1646

I think Timex and others have hit on a deeper issue, though, Menzo.

For a lot of people, doing things that “should work” has proven meaningless, because such a vast portion of the electorate is entirely divorced from facts. At a certain point, some of these folks are more or less unreachable unless you are a lying fascist. . .

Probably why I’ve been encouraging Democrats to play dirty and lie through their teeth like there’s no tomorrow for years now!

1647

And I think you are both correct. But the problem is that people only get presented soundbytes. At one hand it is contingent upon people to do some of the work, and by placing my ire at the media’s feet I no way absolve the public, but at the same time the media did such a piss poor even bringing up the issues.

And this goes back before this election. Ask a random sample of people what they think has happened with crime over the last 25 years. What change, what magnitude, and where. I bet you would find most people believe crime is way up from the 80s, and that the streets are more dangerous than ever. The reality is the opposite though. But the way the media presents reality distorts that. The fact is that news coverage is basically tragedy porn. ‘Car accident kills 3’, ‘shooting spree in bumfuck Nebraska’, ‘police raid on suspected drug house (never mind if the people were the actual people they were looking for, you’ll never hear that)’, ‘police shootout in Hell, Michigan’.

It paints a picture of reality, intentionally or not, that is highly distorted. I had a conversation several times over the last few years, arguing with people about crime, police reform, and the reality of racial targeting being both illegal and ineffective. The problem was that even when I showed him the actual FBI crime statistics incontrivertably proving that crime is down massively, he flat out says he didn’t believe me.

I have 100%, unequivocal evidence that crime is down by huge percentages, and you still won’t accept that? How the hell can you combat that?

1648

I want to say “baseball bat to the cranium in place of facts,” but that’s probably not a healthy means of debate, is it? I mean, it’s more likely to penetrate a thick skull. . . Oh well. . .

edit: also, I really can’t convey how happy I am to have not wound up in journalism, even after dumping ~$160k into it at BU. It’s a sad, craven industry at best.

1649

I think it is silly that the media and many people are still trying to find “the reason” why Clinton lost. I mean, it should be pretty obvious by now, a week later, that there is no one magic bullet that killed the Clinton campaign, it was instead a perfect storm of bullet points both foreseeable and unforeseeable that all contributed to bring about the result last Tuesday. In no particular order you have:

  • The Comey Letter
  • Dems not appealing to WWC voters
  • Low Dem turnout in key states
  • Elitist attitude causes resentment among “exurban” voters
  • SCOTUS control single-issue conservative vote
  • 8+ years of propaganda campaign run by Fox News / Breitbart / etc.
  • Mainstream media coverage, including both their treatment of Trump and the reliance on polls that led everyone to believe Clinton had it in the bag

This election came down to just a percentage point or so difference in key states, which in terms of actual votes is in the 100K or so range (out of millions in said states). If each of the factors above had enough influence to impact even 10,000 votes in a state like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida, then the combination of all of them is enough to swing the state, and some of the issues listed most certainly impacted more than 10K voters in swing states.

Bottom line, the Democratic Party fucked up, and didn’t realize they had until Tuesday night. Running a campaign that pretty much ignored WWC while sounding like elitist snobs with the “Deplorables” remark (remember how the 47% remark cost Romney in 2012?) likely turned some potential blue votes into solid red ones during the campaign. The Comey letter and the mainstream media perception that Trump was a joke and Clinton a shoe-in probably combined to keep a lot of potential blue votes at home on election night. Finally, they were fighting a base that has been preparing for this for 8+ years, which means the Dems needed to counter the effect of the alt-right media and mobilize their own base, which they failed miserably to do outside of Latinos (and that was mostly Trump’s doing). You can’t win an election if your support stays home.

