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Comment by huac | Hacker News Reader

I have a lot of thoughts, but here's one: Hillary focused her entire campaign on why people should stop Trump, at the expense of talking about why she should be president. In general, making the case against someone else rather than the affirmative case for yourself doesn't work. It's reaction versus action.

It's undoubtably true now that there was a very real populist anger towards the existing political order, and as a corollary, the political and economic elites. Instead of harnessing that energy and attempting to create a movement (see: Sanders, Bernie), the Democratic party anointed a candidate who is the definition of establishment.

The results are showing that Hillary lost, at least in large part, due to lower voter turnout, especially among liberal-leaning populations. With all else equal, Podesta, DWS, Neera Tanden, and the rest of the DNC cutup squad ignored the people and ran on the "man, Dangerous Donald, obviously you're not gonna vote for him!" platform. That, and shaming Bernie/Stein supporters about their support for a candidate who can't win - rather than explaining how Clinton's policies would be good. Well, the Democrats and 'moderates' didn't vote for Trump, but they sure didn't have a reason to vote for Clinton either.

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> at the expense of talking about why she should be president.

Hillary couldn't make that argument because it would've drawn more attention to her most damning flaw: The fact that she's a textbook demagogue who was on the wrong side of every progressive issue until she found it politically expedient to "evolve".

That's why so many people were so passionate about Sanders. You could go back to C-SPAN videos from 1992 and hear him saying the exact same things he said throughout the whole primary season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vabeos-F8Kk

There's that picture of him being arrested during civil rights protests.

he would have been something you can set a clock to and someone that was on the right side of history before it was politically expedient to be on.

> That's why so many people were so passionate about Sanders. You could go back to CSPAN videos from 1992 and hear him saying the exact same things he said throughout the whole primary season.

This was this the exact same case with Ron Paul 4 years ago but it seemed to hardly matter

Yes, and the same thing happened to Ron Paul. The RNC colluded to ensure he didn't get the nomination. They actually changed rules during the convention to make sure that couldn't happen.

I'm sure if we had wikileaks of the RNC during that time, it would have revealed much of the same type of insider corruption.

In fact, I seem to recall that the Ron Paul rule itself helped Trump win the nomination this time around.

In response to clifanatic:

I believe the Ron Paul rule was seen to block Ted Cruz rather than help Trump (semantics, I suppose).

> They actually changed rules during the convention to make sure that couldn't happen.

Those knife fights over party rules (especially 40 (b)) made it possible for Trump to get into the running for the nomination, according to many GOP observers. See [1] for an explanation of how.

These election results are a political pressure relief valve: significant swathes of the electorate have been systematically excluded and ignored, then they tried to organize in different ways. First culminating in Ron Paul's bid, then a different wave in Bernie Sanders' bid, and enough formed coalitions behind Trump this time around to cost both parties' establishments their desired outcomes. Ignoring such large groups of the electorate for much longer would have cost us much more in the future. There are very big chunks of the population in a lot of pain for going on decades now, and effectively ignoring that is no longer much of an option going forward.

I see China possibly facing a similar issue with their rural population at some point in the far future.

[1] https://alibertarianfuture.com/2016-election/2016-republican...

I remember the moderator during one of the 2012 debates reframing a question several times to see if it would change Ron Paul's mind.

Ron Paul just kept repeating his position, regardless of how many puppy orphanages were on fire.

I am convinced that he did not possess the duplicity of most politicians.

This! As an example, she had her staff draft a tweet, and it goes through a chain of 12 people to approve before it goes live, I am not sure she knew how to connect with real people.

She doesn't. Her mistake, and the mistake of everyone around her, including the media which defended and parroted everything she said was to believe they would fool people into thinking she is genuine.

A lot of people who voted for her are Democrats -- people she thought she had already in her pockets.

Trump wasn't a top candidate, he wasn't the popular one, has said stupid stuff, and yet people disliked Hillary so much, they still voted for him.

I looked through some emails, it was entertaining (even though CNN said it is illegal to look through them and only media was special and had to interpret them for us). There was very little in those emails of "Hey how does this help ordinary people, let's do something for them" or "You know, we should just tell the truth, let's not really spin this at all".

It is all about how do fool this block "Women, ok, she is a woman, that's easy". Black voters, those are easy... what should we do for them? Organized a rap concert, of course. Because that's not condescending... Let's call Jay-z so he can drop a few N-bombs at them, I hear they like that. She is like the awkward rich person trying to find common ground with peasant that she usually would never associates with and it just looks so fake and stupid... and now more people can see that.

She doesn't.

She fought a near perfect 1970s campaign. She got every Columbia school of journalism grad eating out of her hand, total control and ally to the legacy main stream media. Newspapers. Radio. Every academic in the country shilling for her or they lose their position. She had nothing fundamentally new that a 60s radical wouldn't have recognized. There's simply no way she could have lost in 1976.

Of course its 2016 so Trump has approx 5 million NEETs on /POL/ shitposting insane memes about nazi frogs into every normies facebook feed on the planet while epic trolling social and legacy media and releasing all the proof of her corruption via email thru hacked servers on wikileaks. He was the only candidate talking about 2010s issues like the result of 1960s immigration reform or the marginalization and hatred of the white working class. He fought a pretty good 2016 campaign.

This being 2016 and not 1976 its no great surprise which strategy won.

The "R" side needs to take notes that the "D" are likely to make this mistake precisely once. The battles in 2020 and 2024 are not going to be baby boomers still stuck in the '70s losing to '10s millennials again.

Also she hates half the country and calls them deplorables. Somehow, oddly, her despising them didn't magically translate into votes. The sense of entitlement is strong with that one...

What did she say about "deplorables"? What was the actual quote? You know you are misrepresenting her

https://youtu.be/TUT_tujluSg?t=18s

People remember! The 47% comment did not do well for Romney neither did the basket of deplorables comment from Hillary. Note to future candidates, don't make these comments. Please run for office only if you are genuinely passionate about serving people.

> This was this the exact same case with Ron Paul 4 years ago but it seemed to hardly matter

Did it though? Did it? [1]

[1] https://youtu.be/zaD84DTGULo?t=29s

Ron Paul and Sanders should create a 3rd party. they have way more in common than anyone acknowledge.

They have the identification of a common problem in common, but their solutions are the complete opposites ends of the spectrum and mutually exclusive. I don't think a 3rd party could exist that met both their goals.

They agree fully on criminal justice reform and the removal of money from politics, at the very least. If I recall correctly, their stances on government surveillance are similar as well.

It would match up quite well with a party platform based on decentralization of power. Libertarian at the federal level, Republican for large states, Democrat for small states and big cities / metro areas, and liberal for small cities or towns.

This would allow for a lot of social services, but keep them more localized, so they can serve the population better and be held more accountable.

And it would avoid a lot of the problems with big government at the federal level.

this is actually really good proposal, and it works for everyone.

This twitter meme basically sums up my feelings: https://twitter.com/VoteTrumpPics/status/796032206238060545

If you can't open it, it's an exchange between Gimli and Legolas from the LoTR movie.

Gimli (wearing Bernie hat): I never thought I'd be fighting side by side with a trumpster.

Legolas (with MAGA hat): What about side by side with a deplorable?

Gimli (wearing Bernie hat): Aye.

Gimli (wearing Hillary for Prison 2016 hat): I could do that.

Ordinarily if the choice is bad I'd vote third party, but I really didn't want Hillary in and I was pretty sure this wouldn't be the election when the third party wins it.

Having the same opinion for 24 years is not a virtue.

In the (probably apocryphal) words of Keynes:

> When someone persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?

It's not a sign of vice either; I'm sure he's been believing that the Earth is round for 24+ years, and that's fine. What matters is accuracy, and updating in the face of new evidence, not consistency. Consistency in the face of new evidence is called faith.

> Having the same opinion for 24 years is not a virtue.

But being right for 24 years is.

She adopted his ideas one by one and then tried to pretend they'd been hers all along. Unfortunately (for her), Democrats aren't that gullible. It was clear that she was only saying what voters wanted to hear, while Bernie truly believed everything he'd been saying for that past 25+ years.

Case in point: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/2631

Correct, but being right is orthogonal to consistency. If you are exposed to new evidence, and it points in a different direction than your prior belief, being right means changing your mind; if there is no new evidence, or the weight of new evidence points in the same direction, being right means keeping the same belief.

