you don’t, because before we voted, Greg Laresque asked if he could nominate a third candidate, and Mrs. Kolphner said “Sure! The essence of democracy is that everyone—” and Greg cut her off and said “I nominate a T. rex named Dr. Farts who wears sunglasses and plays the saxophone, and his plan is to fart as much as possible and eat all the teachers,” and everyone laughed, and before Mrs. Kolphner could blink, Dr. Farts the T. rex had been elected President of Pawnee Elementary School in a 1984 Reagan-esque landslide, with my one vote for Greenie the Tortoise playing the role of “Minnesota.”

After class I was inconsolable. Once all the other kids left, Mrs. Kolphner came over and put her arm around me. She told me I had done a great job advocating for Greenie the Tortoise. Through tears I remember saying, “How good, exactly?” and she said “Very very good,” and I said, “Good enough to—?” and she sighed and went to her desk to get one of the silver stars she gave out to kids who did a good job on something, and as I tearfully added it to my Silver Star Diary she asked me what upset me the most.

“Greenie was the better candidate,” I said. “Greenie should have won.”

She nodded.

“I suppose that was the point of the lesson,” I said.

“Oh no,” she said. “The point of the lesson is: people are unpredictable, and democracy is insane.”

Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried.” That is perhaps a pithier and better way to get my point across, than that long anecdote about Mrs. Kolphner. Should I just erase all of that and start with this? Whatever. I’m pot-committed now, and is there extra caffeine in that hot chocolate? Because my head feels like a spaceship. The point is: people making their own decisions is, on balance, better than an autocrat making decisions for them. It’s just that sometimes those decisions are bad, or self-defeating, or maddening, and a day where you get dressed up in your best victory pantsuit and spend an ungodly amount of money decorating your house with American flags and custom-made cardboard-cutouts of suffragettes in anticipation of a glass-ceiling-shattering historical milestone ends with you getting (metaphorically) eaten by a giant farting T. rex.

 

[bluescreen]

I posted this earlier but it is worth posting again. On the eve of the election, Clinton campaign surrogate Lena Dunham released a video where she and her father positively discussed 'the extinction' of 'white men, straight white men'. This is while many of the areas which went from Obama to Trump are ravaged by opiate addiction and the life expectancy is falling.

Someone posted that on FB and I thought it was some kind of right wing satire.
ETA, except not, because of who'd posted it, but wondered if it was a Poe.

 

[J Ed]

Someone posted that on FB and I thought it was some kind of right wing satire.

No it's real.

Drop dead and do it quickly, but vote for my political candidate first please.

 

[Casually Red]

What did Clinton(and Blair and Schroder) do when the butcher devastated Grozny?

Mercilessly bombed Yugoslavia , annexed Kosovo Methoija and kept on bombing Iraq incessantly . Dumping depleted uranium all over the place in both countries to poison generations to come . While murdering about a million innocents in Iraq with their sanctions. half of them children .

Made him look like an angel , basically .

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Trump voters didn't vote against Clinton.

They voted for Trump.

 

[ferrelhadley]

"Enemy" of the banks is going to deregulate them.
Financial Services

 

[Pickman's model]

As Jim W pointed out fewer people voted for him than either McCain or Romney

Or indeed hrc

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I keep trying to end this on an optimistic note. The country will survive, probably. But it could fundamentally change. With control of all three branches of government, the GOP is able to promote an agenda that, in its particulars, Americans tell pollsters they reject: austerity, tax cuts for the rich, abortion and gay marriage either condemned or illegal, college unaffordable, Social Security and Medicare slashed. It will ignore, even suppress, the just claims of the Black Lives Matter movement; the cruelty of mass incarceration and the killings of young black people will continue. We had a chance to stop this, and we weren’t able to. Our country, and its institutions, aren’t as healthy as the optimists among us think.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

― H.L. Mencken

A quote by H.L. Mencken

 

[Casually Red]

I think what we've seen in America is a working class revolt with mainly white voters rallying against the establishment. These people are the same type of "left behind" voters in forgotten deindustrialised towns and cities who voted Brexit in Britain. They've simply had enough of the same old politicians promising change and not delivering. In Donald Trump, they saw a man who was offering change and the chance to "make America great again", rather like Nigel Farage and other politicians advocating Brexit.

