Election 2016

[Omegonthesane]

I don't understand the restraint on display by Hillary and the rest of the Democrats. This was not a fair election, the cost to the Democratic party of 4+ years of Trump is enormous, and the cost to the country and the world will be even larger.

Maybe, she thinks it would not matter / change anything?

In related news it seems like Trump won't arrest Hillary after all.

So clearly a deal of sorts has been cut between white people behind the scenes. Clinton bows down and obeys without causing any more ruckus, and in return Trump does not get her arrested or Guantamo's or droned.

Or, y'know, he decided to notice that he can't actually do that and tries not to admit it.

[DSMatticus]

Trump was stepping down from that bit of rhetoric way before people started talking about irregularities with voting machines.

[Username17]

Somehow I got the impression the poor white guys voted for him, more than the rich ones...

You got that impression because the media and the Trump campaign have been working very hard to try to convince you that Trump won because of salt of the earth white working class voters from the meth belt. The truth is that Trump got the vote close enough to steal because Republicans voted Republican.

Hillary Clinton won the following groups:

• Young people
• Poeople of color
• Women
• Poor people

Donald Trump won the following groups:

• Old people
• White people
• Men
• Rich people

Obviously when it comes to individuals, most of them fit into more than one group, and peoples' chances of voting for one candidate or the other get a bit muddy. So for example, Clinton and Trump basically split rich white women.

Which means that the Democrats had the Democratic coalition and the Republicans had the Republican coalition. And every single person writing some weird ass article about why the coalitions were different this time is not your friend because they fucking weren't.

The things to answer are why massive voter suppression efforts massively suppressed the vote in some places where Trump eeked out a victory, and why Trump can claim victory despite having gotten less votes. But the answer to that is: American Democracy Has Failed. And that is a really scary answer and the status quo media are coming up with every piece of bullshit they can to keep from saying that.

-Username17

[Korwin]

Obviously when it comes to individuals, most of them fit into more than one group, and peoples' chances of voting for one candidate or the other get a bit muddy. So for example, Clinton and Trump basically split rich white women.

So claiming (on your part) that Trump won because of rich white guys was, obvious hyperbole. No suprise...

The things to answer are why massive voter suppression efforts massively suppressed the vote in some places where Trump eeked out a victory,

Can't say much to this (only that requiring identification = voter suppresion, sounds strange to my european ears. As happened in this thread). But maybe there is more.

and why Trump can claim victory despite having gotten less votes. But the answer to that is: American Democracy Has Failed. And that is a really scary answer and the status quo media are coming up with every piece of bullshit they can to keep from saying that.

-Username17

Well, that's old news.
Allready happened with Al'Gore and Bush.

Did the Democrats at least try to reform that under Obama?

[PhoneLobster]

Did the Democrats at least try to reform that under Obama?

First ask yourself...

Did they even publicly or seriously want to talk about it, or let anyone else talk about it, for fear of offending the honorable Republicans?

Meanwhile Jill Stein's efforts for a recount are almost certainly not Hillary and her camp secretly coming to save you. Hillary and the establishment will NOT come and save your from the result of this election. Stop fantasizing, Hillary is not a saint restlessly working to save your democratic soul the only thing she gives a shit about is not having the presidency she thought was hers by divine right. She's human she didn't get what she was in it for, she's done, she's out. Worse than that she's a blatantly corrupt tool of a long standing blatantly undemocratic neoliberal consensus who never gave a shit about you or your democracy in the first place anyway so why the fuck would she secretively go and magically save you or it now?

Also Jill Stein's efforts may well uncover all sorts of bullshit but will ultimately go nowhere and if it ever comes down to those efforts requiring any support from the democrat party establishment or the establishment media to either over turn the election or even to result in ANY sensible future reforms, then you will quickly observe the establishment not just failing to support Stein's efforts but also attempt to crush them.

[Kaelik]

Can't say much to this (only that requiring identification = voter suppresion, sounds strange to my european ears. As happened in this thread). But maybe there is more.

Maybe stop arguing from ignorance when I suspect it has already been explained to you multiple times.