All I'm saying is, you can't tout keeping the same idea for years as an unqualified good thing, you have to look at the idea and history in detail, and show that it was a good idea all along.

(I'm not objecting to the object-level argument that Clinton does whatever is politically expedient, I'm objecting to the line of argument that it's good for a politician to hold an opinion for a long time, without also showing that the idea is good, and that it was good all along.)

> you can't tout keeping the same idea for years as an unqualified good thing

If that's the critique you hear when comparing Sanders to Clinton, you're not listening very well.

To restate, Sanders didn't just tout the same idea. He's fought for the same core principles throughout his whole career, even when in the clear minority. Overtime, the rest of our culture came around to those ideas (bringing Clinton with it).

His virtue isn't his tenacity. It's his progressive thinking.

Maybe. I can accept that I am taking the OP too literally when they say that Berns has been saying

> the exact same thing

for years.

I'm not American, I havn't looked into Berns' history in details.

But consistently having to change your position is not a good sign. It's good to be able to change your mind. But it's hard to trust someone who changes a lot of their positions.

I don't think the OP was criticizing her lack of consistency. (S)He was criticizing her lack of being on the right side of the issues the first time (in the way that Bernie has been on many issues). It's easy to switch sides when everyone does, and nobody should criticize someone for doing that. But to many people, greatness is being on the right side of the issue before everyone else, and convincing people of its rightness.

I think you need both. You need the uncompromising Bernies, to act as visionaries and point out what the future should be. And, you also need the unprincipled politicians who can compromise, and adapt, and win elections. If Bernie had run in all previous elections, you would have probably gotten presidents Dole, McCain, and Romney. And, who knows, maybe Trump too.

I am not convinced those presidents would have been bad. Can we say that they were all acting in the same way as "unprincipled politicians who can compromise, and adapt, and win elections" or maybe did they believe something earnestly that is just different from what you believe?

Would you rather have an ethically malleable liberal than a principled conservative? In most cases I would rather have the principled politician because they will have some kind of goal to benefit some segment of Americans. Can we really say that any ethically malleable politician, of any flavor, will always help some segment of Americans?

Then as a counter to all this. Nixon did found the EPA.

I agree that maybe those presidents would not have been necessarily bad. Maybe, if Dole would have won, G.W. Bush would have never been elected, and the world would now be a very different (and better) place.

I think malleable politicians are malleable because they try to benefit the largest section of the population that they can. Conservatives, lately, have focused on benefiting a very small segment of the population directly, expecting the benefits to trickle down.

However, the trickle down has not worked. I know very little about economics, but, I remember, headlines in newspapers eight years ago were mainly about unemployment, and the growth of the National debt. The euro was $1.30 (now it buoys around $1.10).

I think the American economy is much better now than it was eight years ago, and a larger section of the population has benefited from that, than when principled conservatives were in the government. (And this is just from an economic point of view, which is a small part of the benefits).

Ya don't get me wrong. I wouldn't totally castigate her for that. I was just trying to explain the criticism. You definitely need both kinds of people for different things at different times.

To boil this down farther, We are looking for a leader, not a follower. Hillary is a follower.

She has demonstrated over her career that she will vote for whatever is popular, lean on "think of the children" issues, and only vote progressively to catch up with the times. In a time where Congressional approval is so low, the American people couldn't stomach electing the epitome of a career politician who seems to have so many skeletons in her closet the door is about to burst (real or imaginary, the impression is there).

We ended up with Trump, which I am absolutely not thrilled about, but at least this will send the Democrats back to the drawing board to come up with something better than "Less Evil." I just pray to the FSM that the Republican House, Senate, Cabinet, and Supreme Court don't turn our great nation into a chop shop in the next 2 / 4 years. We are in for a bumpy ride.

No, but in this case he was right and consistent. She was eventually right and not consistent.

> you can't tout keeping the same idea for years as an unqualified good thing

You're missing the point completely.

I'm not praising Sanders' stubbornness, I'm praising his foresight and vastly superior judgment. He knew what this country needed to do 20 years before Hillary, and he was willing to vehemently defend his opinions despite the overwhelming opposition. The fact that you're trying to turn this into some kind of debate about consistency vs. facts is frankly baffling. It's clear that he was right all along and she was late to the party on every issue that liberals and progressives care about.

And do you really believe she changed her opinion on those issues where she claimed to have "evolved"? I sure don't. We know she still wants TPP to pass, we know she still secretly supports DOMA, we know she had no interest in reigning in Wall Street, we know she (and Chelsea) were halfheartedly pretending to support medical marijuana, etc. etc.. The Hillary Clinton presented to the public was a fictional character designed for one purpose: To win the presidency.

It didn't work, and the reason is clear: We're not as ignorant or gullible as they'd hoped: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3599#efmARhAWn

> You're missing the point completely.

You're right, I got sidetracked by this:

> has been saying the exact same things for years

I keep forgetting not to try debating what is or isn't a good argument, in the abstract, in politics threads.

Well, it's because you're arguing what you did was somehow objectively relevant. That's a very binary stance.

What he said makes complete sense in the context he presented it in, and is valid.

You're arguing how what he said would be bad in an entirely different context, which is irrelevant.

Its not a virtue for everyday people, its a virtue for politicians.

His opinions were sound and his predictions were prescient. He was right. That's it. He was right about Iraq, he was right about financial deregulation, he was right about civil liberties.

Having the same opinion in and of itself is not a virtue, but having wisdom and foresight and conviction and true ground level initiative all at once is far more than just virtuous.

That may be true, but he's also a terrible role model that says extremely racist/sexist things. I couldn't quote president Trump at work without being fired from my job because of his lewd language.

This thread is discussing Sanders, not Trump.

Reconcile that with:

“But If Everybody's Watching, You Know, All Of The Back Room Discussions And The Deals, You Know, Then People Get A Little Nervous, To Say The Least. So, You Need Both A Public And A Private Position.”

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927

Her motives are clear.

I'm not commenting on the specifics of Berns and Hilary. I don't particularly like Hilary. I'm objecting to this type of argument in general.

Like, what if someone shows up and shows that Trump has had the same opinions all along? Is that a positive for him?

If the ideas are shitty, it doesn't matter how consistent or inconsistent they are. If they're good, I don't care if the person only adopted them 3 years ago, as long as they did for the right reasons, (e.g. not political expediency, I agree.)

I agree that the fact that he's held the same opinions for a long time is evidence that Berns doesn't act out of political expediency, but to me that point is far overshadowed by whether the ideas are any good.

If someone holds a private and public"shitty" opinion and another holds a public opinion as a demagogue and privately holds the same "shitty" opinions, who would you rather? The one open and honest with their opinions or the dishonest one who will lie and say anything to win the popular vote?

>but to me that point is far overshadowed by whether the ideas are any good

Mind telling me where his ideas are bad? Most of his beliefs are both long held, progressive, and in my opinion, largely agreeable.

>>Having the same opinion for 24 years is not a virtue.

It is if they were good opinions the whole damn time. Being for marriage equality for 24 years is a virtue. Being for an improved social safety net for 24 years is a virtue. Being for universal healthcare for 24 years is a virtue.

Yep, the key about these is moral consistency. He was morally consistent the whole time, which shows integrity. Now, whether his positions were the right ones is another story...

Vermont and Burlington are going pretty fucking good.

>Having the same opinion for 24 years is not a virtue.

"I believe in universal human rights" is a virtue that I think it is perfectly acceptable to have to 24 years (or more!)

You're the only one repeatedly using the word "consistency" and then claiming that word is bad, which is kind of funny. That's because its a mistake you've made. That's OK. The correct word to use is "coherent". He's a believer in a complete and wide ranging logical philosophical system explaining the world resulting in a set of mutually compatible coherent opinions on all kinds of issues. That's why he's a statesman who's earned the respect of people even like me who disagree with him but can see a logical deeply reasoning fellow rational mind. And you try to compare that to someone who's idea of a philosophy, of the right systemic way to live a life, is to look at the polls, see X, Y, and Z are leading, well, guess I'm temporarily a supporter of X, Y, and Z. They're so dissimilar its almost impossible to compare the two.

