The smug style in American liberalism
vox.com
vox.com
Those who know me on HN know that I'm an outspoken proponent of unorthodox ideas. I'm regularly shouted down, called racist/evil/etc, downmodded and flagged on HN. I also get a steady stream of private emails: "I wouldn't say this publicly cause of the bullies, but that .gov link with all the data does seem to support you. I think you might be right, I need to rethink my views." These folks very rarely post here - they are afraid of social and perhaps professional approbrium (ala Brendan Eich and Curtis Yarvin).
Those folks are engaging preference falsification.
Off HN there is a similar manufactured consensus, similar social penalties for expressing the wrong ideas, and similar levels of preference falsification. When pollsters call the preference falsification continues.
Apparently in the privacy of a voting booth, people are willing to express their true beliefs.
Note: I don't support Trump - search my posting history for "open borders" - but I do understand why folks like him. I don't agree with him on basically any policy, but my visceral emotional reaction to his victory is positive: I love the great big "fuck you" to the biased media sneering at him, calling him racist based on "dog whistles" and then writing hit pieces against Ken Bone (let alone the bullying of folks like Tim Hunt, Brendan Eich and Curtis Yarvin).
See also Scott Aaronson who explains this in more detail: http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2777
Looking at the reactions on my Facebook feed, the large majority of people seem to be taking from this experience the learning that Trump voters are all disgusting misogynistic racist pigs, and America deserves to be damned for its sins against the pro-Clinton media orthodoxy.
It's tiring, because in terms of concrete policies, I line up fairly closely with what I imagine Clinton's "true" beliefs to be. But anyone who mentions anything against the progressive catechism is evil. If you even misprioritize items on the agenda, you become evil. And everyone with actual power seems to be in on this train out to condemn the bad think--academia, the media, corporate management, you name it. Even now I worry about this comment being tracked to my real identity and facing professional repercussions because of implying that the bad think can sometimes be reasonable.
My hope is that this loss forces left activists to re-evaluate how they treat dissent.
Edit: LITERALLY
Liberalism has had a smug aspect as long as I've been alive, but at this point that aspect has metastasized to something worse. The norms that have developed are toxic to progressive movements. They certainly alienate people, but beyond that they make it so you don't even have the institutional capacity to understand or formulate policies relevant to those people.
It's a perverse version of the situation people thought Republicans were in in 2012, where they seemed to have driven out most non-white people and thereby lacked the capacity for effective outreach to them. Except in this case, if you're a poor white male in Wisconsin who's done everything right but is still struggling like hell, you're an evil oppressor who just doesn't recognize your privilege. People who can understand where the poor white male perspective is coming from are literally shouted out of discussions for diverting attention from the people uniquely experiencing True Suffering and blessed with progressive sainthood.
It's beyond Obama. Who, for what it's worth, has always struck me as the thoughtful type who wouldn't buy into those kinds of fake dichotomies. It's a broader issue with progressive movements where people earn cred by honing their sensitivities enough to maximize the level of offense they can experience.
Ironically, some of that might have been his own doing, though. The healthcare reform was passed essentially without republican support; I think that's a very rare example of major [healthcare] legislation that was not passed with bi-partisan support. Not doing more to bring R's on board likely burned lots of political capital and hardened opposition to him in Congress. I'm not saying Obama didn't try at all to bring R's on board, just that a bit more effort might have result in a more cooperative Congress.
You’re right that the ACA ended up being a political disaster for the Democrats though.
The ACA was basically the same as “RomneyCare” in MA, and was a style of healthcare reform supported by mainstream center-right Republicans and some center-left Democrats (most Democrats wanted a single payer plan, or at least a public option, but took what they could get because the healthcare system was/is at a breaking point), but once Obama’s name was on it they all decided to throw everything they could against it.
The GOP campaigned hard against the ACA after it passed, and won massively in the midterm elections in 2010 on the back of wall-to-wall anti-ACA messaging on right-leaning media and a huge amount of organizing and spending (the first post-Citizens United election). They took control of the House, Senate, and many state legislatures, following which they redrew all the district boundaries to cut Democrats permanently out of competition in the House and many state legislatures.
After the crushing defeat in 2010, there weren’t enough Senate seats up for grabs in 2012 for the Democrats to regain control. Thus Obama had to deal with 6 years of GOP control, which has been the most obstructionist Congress in US history. As soon as McConnell won in 2010 he publicly declared that his #1 goal was to make Obama a 1-term president. We had multiple government shutdown threats, unprecedented obstruction of executive appointments including judges at every level of the federal court system, bogus investigation after bogus investigation into e.g. Benghazi, and dozens of purely symbolic votes to repeal the ACA.
He didn't have to bring any Republicans on board. What he had to have was the integrity to push for what he had the mandate to deliver, instead of all of this pre-compromising, losing anyway, then eventually quarter-assing something through presidential fiat or lack of enforcement. If President Obama had chosen to pursue the policies that Candidate Obama had been elected on, the voters would have punished congressmen who got in his way. Instead he had one of the least transparent administrations imaginable, passed a bunch of complex garbage with a million special interest carveouts, and tried to create social change through undemocratic executive action.
After his first year in office, Obama started getting shit from people on the left because a lot of them thought he was trying too hard to reach across the isle and unify the nation instead of ignoring the obstructionists and getting stuff done.
http://www.politico.com/story/2010/01/obama-rumbles-with-hou... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/ja...
> Consider that Obama's $787bn stimulus bill of last spring was heavily weighted toward tax cuts, against the advice of many economists, in an effort to win some Republican support. In the end, the bill received not a single Republican vote.
> Consider that he nominated a moderate, pro-prosecution Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, only to see her tagged as a racist over some rather innocuous remarks she made about being a "wise Latina".
> Consider, too, that healthcare reform became bogged down in such a compromise-ridden mess because Obama ruled out a single-payer system ahead of time and never strongly backed a government-owned insurance alternative (the "public option") to compete with private insurance companies.
> As with the stimulus bill, the idea was to bring along a few Republican senators thought to hold reasonable views on the subject, such as Charles Grassley of Iowa and Olympia Snowe of Maine. And again, no Republican support was forthcoming, forcing Senate leaders to cut outrageous deals with recalcitrant Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
> Obama's attempts to find compromise solutions did not stop Republicans from labelling him as a radical – or their nutty tea-party allies from calling him a "socialist" and worse. And, in retrospect, that was going to happen no matter what he did. His real problem has been that, to his supporters, he looked as though he'd been sucked into the very system he was elected to reform. Thus an Obama ally like Martha Coakley, a loyal Democratic apparatchik who'd long been criticised for her reluctance to take on political corruption in Massachusetts, became the perfect foil. (Coakley is best known for prosecuting Louise Woodward, a British nanny accused of killing a baby in her care.)
uh, WOW. you must have a short memory because reagan, bush sr, and clinton were all superior in almost every way, and none will eat a terrible policy failure like the aca.
So, in your perspective, what was something that made Bush Sr a superior president to Obama? Or any of the others you listed? Help me understand your perspective.
Illegal immigration is down, unemployment is down, crime is down.
There are definitely things Obama hasn't done, but he absolutely delivered change, and he did it while facing a completely obstructionist Congress and Senate for most of his tenure. People just get complacent, even when things are going great. No matter how much any president does, or how good things are, people will get antsy just because our human nature forces us to constantly avoid what we perceive as stagnation.
Not really. It's not at the point of collapse, but it sure wasn't a normal recovery. It's better than 2008, but it's still broken in some very real ways.
> ... ending the war in Iraq (done)...
Sort of. The battle for Mosul was in the news just last week, with US involvement.
> ... restoring our relationship with the rest of the world (done)...
Russia is fighting against our goals in Syria, and illegally occupied the eastern Ukraine. Iran has a nuclear deal with us, but immediately started thumbing its nose at us. China is trying to see how much influence they can gain at our expense in Asia. North Korea's nuclear and missile programs are, according to their rhetoric, aimed explicitly at us.
