Election 2016

[hyzmarca]

Because people do not like her when she runs for President, therefore going on television and being a Presidential candidate worked to her disadvantage.

Going on television and being a Presidential Candidate is bad, yes. So she shouldn't do that. She should have gone on television and been a professional wrestler, instead. She should have insisted that everyone call her Hil-Rod and threatened to drop the People's Elbow on her opponents.

[Mask_De_H]

Because people do not like her when she runs for President, therefore going on television and being a Presidential candidate worked to her disadvantage.

Going on television and being a Presidential Candidate is bad, yes. So she shouldn't do that. She should have gone on television and been a professional wrestler, instead. She should have insisted that everyone call her Hil-Rod and threatened to drop the People's Elbow on her opponents.

That would have gone over like Roman Reigns sodomizing a puppy.

[hyzmarca]

Because people do not like her when she runs for President, therefore going on television and being a Presidential candidate worked to her disadvantage.

Going on television and being a Presidential Candidate is bad, yes. So she shouldn't do that. She should have gone on television and been a professional wrestler, instead. She should have insisted that everyone call her Hil-Rod and threatened to drop the People's Elbow on her opponents.

That would have gone over like Roman Reigns sodomizing a puppy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHrOo59LCas

[Kaelik]

Secret Service will have to continue paying for travel on Trump plane, and also will have to rent rooms in Trump Tower to guard him.


"Trump takes no salary, what a public servant" -charges 3 million in rent per year to government budgets.

[DSMatticus]

Clinton's post-debate gains showed up in both general election polling and favorability ratings. People did not watch the debates and see a repulsive Trump. They saw a repulsive Trump standing next to a Clinton who was considerably more likeable than the media had told them she was. Your people's narratives are fucking stupid. These are the narratives that came from the people who gave you Trump, and don't want to admit that they did that. These are the people who spent the entire election cycle talking about how Clinton had difficulty connecting with voters, while refusing to cover policy issues and instead talking almost exclusively about Clinton's various non-scandals. Perhaps you should consider that the word of a bunch of centrist shitheads is not the word of god, and you should not assume that because a media consensus exists on a topic that the consensus must be accurate.

Clinton did not lose because people were reminded that she existed. It's simply true that there was such a thing as positive coverage of Clinton, and that when she managed to get any of it both her odds of winning and her popularity improved. And it's also true that the extent of that coverage was three presidential debates, and there sure as fuck wasn't any in the week running up to the election. It's the media, stupid. It is the media. I will keep saying that until it sinks into your stupid skulls. It's scary. It's depressing, particularly now that we're watching them cope by firmly attaching their lips to Donald Trump's balls. And there's really nothing anyone can do to fix it in time to matter from the outside. If the media can't pull the heads out of their ass, then 2020 will play out on the same terms as 2016 - barring further fuckery from Republicans, that's winnable, but it's basically a coinflip. And there will be further fuckery.

[DrPraetor]

Clinton's post-debate gains showed up in both general election polling and favorability ratings.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... -1131.html

What the hell are you talking about?

Subjectively, FWIW, I agree with you - I personally found HRC to be much more likable during the debates (and the Benghazi testimony), but there is zero signal in the corresponding data. Nada.

There's plenty to blame on the press here, and the result close enough that a better behaved press probably would have flipped the coin the other way, but let's put this in perspective. HRC won the popular vote by just over 2% against this guy:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... -5493.html

That's an achievement, but if your claim is that the press could've engineered a similar result against a candidate with good fundamental numbers, I laugh at you.

Yes, the press behaved badly. Yes, a segment of the population is sexist or racist, and shades of those prejudices reinforced their willingness to buy Trump's economic hokum. But the Dems nominated a candidate whom half the country hated and the popular vote margin is about where you'd expect, from the trend line on the popularity difference between the two candidates.

