katha

This has become the default position of 24/7 news media whose main interest is ratings and non-stop panic and drama. After Brexit there was a lot of discussion about the completely irresponsible way the televised media in particular had covered the issue, without questioning lying fools like Farage etc., without providing much research of their own, and how that had contributed to an uninformed electorate who voted to exit the EU often without knowing what the EU even is or what it does.

This is unfortunately not something Trump-specific, a run-of-the-mill Republican president would stock his cabinet with the same people. Bush had all these extremist, scary people running the show as well, that's easy to forget. He was an outwardly "friendlier, folksier" candidate, but the people doing the dirty work and running the show for him were trading in the same sort of ugliness that Trump is displaying openly.

I don't know why this amuses me so much, but it just does. Perhaps I'm trying to look for any kind of humour or levity in this depressing situation. Still: Somehow, the Republican party with their total spinelessnes when it comes to Trump, has made Mitt "flip flopping milquetoast" Romney come across as one badass outlaw renegade. And now Omarosa going on about Romney is Trump's enemy number one or whatever. And of course Romney's own hilariously shady tweet after the election that basically read "We're all fucked with this Ooompa Loompa" in slightly politer terms. Idk, it's one of the curious stories of this election cyle IMO. And slightly less depressing than a lot else, so I come back to it when the rest makes me anxious. Trump was spouting a lot of bigoted nonsense and pandering to the basests instincts of voters and he's obviously not qualified. Yet the Republican party as a whole just wouldn't call him out on any of it, and I do think this is something that will be their legacy now. Except for Romney. He had to have known that he was basically taking a flamethrower to possible future career aspirations with that speech. He tore down everything about Trump, his campaign, his peddling of hatred, his shady businesses, his lack of competence, his foul temper, and he tore it down good. Trump was a sort of trial by fire for the Republicans and for the most part they failed spectacularly. It's interesting about the ones who didn't.

And I do worry that the left in many places doesn't want to acknowledge that this disconnect is a problem. It's easier and more comforting, I think, to just say "they're all just vile, ignorant yokels, screw them". But if you want to win, you need those votes. And the reality is more complicated, there's frustration and despair and sometimes rightly the perception that the Democratic party also doesn't care about them and hasn't been pushing for policies that might help and isn't even really committed to try because they're too busy colluding with Wall Street. Then you get apathy or people going for the (misguided) "protest vote" or whatever. That's also why the Republicans were always so busy to paint Obama as "elitist". It wasn't really working, though (at least not beyond the crowd who was always going to resent him anyway). Because I think he understood and he found a way to reach out in ways that resonated. And so people responded to the fact that even though he was "not like them", he also might have faced hardships of his own and perceived their pain. Obama was capable of framing all of this in a way that was very inclusive and relatively easy to understand.

Yeah, there's no explaining away Trump's racism and all-around bigotry. One of the (many, many, many, many) lowlights of this campaign was in one of the debates when Trump and Clinton started bickering about who's been more racist (of course Trump always "wins", but it was disheartening to see her tapdance around her own behaviour in the 2008 campaign. And they deliberately went for dogwhistling to court white voters in 2008 IMO.).

I don't think anyone needs to hesitate about drawing comparisons to Germany and posting them, but I am of the opinion that "just like Hitler!" is an argument that only ever stands up completely if a thing is, in fact, just like Hitler. The complexities of how the Nazis came into absolute power (and it wasn't through an election, they had the majority to form a government in a democracy, nothing more. They then proceeded to immediately establish a terror regime, they had no mandate to do that and in no way shape or form was any of that justified by the constitution.) are very much tied to the general rise of fascism and anti-semitism at the time, to the economic depression, to the particular problems Germany faced after WWI. And what's also historically unique about Hitler, Goebbels and their ilk is this: They were ideologues to a degree that's seldom been matched in the history of mankind. What they ended up doing, the genocide, the war, the enslavement, all of that was out in the open for years before they came into power. They also, ultimately, chose to go for the destruction of Germany and chose suicide instead of dealing with a world that wouldn't follow their twisted ideals. That's a level of commitment to ideology that I haven't seen in any of the far-right governments that periodically crop up all over the world. A better comparison might be more recent far-right movements? Berlusconi in Italy, Jörg Haider in Austria. Con men who pandered to prejudices for their own selfish gain.

