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US Election 2016: the fall of the American republic


Kalbear

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Drudge is trying to paint the situation like this, but I have no idea if he's just pulling an angle out of his ass as usual

It's actually a fair angle he is taking.  He is looking at the results based on party data, which is reported in Florida.  After 2012, democrats outvoted Republicans by ~130k, and this year it is more like 35k.  This is a good piece of data for Trump, although it isn't everything.  There was ~ 50k more ballot switching from Democrat to Republican than visa versa between 2012 and 2016.  This is because the remnants of the Dixiecrats are admitting that they are actually Republicans not Democrats.  There is reason to think that those voters were tallied as part of Obama's "lead" in 2012, but actually voted for Romney.  In addition, Latino and Asian American voters are making a much larger portion of the electorate than they did in 2012 early voting.  Both those groups are more likely to identify as independent, but they are polling terribly for Trump. 

And finally, a lot more people have voted in 2016 than they did in 2012.  It's quite possible that Clinton's lead isn't as large as Obama's after early voting.  However, early voting made up 56.5% of total votes in Florida in 2012.  If we assume the same total votes in 2016, then early voting made up 76%.  When such a large portion of total votes are already in, it is good to be ahead, even if Clinton would obviously prefer that her margin were larger. 

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15 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Anyone who claims "strongmen can't rise to power in the US" really hasn't been paying attention.

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36 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

There's a component of "going around the gatekeepers" to this take. The modern internet-talk radio-twitter verse lets a demogogue like Trump talk directly to his supporters instead of being filtered through a sane press or the old network news. I think that's the sub-headline.

The top headline is "the stakes", in my opinion. As much as people worry about the orange dictator having his undersized fingers on the nuclear button, the stakes in 2016 are just not as high as in 1986 or 56 or 36. There has been no worry of a real, active, 'there might be a draft" war since 1991, and really not since glasnost. When the stakes are relatively low, you can elect a reality TV star or a preacher or Kanye.

And not to dismiss them, I know they were important to many people, but the debate over bathrooms last year was not high stakes. And Obamacare was healthcare for less than 10% of the country (I vaguely recall 20+ million uninsured). Important to that 8%, not as impactful as the Great Society or New Deals were in their eras.

And that, "the stakes", is the underlying reason why the right and alt-right want Obama to say the words "radical Islam" and to shut the door on refugees, and a lot of their anti-other rhetoric. The 50s are appealing to them not just for the social mores, but for the collective fear of communism. They could see the 2000s leaning that way after 9/11, but it didn't stick.

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3 minutes ago, SerPaladin said:

There's a component of "going around the gatekeepers" to this take. The modern internet-talk radio-twitter verse lets a demogogue like Trump talk directly to his supporters instead of being filtered through a sane press or the old network news. I think that's the sub-headline.

Yes. And Facebook should suck up the backlash and actually curate the news. What are people going to do? Stop using Facebook?

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8 minutes ago, SerPaladin said:

There's a component of "going around the gatekeepers" to this take. The modern internet-talk radio-twitter verse lets a demogogue like Trump talk directly to his supporters instead of being filtered through a sane press or the old network news. I think that's the sub-headline.

Trump wasn't propped up by talk radio. The mainstream media basically rained down a ludicrous amount of free advertising on this asshole during a crowded primary event where other marginal candidates (Fiorina etc.) had no such advantage and the Jebs of the world had to pay for it.

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I'm not sure if this is rhetorical or sarcasm. I'll answer it as if it was earnest

5 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

Yes. And Facebook should suck up the backlash and actually curate the news. What are people going to do? Stop using Facebook?

It's a new paradigm. Facebook owes no more apology than Gutenberg would for the pamphleteers during the American Revolution or editorial cartoonists in the civil war era.

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5 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

Yes. And Facebook should suck up the backlash and actually curate the news. What are people going to do? Stop using Facebook?

I think Social Media and the internet in generally is kind of self-regulating in that regard though. Take The Donald's Twitter adventures as an example. Anyone can follow him and retweet his nonsense and mock it. When you have high profile people doing this (say Patton Oswalt for example) I think it takes a bit of its' power away. It's not an echo chamber so much as an open forum.

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9 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

Yes. And Facebook should suck up the backlash and actually curate the news. What are people going to do? Stop using Facebook?

