I think the election proved the opposite - that if you can manipulate headlines, you can suppress voters from even coming out.
If you look past all of the fake news, twitter faux pas, etc., I think that FBI Director Comey's manipulation in the last week really did do a number on the voter base, and it's disappointing that nobody is enforcing the Hatch act.
When was the last time you spoke to people in towns of less than 10k people about their most serious issues?
It's so odd to me that Silicon Valley simply can't comprehend that their values aren't shared by the rest of the country. Literally the only explanation they can produce to explain Trump votes is that everyone must have been brainwashed by Facebook news (despite the fact that millions of voters probably don't even have social media).
There was a time when democrats represented the blue collar working class -- who have watched helplessly as their jobs and security has been outsourced to china and Mexico. Now it's Trump who represents their values and clearly they're not alone.
I grew up in an unincorporated town in WI, so to answer your accusatory question: Sunday was the last time I talked to people in a town <10k.
I'm also not sure what "silicon valley sentiment" has to do with wanting enforcement of the Hatch act either. The idea that rural white america is a victim and needs protecting is one of those being spread by the alt-right, and it's wrong to think it justifies manipulating the election.
>Have you tried to start a business before? Are you familiar with the debilitating beauracracy and taxes associated with running a small business (15-50 people) that doesn't take venture capital funding? Nope. I'm a computer engineer and everyone should care about what I care about or they're brainwashed.
Yes. Yes. And that last remark is uncalled for, since I'm not a computer engineer or think that.
What matters more is we don't create an environment where a facist government can thrive.
I am not calling Trump a facist but hand-waving away racist policies like deporting all Mexicans (Trump didn't say that, but it was taken that way) or disallowing all Muslims (again, Trump didn't say that but it was taken that way) as "SJW" is irresponsible.
I think we can have a country where both can co-exist. Maybe people need to realize they can't work 35-hour weeks at "the factory" anymore. Those jobs are long gone.
That sucks and we need to figure out how to get those people back to work but this whole "bringing back the jobs" is complete political BS.
>I am not calling Trump a facist but hand-waving away racist policies like deporting all Mexicans (Trump didn't say that, but it was taken that way) or disallowing all Muslims (again, Trump didn't say that but it was taken that way) as "SJW" is irresponsible.
It was taken that way by people opposed to him or trying to cut him down. I've never heard a supporter represent those as his positions, but rather constantly try to accurately represent what was said. If people decide to create absurd straw men, what responsibility do his supporters have to address them? And how does the wildly inaccurate view of his opponents make him or his supporters irresponsible?
A system where a fascist government can thrive is one wherein the press is in collusion with the government, and where people prop up ideological narratives in lieu of the truth. When we constantly push to dehumanize our opponents and their supporters, we start taking the first small steps down the ideological road that leads to the horrors of totalitarian governments.
Yeah, I agree with like 99% of what you are saying. All of that is right.
>(From my parent comment) But in the end, what matters more: "some democrat love-relationship with LGBT, environmental stuffs, SJWs, or whatever" -or- "food on your plate, and a place to live in with your family"?
What I disagree with is that we have to decide between denigrating others and fixing the economy. We can have both and it is irresponsible to pretend like we have to choose.
I am just hoping Trump and Senate Republicans understand that. But my guess is that they'll throw LGBT people under the bus when they need a distraction, which every politician eventually needs.
Politicians aren't dumb, their entire livelihood is dependent on knowing how to cater to their base.
(Sorry, I feel like my thoughts are becoming a little disjointed from what we are talking about. I buy into like 95% of what Trump supports but I don't buy we need to tear down 'SJW' so the economy can thrive, it is completely illogical to me)
I'm not sure I understand where the Trump is against gays things comes from. He's probably the most pro LGBT Republican candidate in the history of the country, and arguably has a better track record than Clinton.
Personally, I think political correctness is a problem, but that seems like a conversation for another time.
I would definitely agree with the political correctness comment.
