Hillary Rodham Clinton: 2016 Democratic Presidential Nominee

[DAngelus]

1 hour ago, slf said:

LOL I don't know, dude, I feel like maybe racism, anti-immigration, and Islamophobia (1 2 3 4 5) played bigger roles than Hugh Rodham naming his daughter Hillary.

I didn't say the slogan was the whole reason…but it didn't help.

And go on blaming the result on people being "racist" and crap like that.  Because those sort of sneering insults helped so much during the campaign.  To quote James Carville, "It's the economy, stupid."  Republican voters may have idiotic ideas about getting rid of regulations and cutting corporate taxes and such, but the idea that they were just sitting around waiting for somebody to pledge allegiance to the KKK is as stupid as you seem to think they are.

[Watermelon]

54 minutes ago, DAngelus said:

I didn't say the slogan was the whole reason…but it didn't help.

And go on blaming the result on people being "racist" and crap like that.  Because those sort of sneering insults helped so much during the campaign.  To quote James Carville, "It's the economy, stupid."  Republican voters may have idiotic ideas about getting rid of regulations and cutting corporate taxes and such, but the idea that they were just sitting around waiting for somebody to pledge allegiance to the KKK is as stupid as you seem to think they are.

Well when your candidate is endorsed by the leader of said KKK....you should see how some come to that conclusion.

56 minutes ago, Chicken Wing said:

 

So for all the talk of these shock results being the result of Trump bringing out the working-class white vote in droves that overwhelmed Clinton, while it's true in some cases in some of the more crucial states the problem was really Clinton's deficits. It seems it was only Pennsylvania where the white voter surge propelled Trump to the win, with him gaining 300K votes against Clinton's 80K loss, but in other states he actually performed right in line with Romney while Clinton lost a lot of Obama's numbers. Just thought I'd share my nerdgasm and add it to the conversation. In the states that mattered to the electoral map, Clinton's deficits actually mattered more than Trump's surge, so that's something to think about.

Did you take into account the Voting Rights Act being gutted? Hundreds less polling places were open this voting cycle. Sunday polling was cut in places.  

[mojoween]

This just popped into my head but Jesus jumped up Christ for all the times he called her "crooked" and said he was going to lock her up and insulted her family to her face, for her to come out with a speech like this morning after probably getting no sleep?  And saying it like she meant it?

She earns all the props I have to give.  If I were in her position I could probably recite the words, but I wouldn't be able to keep from gritting my teeth while doing it.

[Bastet]

Quote

This just popped into my head but Jesus jumped up Christ for all the times he called her "crooked" and said he was going to lock her up and insulted her family to her face, for her to come out with a speech like this morning after probably getting no sleep?  And saying it like she meant it?

She earns all the props I have to give.  If I were in her position I could probably recite the words, but I wouldn't be able to keep from gritting my teeth while doing it.

One of the gazillion reasons I'll never be president is, in the immediate aftermath of something like this - a loss to a man over whom I was qualified in every single way - my "concession speech" would have been (and this is a variation on what someone here suggested this morning, so credit where credit is due): walk to the stage, give this country the finger, say, "Donald Fucking Trump.  Good luck with that," and walk off.

I disagree with her on many things, as I've said, but I respect her, and I enthusiastically voted for her under the circumstances.  And I gained even more respect for her this morning with her speech and her "thank you" email.  Because in her shoes, I'd have needed to be literally sat upon by my handlers to not walk out there with an "Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?" mic drop.

[Chicken Wing]

6 hours ago, Watermelon said:

Did you take into account the Voting Rights Act being gutted? Hundreds less polling places were open this voting cycle. Sunday polling was cut in places.  

That's a thing to think about. Trump's numbers were identical to 2012 in some places, but Clinton's were noticeably down... Was it that people didn't want to come out to vote for her? ...Or couldn't come out? The possibilities are endless, though the end result remains the same: This stinks.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Chicken Wing

[katha]

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.

Edited November 10, 2016 by katha

[Chicken Wing]

She actually lost about 3 million of Obama's total (59.8m vs 62.6m) while Trump added 500,000 to Romney's vote. Both interesting to consider: On the Clinton side, was it a lack of ability for people to turn out in enough places that added up? Was it just a lack of interest to turn out, and whose fault is it if that? The campaign? The ground game? The candidate? Many things to consider. And where Trump is concerned, for all the chest puffing about how Trump started this game-changing movement and he drove up the numbers everywhere and got so many people to come out to support him who don't normally vote ... it's just half a million nationwide. His victory owes a lot less to his gaining votes than to Clinton's losing votes, in key states in particular. And, of course, we can't overlook the impact of the higher-than-normal percentage of the third-party vote.

Edited November 10, 2016 by Chicken Wing

[qtpye]

This loss is not a Trump problem.  This loss is the absolute failure of the Democratic party to support it's base.  The Democratic party has taken us progressive women, people of color and the LGBT community for granted for a long time.

Forget about the misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic and racists people that supported Trump, because quite frankly, they do not matter.  We must also accept that many people who voted for Trump do not fall into these easy categories of blame, but are actually people who should, at least on paper, supported Hillary.

I have spoken to many liberal women, people of African and Mexican heritage, and other people that probably reliably vote Democrat.  They feel that the party takes them for granted and does little for them.  They feel that the party thinks they have a lock on their vote because of issues like abortions rights and fear mongering that all Republicans are Nazis waiting to take anyone who is not a white wasp into a concentration camp.  They are sick of this do nothing party and, rightly or wrongly, Hillary was the target of their frustrations. 

Does it make sense...no.  Is it fair...no.  However, we are broken as a party and we need to regroup and rise even stronger.

My very speculative guess was that the Dems thought they were going to lose this election and put up Hillary, because "she deserved a turn".  The Dem were expecting a loss because Barry was a two term president and usually after two terms, the electorate are ready for a change. 

Then the orange dildo secured the Republican nomination.  It was supposedly a dream come true.  What would have probably read as confidence and strength in a man came off as unbearable smugness in a woman, as every pollster practically guaranteed her a win. 

My father is a die hard Democrat.  He loves Obama to the point of it being almost a little embarrassing. On election night when I called him, horrified and saddened by the results, his reaction was a non emotional shrugged.  I was shocked that my father was taking this so lightly and was not nearly as upset as I was.  It was then when I realized how badly the party is being received by it's own members.  The Democrats gave Trump the election with their apathy, he did not win it on his own.

[ClareWalks]

6 minutes ago, qtpye said:

The Democrats gave Trump the election with their apathy, he did not win it on his own.

This is why I blame the dems more than the repubs for this whole debacle. This should have been a total slam dunk and THEY FUCKED IT UP.

I have no party affiliation, I was just hoping a rapist wouldn't win. I was counting on the Democrats to really turn it out and I feel like they failed us all.

Edited November 10, 2016 by ClareWalks

[Chicken Wing]

Quote

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.

