The 2016 Presidential Election Trainwreck

[Jeff Lebowski]

So this one isn't a false dichotomy? Or is it still the hidden racists that propelled Trump?

My position is that it is a combination of factors. Hidden racists/xenophobes being part of it. This article doesn't refute that point at all. I agree with the author that this was a colossal failure on the part of the democratic party. They just lost to the worst Republican candidate in our lifetimes.

[Topper]

I would say the Electoral College did pretty much exactly what it was designed to do by the Founding Fathers.

You can't run up the score in the urban areas -- a national campaign that includes rural folks is exactly what was intended to be required.

[creekster]

This is a pretty good post-mortem.

https://medium.com/@trentlapinski/de...597#.jght44vve

I actually think this is more insightful than the cracked piece as it offers how trump may have pulled the winning margin. The cracked piece was interesting but largely serves only to add human meat to the bones of the prevailing narrative.

[creekster]

My position is that it is a combination of factors. Hidden racists/xenophobes being part of it. This article doesn't refute that point at all. I agree with the author that this was a colossal failure on the part of the democratic party. They just lost to the worst Republican candidate in our lifetimes.

I think racism and xenophobia aren't necessarily connected. What constitutes neophobia is very subjective and in its milder forms is not necessarily racist or wrong. And this is not a distinction without a difference. I think that the xenophobia stirred up by Trump appealed to a lot of people across a broad spectrum.

[Shaka]

Has anyone checked Commando's shower rod? He was taking the results pretty hard.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I think racism and xenophobia aren't necessarily connected. What constitutes neophobia is very subjective and in its milder forms is not necessarily racist or wrong. And this is not a distinction without a difference. I think that the xenophobia stirred up by Trump appealed to a lot of people across a broad spectrum.

OK, but no idea what that has to do with my point.

[Goatnapper'96]

My position is that it is a combination of factors. Hidden racists/xenophobes being part of it. This article doesn't refute that point at all. I agree with the author that this was a colossal failure on the part of the democratic party. They just lost to the worst Republican candidate in our lifetimes.

I don't have a lot of time as I have to go cook for an end of year XC banquet. But I think there are a lot of factors at play like you although I have yet to get a chance to catch up and read the thoughts presented here since the election. The white working class is homeless and I think what Democrats need to do to win them over is another round of pushing for cap and trade as well as gun control. If that doesn't work have a party with the execs at Facebook making fun of them while sipping champagne that costs $100/swig. Hector Please...I don't really think of them as people!

Republicans are still in disarray and need to find a way to get back to their own values based initiatives that is not so identity politics. The deplorables just went their direction because Hillary Clinton represents everything about the Democrats ignoring them. Donald Trump gave them bullshit and they believed it. Their jobs are not going to come back under the Don or anyone else.

However, since I dislike the Clintons so Trump has earned a small warm place in my heart for putting the Clintons to bed. I admit to having enjoying the sadfaces I looked at on HuffPo pictures of Hillary's disrupted coronation party. "Blame it on my roots, I showed up in boots and ruined your black tie affair. I saw the surprise and the fear in his eyes when I took his glass of champagne!"

[byu71]

I don't have a lot of time as I have to go cook for an end of year XC banquet. But I think there are a lot of factors at play like you although I have yet to get a chance to catch up and read the thoughts presented here since the election. The white working class is homeless and I think what Democrats need to do to win them over is another round of pushing for cap and trade as well as gun control. If that doesn't work have a party with the execs at Facebook making fun of them while sipping champagne that costs $100/swig. Hector Please...I don't really think of them as people!

Republicans are still in disarray and need to find a way to get back to their own values based initiatives that is not so identity politics. The deplorables just went their direction because Hillary Clinton represents everything about the Democrats ignoring them. Donald Trump gave them bullshit and they believed it. Their jobs are not going to come back under the Don or anyone else.

However, since I dislike the Clintons so Trump has earned a small warm place in my heart for putting the Clintons to bed. I admit to having enjoying the sadfaces I looked at on HuffPo pictures of Hillary's disrupted coronation party. "Blame it on my roots, I showed up in boots and ruined your black tie affair. I saw the surprise and the fear in his eyes when I took his glass of champagne!"

I will applaud the demo leaders. At least verbally much better accepting working with Trump than the repubs were with President Obama

[HuskyFreeNorthwest]

My position is that it is a combination of factors. Hidden racists/xenophobes being part of it. This article doesn't refute that point at all. I agree with the author that this was a colossal failure on the part of the democratic party. They just lost to the worst Republican candidate in our lifetimes.

I posted a quickly thought paragraph about how it was Democratic elitism rather than secret racism that propelled voters to Trump and you told me it was a false dichotomy. So while I very much agree with the article you posted, it much more eloquently and better thought out articulates a very similar point to mine, I found it odd that you basically dismissed me without discussion yesterday and today post that article.