The pattern that emerges is that these people want a chance of hope and change. Take the last two US Elections, Obama painted himself as a change candidate who could unite America as the first black president, while Trump and those advocating Brexit have attempted to deliver similar pledges. This was a lot harder for Clinton and those politicians campaigning for Remain in the EU referendum, as they were trying to sell the status quo to people (more of the same) which sounds a lot less attractive, not helped by the fact they were very much 'establishment' politicians. The reality is that the old economic consensus is now defunct and mainstream politicians on the centre-left and centre-right need to deliver a coherent message to these angry voters to try and win them back. Until something is done about this disconnect, we will continue to see the rise of populist right politicians such as Trump in America, Farage in Britain and Le Pen in France.

So in the context of this, I totally understand the alienation that people feel which has prompted them to vote for Brexit or Trump. However, this is where my own and these voters' paths cross. The reality is Trump is no "man of the people" or change candidate for that matter. Take the fact that Trump has a background as a property billionaire, the type of person who contributed towards the financial crash of 2008 which has hit the very same people he purports to represent very hard financially. He has also earnt mega bucks and not paid certain taxes for decades, while he also favours cutting the top rate of tax for the richest in society. I also fear his 'protectionist' trade policies could also hit the American economy. So I fear that people voting for Trump in the hope of change may very well end up disappointed.

But I guess we have to accept that a majority of American people have voted for Trump to be president, so whether we like it or not, Britain has to respect this decision and try and work with Trump. They remain a crucial trading and political ally to us. On a slightly happier tone to end my post, I seriously doubt that Trump's most ridiculous policies will ever see light of day. Legislation still needs to pass through the Senate and House of Reps, full of Republicans that are weary of him.

This isn't just a right wing thing . It was the same anger that saw Syriza elected. Sanders would have been elected had the convention not been rigged. Or had he the balls to run independently . The SNP and Labours catastrophic meltdown in Scotland are part of the same frustration . None of thats right wing . Corbyn could capitalise on this too were he not surrounded by the types who released that Momentum statement. or the likes of that shadow minister of his who started shrieking " sexist " at Dermot Murnanghan because she didn't know the answers to his questions.
People are fucking sick of the establishment, the metro liberals and all their shite.
The populist right are simply better able to capitalise on this because they aren't hamstrung by that type of weird identity politics bollocks , that causes many people to wince . And the types who espouse it . While too many on the left are badly compromised by their idiotic folly of backing utter shits like Clinton out of some half arsed left tribalism. By self inflicted irrelevance .

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Wow, colleague of mine has just walked past the NY Trump Tower; one lane of 5th Ave closed and the tower surrounded by dump-trucks filled with sand. She spoke to a spook who told her they'll be there until the end of January!

 

[killer b]

I'm just watching this new one with Mark Blyth - some good stuff.

 

[J Ed]

A quote by H.L. Mencken

yes this is such a great quote isn't it wonderful that we've had it again I'm sure we will get an even better discussion out of it this time

 

[JimW]

I'm just watching this new one with Mark Blyth - some good stuff.

I was watching too but his colleague seems a bit more bog-standard psephology so skipped bits of hers.

 

[Casually Red]

Donald Trump’s Victory Was Built on Unique Coalition of White Voters
Donald J. Trump’s America flowered through the old union strongholds of the Midwest, along rivers and rail lines that once moved coal from southern Ohio and the hollows of West Virginia to the smelters of Pennsylvania.

It flowed south along the Mississippi River, through the rural Iowa counties that gave Barack Obama more votes than any Democrat in decades, and to the Northeast, through a corner of Connecticut and deep into Maine.

And it extended through the suburbs of Cleveland and Minneapolis, of Manchester, N.H., and the sprawl north of Tampa, Fla., where middle-class white voters chose Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton.

One of the biggest upsets in American political history was built on a coalition of white voters unlike that of any other previous Republican candidate, according to election results and interviews with voters and demographic experts.