I think the big issue with Trump isn't that he is anti-LGBT (He is actually quite LGBT friendly... the same cannot be said for Pence though), the issue is that his campaign has signaled that it is okay to not be. It doesn't matter what you believe, you still have to be civil and respectful of others.
It doesn't matter what Trump's position is, the issue is his spoken beliefs have somehow morphed into supporting alt-right beliefs.
I feel like on the LGBT issue, you might be falling into an echo chamber trap. If you have some campaign points that support your claim, I'd be happy to hear them. Points for consideration, particularly as far as campaign messaging goes:
-He had Peter Thiel speak at the RNC
-During his speech at the RNC he talked about defending LGBT rights and said that it felt good to say that at a Republican gathering and get cheers. Think about that. He has the Republican party cheering for gays. I never thought I'd see the day.
-When asked about the bathroom row in N.C. he said he doesn't care what bathroom people use.
-He said if Caitlin Jenner visits Trump Tower, she can use any bathroom she wants.
Mike Pence is an obvious appeal to the Republican base. I think it's important to keep in mind the the VP tends to not be all that important. Unless the president dies. If you got any friends planning a Trump assassination, remind them of that :)
I'd also like to point out that there's a decent chance his stance on this isn't a contrivance (though it might be). The LGBT population isn't considered part of the Republican base, and generally they either ignore or campaign against gays. In a lot of ways, being as openly pro-gay was probably considered a risk by establishment Republicans.
Oh no, I wasn't meaning Trump himself was anti-LGBT. I was meaning that his campaign was kind of about being politically incorrect which I feel has empowered the alt-right to be more bold.
In that, because they perceive Trump as being friendly to their cause, they feel their anti-social behavior is ok. Trump seemed hesitant during the campaign to take a strong stance against alt-right / anti-social thoughts. But maybe I am wrong, I wasn't exactly an avid Trump supporter, hah.
There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with LGBT people, I actually think it needs to happen more often. There is something wrong with feeling LGBT people are wrong to exist or are 2nd class citizens.
As long as Trump stays alive and unimpeached, I am not really worried about LGBT rights. He was pretty direct in that gay marriage was settled (which brings up the whole point about how does he accept Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage but not abortion?)
I don't think you really have anything to worry about. And if by alt-right you mean white nationalists, you're talking about almost nobody. They've just gotten a shitload of attention lately because it's the media's most recent boogey man.
Like, the white nationalist gather in D.C. that has gotten so much attention consisted of 300 people: 150 attending and 150 protesting. They're nothing.
The work at the factory is working wonders for the economy of Mexico and China. Add to that, the fact that US labor laws are pretty strict and you should have a steady source of jobs right there.
I'm sorry but bringing back the jobs is not bs. How do you justify that Ford and GMC took TARP funds but they still preferred to let Detroit rot? I did not like Clinton or Trump. Bernie Sanders probably had a better platform, but socialist policies rarely do something good for the economy. But on this point, Trump is absolutely right, to the point where Ford backed down from their plans to move a factory to Mexico.
Do we really want to stagnate just for the nostalgia of the past? I see letting go of these jobs as a freedom to move onto the next evolution of work.
Maybe that is incredibly idealistic but maybe it is better to accept that maybe NAFTA and letting jobs go to foreign countries was wrong and move onto building the future.
Corporations are definitely shitty but I am hesitant to cheer on bringing back the past just for the sake of thumbing our nose at people.
Why aren't people lamenting more over the loss of agricultural jobs? We went from 33% Agricultural jobs to just 2%, thanks to automation, yet we love one form of manual labor more than the other. Even in China and other outsourced countries, manufacturing jobs are being replaced by automation.
This romancing of manufacturing jobs is a strange cultural obsession in the U.S. Maybe it's because our "American" identity is tied to working hard to producing physical things, but I digress.
Easy, back then: heavy back-braking vastly underpaid agricultural jobs with inconsistent hours were replaced on a voluntary basis by offering people higher pay in factories. Aside from agricultural employers, no complaints.