[Username17]

This election showed that fundamental numbers and likeability and shit no longer matter. At all. Republicans voted for the Republican. There were no mass defections because the actual candidate admitted to financial crimes. There were no mass defections because the candidate showed that he knew nothing about foreign policy. There were no mass defections because the candidate retweeted white nationalist terrorist organizations. There were no mass defections because the candidate admitted to sexual assault. It just didn't matter.

Republicans voted republican. Democrats voted democratic. And people who were so unplugged that they only made up their mind in the last week voted for the guy whose scandals graced the front page with less ink in the last two weeks.

That's it. Our coalition is bigger, but we can still lose if the media successfully convinces the mouth breather public that our candidate is about to get indicted by the FBI for vague unexplained "email" violations of... something something.

-Username17

[DrPraetor]

That's it. Our coalition is bigger, but we can still lose if the media successfully convinces the mouth breather public that our candidate is about to get indicted by the FBI for vague unexplained "email" violations of... something something.

-Username17

Which the press is able to do, if and only if our candidate is disliked.

There's a huge volume of academic literature on the topic of how press coverage influences public opinion. For example, this guy: https://comm.osu.edu/people/holt.341
who speaks at the interdisciplinary symposia I used to host at OSU.

The press, advertising in general, doesn't have much power to:
[*] make a candidate liked or disliked
[*] change people's views on issues
[*] de-mobilize people who are activated by some issue

Press coverage can only direct attention to one or another issue on which people already hold views.

The Democrats cannot afford to nominate HRC or Al Gore or Michael Dukakis or the like, because if we do, we lose on an unfair coinflip (because also the other side cheats.)

[DSMatticus]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... -1131.html

What the hell are you talking about?

Are you sure you should be posting graphs if you can't fucking read them?

September 26th: Clinton is at 40.3%. The first debate happens. Her favorability increases steadily to ~43.3% and then basically holds steady right up through the second debate (October 9th) and beyond until...

October 19th: Clinton is at 42.9%. The third debate happens. Favorability increases again until it eventually hits a peak of 45% just before...

October 28th: Comey shouts emails. Her favorability bottoms out - quite quickly - lower than at any point it's been since the first debate had time to fully show up in the polls.

HRC made big favorability gains coming off the first and third presidential debates, and those gains were not eroded by anything that happened inbetween. Then Comey and the media single-handedly erased those gains in the week before the election with the continuation of a bullshit nonscandal.

This shit is exhausting. My patience is going to run out long before the stupid does.

[nockermensch]

The press, advertising in general, doesn't have much power to:
[*] make a candidate liked or disliked
[*] change people's views on issues
[*] de-mobilize people who are activated by some issue

This is a hilariously quaint and innocent view, assuming a level of playing nice that simply isn't true anymore.

In Brazil, the Worker's Party presidencies managed to see a rise of every social and economic indicator you care about. But the press managed to assassinate the party's reputation, going for Big Lie tactics, in a relentless assault.

It's very easy to ruin anybody's reputation if you have a corrupt press. Manufacture scandals, blow things out of their proportion, keep lying and exaggerating. People will fall for it. The classical defence against this (suing for libel/defamation) will fail with complicit judges and/or the same people who bankroll the corrupt press having pockets deep enough to get the best lawyers.

[Koumei]

Yeah, Rupert Murdoch is an actual thing that exists in this world. He has essentially chosen the leadership for multiple countries simply by doing those things you claim he can't do.

[Voss]

The press, advertising in general, doesn't have much power to:
[*] make a candidate liked or disliked
[*] change people's views on issues
[*] de-mobilize people who are activated by some issue

Press coverage can only direct attention to one or another issue on which people already hold views.

Yeah... no. Press coverage basically ran the Trump campaign for him and basically ran that 'popular outsider' narrative down people's throats until they believed it (and neglected to do any of journalistic investigation that is supposedly their job which would have easily disproved it), and their hilariously bad coverage warped views on issues to the point that people thought up was down and wrong was right.

