11 ms·

Such a watershed moment. A few things strike me: * A Republican just won without being very religious and being wishy-washy on abortion. * The loser out-spen

Such a watershed moment. A few things strike me: * A Republican just won without being very religious and being wishy-washy on abortion. * The loser out-spent the winner by huge amounts. Does money really buy elections? Maybe, but not this one. * The rich abandoned Republicans, but many poor and working-class abandoned Democrats. [1] 1: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/elections/exit-poll-analysis.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/elections/e...

woodpanel 10y ago
Yep. Been following the coverage since the primaries and though I don't know who I would have voted for, seeing the self righteous intelligentia being so blatantly wrong on the election outcome gives me an embarrassing satisfaction. None of the established media did even try to keep a disguise of neutrality. Not in the US, not the BBC or here in Germany. You can be against Trump all you want, but where has "journalistic standards" been gone? If your whole organization is made up of individuals who see themselves as morally-superior while being a Clinton-biased - how realistic is it that this organization is able to get a realistic glimpse at the outside world?
- sdegutis 10y ago
  The media is entirely biased towards moral liberalism and I thought it was an "open secret" that only the most self-deluded didn't know about. Of course they're going to be biased towards Clinton, she's the morally liberal candidate. That's their job. If they don't go along with it, surely they get fired. They provide an avenue for confirmation bias, which is interesting because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, considering most people are liberal because of the strong influence of the (biased) media on them.
  - pedalpete 10y ago
    I believe Fox is the most watched news channel and Fox is the 2nd most popular network behind CBS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Three_television_networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Three_television_networks So not all media is as liberal as you say. The sad bit is that the source of media is so partisan that we only listen to what we want to hear (that goes both to the right and to the left).
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - kristopolous 10y ago
      I think it's disingenuous to characterize a political stance of a continuation on policy as "liberal". That's what "conservative" means by any dictionary out there. These terms have become utterly useless.
      - pedalpete 10y ago
        Can you expand on this? I'm not grasping what you're saying but am curious.
        kristopolous 10y ago
        if conservative means "don't change things" and liberal means "try new things" then an establishment candidate which espouses to not change things would be "conservative" while a candidate that wants to do dramatically different and new things would be "liberal". So what are we left it?
    - TheGirondin 10y ago
      Fox News Channel is the the one right-wing media outlet in a sea of left-wing TV, print, and internet outlets. The actual Fox channel is not very aligned with FNC - FFS they give Seth McFarlane 2 hours of primetime every Sunday night.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    What do you mean by moral liberalism? Can you concretely define it?
    - skrebbel 10y ago
      My guess: "not economic liberalism". The word liberalism has many meanings in different places. Eg in many European countries, it's considered to be mostly an economic stance, as in "not socialism". In the US, however, the word has a second meaning, which is more about abortion and civil rights and all that than it is about money. I suspect that the GP meant that definition of liberalism by "moral liberalism".
  - ant6n 10y ago
    Well you know, reality has a well known liberal bias.
- cJ0th 10y ago
  spot on! In the end I (a German) was watching Fox News! Can you believe it? I know they have their own bias but this one time they were doing a somewhat better job.
  - johncolanduoni 10y ago
    I think it was an accident because they were split between loving Trump and wanting him to die in a fire. I don't see any path towards true journalistic standards for any major networks.
    - cJ0th 10y ago
      yeah, probably. But this split is what a good media company needs at any point in time on any issue. Otherwise it's just one-sided drivel.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      Yep, that was the secret sauce. They had reporters, viewers, executives that were one both sides of the issue. So one this one thing it wound up..."fair and balanced". Anytime a bunch of like-minded people reports on something, you'll wind up with a sideways story.
  - woodpanel 10y ago
    So true. The "feud" with Megan Kelly made her probably the most trustworthy person on TV this season. Wether FOX's motivation was election-fallout prepping or wether it was an organic change that brought things like the Ailes ousting, they were the most "fair and balanced".
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  I'll give the foreign media a pass since Trump was doing a lot of finger pointing at foreign countries and their citizens. The domestic media on the other hand...
  - woodpanel 10y ago