Now: we'll take that $30 per hour job you've been doing for 15-20 years thank you. Oh you need a job ? How about this 10$ per hour (with unpaid overtime and a horrible boss) burger flipping job ? No ? How about these 3 part time $8.75 per hour jobs that will require you to commute between them, at least once per day, cannot be done without a car (that your employer is not paying for) ... Better job ? You do have a masters or phd, right ? No ? Well don't expect them to even call back.
There is no romancing of manufacturing jobs, I believe that's a misunderstanding. There is a romancing of reliable, long-term, well-paying jobs. Once you get that, it's very easy to understand.
If the service economy cannot provide that, it's just not a replacement of the manufacturing jobs. The leftist/democrat point of view used to be that if the "new economic reality" can't provide that, it needs to be legislated out of existence, attacked and opposed at every turn. Now Trump is the one providing that viewpoint on the republican side.
I seem to remember that in the late 80s we had a similar push. Everyone pushed to be "little entrepreneurs" (ha!). Doing package delivery. Cold calling sales. Pyramid schemes. It was legislated out of existence, rightfully.
And yes, I get it. This is hacker news. "Legislated out of existence, attacked and opposed at every turn", we're taking about airbnb, uber, sprig, delivery hero, ... and by extension about google, yahoo, facebook, etc ... You really don't want those companies opposed, or god help us, destroyed, for obvious reasons. You don't get why that people feel that needs to happen, because none of your friends are confronted with reality like this, and there aren't any family members providing a perspective of what manufacturing brings. I just hope I can bring some more viewpoints in the picture here.
Except nobody is talking about the bringing the reliable, long term service jobs back to the U.S. Manufacturing is only 11% of our jobs, Agriculture 2%, yet manufacturing is what is being romanced.
Nobody wants to be out in the summer heat, with the sun blazing down. And then, the work itself is back-breaking hard work. And it never paid as well as the industrial and manufacturing jobs paid.
And you're also competing (in the South) with temp immigrants at low low wages, because those wages are good compared to Mexico.
Again, look at countries that do keep their manufacturing jobs. So maybe you think China and Mexico are backwards countries, so let me put it this way then. Look at what Germany and Japan are still doing.
Service jobs are mostly waiting tables, generously interpreted (e.g. from in an Actual restaurant, in a bar, in McDonalds up to maybe stacking shelves).
Small towns of 10k? What about the city of hundred thousands? Or the city of millions? Off the top of your head, would you mind speculating as to what % of America lives in cities or urban environments?
Are we forgetting that small states and small districts generally get an unjust magnitude of political power? That the gerrymandering game of the last 30 years have favored these small states with small districts? Are all American lives equal or do those who live in cities matter less? The answer is yes. American lives are equal, and those who live in cities are worth less.
Trump did not win the populist victory. Hillary Clinton did. This is twice in recent memory that the majority of the United States was overruled by the minority.
As people criticize Hillary Clinton for arrogantly not visiting states and cities she thought were victories, do people in those states not realize that they get an unjust magnitude of power and influence every time election season rolls around? And that big cities and states basically get zero attention?
And why? Is it because big states like California or Texas are unworthy? Yes, thanks to the structure of American politics and districting. The Texan economy is doing great by the way.
Or did you think that Trump is a populist candidate? So popular that he didn't win the popular vote? Do you believe that Trump will ever win the popular vote?
How long should American voters remember that they were twice denied by minority voices? For how many years ought they bear this stain in their trust in government legitimacy?
>small states and small districts generally get an unjust magnitude of political power
The electoral college exists for a reason: precisely to protect the interests of the minority of people who don't live in cities from the whims of those who do. I live in Maine and we recently passed a citizen referendum for a large minimum wage increase in the state. This is almost entirely because of the people in a few population centers. These places will be able to absorb that hike moderately well, but the rural parts of the state are going to get crushed by it, and they're already the poorest parts of the state. It should have been a city ordinance, but was not.
>Trump did not win the populist victory. Hillary Clinton did.