As for demobilization...I hope you're kidding. Half the point of the press is to get 'your people' out there and get 'their people' to stay home.

[Mask_De_H]

Going on television and being a Presidential Candidate is bad, yes. So she shouldn't do that. She should have gone on television and been a professional wrestler, instead. She should have insisted that everyone call her Hil-Rod and threatened to drop the People's Elbow on her opponents.

That would have gone over like Roman Reigns sodomizing a puppy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHrOo59LCas

Yes, I remember that; it went over like Roman Reigns sodomizing a puppy amongst WWE viewers. God save her if that shit was played for a mass audience.

[PhoneLobster]

The establishment media's role in Trump's election is damning, but complex.

They genuinely tried, within their special bus level limitations, to side with Clinton over Trump. Very possibly too little too late, and Trump was originally a media creation, and the media breathlessly promoted him uncritically for too long.

And even when much of the US mainstream media turned on Trump, mostly just because they thought they smelled scandal ratings, they couldn't turn on him hard enough because they don't cover issues of substance, their "fair and balanced" bullshit means they can't bring themselves to properly condemn evil or call out lies, even when they WERE all about attacking Trump they were effectively accidentally giving him all sorts of free promotion, and what THEY considered to be an all out attack looked to a sufficient portion of the public like either a baseless partisan smear or the ultimate recommendation, being hated by the media they themselves hate and distrust, for both good and bad reasons.

Effectively the media created Trump, enthusiastically supported his run in the primaries to a breathtaking level, then turned on him in the general in a way that only helped push him over the line to victory.

You guys should also do something about media reform. And not the thing we keep doing here where we make it worse all the time and CALL it media reform.

[Dr_Noface]

Question: What organizations should I be funnelling cash to in the post Trump world? What news sources deserve paid subscriptions?

[Kaelik]

Question: What organizations should I be funnelling cash to in the post Trump world? What news sources deserve paid subscriptions?

Well the NYTimes is the best of a bad bunch, but if you can find a major media source that didn't cover emails more than all Trump scandals combined, or that didn't use dumb scare words about emails "casting shadows" on Clinton's campaign/honesty, I'd love to know where they are.

[DrPraetor]

So people are disagreeing with me, and I'm seeing a lot of conventional wisdom and similar assertions and not references to social or political science research, because I'm just spouting Media Studies 101 here, and not saying anything controversial.

To summarize:
[*] The Media reflect the society, they didn't create it. America is not the Japanese's Washington Post editorial board's fault.
[*] Hillary Clinton was historically unpopular because of that society; the media exacerbated the issue at the margins (and probably enough to change the result), but didn't cause it.
[*] If HRC's favorability moved due to the first debate, the fluctuation was tiny, and did nothing to change the simple fact that she was enormously unpopular. Also, the following debates, which were also positive coverage and she won them by blowout margins according to polls, did nothing?
[*] The media does not have mind control powers, and cannot force anyone to believe anything (or ram anything down anyone's throat).

For variety, let's learn how to read rolling poll averages.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls ... -1131.html

September 26th (debate)
October 19th (debate)
October 28th (emails)

You do realize that the field-dates lag the averages by several days, right? So the upswing after Sep 26th - if it is even real - is likely due to the "Pussy Grabber" video drawing attention to Trump, and not to her performance in the debate? As Nate Silver said at the time? And none of the other debates are associated with movements at all?

More to the point - it's also a very small movement. A -14 net favorability going to a -10 net favorability would either of them be a record, if not for Trump. Likeable candidates do not have those favorability ratings, whatever non-scandals about them are running in the press.

So you are arguing that Clinton's favorability would improve on positive coverage, because it was varying between 42% and 45%, while her unfavorables fluctuated between 52.5 and 55.5%? To a first approximation, the past three months of favorability numbers are not, as you assert, tracking either the news or the polls but are simply a flat line.