    True. The outburst of self-shaming should be humongous for US domestic media. Whats interesting though when you mention the difference between foreign and domestic ignorance: the intelligentia has a more international mindset and keeps to export and confirm ones bias across borders as the individuals wish. For example, I keep getting baffled by US speakers at EU dev cons, as they sprinkle or finish their talks with their domestic political stances. For example finishing their talk about their dev ops set up out the blue with: "heres a chat room I've opened up for all the LGBT devs here that feel discriminated against". Not only not an issue in most of EU countries but certainly non-existing at the specific con. Very wierd. The other time I remember one speaker twittering about the blatant racism of a German airline in their safety instruction videos. He managed to be ignorant not only of the context, or of the reference to a beloved German novel (Karl May's "Winnetou") but the whole concept of decency (in that, that you may not get the whole picture if you enter another culture so don't rush to your culture's conclusions). If he had invested the same amount in understanding context as he had in extruding anger, he might have even understood that the "Winnetou" stories are anything but derogatory towards native americans.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  I will always remember the media in this campaign. CNN's quote of "Also interesting is remember, it’s illegal to possess, ah, the stolen documents — it’s different for the media" really typifies the type of standards the media has lowered itself to. How could nobody see that ignorance and stupidity on that level was not helping them... It is like they took a gun, paid a lot of money for it, and then used it to shot themselves in the foot.
- byuu 10y ago
  The media wanted a razor-tight race because it was great for their ratings, so they gave Trump billions in free advertising on the 24-hour news cycle. And they got their wish: 48% to 48% of the popular vote.
  - woodpanel 10y ago
    Yes, of course they do profit from escalating every piece of information. But in terms of "tightness" it was a different picture: almost every poll saw Clinton decisivly winning. There was active speculation about how huge the republican wound-licking would be because of the gigantic margins by which Clinton should have won.
ryanhuff 10y ago
Regarding your first observation, I think that people who are very religious and anti-abortion expect their agenda to now be championed by the new administration. I have my doubts whether that will actually come to be.
- goatlover 10y ago
  The religious right are ultimately tools. I wonder if they will ever realize it and form their own party. It's laughable that they think Trump is means to achieve their goals.
  - bennettfeely 10y ago
    What other options were available to achieve their goals? I'd argue that Pence brought quite a lot to the Trump campaign in reeling in Republicans skeptical that Trump would champion conservative causes. What did Kaine bring to the Clinton campaign? Not much it appears.
    - hedonistbot 10y ago
      Kaine was probably promised the VC role when he resigned from the DNC and was succeeded by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. As far as I remember he even recommended her for the post. Everything was in place for a Hillary nomination except Berney...
    - JeremyNT 10y ago
      Kaine brought Virginia, maybe, but that was clearly insufficient.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    The US voting system does not allow non-regional third parties.
- prawn 10y ago
  Will the real direction on those issues come from Trump or the mass of influence in political power under him? I think the latter. I think his grand plans will be largely neutered by a more level-headed GOP (relatively speaking), but they will also have more strength to push socially conservative issues. More years spent getting caught up on intraspecies drama (bathroom use!) rather than working on big ideas.
wtallis 10y ago
> "The loser out-spent the winner by huge amounts. Does money really buy elections? Maybe, but not this one." I would have said attention buys elections, and Trump was the kind of candidate that had the media tripping over themselves to give him free coverage. That definitely seems to explain the primary season, but the general election campaign turned things around a bit by consisting almost solely of negative attention that hurt the candidates when they were in the spotlight. I guess neither candidate could spend enough to buy anywhere near as much attention as the various scandals attracted, and perhaps this campaign season was meaningfully different in overall tone.
- rayval 10y ago
  The "free media" given to Trump throughout the election process has been estimated at $3B, just in the primary season alone. See http://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-has-gotten-nearly-3-billion-in-free-advertising-2016-05-06 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-has-gotten-nearly-3-b...
- rdtsc 10y ago
  > had the media tripping over themselves to give him free coverage. Media treated people as idiots, in some cases CNN went to levels of stupidity and lies that would have put Fox to shame. They thought they were helping their candidate, but they were actually hurting the cause. The fact that many Democrats have voted for Trump doesn't mean Trump is great necessarily, it means they really hated Hillary and what she represented (and no, not because she is a woman, if anything this will always be remembered as step-back for woman as a US president, people will remember Hillary and cringe next time).
  - digler999 10y ago
