To be fair it would have silly to wait 5 years….
2021 American Civil War
- Thread starter Pexbo
- Start date
i'm not saying that trump's base has a better claim, they don't. i'm just saying that the dems acted in such a way as to call the legitimacy of the electoral process into question. it was considered stolen by many people, not just that one person writing immediately after it. trump won because he won more votes in the states that mattered within the fptp system. not because it was stolen as clinton and many others would later say. it set the ground for claims of stolen elections in 2020. i think it was a stupid move because trump would likely have claimed it was stolen had he lost in 2016. in fact that's what all the chatter was about back then with trump indicating that he would do it. it's a bit rich for clinton to then do the same thing.
No idea what you're saying in the first sentence there. As for claims that the election was stolen, polls have shown that a large majority of Democrats thought the 2016 election was fair. On the other hand, a large majority of Republicans think the 2020 election was stolen. Furthermore, what did Democrats do with those allegations in 2016? Not a damn thing. What are Republicans doing with their current allegations? Well for one there was a completely unprecedented riot at the Capitol, while lawmakers were in the process of certifying the election and with the state purpose of stopping them from doing it. But it didn't stop there. Republicans are currently well in the process of nominating, electing and appointing officials who state that they believe the election was stolen, and claim they will act to stop it being stolen again in 2024. And these people are being put (or are attempting to be put) in positions with real power to do that
In other words, it's not the same.
It didn't, though. Trump was talking about electing rigging the entire campaign in 2016, and even when he won he claimed that the other side tried to steal it. He claimed he got millions more votes than Clinton, which is obviously not true.
For me this is both sidesing to a ludicrous degree. Like the whole 'both parties lie' or 'both sides are as bad as each other'.
Comparing the 2016 claims of an election being stolen - which as an extremely close follower of US politics I don't recall at all - to a movement where almost 3/4ers of a party say it is like saying both I and Lionel Messi can kick a football with our left feet. Technically true, but entirely missing the point.
Trump has never lost at anything in his life. Golf, bankruptcies, elections - he refuses to acknowledge reality. The only scary thing is that the GOP went along with him.
Hillary got shafted by Comey and I (and big James himself) will forever believe that if not for his hubris, we would have avoided this nightmare. But I've never heard that as it being stolen.
35% of independents think they'll need guns. 33% of republicans think the same. 20% of democrats.
https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/...-2016-election-why-arent-they-being-canceled/
https://scottrasmussen.com/just-26-...ed-winner-in-last-two-presidential-elections/
second for non partisan poll data.
would need to see evidence for the bold.
I'll trust the second one (to a degree), but the first link is definitely not an impartial site.
I was going off this:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...s-election-results-than-democrats-after-2016/
clinton lost because trump was the better candidate. trump also got shafted by the fbi in a case which was as aggregious as that which clinton cites. this one being bad because it involved clinton campaign members manufacturing lies and misrepresenting facts to the fbi. maybe that's why comey did what he did? who knows.
as for both sides. they are both shit. that's true. but the gop fringe is dangerous in a way the democrats aren't. they take it further for example by putting election denialists into positions of power as nimic said but each side does do it, the whole denialist thing. maybe that's because of polarization but it's factual and borne out by the data.
yeah was a quick grab, wasn't looking for gop biased sites so added second primary link. i'll look through this more anyway. thanks for link
Saying that you believe Russian interference affected the election results isn’t exactly the same as saying the election was stolen by a secret plot.
You can believe the vote count is legit and believe that Russian interference altered people’s voting decisions.
You can believe the vote count is legit and believe that Russian interference altered people’s voting decisions.
Ah, I see. Rasmussen is interesting, because he's not Rasmussen Reports. It's named after him, and it used to be him, but he left a few years ago. Since then it's basically been an extremely pro-GOP polling company, Trump loved to quote their polls in his tweets. But as far as I know Scott Rasmussen is still legit.
i get that distinction but when you add caveats like i think it was fair exept that it wasn't which isn't the same as i think it was stolen you still perpetuate a lack of confidence in the electoral system.
