2016 US Presidential Elections | Trump Wins
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http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/
Click on 538 Grade in the top row to sort by score.
Republican party had about 16 other candidates who were articulate, properly educated and had heavy alt right ideals. Trump won over all of them. These utopian matchups between some imaginary candidate vs Clinton and Trump vs Sanders won't play out how we want to. It's like saying if only we scored the goal in the 4th minute of the match, we could have gone on to win it. Who the feck knows?
LMAO
So how is it looking?
At root, Trump supporters are driven by fear ... fear that the world, life, the universe and true meaning is both far wider than their narrow-minded selves and very different from their bubble reality. And that fear has turned into three things:
1) Hate of 'difference and diversity' (different races, different religions, different lifestyles, different sexual orientations, different perspectives and so on).
2) Retreat into denial. Denial that Trump is a racist, or a sexual predator who molests women, or someone who has stiffed hirelings and employees countless times, or a misogynist.
3 ) A desire to control others - to impose their will on others (e.g. I can get married, but you can't; I can choose to go full term with a pregnancy, but you can't choose not to). This is the driving force of emergent fascism.
Hate, denial and the desire to control: hence the eager gullibility to believe the 'birther' nonsense, the 'global conspiracy', the 'vote rigging' and all the rest; hence the portrayal of Clinton as satanic, hence the "lock her up" chants, hence the "one people, saluting one flag under one God"
"One people, saluting one flag under one God" ... the sheep are frightened, and so they push to herd closer together and will follow a demagogue who gives voice to their fear and promises to be their Big Protecting Shepherd.
1) Hate of 'difference and diversity' (different races, different religions, different lifestyles, different sexual orientations, different perspectives and so on).
2) Retreat into denial. Denial that Trump is a racist, or a sexual predator who molests women, or someone who has stiffed hirelings and employees countless times, or a misogynist.
3 ) A desire to control others - to impose their will on others (e.g. I can get married, but you can't; I can choose to go full term with a pregnancy, but you can't choose not to). This is the driving force of emergent fascism.
Hate, denial and the desire to control: hence the eager gullibility to believe the 'birther' nonsense, the 'global conspiracy', the 'vote rigging' and all the rest; hence the portrayal of Clinton as satanic, hence the "lock her up" chants, hence the "one people, saluting one flag under one God"
"One people, saluting one flag under one God" ... the sheep are frightened, and so they push to herd closer together and will follow a demagogue who gives voice to their fear and promises to be their Big Protecting Shepherd.
What were the odds of Brexit a week before it went down? Jesus Christ if he wins...
Very good article on Comey
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/the-very-political-james-comey-214403
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/the-very-political-james-comey-214403
That's a good post but I'd replace fear with hate. Which you did
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I thought it was shite, but each to their own. Please don't big him up, he receives far too much praise in this forum, he actually makes sense, doesn't rant and comes across as a decent and intelligent chap. Feck my life! Ugh. I'm off for a bath now. Feel so dirty!
Funny thing is, even with that extremely extremely optimistic map, he doesn't get to 270. The remaining states from that map are all strong for Clinton and she'd still win.
I still think even if Trump outperforms all expectations, he doesn't get to 270.
This nightmare will end in just 5 days, then we get to laugh at Glaston again.
Most UK bookies have dropped the odds on a Clinton win again in the last hour or so, although I can't see what has happened for them to change their mind again? she was 1.45 or 4/9 now she's 1.40
Note: the final PA appearance is a joint rally of the Clintons (all 3) and the Obamas on Monday night in Philly.
I hope so. I'll hi five him
There are two kinds of Trump supporters I've seen anecdotally. One group have been economically downtrodden Americans who can't figure out the money spent on foreign wars when their own poverty is crushing them. The other group is being scared of fast changing demographics that'll become permanent very soon.
The rest of your posts have been here long before Trump and will continue to do so. That's my two cents.