    > Media treated people as idiots, ...They thought they were helping their candidate, but they were actually hurting the cause. Thank you ! This is EXACTLY what got me to go vote. I wasn't even planning on going, and finally I just hit the tipping point of negative-smear campaign BS and I said, "alright, if you treat me like a child, I'm going to rebel like a child" and I voted for exactly who they told me I shouldn't. I had every intention of staying home.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
I'd argue you're missing the most important point in this election. Both leading candidates were despised by a large number of people. Many people were heard talking about having to vote for the lesser of two evils. Therefore it makes sense to frame the election in this way. What we have today is not a pro-Trump victory, but an anti-Clinton victory. I don't think the Democratic establishment realised what a gamble it took by favouring Clinton over Sanders, if they had just let open primaries decide who their candidate would be I'm fairly confident a Democratic candidate would now be heading for the White House.
- prawn 10y ago
  Sanders would've been a giant risk too. In retrospect, they needed a third option. But then, 24 hours ago, both parties would've expected one result and have since received the other so that's easier to say with hindsight.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    > "Sanders would've been a giant risk too." Nothing is certain in politics, but I'm curious about why you hold that opinion. Why would you consider Sanders a big risk?
    - wtallis 10y ago
      There were serious concerns during the primaries about how well Sanders was doing among minorities compared to Clinton, and now Clinton has failed to secure enough support from minorities to overcome a racist opponent. Plus, there's no telling how much mileage the Republican party could have gotten out of tarring Sanders as a "socialist". Sanders definitely would have been a big risk. But in hindsight and especially given the weak set of potential candidates available to the Democratic Party, a big risk may have been necessary, and Trump was probably the best opportunity they could have hoped for to gamble on a non-traditional candidate of their own.
      - throw_away_777 10y ago
Houshalter 10y ago
The last point is super interesting. More and more the democrats are coming to represent the upper class and republicans the lower. This election was hugely divided across class lines. Technically it's by college education status. But I believe that is highly correlated with social class.
- nhaehnle 10y ago
  The sad part of this is that if this election was about economics and not about racism and bigotry, then a lot of people voted rather nonsensically. The Democrats aren't exactly a social/left party (at least by global standards), but they're the party that brought better healthcare while the Republicans are the party of Ayn Randism. So if lower class people voted Republican for economic reasons, they're only hurting themselves. Of course they'll blame immigrants or whoever, so that it can all end up in a vicious cycle of stupidity.
  - gph 10y ago
    But I think that's the difference in this election. Lower class people weren't voting Republican, they were voting for Trump. Trump was an outsider. It's hard to say lower class people are voting against their own interests when the entire economic (Wall Street) and political establishments that they see as their opponents were completely behind Clinton. Who knows what Trump will end up doing, but they all knew what Clinton was going to do... more of the same.
    - nhaehnle 10y ago
      I agree that this is probably what happened at an emotional level, but a vote for Trump is still a vote that is enabling a Republican congress. That matters much more for the economic outcomes of people in the US than what Trump himself will be up to. So voting for Trump is still fundamentally irrational from an economic perspective if you're poor or lower middle class: it's possible that Trump will block part of the Republican agenda (e.g. on healthcare) -- who the hell knows what the guy is really thinking apart from his selfishness and thin-skinned narcissism -- but with Clinton it would have been guaranteed. And surely more of the same is better than change in the wrong direction? And yes, it's also possible that Republicans in congress will suddenly change their tune on healthcare, come up with budgets where the spoils aren't overwhelmingly going to the rich, and so on. But really, how rational is it for voters to bet on that given those politicians' past behaviour?
Iv 10y ago
On 538 they also talked a lot about political theory during the elections. The "economic model" of the election says that the candidates do not matter, that what matters is the economic state of the country and variables such as the presence of an incumbent. Most people at 538 seemed to think that this theory would be invalidated after the pretty probablye Clinton win, but was a reason for them to consider the uncertainty high. I think tomorrow they are going to discuss if this theory is not vindicated after all.
- henrikschroder 10y ago
  To be fair to 538, their final prediction was that Trump had a 1 in 3 chance to win. This is what 1 in 3 looks like.
  - waqf 10y ago
    To be unfair to 538, I can just predict any US election as "1 in 2" and I guess you'll defend my record every time.
    - neaanopri 10y ago
      This is the fundamental problem with assigning probabilities to events that will only happen once. It doesn't make any sense!
      - throw_away_777 10y ago
        Sometimes there are no definitive answers. The world we live in is not deterministic, at least with our current knowledge of the world.