> ... universal health care (done)...
Seen the premium changes for 2017? The law was passed, but "bending the cost curve" sure didn't happen.
I'm amused by the Republican concern for rising premiums this year. My health insurance rates have gone up every year by 5-10% for the last 10 years after my work switched to high deductible plans. Between my employer and I the total cost of insurance is $14,400/year. That's more than the total income tax for a median income back in my country of birth. Just for insurance!
There are a lot of things wrong with the ACA/Obamacare but let's not pretend that the giant mess known as the American medical system is solely the responsibility of the Democrats. Every other OECD nation seems to have figured it out....
But the 'normal' recovery? What does a 'normal' recovery look like when the global economy is on the brink of collapse, and the US has run up a deficit never seen before? The Great Depression needed a World War to finally pull the US back to recovery.
The first time I remember him talking about reform of Washington.
Edit: to clarify this is not my personal position but more a reflection on how I see the electorate behaving.
The media really couldn't help it, however. Every president from here on out will be a reality show star. Look for Chris Christie to get a show as soon as he gets booted out of the cabinet for another ethical lapse. Chelsea and Ivanka will both start new shows (perhaps together?) in about a decade.
I am sure they aren't (well actually I don't know, and as you rightly convey, I obviously CAN'T know just from their pro-Trump vote) but would you agree that people that voted for Trump have to be at least OK with being represented by one "disgusting misogynistic racist pig(s)" without themselves being one? … I really don't want to imply that all or even the majority of Trump voters are bad people (because I don't know any due to not being from the US) but they sure seem OK with having a repulsive person as their prime representative?
The statements themselves may well be racist, but racist speech is a different thing than racist action. People who don't mind appearing to the weak-minded as racists may well actually be racists. However they are different sorts of racists than politicians like Richard Nixon and the Clintons who have destroyed minority lives and communities for political gain.
Children may be excused for only thinking about surface meanings, but after one has voted in several elections, it's time to put away childish things.
Would you be OK with being represented by a crook, without yourself being one?
And no, I would not be OK with being represented by a crook. If you are asking for my personal opinion in case of HRC/DT I'd still would have preferred her downsides over his though. Good thing I didn't have to chose I guess.
That says a lot more about you than it does about me.
you: I've yet to meet a Trump voter who didn't meet that criteria.
Are you confused by the English language? Is threaded conversation a new concept for you?
Can you elaborate a bit on this? Obviously you can't get to know EVERYTHING a person is just from what they vote for every 4 years but I always felt like you can't vote for Trump and not at least be OK with his sexism, misogyny and yes, racism. What am I missing (not being snarky here, not even from the US)
People have different priorities. It can be really hard to care about various isms when your life has been borderline misery for a half decade or more.
Thanks for your input.
Wait... you can't. Nevermind.
And yes, I CAN divine what a person is like by who they vote for when the person they voted for is a ridiculous caricature with zero understanding about how any of this works. If you wouldn't go to a faith healer to get treated for a serious medical condition that required surgery, then why in the hell would you go to a completely unqualified, inexperienced buffoon to run the country?
As a woman who has been spoken to in previous workplaces the way Trump has spoken poorly of women, it's too much for me to overlook. It may seem like a one off issue for intelligent men who are (and you should) looking at all the contributing components, not just focusing on the pieces targeted media ads bring to light, but to me its a fundamental component for economic and technology depressions that women are not making money and contributing to technological advances and product creation geared for the masses.
It's fundamentally hypocritical to be a proponent for economic growth and treat 3.5 billion people in the population as potential girlfriends instead of opportunity for economic growth beyond buying diamonds on TV (the business his ex supermodel wife has).
There is no justifiable reason for a 50/50 split in any industry. Some industries are dominated by women and some by men. That's OK. It just reflects the differences between men and women, and yes, they do exist.
The same applies to the workforce at large. If a larger percentage of women than men choose not to participate in a traditional manner, that's OK. Just because we don't put a dollar figure on rearing kids or community engagement, doesn't mean those activities don't bring substantial value to the table.
> As a woman who has been spoken to in previous workplaces the way Trump has spoken poorly of women
There is a fundamental difference between guys "shooting the shit" and actually behaving that way. He's far too much of a pussy to be grabbing anyone by the pussy. That said, there are certainly scumbags out there who would behave that way and neither you (nor anyone present) should tolerate that kind of behavior, regardless of repercussions.
Well, the last part is easy to say and hard to do. One of the reasons I'm not in a traditional employment setting is that I have a very low tolerance for shitty behavior.
There's also a fundamental difference between killing someone and threatening to kill someone, but that doesn't make either ok.
In any case, there is abundant evidence that Trump does in fact grope women.
When Obama ran, did he repeatedly suggest people should vote for him because he was black? I don't recall so. I remember him talking about his policies and beliefs.
Hillary's campaign rapidly devolved after the primaries to "vote for me because I'm not Trump and I'm a (in my view) super competent woman". Her supporters slogan became "I'm with her".
The bigger problem though is how the Dems cleared the way for her to run almost unopposed except for Bernie, an independent who didn't give a crap what the Democrats thought. Trump defeated many primary challengers. Where were the D alternatives to Hillary? Apparently the idea spread that it was Hillary's "turn", that after a black man there should be a woman, and wouldn't that be a nice historical motif.
So the Dems tipped the playing field towards one of the weakest, most easily attacked candidates in US history. She can't give speeches. She has few policy ideas beyond starting a war with Russia (NFZ in Syria). She exudes corruption. She epitomises the widely disliked status quo. She has more skeletons in her closet than a medical student. She would have been the continuation of a dynasty. Yet somewhere, the groupthink-saturated world that decides these things decided it was time for a female President and after that her qualifications became irrelevant. Feminists, both male and female, became so transfixed with breaking "the last glass ceiling" that they grabbed the first female to come along and demanded she be made top dog.
Disagree? Give me a better explanation for how the Democrats mysteriously found themselves with an almost empty stable of primary challengers to Clinton.
People and especially women need to stop talking about gender imbalances or the "injustice" of them or how to fix them - it's yesterday's conversation. Trying to "fix" these non-problems by tipping the playing field towards women gives you Trump, a man who is the walking embodiment of not giving a shit about feminists. If the Dems had simply treated HRC as anyone else, they might be in power now.
She absolutely embodies the outdated and old school corrupt version of aggressive angry corrupt feminism and was riding on the idea of being a female but outside of that was not a compelling candidate, and was a bad choice for females in the first place.
I would love to see a Female President in my lifetime, but a qualified one who sets a good example for women not validating an outdated extremist feminist gone awry version.
However, that is unrelated in my opinion about the degrading and vulgar comments Trump has made about his female employees, and Hillary is unrelated to the men that have personally spoken to me that way, who are only going to feel further validated by this election.
I absolutely agree with you about this, and I think this happening to Hillary is a good thing, because it is an impetus for women to actually change and not just cry "I'm a woman".
I don't get respect from the men I work with because I am a woman and play the gender card, I get respect from the men I work with because my work is up to par and I DONT play that card.
With that being said, every guy I work with for the past few days has gone out of their way to make it clear to me they do not support men who talk to women the way Trump has spoken of woman, because they view me as a real person who is capable of being hurt by comments like this, not a freebie that comes in a party launch goodie bag, and NONE of them want to be associated with it.
But yes, I agree with you regarding Hillary's campaign.
I've never ever seen any negative bias or behavior discussed towards women neither in engineering school, nor in any of the numerous job in my 12 year career. In uni, out of 120 students graduating in IT, there was exactly 1 woman. She was in the center of attention, the teachers were more tolerant to her during exams (not giving free passes though!) and overall she was cherished and very welcomed.
While working, women were/are a bit more common now, and again there is more positive bias towards them rather than equality. Not complaining, far from it, it's refreshing to see slightly different attitude at some times, and more often than not, there is no difference.