Trump is really worse than Nixon? I know we are all upset because we know so much about Trumps ugliness but maybe we need to slow the rhetoric a little bit. I posted in summer of 2015 that part of what appealed to people about Trump was that he wasn't polished and his flaws were out there, he hadn't had a lifetime of hiding them or having a public and private persona. That means we think a lot less of him. I imagine if Reagan was running in the era of social media and 24 hour news cycle he'd be viewed much differently than he is now. What if we knew the private conversations of Bill Clinton, LBJ, W, JFK? Or we got their unfiltered thoughts. We don't know Hillary's private thoughts, only that she is open with the fact she has a public position and a private one. Running the worst Democratic candidate since Dukakis and then talking down to everyone that didn't want to vote for her wasn't Trumps fault, or rasicts. Luckily, he'll either be ousted soundly in four years or he'll surprise everyone probably including a lot of his voters and manage the country in a good way. Despite how millenials and Hollywood are reacting he wasn't given a special 40 year term of absolute power.

[SeattleUte]

I posted a quickly thought paragraph about how it was Democratic elitism rather than secret racism that propelled voters to Trump and you told me it was a false dichotomy. So while I very much agree with the article you posted, it much more eloquently and better thought out articulates a very similar point to mine, I found it odd that you basically dismissed me without discussion yesterday and today post that article.

Trump is really worse than Nixon? I know we are all upset because we know so much about Trumps ugliness but maybe we need to slow the rhetoric a little bit. I posted in summer of 2015 that part of what appealed to people about Trump was that he wasn't polished and his flaws were out there, he hadn't had a lifetime of hiding them or having a public and private persona. That means we think a lot less of him. I imagine if Reagan was running in the era of social media and 24 hour news cycle he'd be viewed much differently than he is now. What if we knew the private conversations of Bill Clinton, LBJ, W, JFK? Or we got their unfiltered thoughts. We don't know Hillary's private thoughts, only that she is open with the fact she has a public position and a private one. Running the worst Democratic candidate since Dukakis and then talking down to everyone that didn't want to vote for her wasn't Trumps fault, or rasicts. Luckily, he'll either be ousted soundly in four years or he'll surprise everyone probably including a lot of his voters and manage the country in a good way. Despite how millenials and Hollywood are reacting he wasn't given a special 40 year term of absolute power.

I think that the presidents you list would throw rocks at Trump from glass houses. I decided a long time ago that I didn't like Trump for much the same reason I didn't like Sanders. I felt that if the economic and trade rhetoric (including his nativism) that generated his popular appeal were instituted in real life, it would be very bad for the country overall, including many of those who responded positively to the populist rhetoric. I didn't like him on the merits. So, his horrifying boast about sexually assaulting women came after I on the merits decided not to support him. Later, Hillary began parroting many of the awful economic and trade positions that Trump and Sanders purported to espouse. I know she did not believe that stuff, and I suspect that many who voted against her sensed that. I suspect and hope that of the three of them only Sanders really believe that nonsense. I still believe that Sanders was the worst candidate of this election, and I have no doubt that enough of his idiot and freeloading supporters (a lot of them white and privileged) voted for Trump to make a difference. Fortunately, Trump appreciates that American businesses literally are the lifeblood of this country and his economic populism will be among the promises he won't keep. We are not the Weimar Republic (which is most important) and chances are good that Trump isn't Hitler.

[SeattleUte]

Maybe the saving grace about Trump is that he's not really dogmatic about anything. He really doesn't believe in anything except monetizing everything; in his personal case, his brand. And apparently he's of above average intelligence.

[Walter Sobchak]

This is a pretty good post-mortem.

https://medium.com/@trentlapinski/de...597#.jght44vve

I posted a quickly thought paragraph about how it was Democratic elitism rather than secret racism that propelled voters to Trump and you told me it was a false dichotomy. So while I very much agree with the article you posted, it much more eloquently and better thought out articulates a very similar point to mine, I found it odd that you basically dismissed me without discussion yesterday and today post that article.

Trump is really worse than Nixon? I know we are all upset because we know so much about Trumps ugliness but maybe we need to slow the rhetoric a little bit. I posted in summer of 2015 that part of what appealed to people about Trump was that he wasn't polished and his flaws were out there, he hadn't had a lifetime of hiding them or having a public and private persona. That means we think a lot less of him. I imagine if Reagan was running in the era of social media and 24 hour news cycle he'd be viewed much differently than he is now. What if we knew the private conversations of Bill Clinton, LBJ, W, JFK? Or we got their unfiltered thoughts. We don't know Hillary's private thoughts, only that she is open with the fact she has a public position and a private one. Running the worst Democratic candidate since Dukakis and then talking down to everyone that didn't want to vote for her wasn't Trumps fault, or rasicts. Luckily, he'll either be ousted soundly in four years or he'll surprise everyone probably including a lot of his voters and manage the country in a good way. Despite how millenials and Hollywood are reacting he wasn't given a special 40 year term of absolute power.

