The Political Thread

[Dandontdare]

One man doesnt run the whole USA on his own.

It's worth remembering that the CIA and NSA have openly briefed against Trump, and these are not what you would call fluffy liberal organisations with a history of rocking the establishment boat

Seems to me like there are different political factions in the intelligence services, especially the FBI - hence the announcement of further investigations into irrelevant but damaging e-mails before the election but nothing about Russian hacking.

As for refusing the usual intelligence briefings, many of trump's promises (eg on banning Muslim immigrants) were always qualified with "until we figure out what's going on" - and now he says he's smart so he doesn't need anyone to tell him what's going on.

[Smith]

so it might have been more of a case of voting against Hillary.But that's just my theory.

Except that they didn't, did they? Clinton's —what?— 2.8 million up in the popular vote. The result is a peculiar artifact of the US electoral college system, that makes a vote in Wisconsin worth about 4x more than a vote in California and, in a particularly vicious bit of irony, was intended as a safeguard against precisely this situation.

Clearly,those memories affected decisions of at least some people.

[Dandontdare]

this did seem to be an election where people were voting against the candidate that they hated more rather than for the candidate they liked.

[TordelBack]

this did seem to be an election where people were voting against the candidate that they hated more rather than for the candidate they liked.

I've voted in a fair few elections now, and this is almost always what I've had to do*; yet I've still managed not to vote for any ambulant turds.


*Exception being Irish presidential elections, where I've been lucky enough to vote for some downright sound folks - whatever you might think of our executive, we've had three gold-star Presidents in a row, the current being a genuine sweetie who may just be the most beloved politico in our history.

[Theblazeuk]

Ah - just like a British election then!

so it might have been more of a case of voting against Hillary.But that's just my theory.

Except that they didn't, did they? Clinton's —what?— 2.8 million up in the popular vote. The result is a peculiar artifact of the US electoral college system, that makes a vote in Wisconsin worth about 4x more than a vote in California and, in a particularly vicious bit of irony, was intended as a safeguard against precisely this situation.

Clearly,those memories affected decisions of at least some people.

Yep - the ones in Winsconsin I suppose. It's always weird how we talk about the electoral systems (everywere) as though they are won by popular vote, when FPTP makes it much more circumstantial.

[Jim_Campbell]

Clearly,those memories affected decisions of at least some people.

Your ability to read minds is very impressive.

Nonetheless, it doesn't change my point: every presidential candidate ever with a share of the popular vote this big has gone on to become president, except this time. (And if 38,000 Trump voters over four swing states had voted Clinton instead, she'd have won the electoral college, too.)

It's just not possible to paint this as a rejection of Clinton at the ballot box; it's an unintended outcome of the electoral college system which, as I said, was supposed to be a safeguard against exactly this situation.

[TordelBack]

Those depressing if-only numbers ignore the fact that no-one but his immediate cronies should have voted for Trump: it was in no-one else's interests, especially those of his core supporters.  They've been gulled good and proper by a waste of useable volume.  Homer's inanimate carbon rod ("In Rod we Trust") running against Trump should have got 100% of the vote. 

[Smith]

Clearly,those memories affected decisions of at least some people.

Your ability to read minds is very impressive.

Well,thank you,it took years of practice.

[Professor Bear]

Except that they didn't, did they? Clinton's —what?— 2.8 million up in the popular vote.

Arguably those millions of Democrat Sanders supporters that the Clinton campaign went out of its way to alienate would have been pretty helpful on election day, too.

[Jim_Campbell]

Arguably those millions of Democrat Sanders supporters that the Clinton campaign went out of its way to alienate would have been pretty helpful on election day, too.

Arguably, yes. Doesn't change the fact that no one has ever lost the popular vote as badly as Trump and won the electoral college before. If Clinton had been a black man called Obama, she could have done even better, and if fish had fur and feet, they'd be mice.

[Professor Bear]

Stitching fur and feet on a fish to make a new mouse species is madness.

[JayzusB.Christ]

*Exception being Irish presidential elections, where I've been lucky enough to vote for some downright sound folks - whatever you might think of our executive, we've had three gold-star Presidents in a row, the current being a genuine sweetie who may just be the most beloved politico in our history.

Yes, it's odd, really, he's a politician but he's fucking sound (and quite probably an atheist, which would have been a national scandal when I was a kid). It's a pity he doesn't have any actual political power; he'd do.a better job of running the country than the current bunch of leeches and scumbags.

[TordelBack]

While I've always respected MDH, and greatly admired his speeches on social equality and economic justice etc., it was the sheer brilliance of his work over the 1916 celebrations that floored me. Event after event, speech after speech, each different, each passionate, each nuanced, reflective, inclusive, informative and inspirational. Not one was tub-thumping nationalism, not one was weasley postcolonoal apologia. How the feck did he do it.

[I, Cosh]

How the feck did he do it.

Micheal D lectured me in sociology!

[JPMaybe]

this did seem to be an election where people were voting against the candidate that they hated more rather than for the candidate they liked.

I think that's sort of true for Republican voters, but certainly not for the Dems: as the boys on the Chapo Trap House podcast have pointed out, HRC's campaign was an awful, tin-eared mess that amounted to little more than "Donald Trump is a big meanie, it's my turn". The hope was obviously for a negative mobilisation against Trump, but it utterly failed to materialise on election day. Huge swathes of people who had voted Obama twice just didn't bother this time- the relative difference in popular vote count is stark, but obviates how much her share as a total of the population tanked.

And frankly, fuck her. Seeing hubris and incompetence like hers punished is a tiny silver lining to the fact that she let a protofascist beat her.