By way of contrast, Trump's unfavorables went from 60.6% to 58.5% post e-mails - what caused that? It's not a statistically significant fluctuation (you'd get bigger moves most of the time if you simply scrambled the order of the polls) but if it means anything at all, it's simply because his staff had the good sense to shut him up.

Yeah, Rupert Murdoch is an actual thing that exists in this world. He has essentially chosen the leadership for multiple countries simply by doing those things you claim he can't do.

No, he has not. You will notice that mobilize and draw attention to are not on my list of things he can't do, precisely because those are the things he has done - and which media coverage has been found to do in other contexts.

The effectiveness of advertising and such is vastly overestimated especially by the political class (who, after all, make their living by claiming to be able to do anything effective in a political campaign.)

Murdoch has been able to help the Bushes etc. get elected - although it's in his interest to vastly oversell his power and influence - by mobilizing right-wingers on their right-wingness. He didn't make them right-wing, and he hasn't de-mobilized the left wing.

As for demobilization...I hope you're kidding. Half the point of the press is to get 'your people' out there and get 'their people' to stay home.

The famous result is that negative campaigns reduce turnout for both candidates - but that doesn't work if people are mobilized. That is, negative campaigns work well against candidates like HRC, who have soft support.

This is a hilariously quaint and innocent view, assuming a level of playing nice that simply isn't true anymore.

I'm in no position to argue about the political economy of Brazil; but much of the media research in the US is based on case studies from a hundred years ago when slanderous yellow journalism dominated as much as it does today.

When similar events have occurred in the US, like this election just now, the media has been harnessing an existing well of:
[*] Hatred towards institutions
[*] Disenchantment with the traditional liberal party and in particular with the liberal candidate
[*] Xenophobia
[*] The personality cult of some fascist (next point)

The first three of which are not created by the media, and as for the fourth...

Press coverage basically ran the Trump campaign for him and basically ran that 'popular outsider' narrative down people's throats until they believed it

No.
In the primaries, Trump benefited tremendously from the boost in name recognition and free media. Primaries are very different from general elections, because mobilization and attention-direction are vastly more powerful.

stuff I agree with.

In the general election, Trump mobilized the red team, and he won the votes of people who hated both him and Hillary Clinton, many of whom bought into his outsider narrative or wherever but the media does not, in fact, have the power to ram anything anywhere.

The media enabled this by reminding voters that Hillary Clinton existed.

People are conned because they are receptive to the con, and once conned contrary evidence just reinforces their views. I assume you've seen that little chunk of social science research?

[Kaelik]

So people are disagreeing with me, and I'm seeing a lot of conventional wisdom and similar assertions and not references to social or political science research, because I'm just spouting Media Studies 101 here, and not saying anything controversial.

To summarize:
[*] The Media reflect the society, they didn't create it. America is not the Japanese's Washington Post editorial board's fault.
[*] Hillary Clinton was historically unpopular because of that society; the media exacerbated the issue at the margins (and probably enough to change the result), but didn't cause it.
[*] If HRC's favorability moved due to the first debate, the fluctuation was tiny, and did nothing to change the simple fact that she was enormously unpopular. Also, the following debates, which were also positive coverage and she won them by blowout margins according to polls, did nothing?
[*] The media does not have mind control powers, and cannot force anyone to believe anything (or ram anything down anyone's throat).

So apparently you genuinely believe that the media is a perfect representation of the country, and couldn't possibly have an institutional bias of it's own. So you are delusional.

[Voss]

So people are disagreeing with me, and I'm seeing a lot of conventional wisdom and similar assertions and not references to social or political science research, because I'm just spouting Media Studies 101 here, and not saying anything controversial.

Yes, people are disagreeing with you, because you ARE just spouting Media Studies 101, and not saying anything of substance, and much that is incorrect.

To summarize:
[*] The Media reflect the society, they didn't create it. America is not the Japanese's Washington Post editorial board's fault.

