US Politics returns: the post-Election thread

[butterbumps!]

10 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Perhaps, but Obama continues to enjoy high ratings, whereas Clinton has low ratings.  Had Obama been allowed to stand again, I'm sure he would have been the favourite in States like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.

Are those high ratings from the places you mention?    And are those places so much surging for trump by former Obama voters or was his victory there significantly dependent on low Clinton turnout?    

No matter how you cut this, trump voters were, at minimum, willing to endorse/ tolerate egregious amounts of bigotry of all shades when they made the calculus to vote for him.    That is incredibly troubling.    

And additionally, simply being a person of color or a woman does not inoculate one from being bigoted or sexist either.     So pointing to poc or women who vote for trump as evidence against bigotry as motivation doesn't work.    

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

10 hours ago, Altherion said:

They ran a data-driven campaign using an algorithm to optimize their resources (including campaign appearances, celebrity concerts, TV ads and county-level campaign offices). The problem is that when you do this, you have to give the machine some data to work with and the data they used included polls which turned out to be wrong. When something like that happens, there needs to be a human being who looks at the output and says "Wait a minute... that doesn't look right." I work with data in physics and it's not easy to do this even there.

In politics, the problem is a whole lot harder and people who can do this are quite rare. Ironically, the Clinton campaign did have such a person (Bill Clinton, who told them that their attitude towards the white working class was problematic), but they basically told him that his ideas were old and he should shut up and let the campaign handle it. Hillary Clinton appears to have been unable to see the issue or even acknowledge it when it was pointed out to her.

Yeah, it certainly appears that the Trump campaign had a leg up on the Clinton campaign in that regard. I wouldn't normally have seen this, but I'm on vacation in Costa Rica and we have 2 TV stations that are in English, one being CNN and the other being Fox. Anyway, Megyn Kelly had Trump's data expert on last night. Patrick something or other (I can't remember his last name) Apparently he's a close friend of Ivanka Trump's husband, who brought him onboard. Anyway, he was saying that they had strong data going into the last week of the election that Pennsylvania and Michigan were tightening up late. They reacted to that data by spending more money on ads there in the last week. It seems like the Clinton campaign was caught with its' pants down in this regard.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

14 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

Scott,

You and I have an advantage over some of the posters here when it comes to engaging bigoted views.  We are both white males of a particular religious backgrounds (I can't remember if you are Catholic or if you are Protestant).  We, I believe, are both able bodied.  We are both in the middle class.  As such, we are not the other.  We can afford to be polite when it comes to discussing these issues with others because we have many points of common cultural identity.  We can attach emotional significance and weight to our words that would be accepted by our audience that people of different backgrounds would find extremely challenging to do.

We had this conversation awhile ago and it is a multifaceted approach.  In that approach, one of the strongest things I can do for social change is utilize the advantages I have and advocate for those that do not.  This may not be possible for others.

ETA:  Sometimes what is polite conversation in one section of the country can be rude in others, same with certain demographics.  It can also very among peoples of different backgrounds.  My conversation and word usage varies between like my friends and the homeless population that I work with for instance.

Very true.  

I have a friend from Beaufort SC who spent a year at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.  While there he was dating a young lady and met her parents who he, being a good Southern boy, addressed as "Ma'am" and "Sir".  Her father got mad.  He immediately assumed John using "Sir" with him was sarcasm and nearly threw John out of the house.  

His daughter had to explain where John is from.  

For the record I'm Orthodox Christian I go to church with a bunch of Russians.  I do see what you mean.

[Jaxom 1974]

35 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

OGE,
 

I agree a lot of it is ridiculous.  I also understand that it feels really nice to point out just how absurd some of this crap is.  I just think, at the end of the day, we are better served by saying "You're wrong and here's why..."  

That said, I cannot say it is never useful or productive to give someone a rhetorical "slap to the face" sometimes it will be effective.  However, I think, more frequently it's just going to prompt an angry indignent response.

Not everyone has your fortitude when it comes to dealing with some folks.  A reasoned approach I generally agree with, but some, and you've seen them on Facebook because I follow a lot of the same conversations you do, won't allow for a reasoned approach.  After the third or fourth time of being reasonavle, how do you get up the energy to point out logical places to take a conversation only to get a 700 word response regurgitating talking points without addressing the question?  You may as well shout at the moon.