When voter ID passed Wisconsin, an estimated 300k registered voters didn't have the required ID. The ID law was so strict that tons of people thought they had ID, but didn't. Other people thought they didn't have ID when they did. Because the ID laws were deliberately written by one party for the sole and complete and intentional purpose of preventing people who vote for the other party from voting. AND THEY ADMIT THAT. The governor who signed the law literally said "We [Republicans] will win Wisconsin this year because of voter ID." So they wrote the ID law intentionally shitty on purpose to prevent people from being able to use all kinds of sensible IDs, like driver's licenses from another state.

Why is a certificate of naturalization that isn't expired, but that is three years old not an acceptable photo ID, but a Driver's License that expired 2 years ago is? Is it because inner cities have filthy immigrants who vote democrat but don't have Driver's Licenses, but rural counties have old white people who drive on expired licences because they can get away with it who vote Republican? WHY YES IT IS. And even all that came only after a judge struck down half the parts of the law that made it fucking impossible for lots of minorities to get a Department of Transportation ID. Although, see Texas below, who the fuck knows if the DoT actually let those people get IDs, and it hardly matters, since anyone who tried to get an ID before August would have faced the old system, and given up after the first 3 attempts to get an ID met with failure.

Meanwhile, in Texas, the voter ID law was found unconstitutional, and yet poll workers still demanded ID and turned away people who didn't have it. EVEN THOUGH THAT'S ILLEGAL.

And of course, all of this is besides the many many many many other voter suppression techniques used that have been explained that you just pretend don't exist.

But sure, if you just keep saying "voter ID laws can't suppress voters" enough times it will become magically true no matter how many times people explain that you are wrong.

Trump won Wisonsin by less than 27k votes. 50k votes were not counted because they were improper ID. Hey I wonder if the targeted fucking voter suppression law targeted one party, and those 50K votes were mostly democrats?

Did the Democrats at least try to reform that under Obama?

You are a fucking idiot. BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE MAGIC POWERS! There are two ways to fix it, one is arguably unconstitutional.

1) Constitutional Amendment. THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE. 13 states can block this. Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, West Virginia, Kansas, Utah, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Arkansas alone could block that law. All 13 of those states are heavily Republican controlled in both houses and governor. (Except Montana which has Democrat Governor and Nebraska which has "non partisan legislators" that are in actual fact, republican.) All 13 of those have 6 or fewer electors, which means that each of them gets at least 1/3rd of their representation from the electoral college bullshit, and would completely lose it under a popular vote.

2) National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. A bunch of Democrats passed this through legislatures. But you know, Republicans have gerrymandered the shit out of state legislatures, and won't pass this law anywhere they can stop it, which includes places like Virginia, PA, Wisconsin, Michigan that have republican legislatures but have pretty decent chances to go democrat in national elections.

So the answer is. THEY FUCKING DID YOU IDIOT. For fucks sake why is there a wealth of fucking idiots who keep saying dumb shit like "Man, these Republicans in control keep preventing democrats from making reforms, clearly WE SHOULD NEVER LET THE DEMOCRATS BE IN CONTROL! Since if they deserved it they would just win the lottery and get rich with stock investments-OH WAIT, MIXING MY DUMB VICTIM BLAMING METAPHORS!"

[nockermensch]

But the answer to that is: American Democracy Has Failed.

Your Democracy has being failing since you guys decided to schedule election days to a work day.

Your election (and country) was objectively lost by the Huffington Post and a lot of the media giving Hillary a 97% chance of winning, making the race look so safe that a lot of democrats decided they could self-express by voting third-party or staying home instead of voting to save their country.

Michael Moore was Cassandra all along.

[DSMatticus]

Korwin, you can fuck off. You're either a monstrous asshat who is pleased to hear that black people have such a hard time voting in the U.S. or a completely ignorant shit-for-brains who feels qualified to comment on these matters without any of the basic, fundamental research one might reasonably be expected to do before opening their fucking mouths.