I stand corrected; the map I was using for the numbers must not have reflected the ultimate total. Looking at Wikipedia instead, yes, Obama got 65.9 million to Romney's 60.9 million, while Clinton got, as of now (are they still counting in some states?) 59.9M to Trump's 59.6M. Between the two major-party candidates, there was a 7M vote decline from 2012 to 2016 -- but only a 3M decline in the overall vote count. In 2012, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein and others (Roseanne!) accounted for around 2 million votes altogether and 1.4 percent of the total electorate. This year, the third-party candidates amassed nearly 6 million votes and 4.7 percent of the electorate. There's your missing 4 million major-party votes.

So with Clinton losing much, much more of the Democratic vote than Trump did the Republican vote while third-party support surged, it's safe to conjecture that many, perhaps a majority, of this year's third-party voters were Democrats/Democratic-leaning voters who hated Trump but couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton -- yet the cumulative total of their defection probably contributed more than anything else to Trump's win. I. Love. Irony.

It is funny, though, that there was all this talk about how voter turnout was going to break records this year with Trump bringing out new voters to vote for him and Clinton bringing out new voters to vote against him, and though we know there was a lot of that, it wasn't nearly enough to offset the voters who just plain stayed home. 

Edited November 10, 2016 by Chicken Wing

[Watermelon]

I'm still so appalled.  It's not even Republican vs. Democrat to me. It's a woman with knowledge vs a man who knows NOTHING germane to running the country.  I'm angry for her. 

[ClareWalks]

2 minutes ago, Watermelon said:

It's a woman with knowledge vs a man who knows NOTHING germane to running the country.

That is kind of horrifying, that a man who thinks "you should have changed the law when you were the Secretary of State" makes ANY SENSE whatsoever. That's not how any of this works.

[Pollock]

15 minutes ago, Chicken Wing said:

So with Clinton losing much, much more of the Democratic vote than Trump did the Republican vote while third-party support surged, it's safe to conjecture that many, perhaps a majority, of this year's third-party voters were Democrats/Democratic-leaning voters who hated Trump but couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton -- yet the cumulative total of their defection probably contributed more than anything else to Trump's win. I. Love. Irony.

For my sanity, I prefer to think that the Gary Johnson voters were Republicans who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Trump and the Jill Stein ones were Democrats. It makes less of a sting as the Stein voters wouldn't have made a difference in any key states Hillary lost. And it's kind of reassuring to know that some Republicans wouldn't put Trump in the White House even if they didn't want a Democrat either. (I have chocolate goggles today, I need to see the bright side of things)

[MulletorHater]

10 hours ago, Bastet said:

One of the gazillion reasons I'll never be president is, in the immediate aftermath of something like this - a loss to a man over whom I was qualified in every single way - my "concession speech" would have been (and this is a variation on what someone here suggested this morning, so credit where credit is due): walk to the stage, give this country the finger, say, "Donald Fucking Trump.  Good luck with that," and walk off.

I disagree with her on many things, as I've said, but I respect her, and I enthusiastically voted for her under the circumstances.  And I gained even more respect for her this morning with her speech and her "thank you" email.  Because in her shoes, I'd have needed to be literally sat upon by my handlers to not walk out there with an "Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?" mic drop.

LOL!  For real!  I still can't bring myself to watch her concession speech.  I may later today, as last night was the first time I slept soundly in weeks.  Yesterday, I was an absolute wreck.  I did read her thank you email, as well as the ones I received from the DCCC and DGA.  That nearly gutted me.  But, today, I woke up refreshed, yet still saddened.  But, I'm also even more pissed off than ever but will use my anger to do something positive.  I've already signed up to work with a "Returning Citizens" ministry at my church, which I did on a whim last weekend so as not to hurt someone's feelings.  But, now?  I'm totally down for the cause especially after reading a FB posting from a so-called friend about how her and others' votes in Virginia would "cancel out the felon vote."  It's  not just enough for me to unfriend her and send her a resounding "fuck you," but I must now take action.  I won't even touch on the irony that she and these others voted to put a criminal in the White House.

But, I totally agree with that dropped mic sentiment.  It will only be a matter of time before Drumpf's supporters are initially disappointed and then outraged because they bought into his con.  Too bad...so sad!  Meanwhile, we have the midterms to get ready for and we need a Democratic and Progressive majority to cut him and Pence off at their knees.

[sistermagpie]

13 hours ago, DAngelus said:

And go on blaming the result on people being "racist" and crap like that.  Because those sort of sneering insults helped so much during the campaign.  To quote James Carville, "It's the economy, stupid."  Republican voters may have idiotic ideas about getting rid of regulations and cutting corporate taxes and such, but the idea that they were just sitting around waiting for somebody to pledge allegiance to the KKK is as stupid as you seem to think they are.

I know anecdotes aren't data, but honestly I've heard the "it's the economy" all the time from pundits, including liberal ones. To me it feels like the dominant official narrative with bigotry just being the distraction that somehow popped up and must be looked past to find the deeper, sympathetic pain they really want to express. The "We need to take rights away from people who aren't like me because they're out to get me" motivation (whether or not there's allegiance to the Klan) is one I hear far more often from actual Trump supporters talking about their views where I can see and hear them. Seems like only recently there's been pushback against the economic idea, with people pointing out how many Trump supporters are actually not suffering economically and that factual economic news really doesn't seem relevant to many of them. I've just seen the economic philosophies and views blatantly change depending on who's in charge to be able to take them very seriously.

[Danny Franks]

6 hours ago, Chicken Wing said:

That's a thing to think about. Drumpf's numbers were identical to 2012 in some places, but Clinton's were noticeably down... Was it that people didn't want to come out to vote for her? ...Or couldn't come out? The possibilities are endless, though the end result remains the same: This stinks.

A bit of both. The Republicans have done their best to stop minorities from voting in states where they control things. But the stories I've heard are mostly from southern states, not from Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Again, we should not fall into the trap of just blaming the Republicans for the defeat. They played a part, with their dirty tricks and unconstitutional behaviour, but there are a lot of reasons that have to be considered soberly, so that mistakes can be fixed.

It seems like Clinton's campaign knew that she had no chance against an orthodox Republican candidate, thanks to the years of her being painted as a villain. They did what they could to push Trump to the front of the queue, but badly underestimated (like we all did) just how much his message would resonate. He lied his arse off, he just told people what he knew they wanted to hear, he is a vessel that's empty of all but bile, there for all those people to pour their own bile and hate into. But he won. Because Clinton's campaign and the media did not grasp that they had to convince his supporters that they had the better message. To be honest, I don't think they'd have succeeded even if they tried, but at least they'd have tried.

Echo chambers is the phrase of the moment, and it feels so relevant here. Trump's supporters would hear nothing good said about Clinton, but Clinton's supporters just weren't aware of how many people felt that Trump was vindicating them. It's a terrible state of affairs.

[Spartan Girl]

Hillary's acceptance speech broke my heart, but it gave me some strength too.  This is our time to rally.  Hillary might have lost the presidential election, but she paved the way for someone else.  Someone who will finish what Hillary and Shirley Chisholm started.

Our first female president is out there somewhere.  I don't know who she'll be, but she is on her way. I can feel it.

And God help men like Donald Trump then.

[DAngelus]

40 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Seems like only recently there's been pushback against the economic idea, with people pointing out how many Trump supporters are actually not suffering economically and that factual economic news really doesn't seem relevant to many of them.