    - ssharp 10y ago
      To again be fair to 538, they are pretty clear that their model is based on polling data, at least in their "polls only" model, which I think they put more emphasis on than their "polls plus" model. Maybe next cycle, they'll do more work on that plus model to account for more factors or maybe this truly was an outlier election, which happens every so often.
zamalek 10y ago
From an outsider's perspective: superdelegates. Stein hit the nail on the head regarding the Democrat campaign[1]. Moderates swung to non-participation, their vote for Bernie actually meant nothing. [1]: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/jill-stein-expect-trouble-white-house-161109051649019.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/jill-stein-expect-trou...
- rdtsc 10y ago
  A lot of Bernie supporters were college kids who spared whatever money they could and donated only to find, it was rigged, their money was stolen and given to Hillary instead. I think people have no idea how much this was a vote against Hillary. Look at Trump, even with all his rhetoric and crazy statements he made, they still picked him! That says a lot about Hillary and the DNC and the campaign they ran.
  - neaanopri 10y ago
    It also didn't help that Hillary didn't have any results in countering that narrative. She just hunkered down, said things about her background which sounded very politician-y, and kept the spotlight on trump. Turns out this was a terrible strategy.
  - zamalek 10y ago
    Sad thing is, I'm expecting the DNC to try and pull exactly the same stunt next time round. As per their campaign; blame will be cast in every direction except internally.
    - soft_dev_person 10y ago
      Even if our Norwegian right wing is pretty much more to the left than your left wing, our left wing behaves in exactly the same way here. Their last campaign was pretty much "if you choose them, the world will end", instead of trying to present their own policies and how they would improve things. And they're still completely arrogant about it. It seems they will repeat their strategy the next time, but then they are in opposition, which is an easier game to play. Also, they try to blame the entire economic slowdown on the current government, even though the oil price fall is unprecedented (and Norwegian industry is seriously oil driven)... Sigh, I'm so tired of politics. It's all about blame and ideology instead of stuff that actually matters to people.
WA 10y ago
What makes me curious: I always wondered if the president really has the power people perceive him to have, or if he's still influenced and bound by many people in the background. One can observe this with Obama. He made promises (like closing Guantanamo etc.), which he ultimately couldn't force through. But why? Possibly, because he isn't nearly as free in his decision making. Now, Trump claimed to do a lot of things and I'm wondering if he really can pull that off or if many of his extraordinary claims and goals won't be doable, because of other people with power. This is what I don't like about modern politics: So many things are claimed to be done, but ultimately, it's all bullshit and you only know what you've voted for long after the election – which could be something entirely different than you'd voted for in the first place.
- OkGoDoIt 10y ago
  I'd argue that checks and balances are very much a good thing. Less gets done overall but at least one side/person/party/opinion can't get pushed through without resistance if too many people oppose it. Then again, Trump didn't just win the election, Republicans also won majority in the House and Senate. So it's going to be a lot easier for Trump to push policies through than it was for Obama.
  - ssharp 10y ago
    Obama had a Democrat House and Senate majority from Jan 2009 - Jan 2011.
- ajankovic 10y ago
  I think this video explains your observations correctly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
* Yet again, Americans didn't even consider the third party. They aren't even allowed to debate.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  > Yet again, Americans didn't even consider the third party. The presidential third party vote more than doubled this election compared to 4 years ago. > They aren't even allowed to debate. Ron Paul begs to differ. --- The challenge, of course, is the the system is susceptible to the spoiler effect. Trump won Florida's 29 electoral votes by just 1%. Gary Johnson alone had double that number in the state. In 2000, the entire election was decided by 537 votes for George Bush in Florida. And the majority of Ralph Nader's 97k votes in the state would have gone to Al Gore in a two-party race. The Green Party lost the Democrats 4+ years of the presidency.
deleted 10y ago
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jpgvm 10y ago
Trump and is running mate Pence want to appeal Roe vs Wade, I wouldn't exactly call that "wishy-washy" on abortion. Given the rest of his political standing it's pretty clear that putting women's rights back a few decades is definitely on his agenda.
mason240 10y ago
Now that religious social issues like gay marriage and abortion have been essentially settled, we have been in the beginning of a trend where left-wing politics begins to align with religion. We are already seeing with people using religious arguments for things like social programs and environmentalism. FFS the Pope said people should vote for Hillary.
- bennettfeely 10y ago
  > FFS the Pope said people should vote for Hillary. He didn't. And he wouldn't do that either.