HFN, I think you will enjoy this deconstruction very much... it's the best one I've read (way better than the one Lebowski linked to!):

Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit

For those who tried to remove themselves from the self-affirming, vehemently pro-Clinton elite echo chamber of 2016, the warning signs that Brexit screechingly announced were not hard to see. Two short passages from a Slate interview I gave in July summarized those grave dangers: that opinion-making elites were so clustered, so incestuous, so far removed from the people who would decide this election — so contemptuous of them — that they were not only incapable of seeing the trends toward Trump but were unwittingly accelerating those trends with their own condescending, self-glorifying behavior.

[...]

Like most everyone else who saw the polling data and predictive models of the media’s self-proclaimed data experts, I long believed Clinton would win, but the reasons why she very well could lose were not hard to see. The warning lights were flashing in neon for a long time, but they were in seedy places that elites studiously avoid. The few people who purposely went to those places and listened, such as Chris Arnade, saw and heard them loud and clear. The ongoing failure to take heed of this intense but invisible resentment and suffering guarantees that it will fester and strengthen.

[...]

Put simply, Democrats knowingly chose to nominate a deeply unpopular, extremely vulnerable, scandal-plagued candidate, who — for very good reason — was widely perceived to be a protector and beneficiary of all the worst components of status quo elite corruption. It’s astonishing that those of us who tried frantically to warn Democrats that nominating Hillary Clinton was a huge and scary gamble — that all empirical evidence showed that she could lose to anyone and Bernie Sanders would be a much stronger candidate, especially in this climate — are now the ones being blamed: by the very same people who insisted on ignoring all that data and nominating her anyway.

[...]

It goes without saying that Trump is a sociopathic con artist obsessed with personal enrichment: the opposite of a genuine warrior for the downtrodden. That’s too obvious to debate. But, just as Obama did so powerfully in 2008, he could credibly run as an enemy of the D.C. and Wall Street system that has steamrolled over so many people, while Hillary Clinton is its loyal guardian, its consummate beneficiary.

Trump vowed to destroy the system that elites love (for good reason) and the masses hate (for equally good reason), while Clinton vowed to manage it more efficiently. That, as Matt Stoller’s indispensable article in The Atlantic three weeks ago documented, is the conniving choice the Democratic Party made decades ago: to abandon populism and become the party of technocratically proficient, mildly benevolent managers of elite power. Those are the cynical, self-interested seeds they planted, and now the crop has sprouted.

[Walter Sobchak]

HFN, I think you will enjoy this deconstruction very much...

Also this:

[Jeff Lebowski]

I posted a quickly thought paragraph about how it was Democratic elitism rather than secret racism that propelled voters to Trump and you told me it was a false dichotomy. So while I very much agree with the article you posted, it much more eloquently and better thought out articulates a very similar point to mine, I found it odd that you basically dismissed me without discussion yesterday and today post that article.

Dismissed you without discussion? Good grief. In spite of creekster's standard hijack, I was making a very simple point that I didn't think needed elaboration. When you say "Democratic elitism rather than secret racism" I am simply pointing out that I think it was a combination of both (and a few other things). So any attempt to point to a single explanation or to imply that one explanation trumps another (no pun intended) may be off the mark. In other words, the fact that the democrats ran a stupid campaign doesn't mean that racism/xenophobia/etc weren't also factors.

Trump is really worse than Nixon? I know we are all upset because we know so much about Trumps ugliness but maybe we need to slow the rhetoric a little bit. I posted in summer of 2015 that part of what appealed to people about Trump was that he wasn't polished and his flaws were out there, he hadn't had a lifetime of hiding them or having a public and private persona. That means we think a lot less of him. I imagine if Reagan was running in the era of social media and 24 hour news cycle he'd be viewed much differently than he is now. What if we knew the private conversations of Bill Clinton, LBJ, W, JFK? Or we got their unfiltered thoughts. We don't know Hillary's private thoughts, only that she is open with the fact she has a public position and a private one. Running the worst Democratic candidate since Dukakis and then talking down to everyone that didn't want to vote for her wasn't Trumps fault, or rasicts. Luckily, he'll either be ousted soundly in four years or he'll surprise everyone probably including a lot of his voters and manage the country in a good way. Despite how millenials and Hollywood are reacting he wasn't given a special 40 year term of absolute power.

I think Trump is capable of being far worse than Nixon. Absolutely. But I hope it doesn't turn out that way.

[Sleeping in EQ]

Maybe the saving grace about Trump is that he's not really dogmatic about anything. He really doesn't believe in anything except monetizing everything; in his personal case, his brand. And apparently he's of above average intelligence.

I've also had this thought.