8 ms·

That's one way to look at it. Another way (and I'm trying hard not to endorse one viewpoint or the other, I've heard both) is: Liberals are tired of the Clinto

That's one way to look at it. Another way (and I'm trying hard not to endorse one viewpoint or the other, I've heard both) is: Liberals are tired of the Clintons. They're tired of nominating people just left of center who fail to inspire them, while candidates who speak their mind and call for change (Bernie) are ignored by both the DNC and the mass media. They perceive, rightly or wrongly, that Republicans have been fighting a battle while Democrats make concessions to people who are unwilling to compromise. And now that the most outspoken, uncompromising candidate has won the election, they're being told to compromise again, to swallow their emotions and have a conversation with people who aren't interested in talking with them. The media told them this was Hillary's turn. They were told to vote against Trump, but nothing about what they were voting for. They were told that feelings don't matter and to vote for the greater good, even while candidates within the party and without inspired based on emotion. Is it any wonder that turnout was down?

AOsborn 10y ago
As an outsider (New Zealand National), your opinion appears spot on from what I can tell from our media. A chart that sums up the election for me: http://imgur.com/TOGIbcP http://imgur.com/TOGIbcP Trump didn't win the election, dropping Democrat turnout lost it.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  Yeah if we just spin things the right way that'll fix...something.
- viscanti 10y ago
  It's almost like Trump ran a campaign to intentionally try to suppress Democratic turnout and was successful with it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/27/donald-trumps-risky-plan-to-use-the-internet-to-suppress-hillary-clintons-turnout/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/27/do...
  - Sacho 10y ago
    I don't think Trump was the only one running such a campaign. How else would you describe the resounding message from the Clinton campaign that a vote for Trump is a vote for "racism, sexism, homophobia", etc..? Both Trump and Clinton's campaigns seem successful - there was less voter turnout than in 2012. However, the angles they took seem to have reshuffled support in a way that ended up with Trump winning.
    - vonmoltke 10y ago
      > Both Trump and Clinton's campaigns seem successful - there was less voter turnout than in 2012. Turnout this election was 2% higher than 2012. It just doesn't look that way because everyone is focused on Clinton's and Trump's totals. This election saw the most votes cast for alternate candidates (a hair over 5% according to Wikipedia) since Ross Perot's run in 1996.
  - hga 10y ago
    Haven't read in detail your citation, although I'll note claiming a Republican operative said "We have three major voter suppression operations underway" is ludicrous on its face, "suppression" is not a word you're going to use when talking to hostile MSM reporters, but lower turnout was baked into the cake if for no other reason than Obama was not on the ticket. For that matter, compare Democratic votes in all three elections, looks to me like you can draw a fairly straight line 2008 to 2016. But if you drop the loaded word suppression, yes, of course part of the game is to discourage the people who might vote for your opponent, the biggest change is that the language used today is by comparison quite tame.
- mikeash 10y ago
  And the weird way we pick the winner. I've now voted in five presidential elections, and in two of them the winner did not have the most votes. I'm shocked that's not getting more discussion this time around. I seem to recall that it was a huge complaint for ages after it happened in 2000.
  - hga 10y ago
    It's so embedded in our Constitutional order, the great compromise that made it possible in the first place, the 2 Senators per state, and the 2 extra Electoral College votes each state gets, that it's not really "a huge complaint for ages", unless, of course, it's your side that lost. It's happened, what, 4 times now? Note also that at least in this election the unofficial margin (at least per the AP, which hasn't called Michigan and New Hampshire yet) is rather small, and one also has to count 3rd parties. Putting the shoe on the other foot, what do you have to say about both of Bill Clinton's elections, where Perot resulted in more people voting against than for him. For that matter, just checking now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016#Results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...), every third party candidate but the Constitutional party's, and independent Evan McMullin, earned more votes than the margin between Hillary and Trump. So it's really hard when you look at those non-major party vote total to say that in any way she won the popular vote, especially if you claim this didn't matter for her husband in the '90s.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      "A huge complaint for ages" was a reference to what I saw people talking about after the 2000 election. If you say that it's wrong based on how the Constitution came about in the 18th century, then you've completely misunderstood what I was saying there. I'm not saying that people have been complaining about it for hundreds of years, I'm saying that people were complaining about it for months (or years?) following the 2000 election. 2000 was the first presidential election I was old enough to vote in. I have voted in every presidential election (and every midterm and local one except when I was living overseas) since. Of the presidential elections I've voted in, the electoral college has flipped 40% of them. So don't try to dismiss my complaint on the basis that it's rare. Maybe it is throughout history, but it has become distressingly common lately. And don't assume I'm complaining just because "my side" lost. I didn't vote for Gore in 2000. I did vote for Clinton in 2016, but I do not identify as a Democrat, and only voted for her because I believe Trump is a terrifying and dangerous choice. I was too young to vote for Bill Clinton in the 90s, and while I think he did a decent job, I think HW Bush and Dole would have too. I don't really see how Bill Clinton is "putting the shoe on the other foot." My ideal system wouldn't be a simple first-past-the-post arrangement. I would like to have runoff elections or ranked-choice voting or something like that. You seem to be imagining a whole slew of arguments on my behalf that I didn't make and don't believe. If you want to reply to me, please reply to what I'm saying, not whatever you imagine I must think.
hga 10y ago
Embrace the power of "and", both can be true, except I'd quibble with disposable099 and say many of us, I would not be surprised if most, believed Trump could win. For me, that was through a combination of his refusing to play the game by the other side's rules (a restatement of disposable099's point) and how terribly awful a politician Hillary is. In fact, I go so far as to say she's an almost total failure in life, aside from graduating from the good schools she went to, the one good decision she made in life was to accept Bill's outstanding offer of marriage, everything successful in her life after law school flows from that. To give you a hint of that, it's pretty obvious the reason she accepted and self-exiled to Arkansas in the 1970s was that between failing the D.C. Bar Exam and being terminated with extreme prejudice from the Watergate Investigating Committee, she had completely burned her potential future career in D.C./East Coast politics. There's lots more if you want more details, but, I can close with the obvious facts that she twice reached for the highest brass ring in US politics with serious campaigns and failed both times, to rather different sorts of people (weasel words since, for example, both Obama and Trump are master level trolls).
- zimpenfish 10y ago
  > being terminated with extreme prejudice from the Watergate Investigating Committee She wasn't fired from the WIC. http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/zeifman.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/zeifman.asp
  - hga 10y ago
    Echoing my point at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12930056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12930056 when you cite a totally biased when it comes to politics site like Snopes, our response is a simple "We Don't Care." But, tell me, why did she exile herself to 1970s Arkansas? As someone who grew up 3 counties north of the state, I can assure you back then it was considered to be a massively worse place than my native Missouri, and the very close states of Kansas and Oklahoma. There was something qualitatively different about it, in a bad way. Note that she went from working on the Watergate Committee, which was the highest pinnacle of the Left in the '70s aside from perhaps the Carter Administration years later, to being a partner at a politically well connected law firm in Arkansas, one no one ever heard of outside the state before the '90s. What's your explanation for her move? Surely she could have tried again to pass the D.C. bar exam.