woodpanel 10y ago

Yep. Been following the coverage since the primaries and though I don't know who I would have voted for, seeing the self righteous intelligentia being so blatantly wrong on the election outcome gives me an embarrassing satisfaction. None of the established media did even try to keep a disguise of neutrality. Not in the US, not the BBC or here in Germany. You can be against Trump all you want, but where has "journalistic standards" been gone? If your whole organization is made up of individuals who see themselves as morally-superior while being a Clinton-biased - how realistic is it that this organization is able to get a realistic glimpse at the outside world?

sdegutis 10y ago
The media is entirely biased towards moral liberalism and I thought it was an "open secret" that only the most self-deluded didn't know about. Of course they're going to be biased towards Clinton, she's the morally liberal candidate. That's their job. If they don't go along with it, surely they get fired. They provide an avenue for confirmation bias, which is interesting because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, considering most people are liberal because of the strong influence of the (biased) media on them.
- pedalpete 10y ago
  I believe Fox is the most watched news channel and Fox is the 2nd most popular network behind CBS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Three_television_networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Three_television_networks So not all media is as liberal as you say. The sad bit is that the source of media is so partisan that we only listen to what we want to hear (that goes both to the right and to the left).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    I think it's disingenuous to characterize a political stance of a continuation on policy as "liberal". That's what "conservative" means by any dictionary out there. These terms have become utterly useless.
    - pedalpete 10y ago
      Can you expand on this? I'm not grasping what you're saying but am curious.
      - kristopolous 10y ago
        if conservative means "don't change things" and liberal means "try new things" then an establishment candidate which espouses to not change things would be "conservative" while a candidate that wants to do dramatically different and new things would be "liberal". So what are we left it?
  - TheGirondin 10y ago
    Fox News Channel is the the one right-wing media outlet in a sea of left-wing TV, print, and internet outlets. The actual Fox channel is not very aligned with FNC - FFS they give Seth McFarlane 2 hours of primetime every Sunday night.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  What do you mean by moral liberalism? Can you concretely define it?
  - skrebbel 10y ago
    My guess: "not economic liberalism". The word liberalism has many meanings in different places. Eg in many European countries, it's considered to be mostly an economic stance, as in "not socialism". In the US, however, the word has a second meaning, which is more about abortion and civil rights and all that than it is about money. I suspect that the GP meant that definition of liberalism by "moral liberalism".
- ant6n 10y ago
  Well you know, reality has a well known liberal bias.
cJ0th 10y ago
spot on! In the end I (a German) was watching Fox News! Can you believe it? I know they have their own bias but this one time they were doing a somewhat better job.
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  I think it was an accident because they were split between loving Trump and wanting him to die in a fire. I don't see any path towards true journalistic standards for any major networks.
  - cJ0th 10y ago
    yeah, probably. But this split is what a good media company needs at any point in time on any issue. Otherwise it's just one-sided drivel.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    Yep, that was the secret sauce. They had reporters, viewers, executives that were one both sides of the issue. So one this one thing it wound up..."fair and balanced". Anytime a bunch of like-minded people reports on something, you'll wind up with a sideways story.
- woodpanel 10y ago
  So true. The "feud" with Megan Kelly made her probably the most trustworthy person on TV this season. Wether FOX's motivation was election-fallout prepping or wether it was an organic change that brought things like the Ailes ousting, they were the most "fair and balanced".
johncolanduoni 10y ago
I'll give the foreign media a pass since Trump was doing a lot of finger pointing at foreign countries and their citizens. The domestic media on the other hand...
- woodpanel 10y ago
  True. The outburst of self-shaming should be humongous for US domestic media. Whats interesting though when you mention the difference between foreign and domestic ignorance: the intelligentia has a more international mindset and keeps to export and confirm ones bias across borders as the individuals wish. For example, I keep getting baffled by US speakers at EU dev cons, as they sprinkle or finish their talks with their domestic political stances. For example finishing their talk about their dev ops set up out the blue with: "heres a chat room I've opened up for all the LGBT devs here that feel discriminated against". Not only not an issue in most of EU countries but certainly non-existing at the specific con. Very wierd. The other time I remember one speaker twittering about the blatant racism of a German airline in their safety instruction videos. He managed to be ignorant not only of the context, or of the reference to a beloved German novel (Karl May's "Winnetou") but the whole concept of decency (in that, that you may not get the whole picture if you enter another culture so don't rush to your culture's conclusions). If he had invested the same amount in understanding context as he had in extruding anger, he might have even understood that the "Winnetou" stories are anything but derogatory towards native americans.
rdtsc 10y ago
I will always remember the media in this campaign. CNN's quote of "Also interesting is remember, it’s illegal to possess, ah, the stolen documents — it’s different for the media" really typifies the type of standards the media has lowered itself to. How could nobody see that ignorance and stupidity on that level was not helping them... It is like they took a gun, paid a lot of money for it, and then used it to shot themselves in the foot.
byuu 10y ago
The media wanted a razor-tight race because it was great for their ratings, so they gave Trump billions in free advertising on the 24-hour news cycle. And they got their wish: 48% to 48% of the popular vote.
- woodpanel 10y ago
  Yes, of course they do profit from escalating every piece of information. But in terms of "tightness" it was a different picture: almost every poll saw Clinton decisivly winning. There was active speculation about how huge the republican wound-licking would be because of the gigantic margins by which Clinton should have won.