the interesting part which is to be expected is that dems have high confidence in the system before 2016 and that erodes continuously post 2016. the gop has low confidence prior to 2016 and that skyrockets, obviously, post 2016. then in 2020 the dems trust it absolutely again, the biden result, and the gop is convinced its stolen. each side while not equal in their denialism basically throws a tantrum when they lose. you see the same, though this is from memory, in the brexit situation. before the referendum brexit conspiracies are everywhere about the vote being rigged. after the referendum the conspiracies change form into absolute certainty of the legitimacy of proceedings but absolute skepticism regarding the establishment and how it's going to try and overturn the "will of the people". on the other side, you have claims of no one understanding the vote and propaganda and russian interference. the no one understanding it isn't completely false but the rest absolutely is. it was right wing british propaganda that led to brexit not russian interference.
you don't see it in british GEs though. no one thought the elections in 2017 and 2019 were rigged even though most labour voters do think, with justification, that corbyn was attacked by the establishment in the leadup to 2017 and 2019. so there you have the democrat version of the "steal" only it's more pronounced in the us than in the uk. pro-corbyn people don't think votes were rigged, they just think that the country was bombarded with anti-corbyn propaganda and this led to the very real results in which corbyn lost conclusively in 2019 and came within a whisker in 2017.
i think the russian thing is shorthand for the incompetence of whichever side uses it. it's a get out jail free card. blame it all on an external baddie.
This is just not true. The issues people had with 2016 (excepting the ridiculousness of the EC) had nothing to do with the electoral system. They revolves around foreign interference and Comey’s letter. Both of those are campaign issues, not electoral system issues.
right but there's no evidence for foreign interference. nothing substantial. comey's letter is a fair thing to raise. russiagate was a prolonged joke. clinton campaign people being prosecuted or narrowly escaping prosecution for trying to mislead the fbi has been the only solid outcome of all that.
and i think it is true. it's the same kind of distinction in the corbyn case. it was unfair but not stolen.
Are you kidding me? A joke? Did you read the Murller report or just listen to Barr’s bullshit synopsis.
i was engaged with it at the time. can't recall anything substantial. i'll reread it though. 400 pages so ill get back to you.
Sure you will. If you read even the published synopsis and don’t believe that the Russian government interfered via Social Media and the hacking of the DNC server then what would, in your mind, constitute interference? I’m not even bring up collusion or the second volume on obstruction, just the findings of volume 1.
Pulled from Wiki, but still…
“The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee submitted the first in their five-volume 1,313-page report in July 2019 in which they concluded that the January 2017 intelligence community assessment alleging Russian interference was "coherent and well-constructed". The first volume also concluded that the assessment was "proper", learning from analysts that there was "no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions". The final and fifth volume, which was the result of three years of investigations, was released in August 2020,[6] ending one of the United States "highest-profile congressional inquiries."[7][8]The Committee report found that the Russian government had engaged in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump, which included assistance from some of Trump's own advisers.[7]”
“The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee submitted the first in their five-volume 1,313-page report in July 2019 in which they concluded that the January 2017 intelligence community assessment alleging Russian interference was "coherent and well-constructed". The first volume also concluded that the assessment was "proper", learning from analysts that there was "no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions". The final and fifth volume, which was the result of three years of investigations, was released in August 2020,[6] ending one of the United States "highest-profile congressional inquiries."[7][8]The Committee report found that the Russian government had engaged in an "extensive campaign" to sabotage the election in favor of Trump, which included assistance from some of Trump's own advisers.[7]”
I mean, your quote suffers from the fact that it tries to claim that two numbers which are in no way identical are, in fact, "almost exactly the same".
Anyway, here's 538's analysis using polls from the time: https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...s-election-results-than-democrats-after-2016/
The worst outing for Democrats was picked up by The Federalist. A Yougov poll that found only 58% of Democrats thought Trump had won legitimately.
At any rate, at the time a clear majority of Democrats seem to have accepted the results, whereas now a clear majority of Republicans do not. It's also worth remembering that Clinton and the Democratic leadership conceded the election the night they lost. Trump failed to concede anything at all until the failed invasion of the Capitol three months later. No invasion occurred in 2016.
Also, there are indeed a great many iniquities in the American electoral system that systematically favour Republicans. These are easily verifiable and range from the gerrymandering of seats in the House of Representatives to the allocation of ballot boxes. There are also some who believe that the race for president should be carried by the popular vote rather than the electoral college. These tend to be Democratic and will no doubt have observed that Clinton carried the popular vote. In short, Democrats have more reason to believe in a rigged system than Republicans and yet it is the Republicans who are by far the more likely to believe that they were robbed.
i'll read the report and get back to you. i'll then take contrary reports and see what you think. that's how this should work right?
right but dems' faith in the system declines over time so that now apparently most believe 2016 was stolen. it's more pronounced on the republican side but you're not looking at two entirely different trends. they're interrelated.