I mean, at this point this is all so terrible that it is actually good news, comparatively speaking, that there's someone on his team who tells him: "Hey, maybe hold it now, huh?" Depressing times...

Trump looking somewhat somber and overwhelmed has been the one slightly less than terrible thing about these last few days tbh. At least there might be hope that he has some self-awareness that he's in over his head, that he's responsible now and if he screws it up there will be hell to pay. Pipe dreams, I know, but it would make me even queasier if he was all bluster and self-assurance now.

I don't know if that should go in the HRC thread or here, but I'll just go with it since I think it's relevant to both campaigns: I think a lot of people who voted for Trump feel that neither the Republican nor the Democratic establishment have helped them at all and have ignored them for decades. They are probably not wrong about this. And they thought that Trump might shake things up because he's "anti-establishment" (even though he clearly isn't). All sorts of prejudices might have played into it as well for that set of voters, but frustration and resignation and despair was probably also a very strong motivator. And I don't think this is something the Democrats can ignore. We talk about the conservative bubble where they are constantly reinforcing each other's world view. But in the age of social media such a bubble exists for progressives as well, where problems might get ignored, where one set of opinions is seen as correct and how the "real world" reacts to campaigns or candidates or issues is ignored or only perceived too late. Like all the stories coming out now about how it seems like the Clinton camp repeated many of the mistakes they made in 2008, why didn't that get addressed sooner?

Mostly I'm scratching my head why they do tango as a trio at all? Don't they need to be in hold all the time, how does that work? It's just strange. Other than that, the dance assignments and music choices look nice for everybody.

He may not be qualified, but I don't think Trump will just step back and let others decide. There were stories throughout the campaign about tensions with Pence and about his temperament and how he holds grudges etc. That's indeed where a lot of the uncertainty comes from, no one knowing how active he wants to be as President and what his agenda might be. He threw out that infrastructure program in his speech, I don't think the Republicans will love that, though the Dems in congress might go for it. I've read they've already scrubbed all that stuff about banning Muslims from immigrating into the country from his website, building that wall "was just a metaphor". They're already walking back all of that, and it's only the second day. How will the people who voted for these promises react to that? And even Cheney, who arguably ran the country for quite a bit, ultimately lost some power in the Bush admin. At least it looked like it from the outside looking in: Cheney/Rumsfeld in the first term and a bit in the second and then once it started going south in obvious ways, Bush and Rice kinda started to step in and froze Cheney out and started to do what they thought was "damage control". So even if the people around Trump think he'll be easily led, that doesn't have to be the case. In the end, even Bush jr. broke away from Cheney to some extent. What any of that means for anything is anyone's guess, of course...

I know many don't like her, and she's certainly mugging too much and too focused on the camera. But I wouldn't mind if she got another chance as a pro next season or later on. Jake didn't have much potential and though she may have made mistakes as well, perhaps she learned from this. Other pros like Peta or Keo or so got second chances after an unimpressive first season as well.

I don't think the problem with Allison is even so much the choreography, though IMO she has issues there as well. And if she's stuck, she can always seek outside help there. I think her problem is that she can't teach and IMO this is very, very obvious in comparison to most of the other pros. Riker was good to start with and never improved on his weaknesses. Andy and Jonathan and Babyface would have benefited from ballroom teachers.

Her numbers are down, what, 7 million from Obama in 2012? Even with all the other factors out of her control counted in, I do think this points to an enthusiasm gap and perhaps also to mistakes in her organization when it came to getting the vote out. Structural issues in her campaign contributed to her loss against Obama in 2008, who had a much tighter ground game. And we've had posters from the swing states writing here that her ground game seemed lacking to them. Who knows, it's certainly something Democrats will have to examine going forward. ETA: Looked it up, Obama had almost 66 million votes in 2012. So Clinton got 7 million less, that's a lot. Romney also had more votes than Trump, turnout was down in general. Always bad for Democrats.

