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

[ferrelhadley]

I am not so sure that Obama would have beaten Trump. That thought is a difficult one given the absolute dog whistle disgrace of Trumps' campaign.

His polling is very good. He is an engaging personality, I think he comes across massively better than Hillary. I think he has a much more intuitive feel for what makes Americans tick and could address many of Trumps arguments in a more human fashion. Trumps victory was very narrow against a very weak candidate. Obama seen of Republics who gained far more votes than Trump did.

 

[Joe Reilly]

And quite frankly this 'loyalty' stuff, whether to class or race, is vile, the logical conclusion is that BME voters that voted for Trump are race traitors.

Well, yes of course. But more importantly, should the opportunity present itself to put the white working class back in their box, the Black and Latino members of the working class who didn't vote for him - but are not regarded as entirely 'blameless' either, due to a lack of enthusiasm for the Goldman Sachs candidate - will be shoveled in as well. Collateral damage.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

One thing that Obama would have had going for him, is that he campaigned with a positive message, a message of hope. That sort of thing tends to inspire people.

Clinton's campaign was largely negative, focused on ridiculing Trump, while Trump was talking about getting things done [even if they were asinine suggestions]. The Democrats misjudged the reception to their anti-Trump message by undecided white voters.

 

[The Fornicator]

Obama was a very tough act to follow. Hillary just didn't inspire in the same way - Trump did inspire, he not only got people voting who'd stopped, he did it without a Get out the Vote Campaign. If it wasn't Trump it would be hellish impressive.

 

[treelover]

What do you think about the article? What bits do you agree with? The implied answer of the author is to do away with democracy, I'm not sure that's the answer myself.

Where does this ignorance come from? Why were they more taken in by Trump's lies than Clinton's? Would it have helped if during the campaign a voice that didn't deny their concerns and offered positive solutions instead of pointing to scapegoats hadn't been deliberately silenced as much as possible by the democratic party apparatus?

Let's say they are ignorant. They're not so ignorant they don't know they've been shat on from a great height. So they're not going to vote for someone whose shit they're still wiping off their shoulders - they're not ignorant enough not to know what she's been doing these last few decades (they've been reminded of this by Clinton supporters at every turn - shitting on people from office for long periods of time makes you 'qualified' - if they weren't so ignorant they'd know that). Especially when she's telling them she's actually been constipated for 40 years - nobody shat, nobody was shat on (America is already great).

What might have been better would have been having a guy who would have said yes, you've been shat on. This is who did the shitting (both party establishments, banks, health insurance companies, employers etc) and this is what I intend to do about it (universal healthcare, stricter financial regulation, higher minimum wage, etc). That might have cut through some of that ignorance, if you think ignorance is the problem (and since you posted the article without comment I can only assume you agree with it).

Instead the only credible voice (the only one not denying the one thing they, in their ignorance, could not be ignorant of - their own experience) was one that would only spread more ignorance.

This isn't important because you should feel sorry for them. It's important because unless you understand what is driving support for trump you're not going to understand what needs to be done to put things right (have a read of that Malik piece, it's excellent - if you look at it in terms of swings rather than static figures you get a clearer picture - the swing from dem to rep among black and Latino voters, as groups, was higher than white voters as a group - got to assume they're not more racist surely, so are they more ignorant? Or is there something else driving this below the surface?)

The problem isn't Hillary Clinton, it's much deeper than that. Much harder to understand. But her history makes her a symbol of that problem - of the establishment that created it. The Democrats failure to understand that has brought us Donald Trump as president.

Or you can refuse to ask yourself those questions and forget about politics altogether because there's nothing remotely political in saying 'the bad guys won cos stupid bad guys voted for the manipulative bad guy' irrespective of whether that statement is true.

Whatever you do, don't look at Momentum's or JC4PM, you will go ballistic.

Btw, wasn't much of this discussed many years ago, with the book,'Whats the matter with Kansas' by Thomas Frank(2004)

What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004) is a book by American journalist and historian Thomas Frank, which explores the rise of populist anti-elitist conservatism in the United States, centering on the experience of Kansas, Frank's native state. In the late 19th century, says Frank, Kansas was known as a hotbed of the left-wing Populist movement, but in recent decades, it has become overwhelmingly conservative. The book was published in Britain and Australia as What's the Matter with America?.

What's the Matter with Kansas? spent 18 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List.

What's the Matter with Kansas? - Wikipedia

 

[Treacle Toes]

Collateral damage.