The fact is that our government doesn't issue free photo ID's to its citizens - even in states that offer free voter ID cards, the supporting documentation you're required to provide still costs money because fuck you. The offices you'll be expected to go to are open on limited days for limited hours and are so notorious for their hellishly long lines that comedians joking about how terrible they are has become its own weird meta-joke-slash-trope, like airline food. For example, the most common form of government-issued ID is a driver's license. Guess who is less likely to have one? People who live in cities, where there's a lot of traffic and public transportation, particularly the poor. Guess who is more likely to vote Democrat? People who live in cities, particularly the poor. Wow. It's almost like requiring a driver's license is a perfect way to disenfranchise a bunch of Democratic voters and very few Republican voters!

[Korwin]

Maybe stop arguing from ignorance when I suspect it has already been explained to you multiple times.

You suspected wrong.
But your explanation was good. So thanks, that cleared it up.

Did the Democrats at least try to reform that under Obama?

You are a fucking idiot. BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE MAGIC POWERS! There are two ways to fix it, one is arguably unconstitutional.

So the answer is. THEY FUCKING DID YOU IDIOT.

So they at least did try, but it was not enough?

But the answer to that is: American Democracy Has Failed.

Your Democracy has being failing since you guys decided to schedule election days to a work day.

Well the US was never a 'real' democracy. Apparently the Democrats tried to reform the US into that direction for the last 8 years.

Korwin, you can fuck off. You're either a monstrous asshat who is pleased to hear that black people have such a hard time voting in the U.S. or a completely ignorant shit-for-brains who feels qualified to comment on these matters without any of the basic, fundamental research one might reasonably be expected to do before opening their fucking mouths.

The second one.
[Hyperbole]But I learned in this thread, that the sources are all biased racists anyway, so why should I bother?[/Hyperbole]

[Kaelik]

So they at least did try, but it was not enough?

Again, enough would require literal mind control on a Xaiver level. That is the only possible way to kill the electoral college.

The people who benefit from the shitty electoral college have to agree to give up their power. That will never happen, ever.

[Korwin]

So they at least did try, but it was not enough?

Again, enough would require literal mind control on a Xaiver level. That is the only possible way to kill the electoral college.

The people who benefit from the shitty electoral college have to agree to give up their power. That will never happen, ever.

Thats an bleak outlook.

[Grek]

It's fairly accurate, though. The Republican Party exists as it does today almost entirely due to the undemocratic dinosaur skeleton that is the electoral college. GOP officials know that their party collapses into a pile of limp suffocating meat the second the electoral college goes away and will defend it to their dying breath because it is the backbone of their party.

[maglag]

Trump was stepping down from that bit of rhetoric way before people started talking about irregularities with voting machines.

And Clinton already was going quiet about Trump before too.

So point still stands, Clinton gets to stay safe and continue to conduct white people's business as usual as long as she doesn't say anything more against Trump, be it voting irregularities or video tapes surfacing of Trump raping people or anything else that happens in the future.

Maybe, she thinks it would not matter / change anything?

In related news it seems like Trump won't arrest Hillary after all.

So clearly a deal of sorts has been cut between white people behind the scenes. Clinton bows down and obeys without causing any more ruckus, and in return Trump does not get her arrested or Guantamo's or droned.

Or, y'know, he decided to notice that he can't actually do that and tries not to admit it.

Trump's party controls all of the law-making parts of government and soon will control the Supreme Court. If the president technically can't arrest/Guantamo/drone Clinton right now, he'll soon be able to outright change the rules.

[hyzmarca]

Somehow I got the impression the poor white guys voted for him, more than the rich ones...

You got that impression because the media and the Trump campaign have been working very hard to try to convince you that Trump won because of salt of the earth white working class voters from the meth belt. The truth is that Trump got the vote close enough to steal because Republicans voted Republican.

Hillary Clinton won the following groups:

• Young people
• Poeople of color
• Women
• Poor people

Donald Trump won the following groups:

• Old people
• White people
• Men
• Rich people

Obviously when it comes to individuals, most of them fit into more than one group, and peoples' chances of voting for one candidate or the other get a bit muddy. So for example, Clinton and Trump basically split rich white women.