You speak of faith and belief a lot. Bernie is like a wise theological scholar. Personally I think he's wrong about quite a few things, but I recognize the strong morals and ethics, the personal virtue, the deep rational thought, the coherent inter relatedness behind his system. He's a personification of sometimes wise people are wrong, but they still remain wise. He's not for me personally, I like other folks, but I'm proud he's an American and if he were the leader I could respect him despite disagreement. And his female opponent is like a televangelist seeking ratings and pledge drives, a faith healer, a fake messiah. And people somehow wonder how she lost. Doesn't her show have the highest ratings? Doesn't she make the best promises in her sermons? Don't our holiest people fall all over themselves to celebrate and show off their own holiness in supporting her? How could a charlatan like her not win, indeed?

No, I meant consistency. You've misconstrued what I meant. That's ok. We all make mistakes sometimes.

> Having the same opinion for 24 years is not a virtue.

You are deliberately misinterpreting the statement. Of course having the same opinion for 24 years by itself is not a virtue! The point is: he has had the same public stance on things that matter : gay marriage, healthcare, etc. In today's climate, when politicians change their views based on the most recent polling, this is indeed a virtue.

> deliberately

How do you know that? Can you really not imagine that someone can misinterpret something without malicious intention?

Can you believe that I agree with OP that Bernie was the better candidate, yet still disagree about a particular argument?

Bernie's viewpoints were so far left that he had to hammer on them for 40+ years until the stars aligned and we all began to recognize the pearls of truth they held. Twenty years ago I could not have considered his viewpoint but now with more age and empathy driven into me I can get behind (most of) his viewpoint. Thank God for Bernie and hopefully we can rebirth a new democratic party that can integrate some of his views to help recapture a large part of the 59,000,000 people that felt compelled to vote for Trump.

This is what scares the Europeans amongst us about the US.

By European standards, most of the European centre-right is fine with most of what Bernie supports...

And then we wake up to Trump.

As crazy as it might seem the USA has been right of center for a long (since WW2) and it is generally working well for us (we are so rich we don't even understand it). It is clearly not perfect (healthcare) but it does often work in unintuitive way (decade on decade carbon release decrease).

EDIT - Even though I think Trump is an existential threat to the USA, so have many of our leaders. Maybe 'us' wouldn't be the US if we weren't just a bit crazy. I must accept that I might be wrong about Trump be universally bad and see what happens.

> Having the same opinion for 24 years is not a virtue.

That was not what GP was saying at all. He was saying that Bernie has always stood for what he believes is the right thing to do, whereas Hillary would pick a stance based on its political value.

There's a dependency tree required to get to the point of "vote", and you have to pass thru "respect" first.

I disagree with, but respect, Sanders, Stein, Warren, Feingold (and some other lefties). Hillary equals revulsion, repulsion. I can't be talked from "respect" to "vote" with someone I can't even respect first.

The D party worked very hard on converting "respect" people to "vote" people. I think they achieved 100% success. The problem is most of the country can never respect her, and there was zero effort put into making her respectable (perhaps it was recognized as impossible?)

There's something fundamentally wrong internally with the D party when the ground seems to be crawling with respectable (possibly votable!) candidates but instead we get a movie caricature of Lex Luther combined with a slightly more chicken hawk bloodthirsty Joker from a sequel rejected in the 90s. There's something just horribly fundamentally wrong with how people gain political power inside the D party, resulting in the wrong leaders at the wrong times.

She'll be within one percentage point of Trump in the end in overall votes (and it looks like she'll beat him actually). All of these commentators seem to be making broad generalizations about the state of politics and how the strategy is obviously going to fail but the reality is that if the election was very slightly different in ways that neither campaign could really control it would've gone the other way. Maybe I'm wrong but all this just reminds me of all of the BS narratives that ESPN concocts to fill air time after football games.

Or just watch market commentators talk about stock price movements. Only after they happened, of course.

That's not quite fair. This election was an upset. I think it's quite reasonable to look for an explanation beyond random noise.

That seems very "ends justify the means". Aren't you concerned that pragmatically the Democratic party is objectively unable to effectively govern itself? Given a choice of respectable statesmen something necrotic is instead selecting failure-prone sociopaths instead? Do you have a theoretical model where competent leadership somehow would result in worse end results? Wouldn't competent leadership, for a change, result in a permanent Democratic majority which theoretically would be a good "ends"?

Most of her troubles were difficult to predict ahead of time, especially the email server and the leaks. Besides those she's actually a pretty good candidate for the party. The DNC pushed against Bernie the same way that the RNC pushed against Trump (and in previous election people like Ron Paul) and the difference was at the end of the day Bernie just didn't have the support. I'm not the biggest fan of the DNC but I'm not seeing how the leadership did anything this election different than any other election.

The popular vote is irrelevant for actually winning - what matters is how states at the margins vote. Look at Michigan. Look at Ohio. Look at Pennsylvania. For the Democrats, Hillary was an unmitigated disaster in all of those areas.

Also, keep in mind that most of the electorate votes against party lines, even if the party were to nominate Satan. She completely failed the margins.

I agree with you but a lot of the troubles that she had were difficult to see ahead of time, especially the email server and the leaks. It's easy to slap on a narrative after the fact but at the time Hillary really was the choice most likely to win the the election. I'm not saying that she didn't do an exceptionally poor job in certain areas but all she needed to do was one or two percent better and there would be the narrative of it being a landslide the other way.

Normally, I'd agree.

But to not put a polarizing, inexperienced politician like Trump away easily is what makes the commentators (and me) think there are larger trends at work.

She had all the cards.

I agree that there are trends at work but many of the criticisms of her were only apparent in the last few months so saying that the DNC and democrats in general should've known somehow that she wasn't a good candidate and that their picking of leadership was fundamentally flawed seems odd to me.

Maybe if she had divorced and denounced Bill before the campaign run... They were not exactly free of scandal when Bill was in office. Her secretary of state term was... memorable. The situation was only unpredictable to maybe the youngest Millennials.

She was pretty unfazed by most of those scandals in the end, though. I think part of the reason they liked her is because she has been through so many scandals and was still the political force that she was. In the end they were wrong but a year ago it wasn't that unreasonable.

The reason you don't respect her is not from her doing or the doing of the DNC. It is because there has been a plurality of the political community that has been working for literal decades to destroy her reputation. If you repeat a lie loud enough and long enough it becomes true. In reality she is in the normal range of candidate. I grant you she is closer to the bad side than the good (at least in most people's mind), but she is no more corrupt or politically calculating than your average member of Congress.

But that's not what people believe! The Democratic party could have accepted that the right wing press had done a character assassination, and nominated somebody else, but they didn't see how they could lose.

I can't really disagree with you, but it is a sad state of affairs that we are asking one of this country's political parties to bow to the propaganda of the other.

Only if they want to win elections

To win a battle, you need to choose the right tactics for the battlefield you are actually fighting on, not the ideal battlefield you think you are entitled to fight on.

Or, to adapt from Donald Rumsfeld, you go into an election with the electorate you have, not the electorate you wish you had.

I know it's sad and upsetting. But propaganda these days is extremely powerful and I don't know how to counter it. If I oppose this kind of propaganda, do I try to counter it with my own propaganda? What are the other choices?

The problem with that conspiracy theory is it doesn't explain why her. Its clearly not gender or we've be getting the two minutes hate on Warren and Stein. Its clearly not simply being high profile because even pres Obama doesn't catch as much heat as Hillary. It's as if there's something about the Clintons. Sometimes a criminal is just a criminal, simple as that.

There could have been a vast conspiracy to frame the Unibomber or Al Capone or John Dillinger or Nixon. No one can explain why them. Therefore I think it infinitely more likely they were just crooks.

>why her

Because she has been in politics for for 30 something years, been on the national stage for 20 something years, and has been "the next president" for roughly 10 years. This wasn't one hit job, this was decades of concentrated work that eventually broke the camel's back.

Bernie's been in politics for longer than that, and he doesn't have a long trail of scandals behind him.

That's because nobody gave a shit about Bernie until he tried to run for president. He was never a threat to anyone or a challenge to the status quo (like having a female president is).

"challenge to the status quo (like having a female president is)"

How is "I'll do exactly what the establishment tells me to do, just like the last couple figureheads, except in a $10K Chairman Mao pantsuit" a challenge to much of anyone?