Tbf... I imagine that is just how many working class black people feel they are thought of knowing that their white neighbours, colleagues, family members even voted for Trump... It really insulting to expect those people to simply overlook apparent racism in his rhetoric. Does that make all Trump supporters racists? Of course not. Does the fact so many people voted for him mean that many are simply willing to go along with or overlook the way he employed racism to win this election? Yes it does.

Where is the class loyality in that?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I once wrote that the U.S. president’s relationship with the economy is more like the captain of a ship sailing through turbulent waters rather than the bow-to-stern engineer. Presidents cannot slide the economy to 4 percent growth, as if GDP were a thermostat bar. But the government has great control over how growth is shared. For the last eight years, the Obama doctrine has put sharing at the heart of economic policy with a progressive plan to redistribute the country’s prodigious wealth to help low-income Americans of all ethnicities stay afloat in a period of severe inequality. Tuesday’s vote represents the repudiation of that economic policy, and the inauguration of a very different strategy. America is about to find out just how much a president matters to the lives of its citizens. For the poor, the stakes could not be any higher.

Donald Trump: A Disaster for Americans in Poverty

Operating under a premise that Trump voters in fact aren't ignorant, and instead cast their votes after fully informing themselves on the issues - it becomes reasonable to conclude that the Trump voters are in favor of the government turning its back on the poor.

 

[CRI]

One thing that Obama would have had going for him, is that he campaigned with a positive message, a message of hope. That sort of thing tends to inspire people.

Clinton's campaign was largely negative, focused on ridiculing Trump, while Trump was talking about getting things done [even if they were asinine suggestions]. The Democrats misjudged the reception to their anti-Trump message by undecided white voters.

True, and there was the campaign image of his face with the caption "Hope" - like this one, but not a guinea pig.

But his campaign in 2008 was largely before the massive economic crash. Now, I think it's pretty hard to instill hope. It's a lot easier to peddle fear, as Trump has done very well.

Also, he's leaving office. His popularity rating might not be so high if he'd been running again, but that couldn't happen anyhow.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Trump also released an infrastructure repair plan that would involve corporations funding infrastructure redevelopment, in return for making profits by levying tolls, etc.

Trump, as you might have noticed during this long, emotionally torturous campaign, likes to wax poetic about America's collapsing bridges and “third-world” airports, and he has vowed to fix up the country by doubling Hillary Clinton's proposed spending on infrastructure. At the same time, he’s also promised to pass gargantuan tax cuts while limiting the budget deficit.


This has all raised an obvious question: How, exactly, does America’s angriest clementine plan to pay for all of this building? I mean, Mexico isn't going to cover the wall and repairs to I-95, is it?

Thankfully, we now have an answer from two of Trump's chief economic advisers. In a report from Oct. 27, University of California–Irvine professor Peter Navarro and private equity honcho Wilbur Ross outlined how the candidate would transform about $167 billion of federal tax credits into $1 trillion of infrastructure spending. Factor in the effects of economic growth, they argued, and the cost to taxpayers would amount to zero, zilch, nada. Or, as they put it, the whole thing would be “budget neutral.”

Of course, it‘s not really free. Americans would just end up paying for the construction a bit later on.

Under Trump's plan—at least as it's written (more on that in a minute)—the federal government would offer tax credits to private investors interested in funding large infrastructure projects, who would put down some of their own money up front, then borrow the rest on the private bond markets. They would eventually earn their profits on the back end from usage fees, such as highway and bridge tolls (if they built a highway or bridge) or higher water rates (if they fixed up some water mains). So instead of paying for their new roads at tax time, Americans would pay for them during their daily commute. And of course, all these private developers would earn a nice return at the end of the day.

The one upside to a plan like Trump's is that it might solve some political problems. Americans like new roads and bridges. They don't like paying for them. By incentivizing private companies to take on these projects with some tax credits, it might make the work look relatively inexpensive. States wouldn't have to add any bonds to their books. The federal government wouldn't have to add much to its debt.

But a lot of the savings to taxpayers would likely be illusory. The main beneficiaries, in all likelihood, are the Wall Street investors who would love to skim some cash off your ride to work.

While You Weren’t Looking, Donald Trump Released a Plan to Privatize America’s Roads and Bridges

Once again, operating under the 'informed voter' paradigm - Trumps voters liked the idea of tax cuts, but were also comfortable with ultimately paying more for the use of infrastructure through user fees, tolls, etc., to Wall Street investors and large corporations.

 

[gosub]

Trump also released an infrastructure repair plan that would involve corporations funding infrastructure redevelopment, in return for making profits by levying tolls, etc.