To me it seems the whole time tech jobs are just not that interesting to women, too abstract, work too nerdy and who knows what. This seems to be changing, hopefully the trend will continue. Nothing to lose, just gain for all of us.
With that being said, I'd love to work in Europe, maybe I should check that out aha.
I agree. In fact, the point at which I started to think that Trump could win was Hillary's "Basket of Deplorables" blunder. It was a blunder because the way she phrased it, she put far too many in that basket.
Paradoxically, because people believed what she said —that there are many Deplorables— she might have initiated the very preference cascade that cost her the election.
It was a blunder because she called people deplorable. Had she talked about deplorable attitudes, she would have been on firm ground. I hope it doesn't sound like a fine distinction, because it isn't.
I voted for her; I am terrified of Trump -- rightly or wrongly, we'll now find out; but I knew this was a bad, bad mistake when she made it, right up there with Mitt Romney's infamous "47%" comment.
And yes, in my opinion, Trump made a lot more serious mistakes. But I am not totally surprised that a majority of Americans don't seem to agree with me.
I should qualify that. Trump, for all his negatives, had people who genuinely agreed with him. He also had a bunch of "not really for Trump, but I am sick to death of Hillary and her scandals and her Machiavellian machinations" voters. Hillary had a bunch of "good heavens, not Trump" voters, some "female in office, therefore has to be good voters", and not all that many "really love her positions" voters.
The reason Trump won is, presumably, to a large extent that he managed to make his message more relevant. If this election would have been about schools, even in the same context, he most likely wouldn't have won and the deplorables comment wouldn't have mattered or even happened in the first place.
We've seen this in Europe repeatedly with new candidates offering easy solutions and a straight forward message, leaving the established parties on their heels trying to defend themselves. In Europe this normally results in 5-15% of the seats in parliament, while in the US (once you're in the running) this can win you the election because of the political system.
The reasons for Trump's win probably varies wildly from region to region and person to person. Anecdotally, I know several who voted only because he was _not_ Hilary, not due to any message resonance. Hell, I mean, personally, despite being politically closest to Hilary on paper, I had no intention of voting for her, and none of those reasons had anything to do with Trump.
"Well, she said I was deplorable, but couldn't be more wrong, because I'm a good person... she must be wrong about him too"
I don't buy this. Sam Wang had projected Clinton winning the popular vote by 4.0% (+/- .6%). She's currently projected to win the popular vote by about 1% (the Electoral College margin is an artifact of the electoral system and unrelated to voting preferences). That means that maybe 1 in 60 Americans voted differently from what the polls predicted. So, while the margin of error relative to the margin of victory [1] was pretty big, the margin of error relative to the electorate was fairly small. It doesn't seem that a whole lot of people were hiding their actual preferences prior to the election.
[1] "Victory" only in the narrow mathematical sense of winning the national popular vote, obviously.
But was it fairly small in statistical significance? A polling error of 3% is likely big enough to confirm a consistent and very significant bias.
It's like throwing a coin and getting 52000 heads and 48000 tails. "Only" a 4% error, but sure as hell evidence your coin is biased.
What's perplexing to me is that the 3% error occurred in a polling average of dozens, perhaps hundreds of polls. If it were just one poll, a 3% miss is quite within the realm of possibility. But in this case it was a range of polls that centered on Clinton +4% and itself had a roughly Gaussian distribution between Trump +2% and Clinton +10%. This makes me wonder if the polling samples were themselves not independent, or some other form of systematic bias amongst mainstream pollsters.
https://twitter.com/samwangphd/status/788544053059153924
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/11/05/poll-expert-i-wi...
http://election.princeton.edu/2016/10/10/some-secrets-are-no...
Specifically the last link exhibits the smugness this article is talking about. Here's a quote from it:
> This seems like a good time to reveal one of the Princeton Election Consortium’s own secrets. Thankfully, it does not involve an Access Hollywood video. Here it is: poll-based Presidential prediction is not very hard. I guess that is a pretty boring secret. Sorry.
Sam Wang was predicting a 95% chance of winning for Hillary. I guess we're in the 5%. I'd further like to point out that Hillary is right now winning the popular vote by 0.1%, and the NYTimes has adjusted their prediction down to 0.5% when all the votes are tallied.
Obama's win over Romney was slightly less than 4.0%, and he won 332-206 in the electoral college. Here's how Sam Wang describes it:
> President Obama’s re-election in 2012 carried even less suspense: he never lost the lead to Romney. The closest he came was right after the first debate, though even then he was slightly ahead.
The pressure to express a Trump sentiment is not high in a non-swing state; If you are in an entrenched blue state, people do not care about you(guaranteed democrat win anyway). If you are in an entrenched red state, then you have plenty of support around you. The voters in swing states are a much smaller percentage of the total, and preference falsification would have affected those states the most.
In my last paragraph, I tried to put forth a theory that leaves the preference interpretation valid. What do you think about it?
Also the west seem to have lost its debate culture. These days most debates of conservatives and progressives in shouting 'commie' and 'racist' at each other. In a good debate you wanna help your opponent to give the best possible argument for his position and then try to disprove it. Everything else is lazy and not beneficial for anyone.
That, more than anything.
There's a RadioLab episode about that at http://www.radiolab.org/story/debatable/ An example they use is that if a debater A has six points in his speech that need to be addressed, and the opponent B only addresses four, A wins by default, since there were two points that were unaddressed.
It reminds me a lot about this election, where there's so much polluting the discourse that there's no time to address the substance (and it plays better to the audience, as Moonves stated).
I hate downvote buttons. Programmers seem to put them there only because we demand symmetry. If there's a plus there must also be a minus. I rarely, if ever, see negative votes used to suppress actual spam or obvious trolling ... the only place I've ever seen that actually happen is on Slashdot where the system actually does suppress auto-generated garbage, page-widening posts, etc. Everywhere else people use +/- buttons to indicate disagreement.
Unfortunately, the further left you go, the more you become convinced that people who disagree with you are dumb and easily manipulated. Thus suppressing opinions you disagree with becomes more and more acceptable. Thus downvoting any right-wing thinking into invisibility becomes not just acceptable but important. This trend of course culminates in far-left communist countries where political censorship is an official state policy.
So people with those opinions then rapidly learn that they aren't welcome, that people aren't interested in real debate ... and leave. Forums that could have been debating centers for mutual understanding turn into echo chambers.
The solution is to eliminate downvoting and do what Slashdot does: require you to pick a reason when upvoting, use randomly chosen moderators, and meta-moderate the moderators.
It never occurs to them that that would just make everything even worse in the long run, that now is the time to understand and compromise. They still seek absolute victory.
The article could just as well have been written about the UK.
Anyone that disagrees with my take on this issue is a moron.
I disagree fundamentally - if you stop regarding the 'other side' as 'other', as stupid, as meritless, and start to consider their opinions when making policy, well we might make progress.
It's wrong to think that everyone who disagrees with you on anything is a moron. It's also wrong to deny the existence of morons who occasionally do moronic things.
I mean, we are talking about a group of people who held a referendum, knowing that the vote would be close, and then didn't even have a plan for what to do afterwards. The country is in chaos and the leaders of the Brexit brigade have all sodded off, having absolutely no idea what to do next.
We did consider the opinions of Brexit supporters. Their concerns were taken seriously. The Conservative government went overboard in its attempts to reduce migration and negotiate a more favorable deal with Europe. They really couldn't have done any more without doing something outright ridiculous. But that wasn't enough. So the public insisted that they do something ridiculous.
All this after AFAICT two decades of ignoring or belittling people for their deeply held views.
That doesn't really cut it and so we get the result we got.
Personally I neither think the country is in chaos nor do I believe that a vote for Brexit is a mark of idiocy. And even if I did I would try to recognise that I share a country with such folk and have a duty to take their views into account. The catastophising and continued moralistic judgements are another symptom of this poisonous thought pattern.
Brexit was the breakpoint, but the preceding decades of smug politics are what got us there.