The country has a not so comfy history with black folks, yet men and women have lived together for eternity, so why didn't Obama get it perhaps 100 or 10000 times worse? Surely you're not a racism denialist? Perhaps no one accused Obama of being a criminal because... he isn't? I mean I never voted for him but I can respect him, he's a wise constitutional scholar who probably deserves a supreme court appointment to an empty liberal seat when this is all over. I disagree with him on many issues but he's no crook and he's reasonably wise. He got teased, essentially, about a technicality of being born in a foreign country and being muslim which frankly don't matter and never turned out to be a problem and never went past offending people on twitter.

Palin was hated in the mainstream media, but it was just a generic Quayle style two minutes hate. How come no one provided any evidence of her crimes? Perhaps... there were none? Could there possibly be any hatred hotter than the DNC controlled MSM's hatred toward Palin, yet there's nothing but sophistry against her because she's clean? I wouldn't describe Palin as being a bright bulb or a beacon of wisdom yet I voted for her, she's not that bad.

Palin is the perfect comparison to Clinton because there was just as much smoke around her. For example Troopergate[1] is the exact kind of non-serious controversy that has hounded Clinton her entire career. Except no one really cares when Palin did this because she never was that close to actual power. Meanwhile if this happened to Clinton there would be endless discussion of it.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Public_Safety_Commissio...

Warren has little power and Stein even less. No one bothers to villify women until they get real power. Everyone was cordial to Hillary until she started pushing for health care reform in Congress as a First Lady. It's about people stepping outside of their perceived place.

> a lie

Hillary didn't need any help destroying her reputation.

As a matter of public record, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated in her FBI interview that she could not recall briefings at the State department pertaining to handling classified information, nor could she give an example of how information might be classified.

Now this is either a lie, or a self-admission that disqualifies a person to hold the position of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, privy to the most sensitive information in the government.

How can you fault a voter who observes these facts and casts their vote for someone else?

Except that all is normal politician CYA type doublespeak. That isn't a good trait and it is something Clinton is certainly guilty of doing, but it is something almost all politicians are guilty of doing. Like I said, Clinton isn't a great candidate without faults. However a large group of this country has worked tirelessly to make these common politician flaws appear as if they are completely abnormal and disqualifying for the presidency.

The Republicans dislike Obama just as much as Clinton, yet his presidency has been virtually scandal-free and he remains quite popular. Clinton's problem is that Democrats and Independents who aren't politically predisposed to dislike her have legitimate concerns about her trustworthyness.

>his presidency has been virtually scandal-free

I like your optimism, but do you remember what first brought our new president elect into the political sphere? It certainly wasn't to praise Obama for his clean and scandal free record.

People did not think she was genuine. They disliked her so much, that they picked a TV personality, said stupid stuff and off-color remarks. That says a lot about the level of disconnectedness between what she/her team/media thought of her and what a lot of people, even traditionally voting Democrats thought of her.

I guess nobody around her who had an inkling dared to raise their hand. Can't even imagine what they'd say "Ma'am, people don't believe what you are saying, can you be more genuine a bit?"...

>I guess nobody around her who had an inkling dared to raise their hand. Can't even imagine what they'd say "Ma'am, people don't believe what you are saying, can you be more genuine a bit?"...

Check out of some of the leaked emails. I'm not sure if they said it to her directly, but they regularly remarked on how insincere and artificial she came across as.

Ah, interesting. So people were warning her, she just didn't listen. It was probably like large ship at that point, it was full of steam (donations and promises), moving ahead and there was just no stopping or turning it around easily.

Actually, my impression is she tried to listen... she just didn't have it in her. There were many moments through the campaign where she tried to come across as organic and authentic, but even that seemed awkward and forced.

She just has almost no charisma or jovial presence, unlike Trump.

This was actually what I thought was Clinton's best quality. I believe it's called "triangulation" and it means figuring out what compromise can be achieved in the current political circumstances and going with that rather that what you believe to be the one true right answer, if that would lead to less pragmatic progress.

Basically, "the perfect is the enemy of the good" applied to politics.

e.g. "Don't ask, don't tell" is a crappy policy compared with letting gay people serve openly, but it's an improvement on the status quo at that time which was setting up sting operations to catch out gay servicemen and throw them out of the army.

I guess I'm condoning her fighting for something she doesn't truly believe is right, as long as it's better than what's currently the case. Does that make me bad? Does it make her bad?

Might be good if she didn't leave a trail like the one she has left with the Gaddafi, Iraq+Syria and ISIS, Haiti, and so on and so on.

Really, she hasn't achieved much good for the world if any. She is good at being a power person in Washington though.

I'm not pro Trump, by the way.

This Benghazi thing; it's a perfect example of the double standards as applied to Clinton. Prior to Benghazi, were there 13 attacks on embassies and 60 deaths under President George W. Bush. Where was the outrage then? Where were the hearings then?

You missed the point. She was the most vocal about striking Libya in the first place.

Like George Bush was vocal about striking Iraq in the first place but got elected twice.

Crazy to think they could both be wrong.

Bush wasn't elected by progressives. Being pro-war isn't going to earn you progressive votes. The progressives sat out this election because Hillary wasn't progressive enough. There were 4M fewer votes cast this year than in 2008.

I up-voted you because this is the first time I heard that.

He said Gaddafi, not Benghazi.

Benghazi was a political dog and pony show, that she is completely blameless of.

Libya and Gaddafi were a humanitarian disaster that rests squarely on her shoulders.

Like Iraq rests on Bush's shoulders and cost him the election?

No, but it is a reason for why a number of liberals feel little but contempt for Clinton.

It should have. And it would have if he belonged to the party that contains a majority portion of anti-war/pacifist types. Can't sell out the major beliefs of your base and expect them to show up at the polls.

The Iran deal is huge. True it's early to tell how well it will work, but still it's there.

Then there's Cuba. Not a big deal in global terms, but a watershed in America's history. Although the payoffs for these mainly accrue to Kerry, it was Hilary who made them happen.

I agree they were good, but the Cuba and the Iran deal both happened after Clinton's Secretary of State tenure, no? How did she make them happen?

> I'm not pro trump, by the way.

You don't have to qualify your statements anymore. The veil of illusion has come down and the sock puppet masters have ended their contracts, so you won't be attacked unfairly for pointing out the truth.

Basically, "the perfect is the enemy of the good" applied to politics.

A valid point, in spirit.

But the basic problem with the Clintonian philosophy (a term which was coined during Bill's tenure, actually) is that they both took "triangulation" to such an extreme (and made so many 180-degree flip-flops on basic issues, which really should have been principle gut calls -- Hillary's gay rights being a classic example) that the end, you could never get a fix on, let alone believe them what they stood for. It's like nailing jello to a wall, basically.

To be truly successful in politics -- the stance to take (which I hope this election proves) is not "triangulation at all costs" (a.k.a. Standard Clintonianism). Nor is it "perfection at all costs". But it does require a keen sense of judgement to know when, exactly, to make a proper gut call between the two -- and stand up for the right thing, and say the right thing. Even if it seems the majority is against you, or no one is listening to your speeches on C-PAN.

That, and a sense for not letting one's self be "played" (in the sense that Hillary appears to have genuinely believed both the Bush's administration line about the imminent threat of WMD in Iraq, and his private assurances -- albeit not encoded in the resolution that she tragically voted for -- that he wouldn't invade unless all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted; or in the sense that both of the Clintons allowed themselves to be played, for decades, by the Christian Right).

> she's a textbook demagogue

I mean, I know people have been redirecting Trump's flaws onto Hillary but this is just hilarious.

It's interesting how my own political positions change over time and are completely unrecognizable compared to 20 years ago. I consider it a strength. Yet for a politician it's associated with hypocrisy or triangulation.

I'm a big fan of Bernie, but I'm not sure I want a politician with early 90s views of everything...

It's a matter of fundamental core values applied to situational matters. Opinions and preferences shift as time goes by. The populace sees this in the politicians of today. Bernie's actions are lauded not because they are the same, but because they represent an integrity to the core values of human life & equality. Politicians claim to value life & equality, but manifest their hypocrisy by going to war and endangering soldier's lives for profit. This is the disingenuity of the status-quo politicians.

> In general, making the case against someone else rather than the affirmative case for yourself doesn't work. It's reaction versus action.