I haven't checked the cross-tabs in the polls, but just because Clinton might have won voters with incomes under $55,000, that doesn't mean there wasn't a large cohort of Trump supporters in that category.  And Trump did win among voters making $55,000-$100,000 annually.  (Clinton won the over-$100,000 earners.)

The definition of "suffering" economically can vary.  If you're (hypothetically) a farmer with lots of loans to pay off (farmers are typically heavily burdened by debt, it's why they're sensitive to drops in crop prices), making $80,000 in a year may not seem as wonderful as it would to somebody working at Wal-Mart to eke out $25,000 a year.  Particularly if the farmer has 5 kids where the Wal-Mart worker is single.  Particularly if the farmer used to make $100,000 or $150,000 a year, and has been digging through their savings to stay afloat.  It's quite possible that the weighted average of the Trump voters' income was below that of the Clinton voters, and "economic stress" is subjective, anyway.  The only factual data I know is that among those whose incomes had dropped, Trump won 78-19%.  And that Clinton was the choice of the high-earner bracket, not Trump.  So I'd be dubious of the "pushback" about Trump voters not really hurting economically.  I think they were more likely to be sincere than not.

I don't really get what was meant by "factual economic news doesn't seem relevant to them"?  Do you mean that you personally perceive the "average Trump voter" as being "not poor enough" to be "forced to" turn to Trump as a solution?  No offense intended, but that seems a bit subjective from my viewpoint.  Or are you saying that you've seen interviews with Trump voters and they didn't immediately say "I'm going broke" and so you thought other motives might apply in those cases?  Because people being interviewed might be reluctant to bring up their personal financial situations and simply talk of generalities such as "change" and "strong leadership" instead, IMO.

And of course, there are plenty of other reasons someone might vote for Trump besides "I'm poor" and "I'm a bigot".  Standard Republican economics, much as I find it ridiculous, has plenty of adherents.  Militarism, much though it revolts me so much that I now pull a Kaepernick and refuse to stand for the anthem, certainly has its adherents.  After all, Trump only got 0.3% more of the popular vote than Romney did in 2012.  (It was more Clinton losing the Obama vote [largely to Johnson, who went from 1% to 3.2% this time around] that did her in, rather than a Republican "surge".)  I don't really see how that equates to "our country is much more divided than we thought", as Clinton claimed in her concession speech.

Which, pardon what might be an unpopular opinion, but I really didn't like.  Saying the country is "divided" because they didn't vote for you seems pretty self-serving, IMO.  Maybe we just didn't like you…did you ever think of that? And again we get the implication that voting for Trump shows some sort of moral failure on the voters' part, which both reeks of chutzpah and seems very counter-productive longterm, I'd think.  But again, that's just my opinion.

Speaking of opinions, what the heck was up with the "protests" against Trump in various cities yesterday?  All the man did on Tuesday was win an election.  Somebody had to.  For all the talk about whether Trump "would accept the results of the election", it certainly seems as though there's a certain amount of hypocrisy coming from the Clinton voters now on that subject.

(One of the Fox blondes [sorry, I haven't watched there often enough to know all their names] Tuesday night played footage of her asking Clinton on the plane after Debate #3 whether she would swear to "accept the results", and Clinton only laughed and tried to pivot to attack Trump on the "issue" again, rather than give a simple "yes".)

I mean, don't get me wrong, freedom to assemble, yada-yada…but can you imagine the outrage if throngs of McCain supporters had "protested" Obama's election in '08?  The "we deserve it, you are evil, how dare you win" tone of the "protests" made me more twitchy about "fascism" than anything Trump said during the campaign.  

George W. Bush, noted Clinton supporter, actually stole the 2000 election.  (Further examination found that Gore would have won Florida had the recount been allowed to proceed, whether you counted partial markings, full markings only, or whatever the standard in the relevant county was.  The only reason he got to put his hand on the Bible in January is because Katherine Harris [who'd already done a lot of shady things in the election] called off the recount when Bush was briefly ahead, and after the Florida Supreme Court overturned that, a Republican SCOTUS overturned them.  By 5-4, with one of the 5 being Sandra O'Connor, who IMO should have recused herself after calling Gore's election "a disaster" on Election night.)  I save my outrage for things like that.  But yet again…JMO.

And I really hope nobody here is as triggered as Rachel Maddow seemed to be last night.  It's an election, we'll have another in 4 years' time.  That's all it is.  It's not the Cuban Missile Crisis reborn or the start of American Fascism, ffs.  Seriously, Rachel…stop that.

I mean, I personally have despised every President we've had ever since I became politically aware in the Jimmy Carter days.  (Don't get me started on Carter sabotaging the Humphrey-Hawkins full employment legislation or his exploiting the Iranian hostage situation to defeat Ted Kennedy's primary challenge.  Or his bragging at the 1980 convention about increasing military spending in each of his four years in office after being elected on a platform to reduce the slavering "defense" budget four years previously.  Mondale gave an actual Democratic speech at that convention;  Carter was a DLC pseudo-Dem before Clinton and his buddies actually founded that group of traitors in 1985.)  

But we've survived all of them.  (Including Reagan, whose VP, a certain Clinton ally named George H.W. Bush, talked about "winning" a nuclear war…)  We'll survive this, too.  And if we don't automatically assume that every Republican voter is a racist/sexist/whatever, maybe we can win more elections, at that.

Although IMO better Democratic nominees wouldn't be a bad thing, either.  Peace.

[DAngelus]

2 hours ago, Chicken Wing said:

it's safe to conjecture that many, perhaps a majority, of this year's third-party voters were Democrats/Democratic-leaning voters who hated Trump but couldn't bring themselves to vote for Clinton 

Given how right-wing Johnson and the Libertarians are in general, I should hope not.  It seems more likely that previous Dem voters simply stayed home, while Johnson siphoned off a good chunk of potential Trump supporters (Republicans and R-leaning independents that the Clinton campaign's "How dare you!" tactics worked on, at least as far as keeping them from voting for Trump), and kept Trump from getting an actual landslide that he might have had otherwise.

But until and unless we get a "second preference" option on the ballots, we'll never know.  And since that would encourage people to vote for minor parties, the major parties would never allow it.

Personal note:  I live in California, where we have this godawful anti-democratic "top two" rule, that there's an all-party primary and only the top two finishers get to be on the ballot for the general election.  (It's why there were two Democrats running for our Senate seat; they'd both beaten the Repub candidates in June.)  This means that there are absolutely NO minor-party candidates on the ballot for any office other than President/VP.  Which means that Jill Stein/Amiri Baraka were the only people I voted for on Tuesday, barring non-partisan judicial races and my local mayoral election.  Because in 2012, I decided I wasn't going to vote for any "Democrats" who chose to run under the same banner as War Criminal Obama, or Clinton this time around.  

So the more the D/R duopoly tries to choke off my options, the less likely I am to "come home" anytime soon.  Give me a choice, not an echo (title of a book by one of Clinton's fellow 1964 "Goldwater Girls", Phyllis Schlafly), and I might listen.  Keep telling me I "have" to support the same people that the Bushes do, and you'll keep losing me.

Which really doesn't make a difference because…California.  But it makes me happy, at least.  So there's that.