Which means that the Democrats had the Democratic coalition and the Republicans had the Republican coalition. And every single person writing some weird ass article about why the coalitions were different this time is not your friend because they fucking weren't.

The things to answer are why massive voter suppression efforts massively suppressed the vote in some places where Trump eeked out a victory, and why Trump can claim victory despite having gotten less votes. But the answer to that is: American Democracy Has Failed. And that is a really scary answer and the status quo media are coming up with every piece of bullshit they can to keep from saying that.

-Username17

On the other hand, Hillary did lose some swing voters. There are people who voted for Obama last election and voted from Trump in this one. This is not because their politics had changed.

[DrPraetor]

Which means that the Democrats had the Democratic coalition and the Republicans had the Republican coalition. And every single person writing some weird ass article about why the coalitions were different this time is not your friend because they fucking weren't.

Yes they were. Add:
[*] Educated people
to the blue team, and:

[*] Uneducated people
to the red team. This includes, by the way, sizable chunks of uneducated Hispanics (I have no fucking idea either) and more black people than Romney got.

These shifts are important, and need to be studied in detail.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dem ... n-results/

unlike the voter suppression, these tiny shifts in who was in which coalition, while not moving the popular vote totals much, are entirely sufficient to explain HRC losing PA and thus Trump becoming the next President.

The things to answer are why massive voter suppression efforts massively suppressed the vote in some places where Trump eeked out a victory, and why Trump can claim victory despite having gotten less votes. But the answer to that is: American Democracy Has Failed. And that is a really scary answer and the status quo media are coming up with every piece of bullshit they can to keep from saying that.
-Username17

Voter suppression turned the outcome in WI, pretty clearly.

But not in PA or NC which Clinton would've needed. NC, in particular, was decided by more than 3%. Vote suppression could've spread that margin by 1%, but 3% is outlandish.

So voter suppression was a huge deal but didn't change the outcome.

The U.S. is a failed state, but that isn't news either. Even if Clinton had been President, would we have policies that reflect the priorities of the public? We haven't had that since, for fuck's sake, Nixon.

So claiming (on your part) that Trump won because of rich white guys was, obvious hyperbole.... equiring identification = voter suppresion

Trump wouldn't be president without rich white guys, obviously. The difference between Trump becoming-president and not was very thin, so you can point to virtually any bit of the 2012-2016 shift: reduced blue score for non-college-educated whites is the media darling, but also decreased turnout of black people and increased red score for Cubans played a role in one or another state.

The U.S. is not Europe, and many people do not have, or have trouble getting, picture ID. Picture ID requirements are absolutely a voter suppression tactic, and we know they're a voter suppression tactic because state legislators say as much on the floor of the legislature when they propose the corresponding laws!

Other voting suppression tactics are generally related to distribution, size and equipment at polling places; voting in the US is on Tuesdays and we don't get the day off, Americans also have far less leisure time (than Europeans) and transportation is more difficult. So you can cut turnout a lot, and in a targeted way, by making it less convenient for working people to get in line and so forth.

[DSMatticus]

And Clinton already was going quiet about Trump before too.

Oh, you mean quiet before anyone had come forward to suggest that there had been statistical irregularities with electronic voting machines, meaning she had merely lost the election because her votes were in the wrong places and because of voter suppression that the supreme court declined to hear a case on because the supreme court is tied 4-4, you stupid shiteater? Your options are Trump or violent revolution. That's it. There is no magic solution that makes Trump go away. He won by the rules that were in place. Yes, the rules are bullshit, but it would take a liberal supreme court to unfuck even part of that, and control of 2/3rds of the state governments to unfuck the rest of it. Yes, Democrats and the media in general are going to pussyfoot around and normalize the new regime far more than it deserves, but they are not doing it to curry favor. They did the exact same thing for Bush, who did not threaten to lock them up. They did the exact same thing for Reagan, who did not threaten to lock them up. This is what they fucking do. The media are just assholes generally who believe in their "middle of the way" bullshit, and Democrats continue to operate under the mistaken assumption that Republicans have a legitimate interest in governance. They do it because those are the foundation assumptions of the institutions they've built, and as a result Republican corruption has broken those institutions. They do not need to be "bribed" or whatever stupid shit you think, this is how they've operated longer than you've been alive and we just happened to hit peak fuckitude in 2016.