ryanhuff 10y ago

Regarding your first observation, I think that people who are very religious and anti-abortion expect their agenda to now be championed by the new administration. I have my doubts whether that will actually come to be.

goatlover 10y ago
The religious right are ultimately tools. I wonder if they will ever realize it and form their own party. It's laughable that they think Trump is means to achieve their goals.
- bennettfeely 10y ago
  What other options were available to achieve their goals? I'd argue that Pence brought quite a lot to the Trump campaign in reeling in Republicans skeptical that Trump would champion conservative causes. What did Kaine bring to the Clinton campaign? Not much it appears.
  - hedonistbot 10y ago
    Kaine was probably promised the VC role when he resigned from the DNC and was succeeded by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. As far as I remember he even recommended her for the post. Everything was in place for a Hillary nomination except Berney...
  - JeremyNT 10y ago
    Kaine brought Virginia, maybe, but that was clearly insufficient.
- tormeh 10y ago
  The US voting system does not allow non-regional third parties.
prawn 10y ago
Will the real direction on those issues come from Trump or the mass of influence in political power under him? I think the latter. I think his grand plans will be largely neutered by a more level-headed GOP (relatively speaking), but they will also have more strength to push socially conservative issues. More years spent getting caught up on intraspecies drama (bathroom use!) rather than working on big ideas.

wtallis 10y ago

> "The loser out-spent the winner by huge amounts. Does money really buy elections? Maybe, but not this one." I would have said attention buys elections, and Trump was the kind of candidate that had the media tripping over themselves to give him free coverage. That definitely seems to explain the primary season, but the general election campaign turned things around a bit by consisting almost solely of negative attention that hurt the candidates when they were in the spotlight. I guess neither candidate could spend enough to buy anywhere near as much attention as the various scandals attracted, and perhaps this campaign season was meaningfully different in overall tone.

rayval 10y ago
The "free media" given to Trump throughout the election process has been estimated at $3B, just in the primary season alone. See http://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-has-gotten-nearly-3-billion-in-free-advertising-2016-05-06 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-has-gotten-nearly-3-b...
rdtsc 10y ago
> had the media tripping over themselves to give him free coverage. Media treated people as idiots, in some cases CNN went to levels of stupidity and lies that would have put Fox to shame. They thought they were helping their candidate, but they were actually hurting the cause. The fact that many Democrats have voted for Trump doesn't mean Trump is great necessarily, it means they really hated Hillary and what she represented (and no, not because she is a woman, if anything this will always be remembered as step-back for woman as a US president, people will remember Hillary and cringe next time).
- digler999 10y ago
  > Media treated people as idiots, ...They thought they were helping their candidate, but they were actually hurting the cause. Thank you ! This is EXACTLY what got me to go vote. I wasn't even planning on going, and finally I just hit the tipping point of negative-smear campaign BS and I said, "alright, if you treat me like a child, I'm going to rebel like a child" and I voted for exactly who they told me I shouldn't. I had every intention of staying home.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