[Danny Franks]

56 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

Our first female president is out there somewhere.  I don't know who she'll be, but she is on her way. I can feel it.

 

'First female president, you say? Knocking that orange piece of shit off his perch, you say?'

She, Bernie and Nancy Pelosi (along with others, I'm sure) have already put him on the spot by praising his infrastructure plan and saying they're ready to work with him on it. Because they know that the Republicans in Congress would rather let an illegal immigrant sleep in their spare bedroom than sign off on a huge govt spending bill.

[ari333]

27 minutes ago, DAngelus said:

I haven't checked the cross-tabs in the polls, but just because Clinton might have won voters with incomes under $55,000, that doesn't mean there wasn't a large cohort of Trump supporters in that category.  And Trump did win among voters making $55,000-$100,000 annually.  (Clinton won the over-$100,000 earners.)

The definition of "suffering" economically can vary.  If you're (hypothetically) a farmer with lots of loans to pay off (farmers are typically heavily burdened by debt, it's why they're sensitive to drops in crop prices), making $80,000 in a year may not seem as wonderful as it would to somebody working at Wal-Mart to eke out $25,000 a year.  Particularly if the farmer has 5 kids where the Wal-Mart worker is single.  Particularly if the farmer used to make $100,000 or $150,000 a year, and has been digging through their savings to stay afloat.  It's quite possible that the weighted average of the Trump voters' income was below that of the Clinton voters, and "economic stress" is subjective, anyway.  The only factual data I know is that among those whose incomes had dropped, Trump won 78-19%.  And that Clinton was the choice of the high-earner bracket, not Trump.  So I'd be dubious of the "pushback" about Trump voters not really hurting economically.  I think they were more likely to be sincere than not.

I don't really get what was meant by "factual economic news doesn't seem relevant to them"?  Do you mean that you personally perceive the "average Trump voter" as being "not poor enough" to be "forced to" turn to Trump as a solution?  No offense intended, but that seems a bit subjective from my viewpoint.  Or are you saying that you've seen interviews with Trump voters and they didn't immediately say "I'm going broke" and so you thought other motives might apply in those cases?  Because people being interviewed might be reluctant to bring up their personal financial situations and simply talk of generalities such as "change" and "strong leadership" instead, IMO.

And of course, there are plenty of other reasons someone might vote for Trump besides "I'm poor" and "I'm a bigot".  Standard Republican economics, much as I find it ridiculous, has plenty of adherents.  Militarism, much though it revolts me so much that I now pull a Kaepernick and refuse to stand for the anthem, certainly has its adherents.  After all, Trump only got 0.3% more of the popular vote than Romney did in 2012.  (It was more Clinton losing the Obama vote [largely to Johnson, who went from 1% to 3.2% this time around] that did her in, rather than a Republican "surge".)  I don't really see how that equates to "our country is much more divided than we thought", as Clinton claimed in her concession speech.

Which, pardon what might be an unpopular opinion, but I really didn't like.  Saying the country is "divided" because they didn't vote for you seems pretty self-serving, IMO.  Maybe we just didn't like you…did you ever think of that? And again we get the implication that voting for Trump shows some sort of moral failure on the voters' part, which both reeks of chutzpah and seems very counter-productive longterm, I'd think.  But again, that's just my opinion.

Speaking of opinions, what the heck was up with the "protests" against Trump in various cities yesterday?  All the man did on Tuesday was win an election.  Somebody had to.  For all the talk about whether Trump "would accept the results of the election", it certainly seems as though there's a certain amount of hypocrisy coming from the Clinton voters now on that subject.

(One of the Fox blondes [sorry, I haven't watched there often enough to know all their names] Tuesday night played footage of her asking Clinton on the plane after Debate #3 whether she would swear to "accept the results", and Clinton only laughed and tried to pivot to attack Trump on the "issue" again, rather than give a simple "yes".)

I mean, don't get me wrong, freedom to assemble, yada-yada…but can you imagine the outrage if throngs of McCain supporters had "protested" Obama's election in '08?  The "we deserve it, you are evil, how dare you win" tone of the "protests" made me more twitchy about "fascism" than anything Trump said during the campaign.  

George W. Bush, noted Clinton supporter, actually stole the 2000 election.  (Further examination found that Gore would have won Florida had the recount been allowed to proceed, whether you counted partial markings, full markings only, or whatever the standard in the relevant county was.  The only reason he got to put his hand on the Bible in January is because Katherine Harris [who'd already done a lot of shady things in the election] called off the recount when Bush was briefly ahead, and after the Florida Supreme Court overturned that, a Republican SCOTUS overturned them.  By 5-4, with one of the 5 being Sandra O'Connor, who IMO should have recused herself after calling Gore's election "a disaster" on Election night.)  I save my outrage for things like that.  But yet again…JMO.

And I really hope nobody here is as triggered as Rachel Maddow seemed to be last night.  It's an election, we'll have another in 4 years' time.  That's all it is.  It's not the Cuban Missile Crisis reborn or the start of American Fascism, ffs.  Seriously, Rachel…stop that.

I mean, I personally have despised every President we've had ever since I became politically aware in the Jimmy Carter days.  (Don't get me started on Carter sabotaging the Humphrey-Hawkins full employment legislation or his exploiting the Iranian hostage situation to defeat Ted Kennedy's primary challenge.  Or his bragging at the 1980 convention about increasing military spending in each of his four years in office after being elected on a platform to reduce the slavering "defense" budget four years previously.  Mondale gave an actual Democratic speech at that convention;  Carter was a DLC pseudo-Dem before Clinton and his buddies actually founded that group of traitors in 1985.)  

But we've survived all of them.  (Including Reagan, whose VP, a certain Clinton ally named George H.W. Bush, talked about "winning" a nuclear war…)  We'll survive this, too.  And if we don't automatically assume that every Republican voter is a racist/sexist/whatever, maybe we can win more elections, at that.

Although IMO better Democratic nominees wouldn't be a bad thing, either.  Peace.

BBM (Bold By Me)

As for the protests, the differences for me between Obama and Trump are too many to list, but I'll start with - Obama is not a hateful, bigoted, racist, misogynistic homophobe. It's not just my thought. The words came directly out of the man's mouth and it's been recorded.

[sistermagpie]

Just now, DAngelus said:

I don't really get what was meant by "factual economic news doesn't seem relevant to them"?  Do you mean that you personally perceive the "average Trump voter" as being "not poor enough" to be "forced to" turn to Trump as a solution?

No, I mean that there's not a reaction that follows economic news. Like the unemployment rate goes down, but that's not good because it's just a lie. Jobs bills are bad. Deficits are great under Bush and then suddenly the problem we were always the most worried all along. My taxes have gone up...when they've actually gone down.  

This was similar to Newt Gingrich when confronted with actual numbers on crime that said it was down. It's not about keeping crime down. Crime must always be up. 

 

5 minutes ago, DAngelus said:

And if we don't automatically assume that every Republican voter is a racist/sexist/whatever, maybe we can win more elections, at that.