Surely the downtrodden should be voting for the Democrats. The ones that want extra and even emergency unemployment. The same party that advocates food stamps to the poor.
Rather than a party that says feck you. You get what you earn.
Rather than a party that says feck you. You get what you earn.
They go by money flow and not by news etc. If I dropped 1k on a Trump win then his odds would come shooting in.
And they probably would, if the Democrats hadn't supported trade deals that shipped their jobs abroad and then called them ignorant racists when they started to complain.
Plus almost every war in recent times has been started by a Republican President
That is... oversimplification.
Policies that benefit the white working class enacted by Democrats have proven to be ineffective at garnering their support, see Medicaid expansion. They are driven more by societal grievances and racial animus than economic concerns, at least a sizeable portion of them.
No, I think that's just what the Democrats have spent the last 20 years telling themselves. "We've made their lives so much better, how can they not like us?! They must just be bad people!".
Well Medicaid expansion is very nice and all, but if you live in a small town whose only major employer moved abroad after NAFTA, and you've spent basically your entire adult life stuck in a decaying deadend town, with no prospects, tied down by a house with little value, watching your friends and family sinking into alcoholism, drug use and depression, it's not exactly like you're going to be tripping over yourself to say thanks.
Which to be fair is a similiar reason for why many people voted Brexit against their own interests. They just don't feel like anyone cares or even listens any more.
Again, trade deals only account for a portion of the job losses. Automaton, improvement in technologies, shipping method etc plays a much more crucial role. It was inevitable that the artificially created strong middle class after WWII based on manufacturing and exporting would be hit by prolonged international stability and the emergence of developing economies. Coupled that with supply side economics followed the Reagan revolution that was a sharp break from the Keynesian economic agenda the preceded it, and you have a stagnating and declining WWC, although still better off than their minority counterpart, yet you don't much hear about the latter, do you?
I'm all for ascribing the woes of the downtrodden to failings of the system, but it's naive and frankly dangerous failing to recognise what drives them the most. The average Drumpf primary voter makes $75k/year.
That's bullshit. There is a lot of people that think everyone should get a fair shake. I'm one of them. Mediacaid should become free Healthcare. A kid that can't afford college or even one that can should get education for free.
Of course its not all down to trade, but the Dems also didn't do a lot to help the people losing their jobs for other reasons either. It's all well and good saying they're still better off than some minorities, but that's a shitty argument to try and tell people who are feeling utterly helpless and abandoned as they watch their lives and homes fall apart around them.
That $75k incidentally was an estimate from people who filled out the earnings section on exit polls taken during the primaries. There have been several investigative journalists who took the time to go out into Trumpland and actually ask people why they support him, and you can be damn sure many of them haven't even dreamed of earning $75,000 in a very long time.
I'd be willing to bet a lot of those people would be feeling exactly the same too if their own lives were a little less desolate. People find it hard to empathize with other peoples problems when it feels like their own lives utterly suck and no-one else gives a damn about them.
Trump is winning this, isn't he?
The trouble is an awful lot of people completely misunderstand "free stuff" and look at it as scrounging and as a hindrance to someone helping themselves rather than looking at it like a safety net or basic right which is exactly how and what it is and should be seen as. It's always the same people that just honestly don't have the foresight to think ahead to what if they lost their job, or got struck down with a crippling disease or if they had a serious accident that stopped them from working. They focus far too heavily on the FEW that abuse the system and live off benefits, rather than accept that will happen and is a minimal problem, rather than focusing on those that absolutely need it and how many would die or have their lives ruined without it.