Both campaigns were strategized around the existence of the electoral college. Winning the popular vote is merely an artifact of the system in place, but holds no real meaning. There's little reason to assume that were the popular vote what actually decided the election that the result of the election would have been different, as the strategies employed by both campaigns would have been different.
>protect the interests of the minority of people who don't live in cities from the whims of those who do
This is a straw man that is commonly made by advocates of the EC. The top 50 cities in the U.S. only account for 15% of the total population, so it's a nonexistent problem.
Yeah, I actually mispoke. the EC is to balance the larger more powerful states against the interests of the smaller ones. It is a compromise that was necessary to fashion the union in the first place. The reason it's not obvious is because of the federal government growing far beyond what it was intended to be.
Yes, both campaigns were strategized around the existence of the electoral college, but that's tweaking at the margins. It doesn't explain a vote difference in the millions.
The main reason for the difference in millions isn't even electoral college per se, it's the fact that most (all but 2) states allocate all their electors to whoever gets more votes in that state. In essence, every state throws all its minority votes away. If you think of it in terms of vote suppression (which, frankly, it is), it's one of such epic proportions that it dwarfs everything else, including redistricting, voter ID laws etc.
I mean, think about it. In California, 33% of residents voted for Trump this year - and those votes didn't count in any sensible way. In Texas, 43% of residents voted for Clinton this year - and those votes didn't count, either!
>This idea that there is impact from republicans not voting isn't true
Which is supported by what evidence?
There are tons of people that don't vote in any given election. Everyone has their reasons, and I'm sure apathy is the leading one, but it's crazy to suggest some portion of them don't vote because they live in a state that won't flip anyway. If you a Republican in California or a Democrat in Kansas, you don't really expect your vote to count.
Post election analysis. The Republicans came out and voted at the same levels as the last election, the Democrats did not. This is why the popular vote difference is exasperated, because the candidate with the most popular vote, by millions, had less of a turnout.
You seem to be missing my point. In any election, some large portion of the population doesn't vote at all. At least some of them are refraining because they know their state is a foregone conclusion.
And you're missing my point that your making broad generalizations about every election is pointless - that the difference between this election and other elections is what matters.
>This is twice in recent memory that the majority of the United States was overruled by the minority.
Which means nothing because they were not playing a popular vote contest. We will never know who would have won, on that day, in a pure popular vote contest.
Winning the popular vote and losing the contest means you miscalculated, and misprovisioned your campaign resources, focusing too heavily on areas you already won.
The problem is that this hasn't been a problem since the late 1800s. It's only in the last few elections that the combination of people moving to cities, polarization of most states, and capping the house have created a situation where you can actually lose the popular vote and still win the presidency (it's always been possible, but it didn't happen for over 100 years for good reason).
It also exists to give slave states power and to make the choice of president up to the electors but we don't use it for either of those purposes nowadays.
Plus, the number of representatives has been capped since the early 1900s. That serves to take things further away from even.
People who live in cities aren't real americans. They are the white collar elite. THey don't deserve votes worth as much as those hard working, blue collar gents in the Heartland of America.
IMO, Democrats are STILL speaking to the plight of the poor far more than the Republicans are.
The problem is, whether through 'natural' forces, the destruction of union power, etc, most of the "we fight for the poor" is about implementing social programs, and, at best, the minimum wage.
But most people don't want handouts. Most people want to be proud and find value from their work.
The Republican party doesn't show more interest in this than they have in the past, but neither does the Democratic party.
Trump can appeal because he can tell them they can have THEIR jobs back. THEIR past glory. Something they were proud of. This is very different from telling a 50 year old "don't worry, we'll send you to 6 months of 'retraining' and you can start your career over in a minimum wage job -- but don't worry, it'll be the NEW minimum wage, $1 higher than the old one!"
Now, obviously Trump can't deliver on his promise. But then again, neither has anyone else, and at least his promise is appealing to them.
Here's the thing though, Trump didn't get appreciably more voter turnout than Mitt Romney. Hillary on the other hand, got a lot less Democratic voters to turn out than Obama did.