What the fuck is wrong with you people? There is so much to bitch about in this world you'd think it'd be easy, but you somehow always screw it up. Always. How can you know so little about U.S. politics and talk about it so much? It's tiring.

[Hiram McDaniels]

But the answer to that is: American Democracy Has Failed.

Your Democracy has being failing since you guys decided to schedule election days to a work day.

Your election (and country) was objectively lost by the Huffington Post and a lot of the media giving Hillary a 97% chance of winning, making the race look so safe that a lot of democrats decided they could self-express by voting third-party or staying home instead of voting to save their country.

Michael Moore was Cassandra all along.

I'm more inclined to blame voter suppression, a flawed campaign by the dems, and the 49% of the country who didn't show up at the polls before I blame people for voting 3rd party.

[DSMatticus]

Look, I don't particularly like Clinton. I like Obama substantially less than I like Clinton, especially now that his ridiculous attempts to be reasonably bipartisan with the people who brought you the birther movement are a proximate cause for what will likely be the demise of our democracy. But I do not know what mythical campaign Clinton was supposed to run that was going to change things. The fact is that the media did not do issue-based coverage this election cycle. End of fucking story. Sanders ran, got a strong enough showing to earn policy concessions from Hillary Clinton and the DNC and a leadership position, and we were looking at both an administration and a party further to the left than the United States has seen in a long fucking time (and in context of civil rights ever), and that entire discussion was eclipsed by emails, emails, emails, Clinton Foundation.

Just fucking admit it; you did not hear about Clinton's policy proposals unless you went looking specifically for that information. You probably did hear "policy proposals" from Donald Trump, and when you did they fell into one of these two categories: a monstrous violation of our rights presented as merely controversial OR vague impossible bullshit presented as legitimate policy goals on which people happen to disagree. What you did see was lots of media coverage of scandals, and that coverage was overwhelmingly of Clinton scandals. What magical thing are you going to do to make the media give you a fair shot, you insufferable jackasses? Because everytime Clinton actually had the opportunity to get her message out (the debates), her polling went up. But those debates were the only fucking times you heard anything resembling her message, weren't they?

I don't know if you shitheads are imagining a symmetrical world in which the right has Fox News and the left has CNN or MSNBC or what the fuckever, but that is not how it works. The Republican Party has a pet media empire and the Democratic Party does not. That is a fact you are going to have to learn to accept. The non-Republican media is going to report whatever the fuck it wants, and it turns out it wants to shit on Democrats and lift up Republicans in order to create some sort of artificial parity because that's what makes their dicks hard. Neither Hillary nor Sanders nor you has the power to shout through their bullshit because it turns out they are your fucking megaphone. When the media shut the fuck up and let Hillary Clinton talk to voters, voters found out they actually kind of liked her. When the media was left to write its own coverage of Hillary Clinton, voters found out they hated her. The problem is entirely that enough millennials are fickle gullible idiots easily swayed by the same media establishment they supposably loathe that Democrats cannot really win without a reasonably fair shake from the media, and Republicans have discovered that they can control media coverage even outside of their bubble because BOTH SIDES!!1! false equivalence bullshit is the foundation on which most media operates.

Millennials were offered a Democratic Party further to the left than they have ever seen in their lives, and enough of them rejected that that they may now never see another leftwing government for the remainder. Just call them what they fucking are; idiots. And if you aren't willing to do that, at least blame the media for its total lack of policy coverage for leaving them room to be that fucking stupid.

[Pixels]

... and control of 2/3rds of the state governments to unfuck the rest of it.

3/4ths, actually. 2/3rds of the state governments together can propose an amendment, but it takes 3/4ths to ratify.