Since TV became a huge factor in US elections, "being able to read a room" has been a clear advantage for any candidate. Kennedy won a close election because he came across as more appealing than Nixon in TV debates, at least that's the received wisdom. Reagan was charismatic and could work a crowd, Clinton was folksy and charming. Many people apparently perceived Bush junior as folksy and charming, compared to "cold" Gore and Kerry. Obama is charismatic and can work a crowd, that helped him against McCain and Romney and Clinton. You could argue that this is the nature of campaigns now, and has been for a long time.

And I give you once again Mitt Romney: "Best wishes for our duly elected president: May his victory speech be his guide and preserving the Republic his aim." https://twitter.com/MittRomney/with_replies?lang=de Damn, that's saltier than some of the official Democratic reactions LOL.

Clinton came with baggage, she was seen as part of the establishment and she doesn't have personal charisma for many people. That was always going to work against her. In hindsight, what should have been a worrying sign is that many thought "well, Trump is so horrible, somehow she'll win against him". That's...not a passionate endorsement for a candidate. Trump is a populist demagogue who knows how to play to a crowd, he's a performer. All these skits about Clinton "casually leaning on that wall, just as she rehearsed it for three weeks"? Yeah. Reaching people emotionally is important in elections, it shouldn't be the main aspect, but often it is. Obama reached people emotionally. Yes, there's hatred for him. But people were always drawn to him as well, to the way he knew how to present his message and make it accessible and emotionally resonant. He's a populist and he won against Clinton in 2008, of course in a totally different context. I'd like to see how her ground game played out in 2016, if she repeated some of the mistakes of 2008.

I think a mass of people knew that voting for Trump is wrong, but they did so anyway, and refused to admit that in polls. That's also borne out by those figures that show that many of the people who voted for him don't think he's qualified, but that didn't stop them. It's difficult to poll for something like that. Also, the race in the swing states was close and if what some posters here are saying is true and Clinton wasn't as sharp in her ground game as she needed to be, that's a huge problem for Dem turnout as well.

The structural issues of Clinton's campaign were partly what cost her the nomination in 2008, Obama was much better organized. I thought she'd learned from that...

Oh, and in the sea of general spinelessness and refusal of the mainstream GOP to take any kind of responsibility for Trump, I want to give a shout out to Mitt Romney. He denounced Trump and he denounced him strongly, even though it was clear that he'd face a lot of backlash for it. He could have done the opportunistic thing like many of his colleagues and hemmed and hawed, but he took a stand.

I thought the Laurie/Jana dance was good for "DWTS contemporary", which is basically nothing like actual contemporary as far as I understand? It was a lot of heavy-handed visual metaphors, a bit of movement, some lifts, some actual dancing and lots of angsty face. So in that DWTS specific "genre", I thought it worked. Jana and Laurie executed what they were given very well and I think the judges mark it as performance, not so much as a dance style, because they themselves have no idea what to look for anyway.

Then there's also the fact that Clinton, and I know saying it now is rubbing salt in the wound, wasn't the strongest possible candidate the Demcocrats could pick. Or at least she came with considerable baggage. We can discuss until the cows come home whether that's fair to her or not, but that was just the case. The hatred for the Clintons in general is strong, hatred for her tied to sexist prejudices is probably even stronger. She's also IMO not a very warm and charismatic presence. Nothing wrong with that, but since elections are so much performance and appearance, she was always going to suffer in that aspect. She suffered against Obama, who was a charismatic populist (I don't mean that in any negative way, just as a description). But Sanders wouldn't have been a stronger candidate, he'd have been trounced as well. Perhaps Biden, I can see people maybe going for him. It's tough to keep the white house after two terms, it's tougher with a female candidate going against a populist demagogue. This must be personally so devastating for HRC. After 2008 the outcome was at least in general positive for Democrats and she became Secretary of State. This is a fatal blow for her and you know everyone will blame her and tear her to shreds, even though there were things out of her control at play as well.

Yes, ultimately voters are responsible for their votes. They wanted this (or couldn't be bothered to turn up, or cast a third party vote knowing the consequences), now they have to own it. That a demagogue who was peddling division and prejudice won in this election is now part of America's legacy.

We don't know their internal polls, and we've seen how reliable polling has been (not very). It looks like there's a large front of silent protest voters, it's difficult to take that into account if it never shows up in the data.

But that was polling before any kind of pushback or attacks on him or closer scrutiny that comes with a general election. And HRC had good polls against Trump as well, I don't know how much it means.