No plan was made by long-term Brexit supporters either. Where is Nigel Farage's plan? What useful suggestions has Boris Johnson made?
>And even if I did I would try to recognise that I share a country with such folk and have a duty to take their views into account.
We did take their views into account, as I said. The Conservative government bent over backwards to accommodate them.
The strategy you're proposing (engagement) was tried and has failed. It only had the effect of making Brexit seem more reasonable than it really was. Now we are in a position where the electorate have done something insane, and yet are in a position to demand that we take their insane views seriously.
The public aren't the ones who decided to have a referendum, the government are. If you're arguing that it was moronic to hold a referendum with no clear plan for one of the possible outcomes, I totally agree, but that's not the public's fault.
The British Polling Council postmortem is a very interesting read. They considered 'shy Tory' but once again ended up ruling it out.
It's pretty clear if you're a Trump supporter.
* Tories to be unwilling to admit to voting Tory (plausible);
* Tories to claim to be voting for someone else, instead of refusing to answer, as if they refuse to answer then the demographic weighting will increase the impact of similar respondents who will tend to also be Tories (somewhat less plausible);
* The source of errors from the above to outweigh other known problems such as turnout modelling, non-response bias, demographic variations in telephone/Internet access, late changing of minds, anti-Tories in Tory areas doing the same things for the same social desirability reasons (I suspect it wasn't any more fun being a Hillary supporter in Trumpland than a Trump fan in Hillaryland this cycle), and so on.
Polling is not easy. Its statistical guarantees are only valid under circumstances that basically don't hold, and there is a great deal of variation due to design decisions which cannot be empirically grounded. You don't need a "shy Tory" effect to produce the misses seen recently, and the evidence doesn't support it happening on a scale big enough to have any impact at all.
This is known to have happened in Britain, because there was a very thorough postmortem by the pollsters' professional body after the 2015 miss.
It appears that Trump won because of working-class people in the Rust Belt, who repeatedly got the short end of the stick by the neoliberal policy of both parties. Democrats should have had their backs, but they'd abandoned them, instead, serving the "professional meritocracy". He did not win because of spoiled, well-off contrarians on the coasts. I'd like to believe that this election was decided by people who have really suffered the devastating consequences of being economically marginalized (also, relatively old), not by tech dudes who were offended they'd been called sexist on Twitter.
Presenting this election as a contest between anti-PC gamergaters and safe-space college girls is not only wrong, but suffers from the same blindness of the elites that Clinton suffers from. If it were the true story, then it would be far too depressing to think that the elites are so obsessed with themselves that they are unable to take anything seriously. Fortunately, this is not what happened because Trump's voters are too old to belong to either group. But if it were the true story, then Trump is exactly what both groups deserve.
> I love the great big "fuck you" to the biased media
You know something? Me too. This is the same media that shot down Sanders. But I feel sorry for those contrarians who voted for him just for this "fuck you". He's going to be their president, too. But I'm not sorry for them for that; fortunately for them, they're probably well-cushioned enough to not suffer any direct consequences that are too severe. I'm sorry for them because their empathy is so lacking that they don't mind the real harm done to real people by their lol-spite decision (even though that's probably not what directly handed Trump the victory). The ray of hope I see in this outcome is that maybe the American "liberals" Clinton represented would realize how much their empathy towards the victims of neoliberal capitalism was lacking, too.
> sneering at him, calling him racist
That's because he is racist and/or certainly doesn't mind the association, although I don't see what this has to do with anything. Xenophobia was his overt battle-cry, no dog-whistles needed, and he enjoyed endorsements by people who would have been offended not to be called racist. It is clear that Trump believed that being labelled a racist would only help his chances. He certainly enjoyed and invited the sneers. If there is one thing Trump has shown himself to be good at, it is manipulating the media to a sort of symbiotic relationship. But if anything, he is a product of the media, not its victim.
> called racist
Wait, what? I thought you liked to present yourself as a male- and white-supremacist of the long, proud scientific racism tradition. You have repeatedly expressed a belief that men and whites are innately superior to women and people of other races in many qualities that you value (oh, sorry, you believe Asians and Ashkenazi Jewish men are naturally superior to whites). I always figured that you enjoyed bathing in the air of "unorthodoxy" and contrarianism by pretending to hold those views. You can't both identify as racist to appear unorthodox and at the same time present yourself as a victim of your own show. Pick one.
I agree with this assessment of voter outrage due to economic issues in the rust belt and elsewhere, but now what? Walmart isn't buying smartphones made domestically that cost 8x what the ones in China cost because Walmart can't sell them. I can see the complaint, but its a bit like voting against hurricanes and tornadoes. They're bad and we don't like them, but we can't legislate them away.
I think Trump's playing up global trade as a conspiracy against "good hardworking people" is fairly disingenuous. Instead of accepting a long changed global economy and re-training these people into the service level sector, they seem to think a little protectionism will suddenly bring back the booming factory work of the 1960s and 70s. Trump has badly misled these people for his own gain. Worse, Trump's own companies are managed in a way against the interests of these people (anti-union tactics, buying Chinese steel, lack of investment in poor rural communities, etc). Trump just follows the laws of economics everyone else does. How does he propose something that even he and his companies would never do?
Re-training and investment in the service sector is exactly what Xi Jinping in China is attempting because he knows other Asian nations will continue to successfully poach his manufacturing due to their lowered cost of labor. Meanwhile in the more advanced economy here in the US, we're somehow going to try to compete with factory work in places like Vietnam which has a monthly wage of $145? What did these people vote for other than another empty suit who had made promises he simply cannot deliver?
You guys want to compete with the Vietnamese? Fine, but be prepared to have the lifestyle $150 a month in wages brings. I suspect Trump voters aren't going to find that acceptable.
That's not the policy I was suggesting, but pretending that current neoliberal policies (that aren't shared by all successful countries) are the only option is both false, and the main reason that gave us Trump in the first place.
You missed the point I was making - I was speculating why electoral predictions were wrong, not speculating why Trump won.
I rather hope liberals don't develop empathy for the wealthy Americans who handed the election to Trump. Empathy is truly a destructive force in the world. We feel far more empathy for those close to us, those who look like us, those who are blessed with attractiveness. If we follow our empathy Indians and Chinese will remain poor just to help wealthy white Americans maintain their social status.
Wait, what? I thought you liked to present yourself as a male- and white-supremacist of the long, proud scientific racism tradition.
No, your (and those of other likeminded folks) attacks on me are not representative of how I present myself. They simply represent what you believe to be the easiest attack mode.
I have also expressed a belief that black women are innately "better" than others in certain qualities that I value: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8300225
That particular belief has explicitly motivated more action on my part than any of the beliefs you criticize me for. Does that make me a black female supremacist?
Somehow I suspect you will be unwilling to apply your original logic to this case, and in fact you'll apply some weird reverse logic to support the same conclusion.
I can't tell if you're joking in the rest of your comment or not, but as to qualities you value, the test is simple: are those the qualities that you'd attribute to those you consider your social equals or superiors, or, in other words, are those the qualities you truly believe give people most social power (status and influence) in your own society? One of the distinguishing characteristics of scientific racism, from its modern rise in the late 19th century has always been to attribute "good" qualities to the races considered inferior as an attempt to paint itself not as a hate group but as simply the objective understanding of the natural order: every species has its good and bad qualities, and so does every race; every species has its place, and so does every race. Of course, scientific racism has always attributed to its believers those very qualities that happen to coincide with most power, because it's not about "better" or "worse", but naturally deserving of power or not. In other words, I smiled when I saw your "black female supremacist" comment, because I've read the exact same thing by writers in late 19th century many years ago in school, that I can't tell if you're ironically referencing classic scientific racism tropes or not. In any event, the view you're presenting here is actually called scientific racism. It is not an "attack on you" by any means, just as calling me socialist isn't an attack on me. I believe that if you read some of the vast scientific racism literature, you'll gladly identify yourself as a member (unless realizing how familiar and old your opinions are would make you understand how far they are from true heterodoxy).