Two things:

1. That sounds horrible.

2. Facebook doesn't care and cannot be trusted and will only curate for their advertisers, which is it's own problem.

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1 minute ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I think Social Media and the internet in generally is kind of self-regulating in that regard though. Take The Donald's Twitter adventures as an example. Anyone can follow him and retweet his nonsense and mock it. When you have high profile people doing this (say Patton Oswalt for example) I think it takes a bit of its' power away. It's not an echo chamber so much as an open forum.

That's why user comments are still important!! It's worth 20 troll comments to get to the one person that brilliantly exposes some bullshit article or claim.

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19 minutes ago, SerPaladin said:

I'm not sure if this is rhetorical or sarcasm. I'll answer it as if it was earnest

It's a new paradigm. Facebook owes no more apology than Gutenberg would for the pamphleteers during the American Revolution or editorial cartoonists in the civil war era.

Gutenberg had absolutely no control over pamphleteers once printing technology started proliferating. Mark Zuckerberg still has complete control over Facebook.

14 minutes ago, Castel said:

Two things:

1. That sounds horrible.

2. Facebook doesn't care and cannot be trusted and will only curate for their advertisers, which is it's own problem.

As long as it forces people to jump through hoops (ie use google or type it into the address bar) to see the latest Breitbart article, I'm fine with all the other consequences and dictatorial implications.

My biggest takeaway from this election is that the Founders, Plato, Machiavelli, etc. were at least partially right. The people do need the elites to guide them away from terrible decisions. The Overton window, just like the dollar, needs some active management.

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4 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

Gutenberg had absolutely no control over pamphleteers once printing technology started proliferating. Mark Zuckerberg still has complete control over Facebook.

As long as it forces people to jump through hoops (ie use google or type it into the address bar) to see the latest Breitbart article, I'm fine with all the other consequences and dictatorial implications.

My biggest takeaway from this election is that the Founders, Plato, Machiavelli, etc. were at least partially right. The people do need the elites to guide them away from terrible decisions.

The thing is, if an argument can be made that any group is less trustworthy than the political elites it's the Zuckerbergs of the world. 

What happens when the Koch's get their own social media network, or we discover tiny variances in spending and find out people in certain parts of the country (which correlate more with certain beliefs) spend X or Y more? 

 

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I'm slightly more optimistic than the Vox article.  Back at the very beginning of the election season when the party primaries were just getting started, I think a whole lot of people looked over the candidates and saw that there was a real possibility of a Bush vs. Clinton election and had a :stillsick: reaction.  

There was the feeling that this was going to be a battle between two well-established families of the American aristocracy and a lot of people, myself included, thought that was a fucking gross prospect.  We still ended up with 50% of that match-up, so from the perspective of wanting to move away from dynastic style political families like the Bushes and Clintons, Clinton started behind the 8-ball.  She also started behind the 8-ball in the sense that the Hannity's and Limbaugh's of the world have had a couple of decades of working the Clinton's over.  We've also just had 8 years of one party in the Oval Office which usually bodes well for the challenger.

No doubt in my mind that Clinton is 100 times the candidate that Trump is.  No question in my mind who I was going to vote for once it became clear that Trump actually had a chance to become POTUS.  But I'm not sure Trump would be just a whisker from being POTUS if he'd had to face Biden, maybe even Bernie.  This was not the time to put forth a re-tread and that is exactly what the Democrats did.  I'm reasonably sure Clinton would be getting thrashed by Kasich or Rubio because the vast downsides of Trump are the only thing keeping her in this race.  Even though Clinton is a historic candidate, she's about as exciting as a saltine.  A saltine that you dropped on the floor and it got a little dirt on it.  Lucky for her, her opponent is the dog-poop in the middle of the rug.  

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59 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

 

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What’s more, we have come to see party officials exercising influence as fundamentally illegitimate.


 

The thing is, no one wants to hear this. The Right nominated Trump so they don't want to hear it, the Left also doesn't. And I can understand.If you're a Bernie Sanders supporter the idea of a group of Good Men making the judgments on who's an appropriate nominee will sound harsh in your ears. 

And...are they wrong? There's a difference between "the  establishment considers this person electable" and "the establishment considers this person a taint on our system". Compare Sanders and Trump, in that regard. 

It's the hump you can never get over, when you start talking about establishment control. Even before you realize the e-word is dirty now.

 

 

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