I am fine if you take a look at Muellers summary report (much shorter). In all fairness that’s all I read.
What contrary reports are you referring to as I will take a look. I was not aware of another governmental organization with subpoena and investigative powers that performed a second investigation.
The GOP led Senate committee even admitted that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election in favor of Trump.
i'll skim the main report unless it gets so arbitrary that i have to bow out and go for the summary. i'm familiar with the summary mostly anyway but i have massive misgivings about the process.
this would be more suited to the assange thread? but the complete lack of proof surrounding direct russian links to wikileaks, and assange specifically, is one that is always ignored. i'll come back to you with detailed analyses which will be non partisan. mostly ngos and investigative reporting from both sides.
and this comes down to the idea of hacking attempts at the dnc and social media campaigns. on the hacking attempts, the podesta one particularly, i don't buy that. not that they and other states wouldn't want to or did try to hack but that that was the source for assange's material.
it begins by saying there's no evidence of collusion between the trump campaign and russia. then goes onto say that there's evidence of russian interference on behalf of trump. it's the second one i want to clarify but better to let me reread the report and consider it before we continue because i'm doing a lot of this from memory right now.
for example that's in the first few pages. but we know now, thanks to further fbi activity, that this was all a clinton campaign op. so while i'd be amazed if there was no russian interference i have a lot of clarifications regarding this report. will get back to you all.
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Fair enough, but if I am weighing the Mueller reports findings vs @neverdie ‘s gut not buying it I am going to lean on the report. Also, collusion is not a legal term and therefore the report was never going to find it, but in my mind it does not matter if Trump was working with them or not, the main issue is if the Russian government interfered In the 2016 election and the answer there is an absolute yes.
i'll contrast it with the usual counterpoints and see where it lands. it'll be various journalists who do this for a living not my gut feeling but not acting in bad faith either way.
I don't think you've enough evidence to indicate the extent to which they're interrelated or not. I'm sure some is based on a general rising disaffection with state institutions. At any rate the scale, intensity and demonstrable consequence of the opposition to the election results is night and day. When the Dems lost a majority of their voters peacefully accepted the results and Clinton conceded the election the night she lost. When the Republicans lost a majority of their voters rejected the results, Trump refused to concede and his supporters stormed the Capitol.
Trump won the 2016 presidential elections for a variety of factors, including the fact that Hillary had a terrible campaign and alienated so many female voters. To that, it was the first presidential campaign where there was a social media strategy aimed at the swing states and undecided voters...which is the introduction to Cambridge Analytica, or whatever it was called. The rise of false narrative FB pages, which is the dominant social platform for the voters within the key demographics as a swing state voter or undecided, played a deciding role in the electoral election. Steve Bannon was so deep into this strategy and enabled outside influence (i.e. Russia) and other countries to own and run a FB page, for an election thousands of miles away. and gather so much data insights that pushed a significant number of voters to Trump. It informed messaging, positioning, tone, and reinforced lies. It was fake news on steroids and it was bite sized for the undecided.
To that, I hate bringing sexism and race into this, but American conservatives were no way ready to have a female woman like Hillary be the next president of the country after Obama. Trump and the republican base attacked Obama (birth certificate, not American, etc) and was able to dismiss sexual assult allegations against him (Trump, grab her by the p***y, etc), which further undermineded the credibility and power of a woman, especially one who is running for president. Hillary ran a highly flawed campaign and she took it for granted. America wanted change and what change it made. The divide in the country continues to deepen every single month. It's fecking wild.