BTW, attributing Jews with qualities that actually do coincide with social power is also a trademark feature of antisemitism, scientific or otherwise. It is crucial for (or at least, the habit of) nativist/racist movements to paint themselves as both deserving of power as well as victims, at once weak and powerful. So if you want to follow up with a question of whether or not you're a Jewish supremacist, you can spare it. I've read it all in 100+-year-old books.
I don't know if empathy is primarily destructive or not, but I still pity those who lack it.
(In fact, I consider beauty to be one of the most underappreciated virtues in the modern world. As a weird tangent, one of the major things I prefer about NYC to Bombay is how NYC weights beauty over wealth.)
I'm beginning to think that what you call "scientific racism" is what I'd simply call "science" applied to humans. Do you believe it differs? If so, how?
I suspect that question will be dodged. I suspect you are using the term "scientific racism" rather than "science" in order to create equivalence between scientists and "hate groups", and imply I feel hatred towards some group. That's definitely an implication I object to.
So if you want to follow up with a question of whether or not you're a Jewish supremacist, you can spare it. I've read it all in 100+-year-old books.
As I suspected, all possible viewpoints I might hold result in you believing I'm a white supremacist.
Have fun with the highbrow dismissal and vague hints that some uncited authority supports your views.
I have no idea whether you consider the women you date to be your social equal or not -- it is none of my business -- but I don't think it is necessarily the case that every man (or woman) considers their romantic partners their social equal. As to the other claim, I wholeheartedly disagree. There is no question that beauty is a source of power. But you'd need to be blind to think that it is a greater source of power in our society than other qualities. Note, also, how beautiful women are often brought down (just a pretty face etc.), whereas powerful men are not discussed in the same way (nah, he's just an ugly billionaire).
> I'm beginning to think that what you call "scientific racism" is what I'd simply call "science" applied to humans. Do you believe it differs? If so, how?
What "I call" scientific racism is what is known by historians as scientific racism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism. The difference (aside from question of whether actual science is involved or not) is the following:
Just to be sure, first of all let me say that I do not believe (based on the evidence at hand) that scientific-racist claims have any merit whatsoever, and based on the history I studied, I am quite certain that even if there were some truth to them, the effect size is negligible compared to social effects. But, for the sake of argument (although it makes me sick to my stomach), let’s suppose that scientific-racism’s claims are absolutely true. There is a crucial distinction to be made between the veracity of a claim and the importance of discussing it.
There’s a parable (by Kierkegaard, I think) about a man who escapes from an insane asylum and, determined not to be sent back, decides to appear sane by only saying true statements. To everyone he meets, he says, "The earth is round. The earth is round," which, naturally, gets him sent back. Or consider Trump’s statement about Carly Fiorina’s looks. I think most people would agree that the important question about the event is not whether Fiorina is actually ugly or not, but why Trump saw the need to make that statement, regardless of its empirical truth. Often, finding the need to say something tells more about the speaker than about the object of the statement. In Trump’s case, it was an expression of how he thinks women should be valued.
Given the treatment of, say, blacks in the US, the question of whether and by how much blacks are innately stupider than whites is completely uninteresting to me. What is interesting to me is why some people think the question of their innate abilities is so important to merit discussion and/or investigation at this point in time. After all, there is much to be done to treat people more fairly and with more dignity even before getting to the question of their innate worth. Once all people are treated with the dignity they deserve, we can try addressing every person's individual abilities. We've invented technological solutions to short-sightedness; maybe we can find technological solutions to stupidity, too.
So to answer your question: scientific racism often has motivations that are completely different from those behind most science.
Expecting your next question, let me say that the reason racism and sexism are studied collectively yet innate abilities should be studied at the individual level -- putting aside the obvious answer of respective effect size and variability -- is this: it has been found as conclusively as anything in social science, that many social forces are best studied collectively, just as gas molecules are; that's just how they work.
> in you believing I'm a white supremacist.
I honestly don't understand this. I don't believe you're a white supremacist; I don't know you personally at all! You just keep claiming to be a white supremacist, maybe not using those exact words, but by repeating textbook scientific racism claims. I could insist not to be a billionaire, only to have a billion dollars in my bank account, and to talk about "your definition of billionaire". Scientific racism has a pretty well accepted definition, and your well publicized views coincide with it well.
> highbrow dismissal and vague hints that some uncited authority supports your views.
What views? That you're repeating classic scientific racism claims? The Wikipedia page has dozens of relevant references.
Also, I don't understand your point about "highbrow dismissal". If I were to tell you "just use logic! Quantum mechanics can't possibly be true!" would your educated response be considered highbrow dismissal?
Given this strong emotional motivation, do you really think you can objectively evaluate the truth of these claims without bias? I certainly don't.
So to answer your question: scientific racism often has motivations that are completely different from those behind most science.
Juxtaposing this with your term "hate group", I assume you mean the motivation is some sort of collectivist hatred or other negative feelings?
In that case, it's pretty clear that you intend this to be a mere ad-hominem attack. You simply refuse to acknowledge the possibility that a person might hold certain positive beliefs without also holding certain normative beliefs. Essentially: "Anyone who believes in evolution must therefore worship the devil. The church opposes both of these things!"
Have fun with that. If you ever want to understand the world better, consider the possibility that atheists are not necessarily satanists.
Reasons I've been told include:
- A "fuck you" to the establishment and orthodoxy.
- A belief that Hillary is corrupt.
- Entertainment value. One Trump voter I know also donated to Hillary in order to get the "Woman Card": https://shop.hillaryclinton.com/products/the-woman-card
- A support for nationalism and economic populism.
- A belief that Trump can do for the country what he did for Wolman skating rink: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/features/2015-09-29/a-1980... (I think Peter Thiel falls into this category.)
I know it's tempting to level the worst insult you can think of - raaaciiiissstt - against anyone who disagrees with you. Consider the possibility that this is what allowed Trump to win in the first place.
This idea keeps coming up again and again that using the word 'racist' in the context of the Trump campaign is essentially name-calling, an insult.
The problem is, racism is a big, big, big issue. And Trump is a racist bigot, you simply cannot deny it. That's why people that are described as 'on the left' feel so strongly about him. It's not 'pulling the race card', it's an actual big problem. America has spent 200 years trying to overcome it, and it's still so far behind. The open racism displayed by Trump is the reason why so many people viscerally hate him. Add to it the sexism (and sexual assault), the bullying, and the xenophobia, and the support for him becomes essentially unfathomable for many who consider his attitudes and behaviors completely incompatible with basic democratic values.
The article posted calls it smug, the commuter above called it 'not tolerating dissent'. I would call it a zero tolerance policy on racism, sexism, bullying and xenophobia.
At some point the term "racist" came to mean "insufficiently left wing". This happened because left wing types called every Republican "raaacciiiiist" - like a bored shepherd boy yelling "wolf" for amusement and likes on social media.
How's that working out?
Clinton is getting a lot less votes than Obama got.
So there is an alternative explanation there, that rather than one group of people getting sick of shrill accusations of racism, a different group of people just doesn't like Hilary Clinton all that much.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-racist-exam...
Or just sit in the wrong place and you get to hear, "all white men are racist." It may guilt some to action, but it makes others disinclined to help.
Look at the #blacklivesmatter. Look at all the people who have been railing against police militarization for decades being called racist by the recent arrivals to the issue just because they say there is a larger problem.
There you go with the name calling again. How about you listen to Trump supporters for once. Or maybe you just don't want to know the real reason why Trump supporters supported Trump.
Stop talking and start listening.
The other option was so far from what they wanted they had little choice. Please try to understand why people disagree with you, why the majority disagrees with you.
But what happens when you don't discuss a subject that the voters consider (right or not - that's not even the issue!) important and worrying?
It wasn't until the subject was considered debatable by more centrist parties that this rise was halted, or at least coupled with less worrying ideologies.