Of course people are going to think more kindly about people who aren't judging them harshly right off, I agree. But I don't really see the key to winning Trump voters over being to just agree with them that they're not racist or sexist at all even when you feel what they're saying or voting for is objectively racist. If somebody says they think social programs (even social programs they themselves use) take money away from hardworking people to feed shiftless "urban" people or illegal immigrants, I don't think they'll be okay with them as long as I don't suggest there's anything racist in the way these things work.

I guess it maybe seems like a difference between not being belligerent and belittling to people personally, either when talking to them in person or making some joke on the internet where you call them names, and committing to pushing the idea that they're not racist at all when they seem to you to be being racist. The Klan is literally out marching in victory that the candidate that supports their ideas won, and not only are Trump supporters saying "I don't understand how anybody can suggest we're racist" but there doesn't seem to be any big effort to condemn it or saying anything to set themselves apart from it at all. (I would say there's a far more concerted effort from Muslim-Americans to condemn Jihadist terrorists...)  It just seems almost comical that it's up to everyone else to come to a Trump voter's defense against the racism charges if they're perfectly fine with the Klan making those charges.

I'm just not sure that being reassuring and polite about perceived racism is that surefire effective. I can't speak with any authority on how the civil rights movement really worked, but just my impressions as someone who's read about it as an average American, it seems like there was for years the Atticus Finch type anti-racist who was kindly and good people with human flaws that sometimes led them to be unfair and needed compassion. And that actually helped keep the system in place. When people got more in your face and demanded equal rights the ugliness that was always there came out. People saw images of non-violent people being beaten, spit at and abused because they stood up for themselves, and that put the whole thing in starker contrast where they had to side with one side of that or the other. If you can be okay with a police department having objectively racist policies (as detailed by a report, for instance) and always assume the dead man had it coming even when video and others say otherwise without racism being brought up, what's the motivation to change your thinking?

I know motivations are always going to have many factors no matter what the issue.  I'm fine not opening a discussion with "Hey, racist! Why are you so racist?" But eventually there's got to be a breakdown of their positions on things that might head back there.  It just seems like historically it's points where people talk about existing racism when progress gets made.

10 minutes ago, ari333 said:

I mean, don't get me wrong, freedom to assemble, yada-yada…but can you imagine the outrage if throngs of McCain supporters had "protested" Obama's election in '08?  The "we deserve it, you are evil, how dare you win" tone of the "protests" made me more twitchy about "fascism" than anything Trump said during the campaign.  

Speaking from my own perspective, I thought the point was to let people who felt seriously threatened by the election let them know that people cared about that and them. The protests weren't challenging the legality of the election, they were registering a rejection of certain values he represented, which I think people would have been just fine with post-Obama. In fact, weren't there many many such protests staged by the Tea Party to do exactly that? There's never been any suggestion that people should not be allowed to vote for a Republican candidate. Trump is actually the one who talked about not accepting the results of the election (if he lost) as well as muzzling the press etc. That's different than protesting to say "that man doesn't represent my values."

[DAngelus]

4 minutes ago, ari333 said:

BBM (Bold By Me)

As for the protests, the differences for me between Obama and Trump are too many to list, but I'll start with - Obama is not a hateful, bigoted, racist, misogynistic homophobe. It's not just my thought. The words came directly out of the man's mouth and it's been recorded.

Allow me to BBM in response.  The only things I've heard Trump say that people called "racist" are his mentioning that some of the illegal immigrants from Mexico are criminals, which is factually true, and his questioning whether Judge Curiel could be fairly judge him about the court case, in light of that controversy.  AFAIK he's never claimed that people are inferior because of their race or that they shouldn't have rights or anything like that, which last I checked was what actual "racism" is about.

(Not that he wasn't a jerk in both of those cases.  Mexico isn't "sending" the immigrants, obviously; it's silly to characterize it that way.  And it wouldn't have hurt to mention that most of the immigrants are law-abiding, before you get into the discussion of immigrant crime.  And Judge Curiel of course might well not be prejudiced by his ancestry, which turned out to not be "Mexican", after all.)

And I don't know where you get "homophobe" from.  I haven't even heard any controversies about that.  Hypothesizing that the (to be determined) judges that Trump might (perhaps) appoint might (somehow) "roll back" marriage equality (how?  We have far more legal precedent now than we did before) doesn't even come close to making him a "homophobe" in my books.  And Trump has come out against the anti-transgender "bathroom bill" in North Carolina, and enjoys the support of a prominent trans person, in Caitlyn Jenner.  Where is the alleged "homophobia", exactly?

Are some of Trump's voters homophobic?  You bet.  However, homophobia exists on both sides of the Dem/Rep spectrum. Ask my fellow Californians the question of who helped pass Proposition 8 (the 2008 ballot measure that took away marriage equality, for the next five years)…it wasn't just the Republicans, let me put it that way.  Because we've got them severely outvoted here, as Clinton's 60-35% triumph showed.  Again, I don't see how that should redound against the man himself.  JMO.

[Chicken Wing]

Quote

AFAIK he's never claimed that people are inferior because of their race or that they shouldn't have rights or anything like that, which last I checked was what actual "racism" is about.

Check again. Racism and microaggression are a lot more complex and wide-ranging that that "definition."

[DAngelus]

25 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Like the unemployment rate goes down, but that's not good because it's just a lie.

The U-3 unemployment rate is certainly subject to manipulation, and Obama is hardly the first one to do so.   The trick is to get the Bureau of Labor Statistics to redefine who's "unemployed" and who is just not part of the "Labor Force".  GWBush made some tweaks on this in his administration, but Obama has accelerated the process.  Those who are over 60 (or is it 62?) and not working are now automatically classed as "retired", which isn't necessarily the case.  Those who are under 24 (I believe) and haven't been able to get their first job are no longer counted in the U-3 statistics.  The U-6 is a far better indicator of unemployment…and it's hardly as pretty a picture as Obama paints.

Here is the Labor Force Participation Rate since January, 2009.  Note the trendline:

The current LFPR of 62.80 is a level not seen since the late 1970s.  And back then, there were (I'd wager) considerably more stay-at-home parents (mostly women) by choice than there are today.  Which means that many people have been pushed out of the Labor Force, even though they are no longer counted as "unemployed".

Sean Hannity claims (I know, I know…but he probably didn't make this up entirely) that 1/6 of all males between 18-34 are either currently incarcerated or not in the Labor Force.  That 9 million Americans have been removed from the Labor Force since 2009.  All the little things that make that U-3 rate (which is still barely under 5%, hardly anything to celebrate after eight years in office) not as pretty as Obama/Clinton like to pretend that it is.

13 minutes ago, Chicken Wing said:

Check again. Racism and microaggression are a lot more complex and wide-ranging that that "definition."

The OP didn't claim that Trump was "microaggressive", however.   The citation was words that "came directly out of [Trump's] mouth", and that's what I'm disputing.

Edited November 10, 2016 by DAngelus

[Lisin]

Hey guess what guys? This is the Hillary Clinton topic not the Trump topic! Please take posts about Trump to his topic. Thanks. 

[Chicken Wing]

Quote

The OP didn't claim that Trump was "microaggressive", however. 

