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The Last 2016 Election Thread You'll Ever Wear
ElJeffe
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
People are very interested in relitigating the 2016 election. There is, admittedly, interesting conversation to be had about it. There's also a lot of uninteresting conversation to be had about it, but hopefully that constitutes the minority of this thread.
If you want to talk about why Hillary lost, or what she could've done to be a better candidate, or what the peculiar socioeconomic conditions were that led to the Darkest Timeline, this is the thread for you! Some conditions, though:
- Do not be an asshole. This should go without saying, but you know, sensitive subject and all. If you are a big jerkface, you will get booted, and you will not be invited back in.
- Do not come in here to post about how we're all doomed, or whatever. That is not interesting conversation.
- Do not post about what Trump is currently doing, or his cabinet, or general politics.
- If anybody comes in here and posts "I don't know where this goes, but I'll just post it in here anyway," I will fucking shiv you through the Internet. Do not do that. I hate that.
- This is not a Dump On Republicans thread. If your sole contribution to the conversation is "Hillary lost because people are dumb", you are not contributing productively.
Have fun!
If you want to talk about why Hillary lost, or what she could've done to be a better candidate, or what the peculiar socioeconomic conditions were that led to the Darkest Timeline, this is the thread for you! Some conditions, though:
- Do not be an asshole. This should go without saying, but you know, sensitive subject and all. If you are a big jerkface, you will get booted, and you will not be invited back in.
- Do not come in here to post about how we're all doomed, or whatever. That is not interesting conversation.
- Do not post about what Trump is currently doing, or his cabinet, or general politics.
- If anybody comes in here and posts "I don't know where this goes, but I'll just post it in here anyway," I will fucking shiv you through the Internet. Do not do that. I hate that.
- This is not a Dump On Republicans thread. If your sole contribution to the conversation is "Hillary lost because people are dumb", you are not contributing productively.
Have fun!
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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Kidding aside, unhappy as I am with the outcome, I am looking forward to the books and tales from behind the scenes on this one. I can only imagine some of the crazy shit that must've gone down.
Unfortunately you probably won't get any from the Trump side since, as far as I can remember, they were all under an incredibly restrictive NDA for the rest of their lives.
Curious to see if this is the death of poll aggregates for a number of elections moving forward. It's possible 538 might still exist given he was the one voice saying Clinton's had a chance to lose, but 2020 is going to have a lot of people skeptical of polling regardless.
I'm still furious with Sanders and (among others such a Comey and Russia) hold him and his ludicrously irresponsible rhetoric to be chiefly responsible for the loss. Moreover he's basically poisoned the well for Democrats with regards to young liberals in such a fashion as being almost impossible to fix. Outside of my immediate circle of friends it's nearly impossible to have a political discussion with damn near anyone without having to ceaselessly fend off accusation of Bernie "getting used by the party" despite the fact that he was the Independent looking for a free ride on the Democratic money train.
This is even more grating given that he's trying to insinuate himself into the DNC fight despite having gone back to being an Independent.
(Yellow States didn't actually pass anything last session.)
You should try to change that if you live there! Since more of the country agrees with Democrats than Republicans, but one vote doesn't actually equal one vote in our system of governance.
That said, clinging to Sanders is not a good idea. Although it's hardly impossible to fix since he's still willing to work with Democrats, and we might as well let him and get that generation back on board.
Straight majority.
Scaled by county population.
Shaded by margin.
We need to turn more districts blue, otherwise the structural disadvantage will only get worse as local government gets redder.
It would seem that Sanders is emerging as the most notable politician in the aftermath overall, still going around the country and speaking at various events and pushing for changes in how the Democrats do things. Nobody else is currently operating at quite the same level of public awareness.
Ellison should probably win so the Bernie activists are somewhat appeased, but a lot of the analysis of that race is utter nonsense.
But compare this to Republicans, whose base is literally dying and are on the cusp of being outnumbered by Latinos? That said, I agree with a lot of what you are saying, and I would agree further if Bernie hadn't outright hamstrung his own ostensible allies...
Such as when Sanders called Clinton unqualified after stating she had done the same to him. (She didn't.)
politico.com/story/2016/04/sanders-clinton-not-qualified-to-be-president-221666
And then of course Trump picked it up and ran with it, because, why wouldn't he accept such a useful bludgeon as a gift? This was actually the point at which I fully turned on Sanders and realized precisely how much bad geeserey Clinton's had to put up with.
Mr. Trump said:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/718761006068051968
Is he willing to work with them, or is that just until he doesn't get his way and then turns on Democrats again? And all this is before we get into the nonsense his supporters pulled in Nevada and the way they treated Roberta Lange, let alone Bernie's own response to it that amounted to "Stop making me hit you."