Well that's blatantly false.

That was Trump's entire campaign. All I've heard all year was "Benghazi", "emails" and "crooked", all of which were just rephrasing of the same thing, repeated in perpetuum. It most definitely worked.

> All I've heard all year was "Benghazi", "emails" and "crooked"

It's true, that's all you heard, but that's not all that he was saying and the part that you didn't hear ... that's why he won. Those who voted for him heard a different message, one specific to their economic circumstances. It's always the economy. And while the aggregate macro picture looks good, we are going through some major shifts underneath those numbers.

And his supporters continue to shout, "Jail her!".

Well your problem is you are using the wrong news sources then. I'm not even American and I know at the very least that Trump started out with a very bombastic and completely un-Republican plan that immediately got the people's attention.

He promised huge tax cuts, a reformed health care system which is more accessible and tariffs that brought back manufacturing jobs. He promised a lot of other things but I'm mentioning what attracted the working class towards him.

He only started attacking Hillary much later.

He only started attacking her when both of them were the candidates, obviously. During the debates she kept trying to discuss policies.

That's one piece of the puzzle though. I wouldn't say he won only on that platform. He also won on platforms of change, law and order, and a return to old school America. I personally thought it was a disgusting campaign that used fear mongering and hate to vilify numerous parts of the nation, but I would not say his only platform was "don't vote for Hillary". But for Hillary I would definitely say the opposite was her strongest message, perhaps even her only one.

Anecdotally I think I have to agree with you. Most of my friends are the sort of college educated millennials that voted overwhelmingly for Clinton but even when talking about her there seemed to be a social stigma to saying that Clinton is a good candidate. She made a very good case for being the lesser of two evils but it seems that she failed to convince even many of her supporters that she was actually good.

The best argument I heard for her was that she was the most uniquely qualified for the job. She had experience at both the congressional and executive levels, plus she was the first lady for 8 years to boot. That was the argument my girlfriend gave me every time we talked about it and I respected it. But that message got lost when you dug too deep. There were a lot of mistakes made during her time as senator and secretary of state and so they never pressed on the experience platform much. It hurt her quite a bit in the long run.

You're in a bubble. No worries, we all are, I think New York Times had that "Clinton win probability" meter at >90% for many many months. It slipped to >80% or so on election day.

I've come to realize that all their statistics foo is just peddled propaganda in opaque packaging. Utterly worthless.

Yeah, I had a lot of faith in that opaque package (more specifically 538's than the NYT, and at least he was "only" giving Clinton a 73% chance) and I'm left wondering why. Even if Nate's model was right and we just landed in the 27% side of things... what good would faith in the model do me in the end?

all of that was to shut out Dem turnout, none of that was why he got votes

You never heard him say "build a wall"?

Fair enough, you got me there.

> Hillary focused her entire campaign on why people should stop Trump, at the expense of talking about why she should be president.

I couldn't disagree more. This campaign was all about emotion, not rationality. Apparently facts don't matter and that's very hard to deal with.

There are emotional and rational ways to make any particular argument. She just chose to focus on arguments that only her staffers care about, rather than appealing to the (obviously) very real populist energy and anger.

Facts do matter, and I think it's disingenuous to really argue that they don't, even to the American electorate. I think the overriding truth is that politics is about engagement, and it's a battle - just because you have the 'right' ideas doesn't mean you will win. You need to engage, encourage, and motivate people to vote for you - which the Clinton campaign could not do.

> Facts do matter

Obviously. I think the point being made though is that they seem to matter less than many people thought. Trump ran a campaign that was light on facts, and in many cases used misinformation in lieu of facts. The fact that this is less important than what, if it's true, amounts to a very slight level of corruption in the other candidate (I'm unsure why I should have considered the idea that money given to a charity would get you semi-favorable treatment with regard to an audience as the horrible thing it was presented as) is something I find upsetting.

I understand that people are upset with their governance, but the only thing that comes to mind when I think of this situation is "to cut off your nose to spite your face."

>"money given to a charity"

1. money given to her charity

2. charity or "charity"? - valid question, given large percentage of its income is spent on overhead

> 1. money given to her charity

So? It's not like she's taking it out to buy herself houses and cars? At most, I think you could make a case that she's used the profile of the charity to boost her political career. If that's the case, and the charity gets income that it spends on worthy causes and she gets clout, well that's not the best outcome, but it's sure far from the worst.

> 2. charity or "charity"? - valid question, given large percentage of its income is spent on overhead

I'm fairly sure this has been thoroughly debunked. The amount of income to that charity that goes to overhead is average by all accounts I've seen that are reputable[1]. I've looked, because this has come up before. If you have a source that says otherwise that is not some random blog that references some other random blog[2], I would be happy to read it.

1: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/...

2: I'm way too tired of debunking what people consider a valid source once they've decided that all the mainstream media is biased and untrustworthy. It's hard to tell whether in some cases the errors are due to incompetence, negligence or with purpose. Undoubtedly a useful feature to some.

I realise it's probably too late to correct facts, and it doesn't seem to matter much anyway, but a large percentage of the charity donations did not go on overhead. They operation was very highly rated by charity watchdogs.

The soundbite you often hear is about X% spent on salaries and only Y% donated to charity. Which is true, but misleading because the Foundation actually pays people to administer medicine. It's not the type of charity that just hands the money to other groups.

How do you figure 2. ? The foundation's 990 and audited financials[1] show ~90% of FY2104 revenues ($217mm) going to program services, with the majority of that ($143mm) going to provide healthcare overseas via [2], and the rest disbursed over a collection of other programs.

[1]: https://www.clintonfoundation.org/sites/default/files/clinto... [2]: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org

> Facts do matter, and I think it's disingenuous to really argue that they don't, even to the American electorate.

Facts matter, but emotion matters more. Foe example, some Trump supporters believe that parts of the US are now governed by Sharia law. The fact is wrong, but the underlying fear and racism is real and so much more powerful. The fact doesn't really matter.

Contrast her making her candidacy a Feminist (and by absurd extrapolation LGBTQ and diversity) issue with Obama's campaign. Yes, everybody felt good about having elected a black president when it was over but he didn't offer "black cards" for download on his website and show grandiose self-promoting videos about the Black Man's Struggle.

A large part of Hillary's campaign (both officially and via her supporters on social media) was actively shaming people into voting for "the woman" instead of "the bigot". Unsurprisingly that seems to have backfired, leaving many liberals flabbergasted how "Women for Trump" was ever a thing.

I would have been upset with either candidate winning but the entire candidacy showed the worst side of American election cycles: mudslinging, character assassination and trying to convince everyone the other guy is literally the devil. Trump's accusations of Clinton being "a liar" and "a criminal" (IOW a typical career politician) were pretty harmless compared to the hyperbole (deserved or not) hauled at him.

Agreed. Ideas are only as strong as the arguments defending them, and the problem with feminism as identity politics is that it takes a bunch of unconnected ideas and packages them in such a way that if you attack the ideas then you're attacking women. This makes it so that bad ideas and bad arguments don't get weeded out and just keep getting repeated.

For whatever barriers Clinton faced due to her gender, she also wasn't held accountable early enough for a lot of legitimately bad things that she's done, which came back to hurt her in the end.

> Trump's accusations of Clinton being "a liar" and "a criminal" (IOW a typical career politician) were pretty harmless compared to the hyperbole (deserved or not) hauled at him

I'm sorry but that makes no sense to me. Now maybe it's my liberal tendencies talking but the things that have come out of his mouth are flat out dangerous for a person who has that much power (now). Not much of it was hyperbole because it didn't have to be. He was already after foreigners, women, "the washington elite", the internet etc. before any of the media got involved. He was addicted to the cycle coverage but he still said all of those things and you can't wish that away.

In politics, as in real life, it is important to judge people on what they do not what they say.

While Clinton mastered the "experienced, competent" persona, what she actually did was mostly driven by her ambition to become the first female president.

Trump, who has been accused of being a bigot, has always been very liberal towards LGBT (see his interview for Rolling Stone from a few years ago), while Hillary had been strongly against gay marriage until it became very clear public opinion changed in favor of it.

How can one be liberal towards LGBT folks while picking Pence as a running mate?