Microaggression (pretty sure microaggressive isn't a word) falls under the broad umbrella of racism. "Racist" is an ugly label. Many people do not like to think of themselves as being racist or touting such behavior. What they do not realize is that very often, they are in fact guilty of microaggression, a very subtle and often undetected form of racism. And it can manifest in ways simple ways ranging from refusing to let it compute in your brain that the black woman on the plane who claims to be a doctor actually is a doctor to making sweeping assumptions about an entire nationality or race as in connecting Mexican immigrants with rapists and criminals and supporting the ban of the followers of an entire religion on the basis that some evildoers in certain regions of the world associate with a corner of the same faith. Racism is not just defined by openly expressing hatred toward another group or accusing them of being inferior. Not at all.

[sistermagpie]

3 minutes ago, DAngelus said:

The U-3 unemployment rate is certainly subject to manipulation, and Obama is hardly the first one to do so.   The trick is to get the Bureau of Labor Statistics to redefine who's "unemployed" and who is just not part of the "Labor Force".

Answering in the Trump thread...

[Danny Franks]

9 minutes ago, DAngelus said:

The OP didn't claim that Drumpf was "microaggressive", however.   

His hands have certainly been microaggressive, according to that Access Hollywood video.

Anyway, back to Clinton. I guess she retires from politics now. There's nothing more for her to do. Her political philosophy has to come to an end, now. I read an article yesterday saying that a technocrat who talks about small adjustments and improvements will never win against a bloviating loudmouth who claims he can fix everything. I guess that's true, but I wish we'd all seen it before now. Politics is about messages, more than it is about truth, and Clinton's message just wasn't compelling enough for a lot of people.

[windsprints]

Sorry, shouldn't have replied in this thread. 

Edited November 10, 2016 by windsprints

[Chicken Wing]

Just now, Danny Franks said:

His hands have certainly been microaggressive, according to that Access Hollywood video.

Anyway, back to Clinton. I guess she retires from politics now. There's nothing more for her to do. Her political philosophy has to come to an end, now. I read an article yesterday saying that a technocrat who talks about small adjustments and improvements will never win against a bloviating loudmouth who claims he can fix everything. I guess that's true, but I wish we'd all seen it before now. Politics is about messages, more than it is about truth, and Clinton's message just wasn't compelling enough for a lot of people.

What's sad is that, for much of this campaign, her opponent attacked her for having three decades in the political sphere and not accomplishing anything. The woman has dedicated her entire adult life to public service, to championing for the people, to wanting to make things better. It hurts to think of all of that being denigrated to "She's been here for 30 years and she's done nothing." She hasn't done nothing. She's done everything. It's important to make sure that Hillary Clinton's legacy will not be defined for the generations to come by this one crushing loss but for those 30 years of hard work, service and sacrifice she made along the way. 

[Danny Franks]

3 minutes ago, Chicken Wing said:

What's sad is that, for much of this campaign, her opponent attacked her for having three decades in the political sphere and not accomplishing anything. The woman has dedicated her entire adult life to public service, to championing for the people, to wanting to make things better. It hurts to think of all of that being denigrated to "She's been here for 30 years and she's done nothing." She hasn't done nothing. She's done everything. It's important to make sure that Hillary Clinton's legacy will not be defined for the generations to come by this one crushing loss but for those 30 years of hard work, service and sacrifice she made along the way. 

She's achieved more than any current Republican can ever lay claim to. That's what they can't stand, above everything else. That a woman has been better at politics than they have. All those sad excuses for politicians have done for the last eight years is obstruct legislation. They're cowards who have opted to neglect their duties to help the American people, so they can retain their ideological purity. But of course, they're not part of the swamp that needs draining. Right.

[qtpye]

I have heard the email leaks have sad that Secretary and President Clinton were worried about Trump, but were given horrible guidance by their advisors.  My dog would have been a better advisor to the Democratic party then these fools.

This article does a great job of how the Clinton campaign (again probably more her advisors then her) could have used the economy to ease the particular us/against them attitude many Trump supporters seem to share.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_bills/2016/11/clinton_could_ve_eased_trump_voters_racism_with_economics_she_blew_it.html

[ari333]

56 minutes ago, DAngelus said:

Allow me to BBM in response.  The only things I've heard Trump say that people called "racist" are his mentioning that some of the illegal immigrants from Mexico are criminals, which is factually true, and his questioning whether Judge Curiel could be fairly judge him about the court case, in light of that controversy.  AFAIK he's never claimed that people are inferior because of their race or that they shouldn't have rights or anything like that, which last I checked was what actual "racism" is about.

(Not that he wasn't a jerk in both of those cases.  Mexico isn't "sending" the immigrants, obviously; it's silly to characterize it that way.  And it wouldn't have hurt to mention that most of the immigrants are law-abiding, before you get into the discussion of immigrant crime.  And Judge Curiel of course might well not be prejudiced by his ancestry, which turned out to not be "Mexican", after all.)

And I don't know where you get "homophobe" from.  I haven't even heard any controversies about that.  Hypothesizing that the (to be determined) judges that Trump might (perhaps) appoint might (somehow) "roll back" marriage equality (how?  We have far more legal precedent now than we did before) doesn't even come close to making him a "homophobe" in my books.  And Trump has come out against the anti-transgender "bathroom bill" in North Carolina, and enjoys the support of a prominent trans person, in Caitlyn Jenner.  Where is the alleged "homophobia", exactly?

Are some of Trump's voters homophobic?  You bet.  However, homophobia exists on both sides of the Dem/Rep spectrum. Ask my fellow Californians the question of who helped pass Proposition 8 (the 2008 ballot measure that took away marriage equality, for the next five years)…it wasn't just the Republicans, let me put it that way.  Because we've got them severely outvoted here, as Clinton's 60-35% triumph showed.  Again, I don't see how that should redound against the man himself.  JMO.

BBM

There are criminals in every race and every culture just as there are good people in every race and every culture. He painted  Latinos with a broad brush, generalizing about all people of a certain race/country in a negative way. That, to me, is an example of racism.

As for the LGBT community, I don't think Trump is in support of their rights, so that's where the characterization of homophobe came from (in my post above)

Edited November 10, 2016 by ari333

[Moose135]

Quote

And if we don't automatically assume that every Republican voter is a racist/sexist/whatever, maybe we can win more elections, at that.

When you stand that close to them, it's hard not to get painted with the same brush.

[qtpye]

One thing that was shocking to me was that not that many progressive minded young women (35 and younger) came out for her or not enough needed to make the difference.

I have been hearing that younger females are independent, but hate the term "Feminist".  I was wondering if this had anything to do with their not embracing Hillary, since she pretty much embodies the spirit of first wave Feminism.

Then I read this article and it all became much clearer:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2016/11/02/im-self-sufficient-sure-but-i-still-do-need-a-man/?tid=a_inl

For those of you have not read this article, it is about an independent woman who has been scolded all her life by older female family member for "needing a man".

She explains that she is very good by herself, but yes, she does crave love and companionship and it is very human to do so.  I think Hillary represents those scolding aunts that basically wanted women to happily be able to everything.  Bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let him forget that he's a man type of thing.

I think a lot of younger women feel pressure by misunderstanding the message of feminism and think they must be perfect in every aspect of their live...twice as good as the boys in order to penetrate the old boys club.  They must have steely exteriors and never admit to any vulnerabilities because that would make them "weak".

