1606

What was the first thing @Timex said after that news broke?
The FBI wouldn’t be releasing this statement unless they had found she did something wrong. His initial reaction to that letter was likely the same for many of the soft Clinton supporters, and that was nine days while early voting was taking place before they said oh oops our bad, they’re all duplicates (no shit, email, the fuck does that work?)

That the election was decided by fewer than a few hundred thousand votes in three states combined, you can bet that soft Clinton supporters either didn’t vote, voted 3rd party, or some went over to Trump. That letter did impact the race, and that it did so far more than the Access Hollywood video and subsequent revelations about Trump’s behavior (let alone the actual corruption done by his business and Foundation) is mind boggling. The Hillary haters and the alt right assholes beating their chests can feel smug all they want, but that doesn’t change the logic. The media was down right giddy with “raises questions”, “cloud of suspicion” that “reinforces the narrative” that they created, This was obvious to many people during the campaign, and it’s also obvious from many of the comments on this board that confirmation biased is very powerful; opinions are already formed, and any evidence that supports that it is held as truth even after that evidence turns out to be bogus.

All that said, I agree that most likely any other mainstream Democrat likely would have won (as for Sanders, I don’t know, ‘Muricans be hatin’ on those damn hippy socialists) and doesn’t change the fact that Clinton handled the email server story very poorly (much like Kerry did with the Swift boating campaign.) But it’s easy to say in hindsight other Dem’s should have run in the primary, when the reality is Clinton was going to hoover up all the big money donors and only a grass roots campaign like Sanders had any shot. Trump didn’t self fund nor did he get much in the way from the Republican billionaires, but he didn’t have to because he had nation wide free media from the first day he announced until election day.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. The American electorate is largely apathetic, lazy and incurious. They are also as it turns out hateful, petty and repulsive. Trump voters don’t get a pass. .

1607

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/12/501704004/after-trump-victory-many-bernie-sanders-supporters-say-i-told-you-so

“Americans are so angry about their incomes going down for the past 40 years, they wanted to see that anger reflected in a leader,” said Exley. “And Trump had that and Bernie had that, and Clinton seemed not to know what the rest of us are going through.”

Dallas Fowler says that because Sanders proved he could tap into that emotion, he could have won several states Clinton did not. Listing states like Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania, Fowler said, “The polls that were right about this outcome [Trump’s win] in May and June of this year, those same polls had Sanders winning by a ten percent margin.”

1608

Robert Reich agrees that the Dems lost the working class:

1609
1610

I agree that Comey had an impact on soft supporters. Day after election I had a co-worker (white collar immigrant professional) say something along the lines of “not too surprising since she’s under investigation again.”

1611

I haven’t read this yet, but it’s from Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas. Democrats were happy to take on the central message of his previous book, and maybe this one hits the mark as well. Published March of 2016, FYI.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1627795391/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=3ZF0B8B3XV73KRWPRZ4M

1612

Was it the working class or the white working class? That’s a real question not a point. The article doesn’t really say.

1613

That NY electoral map explains why Republicans have control of the New York Senate. The City, however, will keep Democrats in control of the Assembly for the foreseeable future.

1614

The LA Times polls showed a 3+ point swing after the Access Hollywood tape was released vs none for Comey letter.

I find you blaming this on the media being in the tank for Trump, to be astonishing and disappointing for somebody who I have found to be open-mind in this election. This is the same media that endorsed Hillary unanimously over Trump (other than Klan paper did he get a single newspaper endorsement?) The media may not have liked Hillary, they loathed Trump and anyone watching the glum faces all non-Fox reporters clearly saw that on election day. And even plenty of Fox reporters and analysis weren’t happy.

You are also missing a couple of key things. First, the MSM just isn’t that important. The combined circulation of the top 10 newspapers is 8.2 million. The top rated new show the week the Comey letter was disclosed was ABC it had 8.1 million viewers (Fox is 3.2 million and CNN is 1.2 million different time period) . The NY Times could have run nothing but Trump foundation, sexual assault, and Russian ties stories above the fold for the last 2 months and it wouldn’t have mattered. There just aren’t enough of the 2.1 million NY Times subscribers in the Rustbelt to move a few hundred thousand votes. Plus I bet 80%+ of them voted for Hillary.