While You Weren’t Looking, Donald Trump Released a Plan to Privatize America’s Roads and Bridges

Once again, operating under the 'informed voter' paradigm - Trumps voters liked the idea of tax cuts, but were also comfortable with ultimately paying more for the use of infrastructure through user fees, tolls, etc., to Wall Street investors and large corporations.

Trump also released an infrastructure repair plan that would involve corporations funding infrastructure redevelopment, in return for making profits by levying tolls, etc.







While You Weren’t Looking, Donald Trump Released a Plan to Privatize America’s Roads and Bridges

Once again, operating under the 'informed voter' paradigm - Trumps voters liked the idea of tax cuts, but were also comfortable with ultimately paying more for the use of infrastructure through user fees, tolls, etc., to Wall Street investors and large corporations.

Fucking nazis and the 'third' way.... Again

 

[bluescreen]

Eww Trump election: Clinton blames defeat on FBI director - BBC News

 

[treelover]

failed image, will repost.

 

[treelover]

 

[bluescreen]

treelover, give us a hint of what those links are about, please.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid ripped into President-elect Donald Trump on Friday, calling the New York businessman a "sexual predator who lost the popular vote and fueled his campaign with bigotry and hate."

"The election of Donald Trump has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America," Reid said in a statement.

In his first comments on the election of Trump, who shocked much of the US and world with his election night victory, the outgoing Nevada senator said "watching white nationalists celebrate while innocent Americans cry tears of fear does not feel like America."

"I have heard more stories in the past 48 hours of Americans living in fear of their own government and their fellow Americans than I can remember hearing in five decades in politics," he said.

Reid pointed to the fear some minorities have expressed at the election of Trump.



"I've felt their tears, and I've felt their fear," he said.

The five-term senator said he felt that "their fear is entirely rational" and implored the news media to not produce "fluff pieces."

"Every news piece that breathlessly obsesses over inauguration preparations compounds their fear by normalizing a man who has threatened to tear families apart, who has bragged about sexually assaulting women, and who has directed crowds of thousands to intimidate reporters and assault African-Americans," Reid said.

"Their fear is legitimate, and we must refuse to let it fall through the cracks between the fluff pieces," he added.

Reid said that the "responsibility for healing" falls "at the feet of Donald Trump," who he noted lost the popular vote.

"Winning the Electoral College does not absolve Trump of the grave sins he committed against millions of Americans," Reid said. "Donald Trump may not possess the capacity to assuage those fears, but he owes it to this nation to try."

"If Trump wants to roll back the tide of hate he unleashed, he has a tremendous amount of work to do, and he must begin immediately," Reid concluded.

http://www.businessinsider.com/harry-reid-donald-trump-election-2016-11

 

[treelover]

treelover, give us a hint of what those links are about, please.

just failed image, now up.

 

[CRI]

Hillary Clinton set to receive more votes than any US presidential candidate in history except Barack Obama
Democrat on course to trounce Donald Trump in popular vote despite losing election

 

[bluescreen]

CRI, part of the problem, you mean?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Similarly:

Donald Trump didn’t actually flip many Democrats, the thinking goes. Instead, Hillary Clinton failed to turn out liberal voters who had previously voted for Barack Obama. It’s a tempting narrative for smarting progressives, as it maintains status quo thinking—Clinton’s unlikable!—and removes any culpability on the part of the Democrats for missing a massive shift in the electorate. In other words, it’s Clinton’s fault, not theirs, that Trump won the presidency.

Unfortunately, that graph is missing something important. (And not just a properly scaled y-axis.) The numbers that came out on Election Night were enough to secure Trump the presidency, but they weren’t complete. State officials are still counting millions of provisional and absentee ballots, and within two weeks, Clinton will likely have another few million votes in the bank.

Most were cast in the Clinton-leaning states of California, Washington, and New York—not swing states—so they won’t change the Electoral College. But there’s a sufficient amount to put her within striking distance of Obama’s 2012 turnout, and help put an end to the argument that she simply didn’t work hard enough.

This has happened before. David Leip is the one-man band behind The Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, a website cataloging vote totals all the way back to the early days of the Republic. He remembers seeing much of the same vote-counting hysteria after Election Day in 2012, when it appeared Obama would fall far short of his 2008 total. “They did the same thing—‘Oh my goodness, look at all those missing votes,’” he said. From the numbers he’s seeing, California is due for a record turnout, and possibly other states are as well. It’s too soon to tell, he cautions, if Clinton’s total haul, which currently sits at 60.6 million, will match or surpass the 66 million votes Obama received in 2012.