Here is a campaign sign outside a polling place about 20ish miles away. https://tribwgno.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/white-again.jpg
Beyond that, anyone who attempts to deny the sexism/misogyny of the Trump campaign and its pull with some of his supporters must have entirely missed all the various materials/items made & sold with hateful messaging about Clinton, using sex-based slurs and insults. The evidence is there and overwhelming. Around here, people are proud to wear those shirts and buttons and affix stickers to their cars with the messages. We will continue seeing them for some time in this area.
EDIT: You might be interested in perusing this stream of day 1 after the election:
https://twitter.com/i/moments/796417517157830656
Here's a couple particularly notable ones:
- Man walks out to his car, on video, to find "fuck you nigger" written on his windows with "Trump" also written on the front & back glass.
- Assaults on Muslim women by white people making racist comments and mentioning Trump or wearing Trump campaign gear
- A group of whites threatening the life of a black woman at a gas station, with a firearm, while calling her nigger
You're left with one of two conclusions to draw:
- There are hateful racists and sexists/misogynists out there who supported & are emboldened by Trump's victory
- All of these people are making these events up
It's the beginning of fascism.
Btw, I'm German. (I've lived in North America for more than ten years)
I might be wrong but I've not heard him say anything that is racist. No doubt there are some that are supporting him because they're racist, that doesn't mean all are. On that note I would love someone to prove me wrong and show me a clear example of Trump actually being racist.
I'm a conservative Christian. As a conservative, the left look down on me and assume there is only ignorance fueling my world view. There are issue like abortion, that to me are like the holocaust. I know most don't agree with me on that, and I can understand that they don't see a fetus as a life, I get it. But imagine for a second that you were firmly convinced that a fetus was as much a life as a new born. Things like that will drive you to vote Trump despite hating some of his actions.
The left also treats Christians with disdain. You have to get people on side if you want them to vote for you. Not tell them they're idiots.
While I don't agree with them some see gun rights as fundamentals to their freedom. You can't just tell these people were going to restrict guns, you have to get them to believe that it's for the best. Not tell them they're idiots. Then call them racist sexist bigots when they don't vote your way.
Immigration in the states is not in a good way, having so many people living illegally is not good for anyone. Trump might sound harsh but at least he is willing to tackle the problem (even in a way I'd not go for).
To me racism and xenophobia are the the things that fuelled the actual Holocaust. I tried to outline some of the racism inherent to Trump further up.
To be honest, I don't understand conservative Christians love for republicans. They preach social darwinism, often they preach fear of others. Is it all based on this notion that "The left also treats Christians with disdain"?
My view of Christianity (I come from a more Lutheran view...) is one of 'love thy neighbor' and charity towards the poor as the guiding principles. I consider myself a humanist, but understand that my flavor of Western humanism is essentially the non-secular continuation of Christian values -- which are inherently compatible with leftist values that are also very much based on compassion and empathy. This all seems to be incompatible with the hatefulness I see from republicans, especially somebody like Trump. To me, Trump is a selfish nihilist.
One of my favorite Presidents is Jimmy Carter, and his strong moral center based on religious beliefs is the main reason.
There is even currently a net migration of Mexicans back to Mexico.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-...
I'm not sure I count as part of the left, but as an atheist, I have no trouble understanding a fetus was as much a life as a new born as an honest and principled position. On the other hand, I'm not sure how you come to a political compromise with people that disagree with it (how do they reach out?).
Okay, so here I am - lifelong progressive Democrat. And I'll open up to this discussion.
So, I'm believing that at the moment of conception a full viable life is formed. And that life has the full rights and protections afforded by the State (both federal and all levels beneath).
Let's start with the simple route - the parents are happy to have the child, are financially capable, and medically sound for delivery. In this nothing is different from how it is today. A healthy child is born to a happy family.
Our differences seem to come from all the complications in the process.
Let's start with an understandable one - the life of the mother is in danger if she delivers the child. This is a horrifying decision. Does the state force the delivery of the child and thus condemn the mother to death? Is not one of the roles of modern medicine to protect people from death? This is, after all, why we now give birth in hospitals.
So, before I go further arguing with myself - what's your rationale as a conservative Christian on that scenario? Is it really as simple as "protect the child's life at all costs"?
For what it's worth - I don't think anyone's an idiot for being on the conservative side. I think a lot of the issues we struggle with in this day and age (such as abortion) are just far more complicated and intricate than most give credit for.
Example 1: Trump never called all mexicans racist, what he said was that a lot of the people crossing the border are criminals while other s are decent. Some of the criminals are racist.
Example 2: His "approval" of sexual assault, was nothing but locker room talk. Two guys "out alphaing" each other in a not so nice way.
As a conservative from Germany that has been accused of racism for showing support for the shut down of the balcan route I find it much easier to sympathize with the falsely accused then with the accuser.
That doesn't mean that I agree with Trump, but I would have voted for Trump over Clinton.
Yeah but one could have observed that shouting/bullying down someone because of their beliefs is counterproductive in getting them to reconsider them. It's not like there wasn't any warning to this.
> Trump capturing the nomination will not dispel the smug style; if anything, it will redouble it. Faced with the prospect of an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the smug will reach a fever pitch: six straight months of a sure thing, an opportunity to mock and scoff and ask, How could anybody vote for this guy? until a morning in November when they ask, What the fuck happened?
But the § just before that one is the meat of the article:
But even as many have come around to the notion that Trump is the prohibitive favorite for his party's nomination, the smug interpretation has been predictable: We only underestimated how hateful, how stupid, the Republican base can be.
Krugman today:
> We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law. It turns out that we were wrong. There turn out to be a huge number of people — white people, living mainly in rural areas — who don’t share at all our idea of what America is about.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/elect...
Some people never learn, but they're not the ones we think don't.
Krugman has lived his life in a liberal urban academic bubble and has no idea what the rest of the USA is like.
We would do well to remember that when we have the misfortune to come across his writings in the future.
The perceptual bubbles are very real for both sides, and to someone who has been on both sides of the aisle - they're terrifying; because breaking through the bubble is exceptionally hard and costly, doubly so if that person is already an established adult.
It's because Krugman changes his mind based on who is currently President and/or controlling Congress. A policy under a Democrat President is good and the exact same policy under a Republican President is bad. Krugman is a hack who received his Nobel for being anti-Bush. There are far better voices for the Left.
What an idiot. American liberals made fun of him for that one for years.
It is worth considering that he didn't misspeak.
He did, however, deliberately cultivate the confusion. He understood the smug style.
W's was perhaps a more subtle dominating response to the Smug, but at this point we can't say it was different than Trump's. Both of them went to school with the Smug. They know what it represents both to itself and to the majority of the nation. Neither of them buy into it themselves, unlike e.g. Romney.
Democrats lose when the Republican candidate has an authentic and rhetorically effective response to the Smug. Now that it's happened twice, at least some Republicans will remember it the next time around. Democrats will either do the hard work of excising this from their ideology and communication, or they will lose in the same way again.
"Both of them went to school with the Smug"; well, yes, and some would find it curious that our populists come from Yale and Penn.
The observations you've made about Clinton aren't news to anyone. The fact she was nominated anyway, with her only primary opposition coming from outside the party, after the DNC had let it be known to all potential opponents that the fix was well and truly in, is symptomatic of the Smug. The insiders couldn't imagine the average voter rejecting the candidate chosen by the insiders. Maybe they still can't imagine it, only now it has happened. They're stuck in a loop, and for the next iteration the Republicans will know just what to do. Hint: it won't be another Romney.
I trust that the Democratic Party will understand that it has run out of ideas. Will the Republicans know what to do? It strikes me as quite possible that Trump's qualities could be those of a one-term president.
Trump could definitely be a one-termer. I could see him getting bored and letting Pence take over, or deciding to campaign for someone else in his cabinet, or even figuring out something so terrible that it will finally make evangelicals vote against him. Or, he could be like Reagan and W, just let his people handle everything, and sail on to a second term.