We don't know how much damage Comey's actions in particular did to Hillary's candidacy but there is no doubt that the email scandal damaged her prospects tremendously.
> There was a time when democrats represented the blue collar working class -- who have watched helplessly as their jobs and security has been outsourced to china and Mexico. Now it's Trump who represents their values and clearly they're not alone.
Trump clearly tapped into that sentiment, particularly on trade deals. However, the Republican party has largely pushed policies that increase income inequality and hurt blue collar workers for some time now. Republicans have consistently attempted to weaken unions that tended to benefit blue collar workers.
Republican voters don't tend to hold them to account for that because the GOP campaigns successfully on wedge social issues, conservative media still largely supports trickle down economics and said social issues. Fake media only reinforces the echo chamber there.
Unfortunately there isn't much honest discourse on what to do about the effects of globalization and automation on the blue collar workforce now and into the future. I suspect that the job-reducing effects will continue to be used as a weapon for grievance politics but effective policy solutions will be hard to come by.
> We don't know how much damage Comey's actions in particular did to Hillary's candidacy but there is no doubt that the email scandal damaged her prospects tremendously.
I don't understand what logic there is in blaming Comey for actions Clinton made. Her and her staff decided to run the server. The FBI did not fabricate something here that needed to be investigated.
Comey violated the Hatch act, which is in place to prevent people of his station from manipulating U.S. elections.
He outright disobeyed the Attorney General's (his bosses) orders and released the information before he even had a warrant approved by a judge to investigate, just days before the election.
Hillary's campaign failed because it was so fucking forced. Come on guys, you have to vote for Hillary because she's a woman and its her turn and shame on you for thinking this was a democratic process.
I think a lot of Democrats were put off and disillusioned. Hillary wasn't a candidate to be excited about, she was the candidate waiting in line whom you were told you had to vote for.
> Come on guys, you have to vote for Hillary because she's a woman
For me, one of the biggest WTFs this election season was when I noticed that Hillary was literally selling "woman cards" on her website. The article below mentions at was meant as a joke, though I'm not sure most people took it that way...
It's pretty clear that "republican" and "democrat" have largely lost their meanings, as Trump is more independent and pretty much hated by his own party, and the democrat running has a historical record of being friends with Wall Street.
This appears to happen every so often. After all, who do you know who votes for the Whig party?
>There was a time when democrats represented the blue collar working class -- who have watched helplessly as their jobs and security has been outsourced to china and Mexico. Now it's Trump who represents their values and clearly they're not alone.
Judging by the way blue-collar communities turned out for Bernie Sanders, I don't think "their values" are the fascist tripe being pushed by the Trump campaign and transition stuff. No, blue-collar people are not automatically violent rubes who want to throw Jews, Muslims, and Hispanics from the country while reinstituting slavery and criminalizing abortion -- while telling people wages are too high.
I was ready for Bernie. I changed my party affiliation so I could vote for him in the primaries. Are you as upset as I am at the DNC's collusion to suppress his campaign?
Of course I'm upset. I'm upset enough that I joined Democratic Socialists of America and have been involved in activism, rather than just getting mad and sending money to corporate shills on occasion.
You're ignoring the fact that inequality has increased in a measurable way, it's not something that can be solved on an individual level. As the saying goes, when your neighbor loses his job, it's a recession - when you lose yours it's a depression.
Also, by definition, not everyone can out-compete the average, if everyone in the country had a PhD, there'd still be unemployment. Not everyone in such a large country can do the same thing.
And yes, maybe lots of these people are stupid. But they're part of society, and societal problems manifest themselves in ways that assuredly don't benefit people like you.
> And yes, maybe lots of these people are stupid. But they're part of society, and societal problems manifest themselves in ways that assuredly don't benefit people like you.
Everyone seems to forget this. A large part of society is simply not cut out for academia and they still need to make a life for themselves somehow.
If you look past all of the fake news, twitter faux pas, etc., I think that FBI Director Comey's manipulation in the last week really did do a number on the voter base, and it's disappointing that nobody is enforcing the Hatch act.