That... isn't the issue. That isn't even in the realm of relevance or truth. Fox media (unfortunately) reflects society. The 'liberal' media doesn't reflect shit, let alone society. It just presents sound bites in attempt (which fails, because side Red condemns them anyway) to present 'both sides.' And most draws negative attention to the left and positive attention to the right, because side Red doesn't give a shit about their side's negatives.

[*] Hillary Clinton was historically unpopular because of that society; the media exacerbated the issue at the margins (and probably enough to change the result), but didn't cause it.

No... they really exacerbated the issue at the center. Again, 'cause' is not the issue. The issue is reinforcing the narratives by repetition until people go along with them.

It isn't 'mind control powers,' and you should be embarrassed by using that as an argument. It is about how they sway people, especially undecided people, by reinforcing shit they should be refuting by not doing their damn jobs and doing investigative journalism. Just repeating every piece of bullshit that anyone utters. The more it gets repeated, the more it sways people.

[Occluded Sun]

The more clearly the media are trying to influence opinion, the less effective they are. That's really the case for all propaganda.

What works is continually pairing two ideas such that they become associated in the mass mind. We judge the probability of events by how many mental examples we have of them. So, for example, people vastly overestimate how many children are kidnapped each year because the relatively rare cases are plastered all over the media, and so they are perceived as more common than they are.

[Koumei]

No, he has not. You will notice that mobilize and draw attention to are not on my list of things he can't do, precisely because those are the things he has done - and which media coverage has been found to do in other contexts.

The effectiveness of advertising and such is vastly overestimated especially by the political class (who, after all, make their living by claiming to be able to do anything effective in a political campaign.)

Murdoch has been able to help the Bushes etc. get elected - although it's in his interest to vastly oversell his power and influence - by mobilizing right-wingers on their right-wingness. He didn't make them right-wing, and he hasn't de-mobilized the left wing.

In Brazil and Australia, the fact is that enough people to vote in a change of government just get all their information from the Murdoch press, and he does in fact tell them what to believe and they go right ahead and believe that. And then they vote in terrible governments and it's partly their fault for being uneducated cockheads who get their political info from tabloids, but the fact is, he made it happen.

[erik]

I know a distressing number of people who believe things from Fox News that they eschew facts to maintain their death grip on lies. They are so primed that I cannot even have discussions because they now live in an entirely different reality which doesn't accept facts or logic. That's the power of fucking anti-fact right wing news. I know otherwise intelligent people who will accept anything no matter how far fetched if it comes from a right wing source.

If you think the media didn't help trump then you're outta your fucking gourd.

[DSMatticus]

You do realize that the field-dates lag the averages by several days, right? So the upswing after Sep 26th - if it is even real - is likely due to the "Pussy Grabber" video drawing attention to Trump, and not to her performance in the debate? As Nate Silver said at the time? And none of the other debates are associated with movements at all?

You fucking idiot. Just stop. Please just stop.

Here is the original article on the recording of Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault. Tell me the date on that article, DrPraetor. Read it and tell me. Because to me it looks like it says October 8th, DrPraetor. October fucking 8th. When was the first debate, again? Oh, September 26th? Is that so? Is that really motherfucking so? How strange. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you have NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. But that can't be true, because otherwise WHY THE FUCK AM I READING THIS BULLSHIT? WHY, DRPRAETOR? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME? WHAT DID I DO TO YOU?

You really do not deserve any more angry ranting than that, because fuck you you stupid asshole for being so incredibly ill-prepared to have this conversation and then having it anyway because fuck everyone else apparently. And yet I have so much more to rant angrily about. Like how you still can't read a fucking line (IT'S A FUCKING LINE, IF YOU HOVER OVER IT IT EVEN GIVES YOU THE DATES, FUCK YOU), and would rather just drop shit like poll lag instead of actually checking to see how it fits. Because spoiler: typical poll lag does not make the boost from the first debate any less obvious.