[hyzmarca]

Look, I don't particularly like Clinton. I like Obama substantially less than I like Clinton, especially now that his ridiculous attempts to be reasonably bipartisan with the people who brought you the birther movement are a proximate cause for what will likely be the demise of our democracy. But I do not know what mythical campaign Clinton was supposed to run that was going to change things. The fact is that the media did not do issue-based coverage this election cycle. End of fucking story. Sanders ran, got a strong enough showing to earn policy concessions from Hillary Clinton and the DNC and a leadership position, and we were looking at both an administration and a party further to the left than the United States has seen in a long fucking time (and in context of civil rights ever), and that entire discussion was eclipsed by emails, emails, emails, Clinton Foundation.

Just fucking admit it; you did not hear about Clinton's policy proposals unless you went looking specifically for that information. You probably did hear "policy proposals" from Donald Trump, and when you did they fell into one of these two categories: a monstrous violation of our rights presented as merely controversial OR vague impossible bullshit presented as legitimate policy goals on which people happen to disagree. What you did see was lots of media coverage of scandals, and that coverage was overwhelmingly of Clinton scandals. What magical thing are you going to do to make the media give you a fair shot, you insufferable jackasses? Because everytime Clinton actually had the opportunity to get her message out (the debates), her polling went up. But those debates were the only fucking times you heard anything resembling her message, weren't they?

I don't know if you shitheads are imagining a symmetrical world in which the right has Fox News and the left has CNN or MSNBC or what the fuckever, but that is not how it works. The Republican Party has a pet media empire and the Democratic Party does not. That is a fact you are going to have to learn to accept. The non-Republican media is going to report whatever the fuck it wants, and it turns out it wants to shit on Democrats and lift up Republicans in order to create some sort of artificial parity because that's what makes their dicks hard. Neither Hillary nor Sanders nor you has the power to shout through their bullshit because it turns out they are your fucking megaphone. When the media shut the fuck up and let Hillary Clinton talk to voters, voters found out they actually kind of liked her. When the media was left to write its own coverage of Hillary Clinton, voters found out they hated her. The problem is entirely that enough millennials are fickle gullible idiots easily swayed by the same media establishment they supposably loathe that Democrats cannot really win without a reasonably fair shake from the media, and Republicans have discovered that they can control media coverage even outside of their bubble because BOTH SIDES!!1! false equivalence bullshit is the foundation on which most media operates.

Millennials were offered a Democratic Party further to the left than they have ever seen in their lives, and enough of them rejected that that they may now never see another leftwing government for the remainder. Just call them what they fucking are; idiots. And if you aren't willing to do that, at least blame the media for its total lack of policy coverage for leaving them room to be that fucking stupid.

Hillary could have, and should have, acted like Trump. If she did, the media coverage would have been a lot more favorable to her.

The problem is that she was defensive. When asked about the emails, she repeatedly said that she didn't do anything illegal and that she didn't recieve classified information. Which is true, but it leaves room to make a scandal of it.

When Trump was confronted about his tax evasion, his replay was "that's smart." He admitted it and was proud of it. Trump is scandal-resistant because he is shameless.

That's the thing about scandals, they're fueled by shame, the shame of the celebrity, the ability of the public to look down on them. If the celebrity lacks shame, there can be no scandal.

Clinton's response to the email scandal should have been "yes I used my own servers, yes I revieced classified information, yes it was against the rules, and it was the right thing to do, because the State Departments email servers have been compromised by Russian spies, and my personal servers are much more secure. I know this because I can personally vett my IT team without having to worry about bureaucratic seniority rules and union contracts which protect spies and incompetents, and I can use protections that are much more secure than anything the State Department is allowed to use because I don't have to worry about a ten-year procurement cycle that keeps us a decade behind the bleeding edge."

And if she said that, the scandal would have ended then and there. The media focus would instead be on the giant holes in the State Departments computer security, which we all know exist because of Wikileaks.

If Hillary was completely shameless about it, there would have been nothing for the media to cover, except how awesome Hillary is.


Second, she should have engaged the media herself, directly and heavily. She should have booked appearances on all the major talk shows, the View, the Tonight Show, Live, even Bill O'Reilly because why the fuck not?