And of course you are completely correct on the inability to perceive conflicts of interest--where they are or where they just might be.
(And to clarify, I think Clinton was a decent candidate in terms of her policies and her ability to do the job. But she was a terrible candidate in terms of her potential to win. The widespread dislike of her among the electorate may have been unfair, but that doesn't mean it wasn't real.)
Or perhaps nominating bad candidates is just a consequence of the "smug"? Maybe that's what pushes Democrats to think that it's OK if a candidate is boring or unpopular as long as they have good ideas.
If there's a lesson from this election, it's that when a candidate inspires a populist movement, the parties should just let it play out instead of trying to stop it in favor of an establishment candidate. Both parties tried to stop it, but only the Democrats succeeded. The general election was their punishment.
Bernie would have beaten Trump. The crucial "rust belt" states that Clinton lost were states where Bernie beat her too. They're states that want to vote Democratic but felt that the Democrat didn't care about their struggles. His platform was completely targeted at helping the lower- and middle-class. Oh, and he probably has no idea what an email server is, let alone how to run his own.
It's clear the electorate didn't take reality into consideration when casting their votes.
This is an amazing observation. The 'smug style' doesn't actually contribute to the amelioration of these issues. Even for some things the lack of individual commitment betrays unseriousness, e.g. abortion rights - most people protesting federal defunding of PP would NEVER imagine to actually cut a check themselves, whereas there are principled libertarians, for example, who would be for ending funding PP using other people's money while donating to the organization themselves. Ms. Clinton's talks in front of Black Lives Matter audiences was notably bereft of any reference to police accountability (which is the one truly important thing) but instead offers feel-good solutions like broadly 'ending racism', 'sensitivity training', 'community policing'.
It took me having a comfortable enough income to donate to political parties before it really clicked I could do a whole lot more.
"Hear me out. We know Hillary isn't the best candidate, but you have to vote for Trump. If you don't you're a racist misogynist. Also, if you vote for a third party candidate, you are basically voting for Donald Trump."
There are so many things wrong with that message, that I won't go into it, but the last bit about a third party vote == a vote for Trump is dismissive, condescending, wrong, and rude. The assumption is that the third party voters are reasonable people who would otherwise vote Democrat but for the fact that they have a few misgivings about HRC.
However that is a very poor assumption.
Not once did I hear any of those same people listen to anybody, Trump supporter, third party voter, no voter. They shouted over everyone else and smugly and overconfidently assumed everyone was listening to them.
I am as shocked as anyone Trump won, but I had been telling my liberal friends for months that people just don't like HRC. I have my reasons for why I think that's true and it has nothing to do with emails or Bill Clinton's past indiscretions. Her primary run against Obama in '08 is proof positive of this, and in many ways this general election is a near repeat of that process.
She and her supporters were overly confident, refused to believe that they weren't connecting with mainstream America, and then got blindsided when the votes were counted.
I truly hope that the democratic party learns something from this, but from what I've seen on my Facebook feed this morning it certainly doesn't feel like it's going in that direction.
There's plenty of corruption beyond what you cited. Private speeches to Goldman Sachs which HRC refused to release. Debbie Wasserman Schultz' straight-up corruption during the democratic primaries and her subverted attempts to force HRC down democrats' throats. The alleged passing of debate questions to HRC's camp in advance. The list goes on and on. And yet, I firmly believe that those things in and of themselves have little to do with why she lost.
If you lived through the Bill Clinton years then you might remember that his favorability ratings were so high when he left office (after being impeached!) that it was widely believed he could have easily won a third term if he were allowed to run again.
The reality is that most voters don't care about the candidates private lives. Some voters actually held Clinton in higher regard after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. Voters are much more drawn to the candidate than the candidate's background or even the issues.
HRC has simply never been an effective politician. Sure, she won a senate race in New York on the heels of her husband's presidency, but beyond that she's had a problem connecting with constituents in both elections. This was exactly the reason she couldn't beat Obama in '08.
It seemed to me more like a very large window onto what turned out to be a pretty small world of corruption. I don't have an axe to grind but I've never seen a straight answer as to what her "crimes" supposedly are.
I'm embarrassed for the country by what Republicans ran on and who they elected.
(I put "you" in quotes since I'm referring to Democrats in general, not you personally.)
It's the same thing "you" ran against Bush and Romney on. It might even be true this time around, but you are the boy who cried wolf at this point.
I don't remember anyone saying that Romney was racist. I remember many saying that he represented the very wealthy rather than the middle and poorer classes.
I'm just saying that "XXX republican is racist" has lost it's meaning due to overuse. The boy has cried "hitler" about Bush, Romney, etc, and the villagers will no longer come running.
[1] I recommend reading Moldbug's article on the topic: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/castes-... The tl;dr; is that while Bush and Romney were Brahmin Republicans, Trump is very clearly a Vaisya, leading to vastly more hysteria.
And yes, I'm aware of Brexit at all. I think that Trump learned more about Brexit than we learned about Remain, Brexit being the politics of complaint.
For you. And me. But we are not the majority. The majority does not benefit from automation, globalisation etc. as much as you and me.
And it doesn't matter if in absolute terms we are all better of(for which citation would be needed, specifically for the lowest income bracket), it matters that the benefits of this new age are not spread around to those bearing the costs as efficiently as necessary.
This is why people vote for brexit, trump, afd etc. And no, those don't have the answers either. But they offer convenient scapegoats and changes with "tangible" effect in favour of their voting base.
Politicians on the left and the right are united in their elitism and their own bubbles of what is "important", and they have become disconnected from their populace so much that they can't even coral them effectively any more.
A lot of communities are absolutely gutted by rural flight and the shift of power to urban tech centers, and they're really hurting. This is a consistent theme across many Westernized nations.
This wasn't about the economy at all which is pretty good. This was a demagogue preying on gullibility. Y'all just elected him, citation unnecessary.
Cutting the deficit? Get real--we need to cut government, not just the growth rate of government.
5% unemployment--made up numbers
Tripled stock market--yes, because of Quantitative Easing, aka money printing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St...
debit: something that is owed or that one is bound to pay
to or perform for another
deficit: the amount by which expenditures or liabilities
exceed income or assets
The Federal deficit was about $1.4T when Obama started and its about $600B now. Obama has been very fiscally conservative. In particular, he put the Afghanistan and Iraq wars on normal rather than emergency funding basis.
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.ht...
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-EX454_wwii10_G_...
edit:
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/national-income-account...
http://www.dw.com/en/italian-pm-renzi-lashes-out-at-german-t...
2008 fed debt: ~10T
2016 fed debt: ~19T
2008 int exp: ~450M
2016 int exp: ~450M
he's spent like a lunatic, and his aca has just gotten started.
Also interesting to recall: The amount of disagreements and personal insults the author got for the piece.
And another: Rensin was let go from Vox shortly after writing the piece for tweeting "If Trump comes to your town, start a riot."
In any case, in retrospect...he nailed it.
(Disclaimer: Supported Clinton, although with major qualms.)
But I suppose the article is still right and competent politicians should have the empathy to relate even to those people. I couldn't do it.
Hence, the problem.
I think a better summary is that "liberal elites" (although really moderate republicans) has conclusively failed. And it lost in 2000 and 2004 and this is a pattern of it failing.
And the problems are that they've completely lost the blue collar male vote. There's no labor party here in the US at all. And the problem goes all the way back to Bill's vote for NAFTA and his center-right policies. The Democratic party has been losing the actual working class ever since then.
The Democratic Party should really stop lecturing the working class, and start promising the working class that they'll have jobs and won't see their kids sent off to die in foreign wars.
Simply those who voted for Trump feel like victims of "something"
And despite having won "everything" I have the feeling that they will still feel like victims of the undefinable "other" in the up and coming loooong years..
Trump supporters won everything by losing their jobs oversea.