How long an event takes to start showing up in the polls can be difficult to assess. Polls themselves typically use data collected in the 24 (though sometimes 48) hours before their release. Modern polling is very much a day-to-day thing. But people also don't learn about things the instant they happen, nor do they change their minds immediately. It's well-accepted that Clinton got a big boost off of her convention; the convention ended on July 28th, and it didn't start showing up in her favorability ratings until July 31st (3 days later), and she wouldn't peak until August 5th (8 days later). So hey, here's some fucking numbers:

September 26th (1st debate): 40.3%
September 29th (1st debate + 3 days): 41.4%
October 4th (1st debate + 8 days): 42.9%

October 9th (2nd debate): 43.6%
October 12th (2nd debate + 3 days): 42.9%
October 17th (2nd debate + 8 days): 43.2%

October 19th (3rd debate): 42.9%
October 22nd (3rd debate + 3 days): 43.1%
October 27th (3rd debate + 8 days): 45.0%

There are statistically significant shifts following the first and third presidential debates. There is no statistically significant shift following the second debate. So not only do I get to make fun of you because CALENDARS, HOW DO THEY WORK, I get to gleefully point out that Donald Trump's tape did not improve Hillary Clinton's favorability ratings and that your entire thesis was fucked to begin with. Hurrah!

The Media reflect the society, they didn't create it. America is not the Japanese's Washington Post editorial board's fault.

Go fuck yourself that is the stupidest shit I have ever heard in my life. No, there is no guarantee that institutions - media or otherwise - will reflect the societies they occupy. The Washington Post editorial board are a handful of specific people who get to make decisions about how a moderately powerful media brand will cover the news, and there is no more guarantee that their decisions will reflect society in aggregate any more than if you took a small number of random people from all over the country and gave them the job. In fact, the WP editorial board almost certainly represents society far worse than a random sampling, because random sampling is actually random, and I guarantee that when there's an opening on the Washington Post editorial board it is going to be filled by someone similar to the existing members of the board because affinity bias.

This is just fucking naive. Grow up. Societies are not beautiful, elegant fractals that always look the same regardless of what section you decide to look at. The media is not some super-special institution which has to represent the rest of society because reasons.

Hillary Clinton was historically unpopular because of that society; the media exacerbated the issue at the margins (and probably enough to change the result), but didn't cause it.

Hillary Clinton had a favorability rating of 66% in 2012, before it started tumbling down and down and down. Guess what happened in 2012? BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI LET THE SCANDALS COMMENCE.

The media does not have mind control powers, and cannot force anyone to believe anything (or ram anything down anyone's throat).

Spoiler: whether or not you prefer to watch Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC is an accurate predictor of whether or not you believe Obama is a U.S. citizen. "Black people aren't U.S. citizens" is not some sort of magical dream that comes to conservatives when they're sleeping independently. Fox News gave more airtime - and less critical coverage - to the birther movement, and as such exposed it to a bunch of people in a positive way and as a result people who prefer to watch Fox News were and are more likely to subscribe to that particular conspiracy theory. Yes, the media you consume does change what you believe.

Etcetera etcetera you're dumb so forth and so on I can't read any more of your post.

[maglag]

I know a distressing number of people who believe things from Fox News that they eschew facts to maintain their death grip on lies. They are so primed that I cannot even have discussions because they now live in an entirely different reality which doesn't accept facts or logic. That's the power of fucking anti-fact right wing news. I know otherwise intelligent people who will accept anything no matter how far fetched if it comes from a right wing source.

If you think the media didn't help trump then you're outta your fucking gourd.

So let's recap, both the media and the FBI are in the side of Trump/republicans.



(Still) President Obama seems to be quite chill for the situation. If he of all people couldn't be bothered to do anything about that over the last year, it raises quite a bit of questions.

[Grek]

Obama has an unhealthy and unrequited fetish for bipartisanship.