I'd argue you're missing the most important point in this election. Both leading candidates were despised by a large number of people. Many people were heard talking about having to vote for the lesser of two evils. Therefore it makes sense to frame the election in this way. What we have today is not a pro-Trump victory, but an anti-Clinton victory. I don't think the Democratic establishment realised what a gamble it took by favouring Clinton over Sanders, if they had just let open primaries decide who their candidate would be I'm fairly confident a Democratic candidate would now be heading for the White House.

prawn 10y ago
Sanders would've been a giant risk too. In retrospect, they needed a third option. But then, 24 hours ago, both parties would've expected one result and have since received the other so that's easier to say with hindsight.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "Sanders would've been a giant risk too." Nothing is certain in politics, but I'm curious about why you hold that opinion. Why would you consider Sanders a big risk?
  - wtallis 10y ago
    There were serious concerns during the primaries about how well Sanders was doing among minorities compared to Clinton, and now Clinton has failed to secure enough support from minorities to overcome a racist opponent. Plus, there's no telling how much mileage the Republican party could have gotten out of tarring Sanders as a "socialist". Sanders definitely would have been a big risk. But in hindsight and especially given the weak set of potential candidates available to the Democratic Party, a big risk may have been necessary, and Trump was probably the best opportunity they could have hoped for to gamble on a non-traditional candidate of their own.
    - throw_away_777 10y ago

Houshalter 10y ago

The last point is super interesting. More and more the democrats are coming to represent the upper class and republicans the lower. This election was hugely divided across class lines. Technically it's by college education status. But I believe that is highly correlated with social class.

nhaehnle 10y ago
The sad part of this is that if this election was about economics and not about racism and bigotry, then a lot of people voted rather nonsensically. The Democrats aren't exactly a social/left party (at least by global standards), but they're the party that brought better healthcare while the Republicans are the party of Ayn Randism. So if lower class people voted Republican for economic reasons, they're only hurting themselves. Of course they'll blame immigrants or whoever, so that it can all end up in a vicious cycle of stupidity.
- gph 10y ago
  But I think that's the difference in this election. Lower class people weren't voting Republican, they were voting for Trump. Trump was an outsider. It's hard to say lower class people are voting against their own interests when the entire economic (Wall Street) and political establishments that they see as their opponents were completely behind Clinton. Who knows what Trump will end up doing, but they all knew what Clinton was going to do... more of the same.
  - nhaehnle 10y ago
    I agree that this is probably what happened at an emotional level, but a vote for Trump is still a vote that is enabling a Republican congress. That matters much more for the economic outcomes of people in the US than what Trump himself will be up to. So voting for Trump is still fundamentally irrational from an economic perspective if you're poor or lower middle class: it's possible that Trump will block part of the Republican agenda (e.g. on healthcare) -- who the hell knows what the guy is really thinking apart from his selfishness and thin-skinned narcissism -- but with Clinton it would have been guaranteed. And surely more of the same is better than change in the wrong direction? And yes, it's also possible that Republicans in congress will suddenly change their tune on healthcare, come up with budgets where the spoils aren't overwhelmingly going to the rich, and so on. But really, how rational is it for voters to bet on that given those politicians' past behaviour?

Iv 10y ago

On 538 they also talked a lot about political theory during the elections. The "economic model" of the election says that the candidates do not matter, that what matters is the economic state of the country and variables such as the presence of an incumbent. Most people at 538 seemed to think that this theory would be invalidated after the pretty probablye Clinton win, but was a reason for them to consider the uncertainty high. I think tomorrow they are going to discuss if this theory is not vindicated after all.

henrikschroder 10y ago
To be fair to 538, their final prediction was that Trump had a 1 in 3 chance to win. This is what 1 in 3 looks like.
- waqf 10y ago
  To be unfair to 538, I can just predict any US election as "1 in 2" and I guess you'll defend my record every time.
  - neaanopri 10y ago
    This is the fundamental problem with assigning probabilities to events that will only happen once. It doesn't make any sense!
    - throw_away_777 10y ago
      Sometimes there are no definitive answers. The world we live in is not deterministic, at least with our current knowledge of the world.
  - ssharp 10y ago
    To again be fair to 538, they are pretty clear that their model is based on polling data, at least in their "polls only" model, which I think they put more emphasis on than their "polls plus" model. Maybe next cycle, they'll do more work on that plus model to account for more factors or maybe this truly was an outlier election, which happens every so often.