The answer is not to lay blame, scapegoat, protest and cry at sad songs on SNL, the answer is to tear down the party to it’s core, analyze what will appeal to American voters in the mid-terms and in 2020, and get to work building THAT party. Bernie Sanders is already doing it, though nobody else seems to be listening. The Democratic party has been defined as the liberal elitist party, partly by 8+ years of un-countered propaganda from right wing media and party through their own actions and words. That perception is never going to play to middle America. Right now we have a lot of young people upset about the results of the election (many of whom probably did not turn out to vote), we have a lot of minorities upset about the results of the elections, we have a lot of liberals upset about the results of the election. The task at hand is to find a way to tie all those people together and get them to the polls in 2018 and 2020. Chances are by then we will also have a lot of people who voted FOR Trump upset with the results he and his ultra-conservative cabinet will have failed to deliver to them, and if you tie in a portion of those folks too…the balance will swing.

1650

Media reality is the only reality much of America lives in these days. People downplay the effect conservative media (Fox News etc.) has had on society in general, but to do so is to ignore a growing and disturbing trend. People get their “knowledge” in sound bytes from standard media and posts/links from social media. This means the average person is woefully misinformed on actual issues (I know, there I go sounding elitist again).

I bet if you asked 100 random people from all across America a question like “The Affordable Care Act would provide health insurance coverage options for all Americans and nobody could be denied coverage or charged outrageous premiums based on pre-existing conditions, which means millions of currently uninsured Americans could have health insurance and you wouldn’t lose yours if you had a major health crisis. What do you think of something like that?” , almost all would respond “That sounds awesome! I’d support that!”

Then immediately afterwards ask them “What do you think about Obamacare?”, the majority would say “Obamacare sucks! It has to go!”.

1651

If this forum had a thumbs up, I’d be clicking it feverishly.

1652

Well said Slainthe. I think the real split in the Democrats will be whether in their anger some simply refuse to compromise with the WWC and just focus on GOTV, and those that take the Bernie path to compromising with labor; and honestly both sides have a point here. Because the intelligentsia of the Democrats are dominated by the technocrats - tech workers / programmers / bloggers / ect that immigrated to the coasts who have the enthusiasm of the convert and disdain from where they came - I’m not sure reconciliation is possible. They’re the ones that really think the WWC are deplorables, they’re the ones that don’t give a shit about unionized labor except as a social media hashtag when were talking about deplorables who are in unions. They have that entrepreneurial techy love of disruptive big data and think there is always a technical solution to political problems.

In other words I think the thought leaders and their tech supporters would prefer total war to compromise. And since Donald and his ilk are intentionally or unintentionally encouraging a rise in racist white nationalism, the path might be chosen for Democrats anyway.

1653

I honestly think that a bigger element to this last election was just old white people. And frankly, those folks are gonna die, and become less and less of a factor moving forward.

1654

I used to think that to Timex, but we shouldn’t underestimate the rise of the alt-right. Those aren’t old fogies that fondly remember the days of segregation, they’re 20 something shitheads that love the anarchic power of disrupting the status quo and the ability to frame and transform narratives to their will.

1655

I think those folks are a tiny, tiny minority of the group that got Trump elected.

1656

A) The Republican party’s instituted a policy of total war for decades now, and it’s proven exceedingly effective (I mean, insofar as shutting down the country might be considered effective, but who am I to judge?). Compromise isn’t something they’re interested in; the last 8 years reflect that as surely as anything. At the end of the day, Democrats will be drug around by the nose and demonized more or less no matter what they do, so why not try as hard as they can to impede The Donald’s ability to fuck the entire world over?

B) If the WWC feel the need to hitch their cart to the horse of white nationalism, then as far as I am concerned, the choice is already made. I’m sure there are fine and upstanding people among their number, but making that choice short-circuits the discussion. "I’d like to try to salvage what’s left of my broken hometown and also just FYI I’m okay electing a guy who is going to ban brown people from existing to make that happen anyway back to helping me out. . . "

1657

Unfortunately, they now have an advocate working for President -Elect Trump as Chief Strategist.

1658

Yeha, but they can do a ton of damage on the way out.

And don’t forget

Propaganda is a helluva drug…

1659

Yea I agree Armando. In some ways these debates are already too late. Democrats should or might have made this turn a few years ago… but it might already be too late now. You don’t go to a Nazi in 1943 and sympathize with the loss of their savings during the years of hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic. You shoot them. What we’re seeing might be too late to stop developing. Most people are pretty pliable and could turn to evil with only a little encouragement.