I really do not understand how she became so hated and misunderstood by everyone, when her opponent was the one spewing the horrible remarks.

[slf]

3 hours ago, DAngelus said:

Allow me to BBM in response.  The only things I've heard Trump say that people called "racist" are his mentioning that some of the illegal immigrants from Mexico are criminals, which is factually true, and his questioning whether Judge Curiel could be fairly judge him about the court case, in light of that controversy.  AFAIK he's never claimed that people are inferior because of their race or that they shouldn't have rights or anything like that, which last I checked was what actual "racism" is about.

No. He's also been called racist because he said that Mexico is using the US as a "dumping ground" by sending people "that have lots of problems" such as "rapists" into our country. Which is weird as hell and also: racist. He retweeted a bogus crime stat that said black people were responsible for over 80% of white homicide victims (in fact white people are responsible for the majority of white deaths). He defended supporters who attacked a homeless Hispanic man, saying they were passionate and patriotic. "Oh, look at my African American over here." A former colleague once quoted him in a book as having said that “laziness is a trait in blacks.” (The book was released in 1991.) "Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!” He included the head of a white nationalist part on a list of California delegates. He said that second and third generation Middle Easterners don't "really" assimilate. He criticized the decision to replace Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the twenty dollar bill, saying it was just political correctness. He said the cities like Ferguson and Oakland - which had recently been in the news for protests by black citizens - were among the most dangerous places in the world. "“The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!” He hired the editor of Breitbart, a right-wing white nationalist website, as his campaign chief. He said to black voters, "You’re living in poverty; your schools are no good; you have no jobs.” He referred to a Latina who won Miss Universe as "Miss Housekeeping." He keeps a collection of Adolf Hitler's speeches in a cabinet next to his bed. He willingly associates with white supremacists.

Like, what next, are we going to suggest he isn't actually a misogynist? You don't vote for this guy without also being racist yourself. This isn't even "soft" or "casual" racism, either. He trucks with white supremacists. End of.

Edited November 10, 2016 by slf

[ari333]

43 minutes ago, slf said:

No. He's also been called racist because he said that Mexico is using the US as a "dumping ground" by sending people "that have lots of problems" such as "rapists" into our country. Which is weird as hell and also: racist. He retweeted a bogus crime stat that said black people were responsible for over 80% of white homicide victims (in fact white people are responsible for the majority of white deaths). He defended supporters who attacked a homeless Hispanic man, saying they were passionate and patriotic. "Oh, look at my African American over here." A former colleague once quoted him in a book as having said that “laziness is a trait in blacks.” (The book was released in 1991.) "Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!” He included the head of a white nationalist part on a list of California delegates. He said that second and third generation Middle Easterners don't "really" assimilate. He criticized the decision to replace Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the twenty dollar bill, saying it was just political correctness. He said the cities like Ferguson and Oakland - which had recently been in the news for protests by black citizens - were among the most dangerous places in the world. "“The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!” He hired the editor of Breitbart, a right-wing white nationalist website, as his campaign chief. He said to black voters, "You’re living in poverty; your schools are no good; you have no jobs.” He referred to a Latina who won Miss Universe as "Miss Housekeeping." He keeps a collection of Adolf Hitler's speeches in a cabinet next to his bed. He willingly associates with white supremacists.

Like, what next, are we going to suggest he isn't actually a misogynist? You don't vote for this guy without also being racist yourself. This isn't even "soft" or "casual" racism, either. He trucks with white supremacists. End of.

THIS!!!

That is all.

[film noire]

4 hours ago, DAngelus said:

 

And I don't know where you get "homophobe" from.  I haven't even heard any controversies about that.  Hypothesizing that the (to be determined) judges that Trump might (perhaps) appoint might (somehow) "roll back" marriage equality (how?  We have far more legal precedent now than we did before) doesn't even come close to making him a "homophobe" in my books.  And Trump has come out against the anti-transgender "bathroom bill" in North Carolina, and enjoys the support of a prominent trans person, in Caitlyn Jenner.  Where is the alleged "homophobia", exactly?

 

It's right here. 

October 7th 2016: "Donald Trump would roll back Barack Obama’s orders on LGBT rights, his running mate Mike Pence has confirmed. The news comes from Trump’s Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence’s interview with Dr James Dobson’s Family Talk radio show, which aired earlier this week.

President Obama last year signed an executive order outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity among federal contractors. Earlier this year his administration followed up with guidance to schools, urging them not to discriminate against transgender students. In the interview, Dobson asked Pence whether Obama’s guidance would be reversed.

The VP candidate confirmed that the Republicans would roll back Obama’s orders so that “the transgender bathroom issue can be resolved with common sense at the local level”.

He said: “This is such an example of an administration that seems to have… there’s no area of our lives too small for them to want to regulate, no aspect of our constitution too large for them to ignore.

On September 23, Trump confirmed he would sign the so-called First Amendment Defence Act, which bans the government from taking any “action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognised as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

The broadly written law would effectively legalise all discrimination against LGBT people in all sectors – from employment to retail to healthcare – as long as the person discriminating claims it was due to their religion."

More at:

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/10/07/trump-will-roll-back-obamas-lgbt-rights-protections-mike-pence-confirms/

Edited November 10, 2016 by film noire

[ari333]

41 minutes ago, film noire said:

It's right here. 

October 7th 2016: "Donald Trump would roll back Barack Obama’s orders on LGBT rights, his running mate Mike Pence has confirmed. The news comes from Trump’s Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence’s interview with Dr James Dobson’s Family Talk radio show, which aired earlier this week.

President Obama last year signed an executive order outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity among federal contractors. Earlier this year his administration followed up with guidance to schools, urging them not to discriminate against transgender students. In the interview, Dobson asked Pence whether Obama’s guidance would be reversed.

The VP candidate confirmed that the Republicans would roll back Obama’s orders so that “the transgender bathroom issue can be resolved with common sense at the local level”.

He said: “This is such an example of an administration that seems to have… there’s no area of our lives too small for them to want to regulate, no aspect of our constitution too large for them to ignore.

On September 23, Trump confirmed he would sign the so-called First Amendment Defence Act, which bans the government from taking any “action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognised as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

The broadly written law would effectively legalise all discrimination against LGBT people in all sectors – from employment to retail to healthcare – as long as the person discriminating claims it was due to their religion."

More at:

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2016/10/07/trump-will-roll-back-obamas-lgbt-rights-protections-mike-pence-confirms/

Thank you! for clarifying what I was saying upthread.

[LoneHaranguer]

19 hours ago, Watermelon said:

Hundreds less polling places were open this voting cycle. Sunday polling was cut in places.

More than offset by the growth in Early Voting.

21 hours ago, KerleyQ said:

It's the same way that they rail about the "intellectual elite."  Like being smart and educated is a character flaw.

No, but it can feed a certain flavor of egotism that can give you someone who thinks they know more than they do and doesn't appreciate a different style of education in others. There was a corporate fad many years ago based on the idea that it was easier to teach an MBA the business than teach management to a worker in the company. Boy, were those CEO's wrong.