I can see him being apathetic towards them: if they get married, that's not my problem, but if they get "conversion therapy," that's also not my problem.

Now, I'm not sure that bigotry is the right word for that. But it is something at least as monstrous.

(Also, as a tangent: let's please not confuse gay marriage with "LGBT" as a whole. Trump has come down firmly on the evangelicals' side about trans people and bathrooms. If we mean "LGB" or "gay marriage", we should say what we mean.)

Yes, Pence's position is unfortunate, but he was brought in to please the religious supporters.

I believe Trump's administration will focus on pressing trade/economics and foreign policy issues, not bathroom identification issues, which affect 0.3% of the population.

To people disappointed with his victory, the consoling fact should be that Trump is not a religious nut. Yes, he said things about Supreme Court/abortion - as a Republican, you have to, to win the primaries.

Well, one would have hoped that the federal government would have stepped in and voided the laws being made by religious nuts at the state/local level. Obama was trying to do that. It seems exceedingly unlikely that Trump will continue trying to do that.

Also, while these issues directly affect 0.3% of the population, it is a subset of the 99.7% of the population that's calling for these bills. Perhaps enough of a subset that he'll continue wanting to please the religious supporters.

> How can one be liberal towards LGBT folks while picking Pence as a running mate?

Compromise.

Does no one remember when Obama was against and would not support gay marriage?

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/09/11623172-the...

Yes, I remember that. I would not have called 2004 Obama liberal on LGBT issues.

Also, and maybe I'm missing something because I'm not personally affected by this, but I think there's quite a difference between telling two adults they can't get married, and telling a child that they're going to be miserable and flawed their whole life if they don't figure out how to be straight, and we'll give you electric shocks to condition you out of being gay.

Or between telling two adults they can't get married, and telling an adult they can't use the bathroom. (Which is the effective result of the bathroom bills: a trans person is legally unwelcome in one restroom and socially unwelcome, to the point of causing legal trouble until a judge looks at their birth certificate, in another.) I would much prefer never to be able to get legally married than never to be able to use a public restroom.

There are plenty of anti-gay-marriage people, even evangelicals, who don't support "conversion therapy" and who don't believe that government should be regulating which bathroom you're using. I would be very willing to call someone liberal on LGBT issues despite picking, say, Obama of 2004 as their running mate.

I'm not defending either candidate here. I have no skin in this game (and besides, it's all decided now anyway).

But I've never before seen a candidate -- and especially that candidate's supporters -- be so viciously attacked as Trump was in this election campaign. I know certain liberal groups think "tone policing" is fallacious but I don't agree with this and neither do half of the American voters apparently (please excuse the tired phrase).

Throughout this campaign I've seen HRC supporters lump in abstainees and third party voters with Trump supporters in a way that only reminds me of George W Bush's "with us or against us" rhetoric. I've seen HRC supporters sever ties with family members who announced they would vote for Trump. I've seen them shame and ridicule anyone saying they would do anything other than vote for HRC. I've even seen them call for boycotts of companies run by alleged Trump supporters.

It's not that Trump isn't a disagreeable character, its that he has been singled out and denounced with every imaginable slur and every single accusation levelled at him was taken at face value.

I know this is not solely the work of Clinton's campaign and that the election unfortunately coincided with the BLM movement, various Islamist attacks in the West (including the massacre in Orlando) and the peak of SJW conflicts at American universities but this was a despicable crapshoot and you know it.

If a family member said the things Trump has said, our relationship would be very strained.

If a company's CEO or owner said the things Trump has said, I would call for boycotting the company until that person no longer ran it.

That has nothing to do with the Democratic party, nor his running for president (I'm not even allowed to vote): It's because Trump's ideas are today's equivalent to being opposed to interracial marriage back then.

I think the personal attacks on Clinton were far, far worse: 'crooked Hillary', 'such a nasty woman', 'lock her up' (or 'hang that bitch' from the Trump supporters) without any due process, attacking her for her husbands infidelities, Comey sends an ambiguously worded letter to congress and it becomes 'she will surely be prosecuted', she is 'rigging the election',...

Absolutely agree here

What I find truly amazing is how people say "RIP Democracy" (not all of them), when it were the people of the US who elected Trump, didn't they?

Also that the media is totally disconnected with the ground reality, I know it is in my country, it is more in the US apparently.

Not to specifically defend the people you mentioned, but democracy really is twisted that way.

People associate "democracy" with "fairness". With "representation". They associate it with "everybody's voice is heard". When 40+% of the people vote for something, and that something doesn't come through, that's 40+% of the voices being ignored. Don't disregard those simply because they didn't break the 51% barrier.

We can also agree that Trump played the entire electorate. He strategically chose to run as republican, he played the media like puppets to have a free platform to shout from, etc. Those things don't feel fair.

In fact, the entire election really seemed to be a pissing context at times. People also associate democracy with "elevated discourse" and I don't think anyone can claim this happened.

And of course, the US democratic system is really poor compared to other countries (France has one of the best, by comparison: two round voting and none of that electoral college nonsense). But that's another topic.

To me, this is the advantage of a Republic (which is what the US federal gov't really is). It can have some of the same issues of the tyranny of the majority, but ultimately you have a human being in charge who needs to listen to what others say. If we simply voted on every issue at hand it would quickly devolve into emotional appeals for everything, rather than letting a representative listen to expert opinion on the consequences of a decision.

If we simply voted on every issue at hand it would quickly devolve into emotional appeals for everything

This brings to mind California and San Francisco's penchant for referendums.

I like your remarks; could I extend them?

If you can run a Republic with little hatred and division, a nifty opportunity opens up if the nomination process proposes wise and respectable candidates. For example I dislike Obamas ideas but I can respect the guy as someone who's not a crook and has a solid brain on his head and a bit of wisdom. So if the guy who agrees with me wins, I'm chill because we have a comfy echo chamber. If the other guy wins I'm a little bummed but I'm still chill because the have a who's wrong about some things, but wise enough to keep us out of complete disaster.

That's the tragedy of not running Bernie. He's respectable and wise and no crook. I voted for Trump and I'm glad he won, but if Bernie won, I'd be chill enough till next time.

Sort of like mate selection, where kids childishly try to find an appropriate gender photocopy of themselves, whereas once you're over a certain age, its more important to find a mate who's wise. Its OK if my wife likes my hobbies when we were young, but now that we're old its OK if she doesn't, because we respect each other and think each other are wise enough that it'll be OK.

This time around I don't think the right could trust Hillary so it was win at all costs. Meanwhile we "have to" social signal the opposite, but the left pretty much trusts Trump because lets face it, if you think he's an idiot or lunatic, make sure you mention your billion dollar self made net worth first to even qualify... lets face it, a guy who's worked successfully side by side with corporations and banks and unions and politicians for decades resulting in a billion bucks can certainly navigate a giant complex country pretty darn well; he's proven over a couple decades that he's wise enough that its gonna be OK, even if you disagree with everything he believes in and everything he's ever said. So I simply don't think the left wanted it as bad as the right.

It fundamentally comes down to you've got one candidate that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to New York, which is pretty darn cool, and another that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Benghazi, ... so obviously one side is a little more motivated than the other.

First of all, how do you know his net worth? Are you taking his word for it? He said that his net worth fluctuates “with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings” [1]. Any accountant will tell you that a person's net worth does not fluctuate with the feelings of that person.

Unfortunately, we will probably never know, because he hasn't released his tax returns (which would at least have given us a partial picture).

The Economist tried to compare his financial performance with the S&P 500 [2] and is not impressed: on the longest timeframe (since 1986) he grossly underperforms the S&P 500.

Then there is the question of how he got his money. He seems to have left a long string of investors, banks, suppliers and partners that he essentially conned [3]. In the latter part of his carreer no American bank wanted to do business with him anymore (one of the reasons he switched to licensing his name instead of developing projects himself).

Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet's partner at Berkshire Hathaway, a staunch republican and a man of brilliant insights who knows a thing or two about business (he made his fortune by evaluating companies and their management) says this about Trump [4]: "Do I consider Donald Trump an ideal decision maker or manager of anything? And the answer is no. The last person almost I'd want as the president of the US".

If you voted for this man because of his business acumen, I'm afraid you are the latest in a long line of people he successfully conned.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2016/03/31/how-dona...

[2] http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21693230-enigma-...