Mr. Trump’s coalition comprised not just staunchly conservative Republicans in the South and West. They were joined by millions of voters in the onetime heartlands of 20th-century liberal populism — the Upper and Lower Midwest — where white Americans without a college degree voted decisively to reject the more diverse, educated and cosmopolitan Democratic Party of the 21st century, making Republicans the country’s dominant political party at every level of government.

Mr. Trump spoke to their aspirations and fears more directly than any Republican candidate in decades, attacking illegal immigrants and Muslims and promising early Wednesday to return “the forgotten men and women of our country” to the symbolic and political forefront of American life. He electrified the country’s white majority and mustered its full strength against long-term demographic decay.
...
But Mr. Trump won low-income white voters to the Republican ticket, reversing a partisan divide along class lines that is as old as the Democratic and Republican Parties — a replay of the “Brexit” vote in June, when the old bastions of England’s Labor-left voted decisively to leave the European Union. His breakthrough among white working-class voters in the North not only erased the Democratic advantage but reversed it, giving him a victory in the Electoral College while he lost the national popular vote.

Most strikingly, Mr. Trump won his biggest margins among middle-income white voters, according to exit polls, a revolt not only of the white working class but of the country’s vast white middle class. He did better than past Republicans in the sprawling suburbs along Florida’s central coasts, overwhelming Mrs. Clinton’s gains among Hispanic voters. He held down Mrs. Clinton’s margins in the Philadelphia suburbs, defying expectations that Mrs. Clinton would outperform Mr. Obama by a wide margin.
..

Are we still paying attention to polls ?

 

[killer b]

I was watching too but his colleague seems a bit more bog-standard psephology so skipped bits of hers.

yeah, she's pretty bland.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The Russian government was in touch with members of President-elect Donald Trump’s political team during the U.S. election campaign and knows most of his entourage, one of Russia’s most senior diplomats told the Interfax news agency on Thursday.

Accused by defeated Democratic contender Hillary Clinton of being a puppet of President Vladimir Putin after praising the Russian leader, Trump has dismissed suggestions he had anything to do with the Russian government during the campaign.

Russia Says It Was In Touch With Trump Campaign During The Election | The Huffington Post

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Amy Schumer's comments:

Like the rest of us I am grieving today. My heart is in a million pieces. My heart breaks for my niece and my friends who are pregnant bringing children into the world right now. Like everyone else I am horrified that people believed these bumper sticker slogans filled with hate he spewed. People who voted for him you are weak. You are not just misinformed. You didn't even attempt information. You say lock her up and you know something about the word email but what was in the emails? You have no clue. Well I'll tell you if you were able to read this far through the holes in your sheet. They said nothing incriminating. Nothing. She dedicated her entire life to public service and got our children Heath care and education without discrimination. he didn't pay his workers. Started a fake college. Ripped people off. Never paid his taxes and sexually assaulted women and on and on She would have taken care of us. I personally would have had to pay higher taxes. All the celebrities backing her would have. People asked how much I was paid to stand with her. Nothing. None of us were paid a dollar. We would have had to pay a lot more because we are fortunate enough to make a high income. But we all wanted to do it to take care of the people in need. She was fighting to take care of you kicking and screaming babies. Yelling about emails you know nothing about and not liking her clothes or her hair she wanted to protect you even you. Well you've gotten what you asked for and now you can watch the sky open up. Literally. I am furious. I cry for her and for all the smart people I love who know what's right and I cry for you people who fell for shiny hats and reality catch phrases. She would have protected you. Today we grieve tomorrow we begin again.

 

[bluescreen]

Good god, J Ed I just saw that Parks & Recreation post of yours upthread. Classic. I've been seeing stuff like this all day. I don't like to call people snowflakes but really, can't they just listen to themselves? Well, obviously they do a bit, because they self-ironise, but only within their own little self-ironising bubble.

 

[frogwoman]

Billionaire Globalist Soros Exposed as Hidden Hand Behind Trump Protests -- Provoking US 'Color Revolution'

errrrm...

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Russia Says It Was In Touch With Trump Campaign During The Election | The Huffington Post

Phew, glad someone's talking to Putin, sparring with the cunt wasn't going to end well was it!

 

[J Ed]

Amy Schumer's comments:

If she didn't want Trump then she should not have backed a loser then should she. Fucking insufferable. Can these people not shut up.