1660

1661

Second guessing is easy when you know the answers to the test, but the Clinton campaign spent heavily in FL, NC and PA but still lost.

And what do the rest of these talking points even mean?
You mean policies like affordable health care and college? Job training assistance? Higher minimum wages and work place health and safety laws? Support for Unions? Protecting basic civil liberties? These policies don’t appeal to white working class voters because … why, exactly? They only help poor brown people or something?

And it’s ironic that the left is being pilloried as elite coastal liberals being mean to WWC voters, when the entire GOP is mean to everyone not rich, not white and not male. And what does the label “liberal elite” supposed to convey? People who read and apply a bit of critical thinking? Or those who care about issues outside themselves? As a white male with its attendant white privilege, Trump isn’t going to impact me personally. But I care about environmental issues, climate change and civil liberties, all of which are about to get destroyed in ways that go far beyond the next eight years. But because I’m not looking at these issues through a selfish lens, that makes me a snob, out of touch and elite.

Sure, ok.

1662

I think it’s reasonable to expect a left-wing version of the Tea Party to emerge. The conditions are very similar to 2008 for Republicans. There are a group of very angry progressives who will demand ideological purity from any Democrats for a while. We’re already seeing it.

Now what that means on the ground is TBD. Hopefully it looks more like the widespread, and focused Tea Party opposition to the ACA than the diffuse and confusing Occupy Wall Street.

1663

Again, I think that maybe we need to acknowledge the harsh reality that folks seem to want to forget, and that is that there was a major component of racism, xenophobia, and sexism that contributed to Trump’s win.

This is the reality, whether people want to acknowledge it or not.

Trump’s campaign, more than anything else, was focused on ostracizing “the other”. About how various groups of non-whites had to be put down.

And this is what most Trump supporters voted for. We can pretend like they didn’t. We can attribute some other, less ugly motivation to their actions. But to do so is fundamentally dishonest, and ignores the real issue at hand.

The message that was sold to these white working class voters was that somehow these “others” were taking stuff that was rightfully theirs, and that their problems were due to this theft. That blacks, and hispanics, and gays, and muslims, and were getting things that they didn’t really deserve, and that this was diverting money away from THEM.

I’m sorry if this is hard to hear, but I’m gonna say it again. If you voted for Trump, then you are a racist/xenophobe/sexist/authoritarian. Does this hurt your feelings? Why? Because that’s what you are. If you believe in those things, don’t hide from them. Own them. If you believe in the ideals that Trump represents, then that’s fine. That is indeed your right, as an American. You are free to believe what you feel is right.

But don’t believe in those things and then cravenly deny them. Don’t pretend as though he didn’t say overtly racist things. Don’t pretend like he’s not obviously a misogynist. Because what’s the point? Why PRETEND like you don’t believe in those things? Because you’re afraid of other people being mean to you for it? That just makes you a coward.

At best, a vote for Trump means you simply don’t care about all of those groups he abused and attacked throughout his campaign. But again, this doesn’t absolve you of those things. You still think of those groups as less worthy of respect than others. While you may not abuse them directly, you are still willing to accept their being abused by others, less cowardly than yourself.

Again, maybe calling such people what they are won’t change their minds… but allowing them to be racists and xenophobes, without even acknowledging what they are? That serves no useful purpose at all. That’s merely pretending, and while maybe it’s less contentious then calling a spade a spade, it won’t actually improve things.

We’ve had folks here try to pretend like Trump isn’t a racist, but these defenses have always been entirely without merit. They have ranged from simple denial that he said things, or more commonly silence when faced with the reality of his statements.

If you want to say that Trump’s message is the direction you believe the country needs to go, that’s fine. That is your right. But own it like a man, and don’t be a coward who pretends he didn’t vote for those ideals.

1664

@Timex, I’d love to marry you, while we’re still allowed.

1665

Timex, may I share that on Facebook please?