To that, I hate bringing sexism and race into this, but American conservatives were no way ready to have a female woman like Hillary be the next president of the country after Obama. Trump and the republican base attacked Obama (birth certificate, not American, etc) and was able to dismiss sexual assult allegations against him (Trump, grab her by the p***y, etc), which further undermineded the credibility and power of a woman, especially one who is running for president. Hillary ran a highly flawed campaign and she took it for granted. America wanted change and what change it made. The divide in the country continues to deepen every single month. It's fecking wild.
i think that's fair. i've only just begun turning it over so it seems interrelated for the reasons you state. push and pull between the two parties, over time, which is six years of bitterness now, or ten if you include obama's second term, and mutual resentments that come from that. but it's hardly empirically verified on my part.
as to the rest. the gop perception from what i can tell is that trump's presidency was obstructed for four years over charges of direct collusion with russia and that none of that was ever substantiated. the part which says trump himself or his team directly colluded with russian attempts has never been substantiated imo but i'm now rereading that entire report and will get back to this once i've digested it all. anyway, the militant part of the gop base feels entitled to obstruct the dem agenda and even the result itself in part because of the 2016 result and whole russiagate thing whatever you or i or anyone else thinks about that. it's a massive breeding ground for mutual hatred really.
i think there's a lot of sense in that but the data by itself only tells you that people are open to voting for trump. it's not a gateway to a manchurian candidate scenario. which brings it back to your second paragraph. i think what ultimately decided that election was the same thing that decided brexit in which cambrige analytica was also implicated but by itself was also just a bunch of data which said "these people might agree with us" or "these people also hate the establishment". it's more economic than anything else imo and the divisions between coastal cities in the us and the flyover states and the cities in the uk, particularly london but also some up north and in scotland, and those who feel left behind. it's also generational. there are a lot of legitimate reasons for what most of us would consider two bad electoral results, or four if you count 2017 + 2019, but these reasons are less sensational than foreign intrigue, even if there is a small element of that in each case.
The foreign interference was significant and it was done by faceless people. The fact that foreign states were able to infiltrate mass voters with propaganda for a historic presidential election was unheard of before in the US. That was shocking and on the other hand, changed political strategy and data implementation forever. Bannon's strategy was clear and there was a huge soft spot that they exploited the shit out of. The recognition and immediate resources and funding was unheard of and unfortunately impressive. The geotargeting of the significant population that flipped counties and therefore states was staggering.
That's exactly what undecided voters and swing states are decided by...fine margins and rhetoric that was constantly bombarded into their minds. Which then created a massive ground swell we see today that is amplified by Twitter, Discord, and the far right media. And it culminated with the Jan 6th insurrection.
I'm sadly convinced it hasn't culminated in anything yet. The worst is still to come.
reading the report you can conclude that there were russian attempts made to amplify pro-trump content but the extent of its influence is as of yet unknown. i'm making my way through it. not much new to me so far except the minute details behind things i already understood. they can only target people who are liable to vote that way in the first place. that's not nothing but it's not what won the election imo. i think that's a massive overreach. if the report goes into more detail about the translation from propaganda to voter intent, which i don't see how it can because it has to demonstrate that the people affected otherwise would have done differently, i'll revise my opinion. anyway, it's interesting reading.
but yes, it makes a compelling case for russian interference. it then comes down to how much weight you want to give that. the report as of yet is itself inconclusive. would most likely require a much different kind of report probably impossible to compile now six years after the fact to understand the value you should place on this stuff. would have to be a kind of very laser focused content analysis. i've seen attempts but they aren't good enough.
my point was never that russia didn't interfere btw it was that russiagate was a complete misdirection and largely a distraction. what should have been a bipartisan inquest into national security breaches became a partisan trial when no evidence ever existed of direct collusion between any of trump's immediate campaign staff and russia. so you have to filter out the issue of direct collusion which derailed public debate for three years from direct interference which i don't think anyone, except maybe trump and even he won't believe it, denies.
would also add this:
on the distinction between direct collusion and indirect interference. the clinton campaign's manuplation of the fbi is almost never addressed despite it being an enormous breach of every ethical standard you would expect of trump. i get people don't like the extremists in the gop and neither do i but i'll never understand the inabiltiy to criticize the democrats when they clearly merit it. this is one example, their legal dirty tricks to eliminate a legitimate green party candidate very recently, which i linked to but was predictably ignored, is another example. anyway, i'll post something tomorrow or day after having read report completely and gone over it.
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Scott Rasmussen being called a nonpartisan pollster has gotten my day off with a chuckle.
Partisan trial? What trial?
Ohhhh, I see the problem, we are discussing separate things. You were talking about the Durham investigation and I was talking about Mueller.
He's not that bad these days, is he?
i think the rest of that post mitigates the first part.
media optics.