zamalek 10y ago

From an outsider's perspective: superdelegates. Stein hit the nail on the head regarding the Democrat campaign[1]. Moderates swung to non-participation, their vote for Bernie actually meant nothing. [1]: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/jill-stein-expect-trouble-white-house-161109051649019.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/jill-stein-expect-trou...

rdtsc 10y ago
A lot of Bernie supporters were college kids who spared whatever money they could and donated only to find, it was rigged, their money was stolen and given to Hillary instead. I think people have no idea how much this was a vote against Hillary. Look at Trump, even with all his rhetoric and crazy statements he made, they still picked him! That says a lot about Hillary and the DNC and the campaign they ran.
- neaanopri 10y ago
  It also didn't help that Hillary didn't have any results in countering that narrative. She just hunkered down, said things about her background which sounded very politician-y, and kept the spotlight on trump. Turns out this was a terrible strategy.
- zamalek 10y ago
  Sad thing is, I'm expecting the DNC to try and pull exactly the same stunt next time round. As per their campaign; blame will be cast in every direction except internally.
  - soft_dev_person 10y ago
    Even if our Norwegian right wing is pretty much more to the left than your left wing, our left wing behaves in exactly the same way here. Their last campaign was pretty much "if you choose them, the world will end", instead of trying to present their own policies and how they would improve things. And they're still completely arrogant about it. It seems they will repeat their strategy the next time, but then they are in opposition, which is an easier game to play. Also, they try to blame the entire economic slowdown on the current government, even though the oil price fall is unprecedented (and Norwegian industry is seriously oil driven)... Sigh, I'm so tired of politics. It's all about blame and ideology instead of stuff that actually matters to people.

WA 10y ago

What makes me curious: I always wondered if the president really has the power people perceive him to have, or if he's still influenced and bound by many people in the background. One can observe this with Obama. He made promises (like closing Guantanamo etc.), which he ultimately couldn't force through. But why? Possibly, because he isn't nearly as free in his decision making. Now, Trump claimed to do a lot of things and I'm wondering if he really can pull that off or if many of his extraordinary claims and goals won't be doable, because of other people with power. This is what I don't like about modern politics: So many things are claimed to be done, but ultimately, it's all bullshit and you only know what you've voted for long after the election – which could be something entirely different than you'd voted for in the first place.

OkGoDoIt 10y ago
I'd argue that checks and balances are very much a good thing. Less gets done overall but at least one side/person/party/opinion can't get pushed through without resistance if too many people oppose it. Then again, Trump didn't just win the election, Republicans also won majority in the House and Senate. So it's going to be a lot easier for Trump to push policies through than it was for Obama.
- ssharp 10y ago
  Obama had a Democrat House and Senate majority from Jan 2009 - Jan 2011.
ajankovic 10y ago
I think this video explains your observations correctly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

* Yet again, Americans didn't even consider the third party. They aren't even allowed to debate.

paulddraper 10y ago
> Yet again, Americans didn't even consider the third party. The presidential third party vote more than doubled this election compared to 4 years ago. > They aren't even allowed to debate. Ron Paul begs to differ. --- The challenge, of course, is the the system is susceptible to the spoiler effect. Trump won Florida's 29 electoral votes by just 1%. Gary Johnson alone had double that number in the state. In 2000, the entire election was decided by 537 votes for George Bush in Florida. And the majority of Ralph Nader's 97k votes in the state would have gone to Al Gore in a two-party race. The Green Party lost the Democrats 4+ years of the presidency.

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jpgvm 10y ago

Trump and is running mate Pence want to appeal Roe vs Wade, I wouldn't exactly call that "wishy-washy" on abortion. Given the rest of his political standing it's pretty clear that putting women's rights back a few decades is definitely on his agenda.

mason240 10y ago

Now that religious social issues like gay marriage and abortion have been essentially settled, we have been in the beginning of a trend where left-wing politics begins to align with religion. We are already seeing with people using religious arguments for things like social programs and environmentalism. FFS the Pope said people should vote for Hillary.

bennettfeely 10y ago
> FFS the Pope said people should vote for Hillary. He didn't. And he wouldn't do that either.