[Guy Kilmore]

Like on any public forum, sometimes the message isn't about changing the mind of the person you are speaking to, but the audience that is listening.  That process can be exhausting and not very rewarding.

[Mexal]

Anyone post this yet? Democratic coalition filed a Federal Election Law complaint against Steve Bannon and the Trump Campaign.

Quote

The Democratic Coalition has filed an FBI complaint against Trump Campaign Chairman Steven Bannon, which alleging that he violated a federal campaign finance law coordinating Super PAC activities with the Trump campaign, and receiving payments from it after becoming officially part of the Republican campaign.

Bannon’s recent appointment as a Senior White House Advisor has caused shock waves throughout American media for his alt-right connections and headlines from his Breitbart News outlet.

Bannon’s production company Glittering Steel LLC made “Clinton Cash” as an electioneering communication.

The Make America Number 1 PAC sent payments to Glittering Steel LLC in the amount of $950,090 during the 2016 primary and general election cycle until this September.

This spreadsheet contains lists all payments, with links to the corresponding public records.

The Federal Election Campaign Act is enforced by the FBI, whose first ever prosecution under the act concluded last year with a Virginia man being sentenced to 24 months in a plea bargain deal. The Democratic Coalition wrote:

On Tuesday morning, the Democratic Coalition Against Trump reported Trump Senior Advisor and Former Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon to the FBI for breaking campaign finance law. Over the course of the Trump campaign, Bannon was paid $950,090 by pro-Trump Super PAC, Make America Number 1, through his company Glittering Steel LLC, both before and after Bannon assumed his role as campaign CEO.

The propaganda film “Clinton Cash” was written for the screen and produced by Stephen Bannon himself according to a Breitbart News report on August 12th, 2016, and it was presented by ‘Glittering Steel.’ Glittering Steel LLC is itself a Delaware LLC.

 

[DunderMifflin]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

 

Screaming and shaming is probably the best current method of getting the candidate you like to win an election.

If the aim is to bring everyone to the side of morality and righteousness that's more difficult and probably not achieved simply by voting for a certain candidate.

You can say a vote for Trump is a vote for wrongness and immorality. You won't change many minds of Trump voters. 

Are Hillary voters any better? If someone strongly supported Hillary are they any more willing to listen to a Bernie supporter calmly explain to them how they voted for immorality?

It keeps going in that circle, are people like me that didn't vote for either of them any more moral than people that felt strongly about a candidate. No of course we arent. I've certainly not heard anything near to a convining argument that I did something immoral by not voting for one of those people no matter how calmly it's been explained to me.

 

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

None of these demagogs are purely "screamers".  They mix their emotional appeals with rational appeals to get their desired results.  What I'm suggesting is that rather than answer vitriol for vitriol we calmly explain why people are wrong.  You are less likely, in my opinion, to get an angry reaction if you go with rational argument than the emotional response.  
 

This is not to say you never get an emotional response to rational arguments.  I lost a number of right of center friends on FB making rational arguments against Trump

Rational? Those guys? Since when?

 

[SerPaladin]

5 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

Screaming and shaming is probably the best current method of getting the candidate you like to win an election.

The possibility that I'd vote for Hillary died of a shaming attempt. Someone posted pictures of Yeungling Beer trucks leaving D.C., after the bars there refused to stock that beer because the CEO supported Trump. The pictures were accompanied by some rather colorful comments. Yeungling is the house brand at my home, and I'd never known the politics of the ownership.

You can boycott, that's an absolute right, but it seemed that the Hillary side was attempting to put out of business anyone who even uttered support of Trump. I've seen such economic bullying before the Trump election, almost exclusively from the left, and it goes beyond shaming.

[MerenthaClone]

4 minutes ago, SerPaladin said:

You can boycott, that's an absolute right, but it seemed that the Hillary side was attempting to put out of business anyone who even uttered support of Trump. I've seen such economic bullying before the Trump election, almost exclusively from the left, and it goes beyond shaming.