It's the attitude that is instilled almost from birth. The land of opportunity, the place where people go to achieve their dreams, go to make something of themselves. Anyone can become anything! And many look at welfare benefits and free healthcare and free college education as the complete opposite to how they were brought up, they look at that as failure and not success! Not paying for it yourself is not succeeding. That is the problem and that is the attitude that you have to fight. It's about education, it's about teaching and showing people that benefits and free healthcare is not failure, and in fact will help many more people succeed because they won't be paying ridiculous amounts of money for health insurance or college. It's also about a little more tolerance and fairness for those that don't have or can't have. Don't look at them as scroungers, more unfortunate and needy and help them get out of their troubles, if not just accept they need the help. Also just try to minimise the abuse of the system as much as possible and just accept that for every one person that's living off benefits paid by your tax dollars that could work and doesn't really need it, there is hundreds more who are getting the help they desperately need.
It actually promotes the land of the free and equal opportunity far more than the selfish system the USA has now. Also, many wise people have said that a society is judged on how they look after their poor, sick and needy, and unfortunately the USA doesn't treat them very well at all compared to many other civilised societies throughout the world. Personally I think universal healthcare is the basic minimum requirement for any civilised country on earth, and it disgusts me that the States don't have it, and also the attitude against it. I just hope people come round and don't look at it as Socialism, but more equal opportunity and fairness for all.
It's late and i'm tired and my brain is hurting but not letting me sleep properly, so I may not have articulated that as best as I could, but I think I did ok.
I'm not saying they've done a stellar job at it, but you have to take into account the fact that 1) during the last 40 years, Republican economic agenda have been enacted through either the executive or legislative branch for about 32 of them. Bill Clinton and Obama each had control of both branches for 2 years and 2) despite the economic hardship disproportionately affecting communities of color, they are shown to be markedly more optimistic about the future and more tolerant as a whole than the white underclass.
There's a power dynamic at play here that runs far deeper than just the economic factor. Why do they prefer to vote Republican in majority of election going back to Nixon (76 blip notwithstanding due to impeachment), despite the fact that the GOP economic agenda is markedly more subversive for them? Don't you think passage of the Civil Rights Act, the societal upheaval that followed and the aftermath of the Vietnam War have a lot to do with that?
That's why I said a sizeable portion of them. You still can't account for the well off Drumpfkins famed fervour going by this logic. And again, why do they consistently vote Republican even though most of the decline that happened during their lifetime is under Republican presidencies, governorship/state legislature?
There's space for both empathising with their woes and criticising the baser reactions that emanate from said sufferings.
And no serious Democrat has campaigned on proper universal healthcare or free college, or has tried to do anything about it while in office.
The last president to consider expanding the welfare state was Nixon. He even considered a universal basic income before reversing his position. On that issue to the left of insurgent outsiders like Sanders.
Bill Clinton hugely reduced the welfare state with his reform of 1996. Both he and Obama (the only 2-term Dems since Nixon) tried to privatise or reduce social security as part of budget deals, but it was the Lewinsky scandal and the Ted Cruz faction (respectively) that stopped the GOP from accepting these bipartisan anti-welfare deals.
No I think it's down to rednecks that love guns and hate anyone that isn't them
I understand what you're saying, and I completely agree man.
I see it in almost every kid I teach. I'll present "socialist" ideas to them (universal healthcare, free college, etc) without the label, and they'll be all for them for a few minutes, then what's been drilled into them by their parents kicks in and they stop thinking for themselves and revert back to "eww! That's socialist! We can't have that."
Hey, I'm about as liberal as they come and I have no problem ripping into the actual racists and bigots, but I think at some point we have to accept that much of the problems we're facing are self inflicted.
Take it a step further, how are rural folks portrayed in the media? In movies or TV they're usually either wide eyed naive bumpkins or racist or ignorant idiots. Imagine how that starts to feel after a while, when those city folk are living what seems like rich lives and lecturing you on social equality while you can't even find a job?
I don't want to overdo this because there are lots of people out there not struggling (and for a lot of them the simple slow destruction of their value systems and the rise of atheist liberalism is a very scary thing) but I think this stuff is worth looking at. I don't think there are any easy answers but I'm fairly sure that it's far from a one way street.
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