Clinton's Lead in the Popular Vote Is Going to Get a Lot Bigger

 

[redsquirrel]

Hillary Clinton set to receive more votes than any US presidential candidate in history except Barack Obama

What a meaningless claim, the size of the electorate has increased so a comparison of absolute numbers in this sense means crap all.

 

[bimble]

What about all those Trump voters who had previously voted for a man called Barack Hussein Obama? There can be multiple causes of things.

Isn't that quite a lot like saying 'I'm not racist, I have a black friend'?
You include his middle name as if to make a point. I think it's important to remember how those exit polls show that when asked what were the most important issues facing America, the overwhelming majority of people who voted Trump answered immigrants and terrorists, with the economy & inequality lagging way behind.

 

[J Ed]

Isn't that quite a lot like saying 'I'm not racist, I have a black friend'?
You include his middle name as if to make a point. I think it's important to remember how those exit polls show that when asked what were the most important issues facing America, the overwhelming majority of people who voted Trump answered immigrants and terrorists, with the economy & inequality lagging way behind.

What's a racist? Can they not vote? Is it a bad idea to try to win over these 'racist' voters who have voted for explicitly anti-racist, black political candidates in the past?

Also, it's perhaps worth pointing out here because based on the general discourse we may all have forgotten the fact that Hillary Clinton is white.

 

[andysays]

Isn't that quite a lot like saying 'I'm not racist, I have a black friend'?
You include his middle name as if to make a point. I think it's important to remember how those exit polls show that when asked what were the most important issues facing America, the overwhelming majority of people who voted Trump answered immigrants and terrorists, with the economy & inequality lagging way behind.

I take it you're referring to this



Yet again someone (not just you, it seems to be endemic here) has got this back to front.

What it actually shows is that of people who said immigration was the most important issue, 64% voted from Trump, and of people who said terrorism was the most important, 57% voted for Trump.

You could argue that the reason they felt those issues was so important is becasue they've been listening to a lot of Trump-talk and similar, but lets at least try to get the results of the exit polls the right way round before we attempt to interpret them.

 

[bimble]

What's a racist? Can they not vote? Is it a bad idea to try to win over these 'racist' voters who have voted for explicitly anti-racist, black political candidates in the past?

Don't know where you're getting all that from. Of course it's not just a good idea but a vital one. I do understand that there are only a small number of extreme self-aware racists. Just don't think that 'they voted for Obama so they're not racist' makes sense.

 

[J Ed]

I take it you're referring to this

View attachment 95421

Yet again someone (not just you, it seems to be endemic here) has got this back to front.

What it shows is that of people who said immigration was the most important issue, 64% voted from Trump, and of people who said terrorism was the most important, 57% voted for Trump.

You could argue that the reason they felt those issues was so important is becasue they've been listening to a lot of Trump-talk and similar, but lets at least try to get the results of the exit polls the right way round before we attempt to interpret them.

This has already been pointed out to her I think.

 

[J Ed]

Don't know where you're getting all that from. Of course it's not just a good idea but a vital one. I do understand that there are only a small number of extreme self-aware racists. Just don't think that 'they voted for Obama so they're not racist' makes sense.

Who said 'they voted for Obama so they're not racist'? Not me.

 

[bimble]

Yes, sorry, same again.
Is it not true then or not possible to say from those figures, that of the people who voted Trump immigrants and terrorists were the biggest concerns? (real question).

J Ed what point were you making with the 'what about those who voted for Barrack Hussein Obama' then?

 

[andysays]

This has already been pointed out to her I think.

Probably by me...

I'm trying to avoid accusing people who get this arse backwards of being ignorant/uneducated, because I realise that some find understanding the way data is presented more difficult to understand than others, but it is becoming frustrating to have to point it out over and over again.

 

[J Ed]

Yes, sorry, same again.
Is it not true then or not possible to say from those figures, that of the people who voted Trump immigrants and terrorists were the biggest concerns? (real question).

J Ed what point were you making with the 'what about those who voted for Barrack Hussein Obama' then?

Look at my post and look at the post it was replying to.

 

[andysays]

Yes, sorry, same again.
Is it not true then or not possible to say from those figures, that of the people who voted Trump immigrants and terrorists were the biggest concerns? (real question).

No, not without knowing how many people out of the whole sample said immigrants and terrorists were the biggest concerns, and how many said the economy and foreign policy. It could be that only 10% picked each of the first two and 40% the latter two (although that probably wouldn't tally with the overall result of a Trump win).

It's also dangerous to automatically assume a causality which says that people voted Trump simply because they thought terrorism was the biggest single issue.

And finally, remember that people are likely to have had to choose between a short list when deciding their most important issue, so it's a slightly artificial question.