When one side tends to own the majority of capital, its somewhat hard for there to be a protest except in that manner.  

[DunderMifflin]

3 minutes ago, SerPaladin said:

The possibility that I'd vote for Hillary died of a shaming attempt. Someone posted pictures of Yeungling Beer trucks leaving D.C., after the bars there refused to stock that beer because the CEO supported Trump. The pictures were accompanied by some rather colorful comments. Yeungling is the house brand at my home, and I'd never known the politics of the ownership.

You can boycott, that's an absolute right, but it seemed that the Hillary side was attempting to put out of business anyone who even uttered support of Trump. I've seen such economic bullying before the Trump election, almost exclusively from the left, and it goes beyond shaming.

Idk maybe ur right. I made the decision to not vote for her due to multiple shaming attempts as well. I was just thinking that she probably did get a massive amount of votes by being pitted as virtue and righteousness against pure evil and Hitler.

 

My main point is that all or most of us get rooted deep into our ideas once they take hold in us. No one is likely to convince me I'm immoral by not supporting either of them just as much as no one is likely to convince a Hillary or Trump supporter that they did something immoral.

When we talk about morality we mostly tend to discuss it from our own personal framing so it becomes easy to cherry pick issues and say "that candidate is against thing, that's wrong!" and be puzzled by others who don't share our rating importance of issues within some overall moral heirarchy 

[SerPaladin]

2 minutes ago, MerenthaClone said:

When one side tends to own the majority of capital, its somewhat hard for there to be a protest except in that manner.  

I'm aware there are always some exceptions and donations to the other sides once in a while, but Starbucks, D, McDonalds, R, Costco D, Walmart R, Big Technology D, Big Energy R. Hollywood and Sports New Money D, Old Money R. Wall Street close to even (thanks Hillary). Aside from gaming (Sheldon Adelson), energy (Kochs) and transportation, most economic sectors give equally to both parties.

It might be a majority, but it's a lot closer to 50% than to 90%.

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Yeah, it certainly appears that the Trump campaign had a leg up on the Clinton campaign in that regard. I wouldn't normally have seen this, but I'm on vacation in Costa Rica and we have 2 TV stations that are in English, one being CNN and the other being Fox. Anyway, Megyn Kelly had Trump's data expert on last night. Patrick something or other (I can't remember his last name) Apparently he's a close friend of Ivanka Trump's husband, who brought him onboard. Anyway, he was saying that they had strong data going into the last week of the election that Pennsylvania and Michigan were tightening up late. They reacted to that data by spending more money on ads there in the last week. It seems like the Clinton campaign was caught with its' pants down in this regard.

That may be, but I think the problem is more fundamental. Some ads in the last week would at best result in a point or two; the deeper issue is that they made the election primarily about how Trump is unqualified and that just didn't cause enough people to vote for Clinton.

On a related note, I'm starting to realize (with slowly dawning horror) that the media is not going to let up. After a year of Trump: The Election, we are now being treated to a couple of months of Trump: The Transition. Trump appoints a white nationalist to some post! Trump demotes Christie! Trump fires Christie's minion! Trump's son-in-law involved in transition infighting! The latter is currently the front page article for CNN and contains absolutely no information beyond what had already been reported (although it does give them an excuse for a picture of a very well dressed couple). And after that, there will of course be Trump: The Presidency. They can't keep this up for four years, can they?

[SerPaladin]

6 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

My main point is that all or most of us get rooted deep into our ideas once they take hold in us. No one is likely to convince me I'm immoral by not supporting either of them just as much as no one is likely to convince a Hillary or Trump supporter that they did something immoral.

When we talk about morality we mostly tend to discuss it from our own personal framing so it becomes easy to cherry pick issues and say "that candidate is against thing, that's wrong!" and be puzzled by others who don't share our rating importance of issues within some overall moral heirarchy 

The over-reach bothers me most. I decided not to vote for Trump in 2015 because I could see the ideological shift in my party coming. Cruz was already on the no-vote list, and Trump joined him as too conservative. After the Access Hollywood tape, media put words into his mouth and expanded the hype, tried to make a douchebag with a huge sense of entitlement into a rapist, and then say "anyone supporting a rapist is terrible." Bannon is a bag of hammers, but he's a really effective agitator. Brietbart is a hive of scum and villainy, and he was the CEO. But it's a huge leap from that to "he's a white supremacist."