Second, many/most folks in Red States don’t believe anything the MSM says. When I first heard Trump brag about shooting somebody without losing supporters. I thought they are awful people. But now what I think he was saying is his supporters wouldn’t have believed their reporting. They would have simply figured the MSM was lying and any film or photos were faked. Now I don’t believe the MSM lies but they are clearly biased and this election even worse than normal.

Take the Clinton story on why she lost. The NY Times said this
"Mrs. Clinton’s contention appears to be more rooted in reality — and hard data. An internal campaign memo with polling data said that “there is no question that a week from Election Day, Secretary Clinton was poised for a historic win,” Now neither the WSJ, or Washington Post reporting on the story added this bit of fact checking.

But it was clearly one-sided. Did they add the LA Times poll that I noted that shows contrary data? Did Times even acknowledge that is “hard data” was collected in the same matter that said that Hillary had a 90%_ chance of being President, the Columbian were going to accept the FARC deal, and the Britain was going to remain in the EU? No, they did not, because Comey costing Hillary the election is the narrative.

In an earlier rant, you said when you worked with blue collar workers they only talked about cars and woman.

1/2 the population has an IQ under 100. They are often fine people, but most of them are more comfortable working with the hands, then manipulating words or figures. When the MSM is populated with people like us, and have the level of contempt for them that you’ve expressed to do you really expect that should be spending their precious leisure time doing Google searches, watching Sunday News shows, and watching Frontline documentaries?

1615

No. I expect that people that are experts in their field are doing their damn jobs for those of us that aren’t in that field. I expect my doctors to be well read in medical fields. I expect climate scientists to be well versed in their field. I expect the media to be reporting on facts. Then, regardless of IQ, we as observers can consume that information and make good decisions that won’t destroy the planet.

Instead, we have people getting their information from Fox, celebrities (anti-vaxx), or the oil industry. So people are making decisions because certain areas of the media are NOT required to do their job competently and thus we are where we are.

1616

On the other hand, from Sam Wang:

https://twitter.com/SamWangPhD/status/797071567398301696

1617

Fox consistently reported the election day result in a more accurate and more timely fashion than any other network. Fox News, Chris Wallace was also the best moderator of the debates. I think your bias is showing.

1618

Today i heard same thing from table full of senior citizens. One said Trump just called the nytimes out for lying about him and how horrible it is that they can get away with it. Everything they say is propaganda, he said.

Despite the fact the claim that Trump said was a lie was trivially and inarguably true. It was a claim he made me than once in interviews in the campaign trail and a five second Google search result would show the video
But these people only trust the crazies in their Facebook feed. It’s so depressing. There is literally no way to win an argument with facts.

I was just sitting there quietly despairing. God help us.

1619

You can’t beat propaganda with truth. It means nothing. We are doomed.

1620

But remember you respect their very valid world views! You wouldn’t want to appear to be an elitist, disagreeing with wise, Good American Folk who believe Hillary’s staff performed Satanic rites.

1621

Not to dismiss Sam Wang, but he posts that days after the election when the results are known. That seems like a face saving move. Why didn’t his algo pick that up ahead of time when it was important and he was at 99%?

1622

That would be my reaction, but I think we’re past the time when we can react like that. We have to start speaking up, politely saying, “I overheard your conversation and I can prove to you that Trump said that with video of him saying it. Here, let me show you.” Then whip out your phone.

In fact, it would be an awesome Internet resource to have – if you want to prove to somebody that Trump said something – a site where video clips of him saying all of the things he said are indexed and easily/quickly accessible. We may not be able to argue morality quickly and easily, but we should be able to at least correct factually incorrect statements quickly.

1623

But we had that all election season long, and it didn’t help. As Quaro said, you can’t beat propaganda with truth. Oh but hey, I hear people are saying Fox News had one day of factual reporting while the election results were coming in.

1624

It’s also worth remembering that correlation does not prove causation. There is a “party comes home” affect that happens close to and on the election. The polls showed a large “undecided” vote, but “undecided” wasn’t on the ballot. Did the Comey leak cause people to not vote or vote the otherway? Or, were distraught Republicans who were going to vote Trump finally get around to admitting it and then doing it?

1625