Trump supporters won when other people call them racist for wanting to have a job.
Trump supporters won when their kids are sent to die in the Middle East to line up the Rich Elite's pockets with oil money.
Trump supporters won when they return from the war, with missing limbs, and the VA won't even take care of them.
And the smug still can't figure out why Trump supporters support Trump.
Still, "they regret it already" was the message spreading throughout Europe for a while. I recently saw some research stating that a very small percentage had changed their mind about the vote, and they came more or less equally from both sides. So no, no significant regret noticed.
Not sure why I'm writing this. It just seems that the people seeming to vote rationally are completely irrational when it comes to judging the other side. Did we collectively lose the skill of empathy?
We need to understand this or we'll be repeating these mistakes forever.
When people challenged the feasibility of solutions - ditto.
Which in my mind signaled the worst - the desire to break resistance was stronger than the desire to persuade. Which led to a belief that maybe something more sinister was in the cards - a la Pol Pot's killing fields.
Not a reasonable belief but when you see others dehumanized for questioning the know-it-alls, it's understandable.
Because what makes some of us on the left come off smug or haughty is the fact that conservatives refuse to accept that we deserve those protections. Worse still, some of them think that LGBT people should be put into some kind of hospital to be "cured" because "JESUS!" I'm not trying to lash out but it's a real complaint I have as someone who was formerly an evangelical Christian. It's a thread of thought I see that conservatives get looped into that their faith should override their sense of good law. I'm not asking for the Christian churches out there to let me join their congregations. I'm asking for them to respect my civil rights as I respect theirs. It's a reciprocal arrangement with both benefit. It's mutualism at it's best. Why is this so hard for them? I just want a good answer beyond their emotive, knee jerk reactions.
Oh, and religion & faith is largely based on emotion, so asking for something other than an emotive response from an Evangelical Christian is... misguided. (As far as I'm concerned, the Evangelical & Pentecostal strains of Christianity have evolved to be largely based on inspiring emotion particularly in their services, from the pop style worship music to the street preacher style sermons).
I'm a centre-left in my own country, which would be far left in the US. Gay marriage is a non-issue to me, because it doesn't affect anyone that is not involved and consenting. I'm of the opinion that if those religious people who oppose it because it brings the devil or some such, if they want to ban it because of their beliefs, then they should step forward and provide some proof. If you want to meddle in a stranger's life, there should at least be some evidence, rather than a hunch.
Unfortunately I don't have a good answer for you, apart from the intolerant christians simply turning to religion because of easy answers. There's plenty of christians in the US who don't bludgeon their neighbours with their faith, and those people generally are up for discussion. It's like the Church of England in the UK - they're christian, but they're also perfectly normal people that can live beside people who don't behave the same as them. But if you're the kind of person who finds asking searching questions difficult, then a loud defense of your religion helps keep you 'safe'.
As for the smugness, I find it hilarious when conservatives talk about how smug progressives are, even as they're using a dismissive tone as they describe that smugness. The main article is a classic example of this, and my comment was just meant to point out that both sides do this tactic that the author so despises.
Unfortunately, the only way to get people to change these kind of deeply-held beliefs is to get them to ask themselves questions about it, and they may get there of their own accord. But if the other side isn't listening, then those questions can't be seeded.
A shorter form of my opinions on gay marriage is this: it's fucking outrageous that a completely unrelated person can get in the way of a loved one making important decisions for their partner (like medical care). Is there a need for debate on it? No, not if you're for 'Freedom'. And, of course, if a person is not for 'Freedom', then they must Hate America :)
"[T]he contemporary debate within modern political systems are almost exclusively between conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals. There is little place in such political systems for the criticism of the system itself, that is, for putting liberalism in question" (Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 394).
Smugness is a problem for liberal liberals and conservative liberals alike. Perhaps smugness is a natural temptation or outgrowth of liberalism itself.
Clinton largely campaigned on shame and fear, and the midwest felt too left behind to care about that.
However, it raises an excellent point. The United States is not going to get anywhere if half the country looks down on the other half as a bunch of plebs, and in response the "plebs" disdain the elites. (I understand that this is a gross simplification, but I have seen this attitude often enough that it is significant).
For me, the article was about the need for mutual respect.
Ironically, the people who are going to take it most directly in the tuckus, are the people who voted Trump.
I don't even live in America, so it's not like I consider myself an American liberal. In fact, in my country, the Liberal Party are the conservatives, and being centre-left, I wouldn't identify with them either.
I also tend to think a lot of liberals are mentally ill, but I concede that you can't begin a dialog with that assumption. The PC movement on campuses today is a dead end and will thus die or higher education will die. Their choice.
A good overview from A.H.M. Jones, Augustus, from the first chapter, "The Breakdown of the Republic":
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/U7mLJYGy...
(The book is brief but the remainder is about as similarly dense as this overview -- if you're not already familiar with Roman history and particulars, there's not quite enough context to grab hold of. There are better, longer biographies which should be easier reading.)
I guess I'm part of the problem.
Not to mention that (A) employees in the US often have employer-provided health insurance; (B) many who live in the middle of nowhere are covered under medicare, medicaid, veteran's benefits, children's programs, and state programs; and (C) people who really depend on health insurance, ie those with big families or no savings, can still go out and buy it from a private company.
It's not like people are sitting on the side of the highway in Appalachia, dying of appendicitis and the flu.
2. The USA subsidizes drug development for the rest of the world. All the R&D happens here, and the only reason so much money is spent on this R&D is because the drug companies can charge maximum price to Americans. Other countries negotiate as a block to lower prices. This is great for those countries (cheaper drugs) and the drug companies (marginally expanded markets), but it increases the fraction of money from the US going to that R&D.
I've heard that Cuba has the best doctors, and they often play a crucial role in emergency aid to other countries.
For quality of health care overall, the US is just a solid middle ranker when it comes to life expectancy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe... That's only one metric, of course, but it seems like an important one.
It seems like the US pays about 3x more (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...) for moderately worse outcomes.
If we were to supply Cuba with bacon double cheeseburgers and unlimited soda refills, that life expectancy would not be so hot. Also, give them all desk jobs.
Healthcare is better in the USA. We just like to do bad things to ourselves.
Similar to broadband and mobile phone services, the free market hasn't been able to drive prices down as effectively as it theoretically should. I think it's because the incumbent providers have successfully lobbied for a network of regulations that protect their monopolies. What's actually needed is better regulations (a la net neutrality) to level the playing field.
Or alternatively, just run it as a free public service like many other countries do. That approach works pretty well.
People in the US aren't use to making those kinds of tradeoffs, which is why we spend half of our medical dollars on the last year of people's lives. We might decide not to operate, but financial considerations won't enter into the decision.
That's why I will be surprised if anything the government does short of rationing care will affect the cost of medicine in the US. It's about expectations.
It's not six MRI's the uninsured need to worry about, it's incidental injuries and illnesses that potentially cost several month's wages.
God forbid you have a multi-day stay in the ICU.
But I believe even in the USA you will get (emergency) treatment and the bills racked up, right?
A prerequisite for an 85% increase is some payment beforehand. If they had no health insurance, they wouldn't have been paying for health insurance, and therefore their rates could not increase.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/healthcare/trump-and-the-gop-...
[0]http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SAM?output_view=pct_1...
Isn't that the idea of insurance?
Edit: No seriously.
And that's coming from me.
I posted this particular story because I have seen what it criticizes on HN more than anywhere else. Perhaps the article is wrong, but I thought an external opinion would be useful.
Perhaps HN is not the place for political discussion. But it has been in the past, and will be in the future, so I think that this article is excellent to contemplate.
I don't think it makes the article justice by trying to simply place it as "right" or "wrong". I'd be content to just point out that I think it covers a lot of history, divides and for lack of a better word, emotions or perspectives.
I'm not liberal, but I too constantly need to fight the need to be smug towards others and their choices.
Thank you for posting it. It was a worth the time to read.