[3] http://www.newsweek.com/2016/08/12/donald-trumps-business-fa...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGLMnTzQIh8

You are grossly misrepresenting the facts and policies of both candidates. It's hard to take any of the rest of your post seriously when it closes with that paragraph.

This comment started off well and went off the rails pretty quickly. My main point is that whoever wins regardless of your party affiliation, there's a real person in charge and we aren't subject to the will of the majority.

Didn't Hillary actually actually win more votes by number but the constituencies that Trump won were more heavily weighted, or something like that?

Or am I just misunderstanding the US vote completely?

Yep. For the most part, each state is winner-take-all. Hillary earned extra votes in states like California that would have already went to her.

  People associate "democracy" with "fairness". With 
  "representation". They associate it with "everybody's 
  voice is heard".

Which is really a matter of perspective. The people claiming that "democracy is dead" would be crowing about the "power of the people" if they were in the 51% and not the 49%.

Fairness doesn't mean "I get my way". And unfortunately, it's binary. Your candidate wins or loses. A loss feels like being ignored, not representation of your 49%.

> And unfortunately, it's binary.

That's a feature of specific choices about the electoral system and system for government. One'such which are not universal among modern democracies and which empirically lead to lower satisfaction with government and less effectively representative government.

To which we have to look at ourselves. We continue to set ourselves up for these binary choices. Where are the moderates that appeal to 80% of the population, not 40% at each extreme?

I think it's more, "democracy is broken in America", and the victors are in a position to hasten its demise.

> RIP Democracy

Part of this is due to the fact, I think, that Hillary won the popular vote. In fact, the Dems have won the popular vote 3 elections in a row, and 4 of the last 5. But they only have Obama's 2 terms to show for it.

My guess is that is where some of the "broken democracy" language comes from.

A difference of 0.2% (around 250k votes) in popular vote is not conclusive.

If USA chose the president by popular vote, the campaigns would have been run differently, and some people especially in "sure" states could have had different voting behavior.

I do agree that the US Electoral College system feels obsolete and should be modernized.

> "RIP Democracy"

Maybe they don't think Trump is going to leave office in eight years.

Well, let's not forget that Hillary won the popular vote and lost the electoral college. More Americans wanted Hillary than Trump. And given all the flaws with the electoral college that are well documented (and the overwhelming majority of Americans that want to abolish the system), it's hard not to feel slighted. Especially when this happened before in 2000 and it appears it will continue to happen.

Democracy is not just voting (which the US is doing badly at, given it's system).

It's also respect for the rule of law (Rechtsstaat), democratic processes, democratic institutions, respect for minorities, women, separation of church and state, accepting dissent, and a pluralism of opinions.

Trump is not very good at these.

And the voting itself may become an issue in itself - now with total control by Republicans, they can increase the voter suppression to keep old white men in power for a couple more decades.

The "RIP Democracy" bit is maybe a bit dramatic, but the concern for the already weak democracy is very real.

I totally agree with your point of view.

This election results, the way I see it, is a big middle finger to the political establishment. Again, this has happened in my own country's capital citiy's election, an outsider won majority. If he does anything +ve is not the question, politicians need to stop acting as the elite, that's the underlying problem.

If the majority of your electorate allow themselves to be manipulated by a blatant demagogue; whose stated policy goals are clearly ruinous; who blatantly disrespects women, veterans, and non-whites; and who not-so-subtley advocates violence against his political opponents...

...then yes, your democracy might as well be dead.

Trump didn't win a majority of the votes. Or even a plurality.

> What I find truly amazing is how people say "RIP Democracy" (not all of them), when it were the people of the US who elected Trump, didn't they?

The plurality winner of the popular vote was Hillary Clinton; Trump's victory is directly dependent on the ways America's Presidential election system defies democracy.

> This campaign was all about emotion, not rationality.

Keep thinking that and you'll lose the next election as well. Amongst Trump supporters I know it was about jobs, the economy, the wars and a feeling that politicians no longer represented them.

I have no doubt there are some Trump supporters who are racist and sexist, but that doesn't win you the middle swing states and the rust belt (especially those states that voted Obama but went against Clinton)

> Amongst Trump supporters I know it was about jobs, the economy

Aren't unemployment and the economy doing better now than 8 years ago? My impression is Trump just fueled the emotion of pessimism (things are awful, they were great before), without neither the facts to back it (because he didn't care) nor a plan beyond the old "the more you cut taxes, the better the economy".

Even for the people that think the economy is important enough that the racism and sexism should be ignored, that's still playing to their emotion.

labor force participation rates are still down. Unemployment can be a misleading statistic.

Jobs are also of a lower quality / less secure than in the past.

> Keep thinking that and you'll lose the next election as well.

I think he probably will win a second term, if he wants to.

> Hillary focused her entire campaign on why people should stop Trump

Until now I thought that wasn't a bad strategy against Trump as he had said and done so many repulsive things far far beyond what I would of thought the voting population would of tolerated.

For example, "grabbing women by the p*y" I would of thought would have alienated the entire female voting population.

For some reason, some women voters seemed to of tolerated this. It should of been easy win for Hilary.

But consider, "got 'em by the balls" is a commonly used expression. If Hillary had said that she had got Col Ghaddafi "by the balls" no-one would have batted an eyelid. It certainly would not have alienated the entire male voting population. The double standard meant that focussing on this one line, undermined Hillary's campaign.

"Got 'em by the balls" is a colloquialism and if Clinton were to use it, she wouldn't be using it in the same sexual context of Trump's comments.

If you're unfamiliar with the context, Trump was actually talking about grabbing women.

This is a false equivalence- Hillary would have to say that she wanted to "walk up to ghaddafi and open-hand grab his testicles" for this to be a proper analogy.

Worse than that, she would have had to say that she did walk up to ghaddafi and open-hand grab his testicles.

And that she did it so that she could enjoy the feeling of those balls without care for gadhaffi's feelings -- and replace gadhaffi with "any man, including those for whom subjugation is unlikely to be generally seen as deserved"

If only mental gymnastics was an Olympic sport...

The objectionable thing about the "grab them by the pussy" tape is NOT that Trump dared to use the word "pussy" in a private conversation that ended up being recorded.

The objectionable thing is that it indicates that Trump has, on multiple occasions, grabbed women's genitalia without their consent, purely because he's a celebrity and nobody stops him.

If Hillary had said that she had gotten Col. Ghaddafi "by the balls", I agree that nobody would have batted an eyelid because everybody would have understood that she was not discussing a situation in which she habitually sexually assaulted men and was able to get away with it because she was the Secretary of State.

Yeah, this is a lot of why I am rejecting the easy answers. John Edwards was one of the most populist Democratic candidates we've seen in a while, and his political career ended because he had an affair. I can't really blame anyone for thinking that Trump's sexual misadventures would be a serious weakness.

I think this analysis is incorrect. Edwards' affair was a problem because it told people he wasn't a trustworthy or professional guy. He brought his mistress along on the campaign trail. Meanwhile he depicted himself as a standup guy. It outed him as a phony with bad judgement.

I thought Michael Moore's reasons were pretty on point: http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were indeed critical to the election, though it was by a hair that Trump won.

The liberal vote was not very enthusiastic, whereas Trump pulled in people that were die-hard fans.

Wow, this is eerily prescient and the best explanation I've seen so far of the Trump phenomenon. Great read for someone like me who like so many others, didn't know a single person voting for Trump.

> Hillary focused her entire campaign on why people should stop Trump

I don't believe that. It might be what you saw but that's because the media wouldn't cover anything substantive. She tried; it just got drowned out by all the smears (including those against Trump) and horse-race coverage.

On the other hand, Trump focused his campaign on populist anger against Clinton, which seems very similar to making the case against someone else. "The woman, Hillary, it would be a disaster if she was elected and I can save you from her."

I'm not convinced by this argument.

That was part of his argument. He also pushed immigration and anti-trade.

Primary source: Clinton's stump speech. See http://www.npr.org/2016/09/15/493924325/inside-hillary-clint...

She definitely attacks Trump. She also calls for:

  * investing in infrastructure
  * solar energy
  * expanding broadband access
  * more technical education, with the strong implication that there are other reasonable paths beside the elite four year college path
  * moratorium on student debt
  * public health funding

It's not accurate to say she didn't talk about why she should be president.