I watched some bald doofus on MSNBC say something similar to these sentences within moments of eachother: "Trump hypocritically promised to drain the swamp, but here he is appointing the ultimate insider and Paul Ryan buddy Rinse and Repeatus, I guess draining the swamp wasn't important" and "Trump doesn't know what he's doing appointing outsiders like Steve Bannon, no one inside Washington likes the guy, he hates Paul Ryan, and this will cause strife."

Bannon, if he survives the next 2 weeks, is going to be high quality entertainment. I could respect the work and despise the results of the Podestas and Blumenthals and Carvilles. Bannon is the other side of that coin. Liberals will truly hate him.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

15 minutes ago, Altherion said:

That may be, but I think the problem is more fundamental. Some ads in the last week would at best result in a point or two; the deeper issue is that they made the election primarily about how Trump is unqualified and that just didn't cause enough people to vote for Clinton.

On a related note, I'm starting to realize (with slowly dawning horror) that the media is not going to let up. After a year of Trump: The Election, we are now being treated to a couple of months of Trump: The Transition. Trump appoints a white nationalist to some post! Trump demotes Christie! Trump fires Christie's minion! Trump's son-in-law involved in transition infighting! The latter is currently the front page article for CNN and contains absolutely no information beyond what had already been reported (although it does give them an excuse for a picture of a very well dressed couple). And after that, there will of course be Trump: The Presidency. They can't keep this up for four years, can they?

Why shouldn't they?

[Castel]

6 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

Why shouldn't they?

The Republicans  managed to show admirable stamina in terms of reacting to everything Obama did.

 

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

12 minutes ago, SerPaladin said:

, tried to make a douchebag with a huge sense of entitlement into a rapist,

Just to address this point, while the tapes didn't prove that Trump raped anyone, they did show somebody with, at best, reckless disregard for consent.

[MerenthaClone]

16 minutes ago, Altherion said:

On a related note, I'm starting to realize (with slowly dawning horror) that the media is not going to let up. After a year of Trump: The Election, we are now being treated to a couple of months of Trump: The Transition. Trump appoints a white nationalist to some post! Trump demotes Christie! Trump fires Christie's minion! Trump's son-in-law involved in transition infighting! The latter is currently the front page article for CNN and contains absolutely no information beyond what had already been reported (although it does give them an excuse for a picture of a very well dressed couple). And after that, there will of course be Trump: The Presidency. They can't keep this up for four years, can they?

Oh no, someone might actually write articles about how the President is actually appointing terrible people with terrible opinions to office!  What will I do!  "White Nationalist to some post" my ass, he's being appointed as the chief WH strategist and senior counselor.  I'm sorry you managed to overlook the blatant racist nature of Trump's campaign somehow, but just because you're tired of hearing about it doesn't mean its any less goddamn terrible, especially since its new goddamn terrible shit.  You're rolling your eyes and going "god, why won't people stop whining" when his VP is basically in-line with "gay people shouldn't exist" and his strategist is about as vile as it comes when it comes to hating women, PoC, Muslims, and gender minorities.  His actions and decisions can have very real and very awful outcomes for millions of people, but I guess we should ignore that because you're tired of hearing about it.  

Get over yourself.  

[SerPaladin]

Just now, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

Just to address this point, while the tapes didn't prove that Trump raped anyone, they did show somebody with, at best, reckless disregard for consent.

Yup. Akin to the surfers and quarterbacks I went through high school with and met again post college. Those were just the "disregard for consent" types I knew, you may know similar ones who were the rich boys or the popular guys or the guys with easy access to harder drugs. Or maybe you were lucky enough to grow up not knowing any of those archetypes. Trump's line started with "when you're rich and famous, they let you...", but for those guys, it was a consistent entitlement mindset of "when you're me..."

[Weeping Sore]

11 minutes ago, SerPaladin said:

But it's a huge leap from that to "he's a white supremacist."

 

Really not a huge leap. Is there a better euphemism we should be using for him?