And if they wouldn't book her, then she should have showed up anything and just sat herself in front of the camera like she was supposed to be there, giving them no other choice but to interview her.


And she should have hosted an episode of SNL, too.

The hands-off media approach does not work in 2016. You have to get in their and engage them personally, and directly.

[Hiram McDaniels]

I still say that we need to do to the 1% what the right wing noise machine did to Muslims, immigrants and people of color.

I don't think the DNC will ever have the balls for this though.

[DSMatticus]

None of any of your stupid fucking ideas work because the DNC legitimately does not have a propaganda outlet. Clinton trying to own the private email server results in headlines like "Clinton admits to deliberately mishandling classified information" and her justifications will be somewhere two-thirds through the article interspersed with the word SHAME here and there because Clinton does not own those fuckers. There is no left wing noise machine! None! It's not there! How many times do I have to say this? Your message only matters insofar as you can broadcast it, and the Republicans have a dedicated platform and the left have a bunch of centrist shitstains who want to pretend everyone's equal and those are the two kinds of outlets to connect with voters; the ones who call you are the antichrist and the ones who will dedicate more time to the use of a private email server than sexual assault because both sides do it, right? They have to! Whatever the fuck it is, anyway.

The media is broken and people are kind of stupid and that's why we can't have nice things (like democracy).

[Mechalich]

I still say that we need to do to the 1% what the right wing noise machine did to Muslims, immigrants and people of color.

I don't think the DNC will ever have the balls for this though.

It's not that simple. The right already controls anti-rich people memes. Heck, Trump was using them, with his railing against global cabals and George Soros. This is basically an anti-Semitic dog whistle, but even played straight it works.

Beyond that, othering is largely about attitude. Trump is a ridiculously well off member of the global jet-setting elite. He has his own fucking plane, which is pretty much the most obvious demarcation of being part of the super-rich there is (I've been on the private planes of really rich people, they are nice, and you totally get to ignore normal airport protocol to boot). None of that mattered in the election as Trump supporters considered him to be the everyman candidate and Clinton the oligarch - even though the story of the Clinton's is about as close to a classic American up-by-your-bootstraps story as one is likely to get on the ticket.

Romney, a man worth a fraction of what Trump is and by pretty much all evidence is a comparatively decent human being who actually gives a lot of money to charity instead of falsely claiming to do so, got denigrated as a plutocrat. Trump...did not. In fact, by being a boorish jerk, Trump managed to turn many of his vices, most notably rampant sexism, into assets or at least neutral traits.

[hyzmarca]

None of any of your stupid fucking ideas work because the DNC legitimately does not have a propaganda outlet.

They make it. By hook or by crook, the DNC should create a propaganda outlet.

[DrPraetor]

The DNC is the 1%, just a different faction of the business class. So obviously they're not going to call for patent attorneys to be hunted in the street like dogs.

To the extent that the left has an outlet, it's SNL and Trevor Noah, not the aforementioned centrist shit-stains; and they're mocking the 1% pretty mercilessly but liberals/progressives do not mobilize hostility in the same way that reactionaries will do.

In hindsight, Clinton absolutely should have done - something, anything else at some point. Because she lost WI, MI and PA by tiny margins, so she should've shuffled things from one pile to another or taken some other risk or whatever.

Simple explanation: Trump and Clinton were the two most unpopular candidates in US presidential history. In the final stretch, voters with negative views of both candidates broke for Trump. Now, the outcome was so close that any tiny slice can be said to be decisive, but this is a slice that was decisive and clearly persuadable.

The explanation for this which is most consistent with political science and media research is: Clinton lost because, in the final stretch people were reminded that she existed. Trump spent post-debate pre-election period basically hiding and saying nothing, and I think that was the perfect strategy for this election.

So Coney hurt Clinton both when he told Congress that there were additional e-mails, and hurt Clinton again when he sent his "never mind" letter, and:

Second, she should have engaged the media herself, directly and heavily. She should have booked appearances on all the major talk shows, the View, the Tonight Show, Live, even Bill O'Reilly because why the fuck not?

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