I hate the angry parrot map.
I hope UMich updates this one from 2012 since it has so much going for it.
I'm curious what you think the path forward for the Democrats is, considering their almost complete dismantling at both the national and local level. You can't blame Sanders for the Democratic policies that led to massive losses during the Obama years. Clearly they've been doing something wrong and a change of strategy is called for.
I mean, yes and no...
Step one: run candidates.
Pretty sure they've been doing that for the last eight years. And that's a lot easier said than done now, considering their stable of candidates being groomed for higher and higher offices has had its legs cut out from under it. The Democrats' ranks have been decimated.
And I will rip this party in half over this.
They leave a LOT of races unopposed. Like a Wisconsin supreme court spot the filing deadline was 5 PM today. No challenger.
There was a kerfuffle about more debates and CNN's question thing, but unless I'm forgetting or ignorant, nothing particularly substantial.
Certainly nothing to merit the accusations that came of them.
This speaks to a mindset I've seen in Democratic circles, namely that certain districts, counties, etc, are just so much dead air: they can never win there, why bother? I'd say this is related to the malaise I've also seen regarding midterms. Many Democrats seem to just assume they automatically do poorly in the midterms, as if this were written law.
The party feels like it's really lost its ability to put forward a core message that is compelling to people and instead of addressing this it's just shrugged its shoulders and said "oh well."
It seemed pretty clear from everything I was seeing that they wanted to go with Clinton and did what was in their power to keep it that way, despite the support for Bernie.
So what exactly did they do to Bernie? Please give specific examples.
Moreover, in terms of favoritism, why wouldn't the DNC be backing Clinton- a career Democrat- over Sanders who joined the party for scarcely a year just to use their election apparatus, warchest, and donor list for himself? Doubly so once he started biting the hand that had been feeding him with campaign money and chairmanships for years.
Citation needed.
(Doubly so for cherry picked emails sent late in the primary, stolen by the honest-to-god Russians, and leaked by Assange who besides being wanted on rape charges is about to be interviewed by Sean Hannity.)
Plus the fact that he only decided to become a Democrat last year so he could use the party to boost his own profile. Not a big surprise the establishment didn't want some Johnny-come-lately carpetbagger as their candidate.
Ooh big conspiracy
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Though, to be fair, I'm not really personally convinced that it was something magical about Sanders that was the source of that support. He just ended up the only opposition to Clinton's nomination with a chance in hell, and his positions were leftist enough to create some excitement.
We lost this race sometime in the 90's, when the Clintons consolidated their power but decided it would be weird to run Hillary in 2000. Then we lost it again in 2008 when Obama took the nomination.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
No, evidently it's 1980.
Which remains an extremely underwhelming defense of her candidacy, particularly in hindsight.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
1876 is more accurate.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/279007-sanders-says-dnc-favoring-clinton-ahead-of-convention
I mean here's one example. I'm having a shitload of trouble finding examples beyond people screaming wikileaks up and down, but the idea that the DNC had a plan for Clinton and Bernie was an annoying wrench isn't exactly an outrageous one.
A lot of the examples have a bunch of possible defenses but the impression that Clinton was the preferred golden child who "deserved it" was definitely a common one. Even if not intentional, the DNC managed to make it seem that way when they should have strived for fairness. Especially because despite her qualifications and despite the accusations launched against her all the time being ridiculous, the general public doesn't care to delve that deep or care that much. Clinton had a lot of baggage, whether it was real or not, and putting focus on her was a bad move in my opinion. No, this isn't right, and yes, it is shitty. Unfortunately it is also how things worked out.
It's more an argument that we shouldn't be smug about Trump voters vulnerability to propaganda.
I think in general we can't really reasonably be smug about anything about this election.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
And they generally* fail because of the blind Clinton hate.
So that's all kind of frustrating.
* generalizations etc. Is there anyone here who thinks Hillary would have been a bad President (relative to, say, Obama)?
Winning the popular vote is a decent balm. Republican Presidents have only won a popular mandate twice in my lifetime.
Unfair comparison, because Obama is a top 5 President.
Well, I'm more referencing the "it's totally unfair that [insert terrible thing that people think about Clinton]" and how often it came up, both in the primary and the general.
That we ran someone who had such widespread negative misconceptions and couldn't catch a break from a public approval standpoint looks a lot like the height of arrogance in retrospect.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I suppose I more accurately mean using Obama as a marker for very good. I know some folks who think him despicable (the illustrious fringe left).
On the other hand, letting the GOP propaganda outfit win and having their message become conventional wisdom among leftists is... let's say frustrating.