I have heard something on the radio that rigs true: The Democrats used to be party for blue collar workers but they have totally abandoned them. At least Trump said the right things.

I agree that Clinton never made a case for electing her other than being there for some reason. In general, the Republicans have the courage to take clear positions no matter right or wrong. Whereas the Democrats and especially Clinton are super wishy-washy.

In what way has the Democratic Party abandoned blue collar workers? By supporting labor unions? By supporting labor laws? By supporting anti-discrimination laws?

I agree with you that the Democratic Party is horrible at communicating with voters.

>turnout

"Obama got 65.9m votes in '12, Romney 60.9m. Clinton has 59.3m, Trump 59.1m. R vote didn't go up; Dem vote went down. 6.6m missing votes."

https://twitter.com/MaxBoot/status/796378238306160641

We don't have final counts yet - these numbers will increase. Voter turnout this election was high.

I sat out as a Sanders supporter. I am sure I am not alone.

EDIT:

1. I viewed Sanders support of Clinton as forced/coerced, as in "We let you compete in the Democratic primary, now you owe us". EDIT 2: By agreeing to support Clinton, she adopted some of his left leaning policies (in show only though, such as not supporting fracking or the TPP).

2. Of course I voted down ballot.

EDIT 3: Getting really tired of these HN throttling limits.

A lot of my friends did the same.

Did you at least vote down-ballot?

How did you view Sander's support of Hillary?

After Hillary became the Democratic candidate, what was Sander's incentive for doing endorsing and continuing to support Hillary? What leverage would force/coerce him? He had at least two other options: remain silent, or endorse Trump.

Well, the WikiLeaks revealed they had some sort of "agreement" with leverage although I don't know exactly what it was.

This disparity in numbers is the most salient point about this election, period.

I'm quite sure every campaign speech would disagree with you.

But that's not what gets coverage.

The one where Hillary spoke about cartoon frogs?

With how close it was it's disingenuous to look for reasons why she lost. People simply didn't think the entire rural population would vote enmasse and they underestimated the size of that voting block. Full stop.

>> ... and shaming Bernie/Stein supporters

This ... the voting public was told over and over what to think, told what was best for us. We decided for ourselves.

The results are showing that Hillary lost, at least in large part, due to lower voter turnout, especially among liberal-leaning populations

I can't help but think of the similarity to the 2012 election where rank-and-file middle-class conservative voters were being asked to support a Republican candidate who built his fortune firing Americans and off-shoring their jobs. They didn't vote for Obama, but they sure didn't vote for Romney either.

That and we should take away the message that voter suppression efforts in states like NC worked.

I disagree with you entirely on your first point. Trump's entire campaign was based on hate and that's why he won. It was all about building the base of people who hate the other side more.

The next four years is going to be very confusing for you if you can't ask yourself objective questions about your opposition and resist the reflex to paint them as a cartoon villain.

Trump condoned crowds chanting "Hang that bitch" at his rallies. Regardless of how you feel about the usual left vs right arguments - tapping into anger in this fashion is playing with fire.

Just like he welcomed his KKK endorsement by not explicitly "disavowing" it?

If you ever watched a rally he'd talk about Hillary 10% of the time. The rest was about America and his plans.

OTOH Hillary rallies were 90% Trump bashing distributed among different groups. - now all women!! - now all hispanics! - now [insert group name here]

You can't compare how both candidates ran their campaigns and it's hard to argue that HRC main campaign points were: 1. I'm a woman. 2. I'm not Trump.

This is very similar to what happened in the UK with Brexit; the remain campaign focused their arguments on the negatives / fear of leaving rather than the positives of being part of the EU.

It's not entirely true. During the previous elections in France, people voted against Sarkozy, they did not vote for François Hollande.

I agree. Combine that with her pretty much saying what she thinks people want to hear, and no real history of standing for anything, she really sucked as a candidate.

I also believe that the Dems suppressed Bernie in order to have Hillary as their nominee. I don't think Trump had a chance against Bernie. I am hopeful that this will be a blow to the 2 party system where we're forced to vote for lesser evil.

This is true, she didn't make a strong positive case for what her policies would look like. And if she did then she didn't spend her time effectively trying to convey this. (can't actually remember even a single policy of hers except for easier abortions and confrontation with Russia over Syria)

But what I feel is problematic is that Trump was painted as some kind of Hitler, which is ludicrous if you spent a few hours watching some of his rallies. He says things he shouldn't say, and some might say he's an a-hole, but he certainly doesn't come across as a Hitler, a fascist or a Nazi.

Why is it so problematic for everyone? It increases the likelihood of violence, not just against Trump and his family, but against everyone showing public support for him.

In some way not only the people engaging in violence are to blame, but also the media and the campaigns, because when you somehow convince a large chunk of the population that a candidate is literally like Hitler then many will use violence believing it's justified in order to prevent a new Holocaust.

Also the Hitler comparison is used today too often. I believe we currently have 4 Hitlers according to the political establishment: Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Duterte

I remember the leaks mentioned something about reinforcing the "Trump = Hitler" idea.

This was all manufactured by the DNC and it didn't work. I wouldn't be surprised if they're currently planning ways to disrupt Trumps inauguration or other events during the next 4 years to see if he snaps and they can use that as ammo for the next election.

At the end of the day it's politics and playing dirty is expected but now that one side has been exposed it's hard to brush it off thinking everybody does it.

I agree that it is a normal (but nasty) part of politics to paint an unfavourable picture of an opponent (both candidates did that), but inciting violence is where it goes too far for me.

I imagine how many people in the US are now fearing for their lives because the DNC made them believe that Trump will probably build forced labour camps. And how many of them are not just frightened but even read to use violence.

When I check my Facebook newsfeed it's full of posts from friends who seem to be very afraid about what has happened.

If something terrible happens then it might be that the DNC has created the illusion which justified the violence.

He says things he shouldn't say, and some might say he's an a-hole

I voted for Obama in previous elections. But I also remember how he'd said denigrating things about people who "cling to guns or religion." I suspect people voted for Trump because they thought he didn't put on one face for one public and put on another one for a different public. (Which I doubt is the reality.)

Our media "elites" aren't elites anymore, and they're very out of touch with walk of life lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Denigration and painting with a broad brush are now accepted as the "reality" of politics, the news media, and social media. The "savvy" line to to accept and skirt such things. This is done by both the right and the left.

I believe we currently have 4 Hitlers according to the political establishment: Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Duterte

Fox News made various comparisons of Obama to Hitler.

In a book from the 90's, Eric Drexler proposed that a networked world would save society and make it easier to disseminate the truth. In 2016, one finds that instead the internet has given the loudest voices to the coarsest, most hateful, and stupidest among us. (And by this, I don't mean Trump, but rather online activists on both the right and left.)

I fully agree, though I didn't know that Fox News compared Obama to Hitler (I'm in the EU so I don't watch US TV) - which is equally unacceptable.

But I'm a more of an optimist regarding the Internet and the availability of platforms to share information and express views.

While it is certainly true that some of the loudest voices are indeed the most hateful (Comments on HRC's and DJT's Twitter posts were unbelievable vicious) I also see that there is organically dissent organising on all kinds of issues which we didn't have to such a degree in the pre Internet era.

Of course dissenters also existed before the Internet, but it was much harder to reach an audience. And not all dissent is just hateful and stupid, a lot is legitimate.

It's often the stuff that generates outrage that gets viral traction.

Another example of Godwin's Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

I upvoted (or rather, anti-downvoted) your comment because (even though it does seem you could use a better historical perspective on things) it was undoubtedly sincere and civil.

But what I feel is problematic is that Trump was painted as some kind of Hitler, which is ludicrous if you spent a few hours watching some of his rallies.

The thing about Trump is that he's better classified as a "proto-" or "quasi-fascist", rather than anything of the old school, early 20th-century sort. For exactly the reasons you describe -- Middle America in 2016 doesn't particularly have an appetite for jackboots or Nuremberg-style rallies, and most likely never will.

But blatant anti-intellectualism, incessant emotionalism, button-pushing, and finger-pointing, combined with a healthy dose of naked bigotry and not-so-subtly implied threats of violence? "You betcha". Those are the seeds of fascist and authoritarian thinking. And they are at the very heart and core of what Trump and his people are about.

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