[Keepitmoving]

I just saw a picture of this woman and Hillary on the ABC world news. Hillary looks so relaxed in her leggings, little booties and walking her dogs. I didn't even know she had puppies. The woman was on a hike with her baby on her back and she was feeling so down about the election and she ran into Hillary, so cool. She looks good, relaxing and that's all I wish for her right now. Let the rest of us deal with this shit, I can't even begin to describe the two reports on a high school and middle school with students walking through the halls today holding up Trump/Pence signs chanting "white power." In the second school they were in the cafeteria with school staff all around chanting "build that wall" while the Hispanic kids were sitting around crying.  I only happened to turn on the tv and saw at the top of the hour that they were going to talk about Hillary so I stuck it out to see the horrific reports on the schools. I'm done with news now.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Keepitmoving

[Spartan Girl]

Love the dog picture.

CNN is now saying Hillary admitted she stepped in it with the "half the Trump supporters are deplorable" crack. Oh boo hoo, all the racists got their feelings hurt. And the ones that maybe aren't racist...well, did it ever occur to them, looking at the company they were in, that maybe their reasons for supporting Trump were kinda sorta WRONG?!

*sigh* Why do I even bother?

[slf]

37 minutes ago, Keepitmoving said:

Let the rest of us deal with this shit, I can't even begin to describe the two reports on a high school and middle school with students walking through the halls today holding up Trump/Pence signs chanting "white power." In the second school they were in the cafeteria with school staff all around chanting "build that wall" while the Hispanic kids were sitting around crying.

This is what happens when you put a racist like Trump in the White House; you give confidence to people who share his beliefs, that they're accepted and can be more vocal in their hatred of minorities. 

We needed Hillary to win. Voting for her wasn't some shallow thing like party loyalty, just wanting to see a woman win (though that would've been a plus), we think she's got a cool personality, we'd like to have a beer with her! We needed her to win; for healthcare, for the education system, for LGBT rights, for the rights of minorities. Things wouldn't have been perfect, no more than they have been with any other Dem in office, but it would be a lot better than it ever has been with a Republican and a helluva lot better than it will be with Trump.

Edited November 11, 2016 by slf
wouldn't not would've

[Ceindreadh]

On 22/10/2016 at 3:36 AM, Macbeth said:

 

The only thing Hilary got wrong with the deplorables line was the percentage. If anything, she underestimated it. 

[NinjaPenguins]

Quote

 

He said: “This is such an example of an administration that seems to have… there’s no area of our lives too small for them to want to regulate, no aspect of our constitution too large for them to ignore.

 

This is rich, coming from the asshole who wants to invade my uterus.

[ruby24]

Hillary's apparently going to win 51-52% of the popular vote, guys. Unbelievable.

This is a false presidency. I will never think of it as legitimate. What kind of a democracy give the presidency to the loser of the vote? Bush in 2000 wasn't legitimate. Those three guys in the 1800's (Quincy Adams, Hayes and Harrison) weren't either. And now neither is Trump. The only times this has happened in our history. All of these presidents were spectacular failures, because you can't govern without the will of the people behind you.

This is fucked up.

[slf]

5 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

CNN is now saying Hillary admitted she stepped in it with the "half the Trump supporters are deplorable" crack. Oh boo hoo, all the racists got their feelings hurt. And the ones that maybe aren't racist...well, did it ever occur to them, looking at the company they were in, that maybe their reasons for supporting Trump were kinda sorta WRONG?!

*sigh* Why do I even bother?

This is the criticism of her, and leftists in general, that bothers me the most. "Well if y'all hadn't insulted them..." Oh, I'm sorry. Should we have all been welcoming of the racist who admitted that what he wants to do to Muslim Americans is what we did to Japanese Americans during WW2? Do people honestly think if HRC hadn't called people waving the Confederate flag deplorable they would've voted for her? I don't have the memory of a goldfish, I remember the stickers on the trucks and cars that read "The only thing a n*gger can do for me is pick my cotton" that were right alongside McCain/Palin stickers back in '08. I remember Republicans distributing that racist song about Obama (Barack the Magic Negro), also in '08. Racism was prominent and proudly displayed during the previous two elections. This isn't new but, but, what's different is that the candidates those years were, to a degree, better mannered. They knew you weren't supposed to say those things quite so bluntly, you shouldn't use the n word, you should clutch your chest in shock and say that you and every decent Republican you know isn't racist and would never tolerate it. But they did. And their supporters kept on until Obama won each time because leftists turned out in droves.

What makes this election different is that it followed eight years of a black man being the most powerful person in this country. Eight years of a black first lady. Eight years of hearing the world fawn over how 'cool' the Obamas are. Eight years of a somewhat more liberal healthcare system they consider, hilariously, socialist which is of course welfare which of course only lazy poor people, usually poc, depend on. (Seriously go to any conservative forum, hell, go to Facebook- this is a common view among conservatives.) Eight years of attempted education reform (during which black women kicked all kinds of ass becoming the demo most likely to be enrolled in college), eight years of nowhere near as many wars as they'd like, eight years of hearing the police criticized for shooting black men (God forbid the conversation even happen, that alone is an attack!), eight years of hearing that waving the Confederate flag does kind of make you a racist, and on and on. And then, right off the bat, Trump comes out saying the most bigoted things and embraced his supporters who did the same. And the GOP was shocked he was violating their rules on How to Be Racist Respectably and called him and his supporters out, called him a fascist, etc, and so Republicans turned on them too. The media gave them the spotlight, leftists got angry which conservatives love, and Trump kept winning primaries and caucuses until he was the only one left. Then he pretty much had carte blanche to do what he wanted and he did and so did his supporters. HRC calling Trump supporters deplorable, no matter what she or anyone says, had nothing to do with it. Trump told them what they honest to God wanted to hear, promised them what they honest to God want; even if she hadn't called them deplorable she wasn't willing to give them what they wanted so they were never going to vote for her.

(I tried to include something about how white women have been forced to face our own racism and culpability in America's racist history more in the past few years than ever before and the pushback there's been because of that but I couldn't word it right. But I do think that played a role in so many white women backing Trump.)

Edited November 11, 2016 by slf

[Macbeth]

Two great articles on how the Democrats lost:

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit/

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/president-trump-how-america-got-it-so-wrong-w449783

  From Matt Taibbi's article this quote stood out:   "Trump's rebellion was born at the intersection of two toxic American myths, the post-racial society and the classless society."

Greenwald and Taibbi sums it up much better than I could ever hope to.   I feel like someone has died - a Trump presidency completely horrifies me.  I said in another post - the fact that the stock market rallied back after the initial shock of his win, means our Corporate Masters understand they can work with a Trump presidency.  I think it was inevitable that the US would become another banana republic.  Our masters love working with them, having created so many across the globe.

So they have no problem that the US elected a white supremacist into office.

Our society is racist sexist and our masters don't care - in reality they benefit from this.  Punch up not down.  Don't punch the powerless - punch those in power.  They love the race and gender wars - it keeps people distracted from the major problem confronting our nation.

Edited November 11, 2016 by Macbeth

[qtpye]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ku-klux-klan-hold-north-230227525.html#

It seems Trumps dad was arrested once for refusing to leave a KKK parade.