AOsborn 10y ago

As an outsider (New Zealand National), your opinion appears spot on from what I can tell from our media. A chart that sums up the election for me: http://imgur.com/TOGIbcP http://imgur.com/TOGIbcP Trump didn't win the election, dropping Democrat turnout lost it.

oldmanjay 10y ago
Yeah if we just spin things the right way that'll fix...something.
viscanti 10y ago
It's almost like Trump ran a campaign to intentionally try to suppress Democratic turnout and was successful with it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/27/donald-trumps-risky-plan-to-use-the-internet-to-suppress-hillary-clintons-turnout/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/27/do...
- Sacho 10y ago
  I don't think Trump was the only one running such a campaign. How else would you describe the resounding message from the Clinton campaign that a vote for Trump is a vote for "racism, sexism, homophobia", etc..? Both Trump and Clinton's campaigns seem successful - there was less voter turnout than in 2012. However, the angles they took seem to have reshuffled support in a way that ended up with Trump winning.
  - vonmoltke 10y ago
    > Both Trump and Clinton's campaigns seem successful - there was less voter turnout than in 2012. Turnout this election was 2% higher than 2012. It just doesn't look that way because everyone is focused on Clinton's and Trump's totals. This election saw the most votes cast for alternate candidates (a hair over 5% according to Wikipedia) since Ross Perot's run in 1996.
- hga 10y ago
  Haven't read in detail your citation, although I'll note claiming a Republican operative said "We have three major voter suppression operations underway" is ludicrous on its face, "suppression" is not a word you're going to use when talking to hostile MSM reporters, but lower turnout was baked into the cake if for no other reason than Obama was not on the ticket. For that matter, compare Democratic votes in all three elections, looks to me like you can draw a fairly straight line 2008 to 2016. But if you drop the loaded word suppression, yes, of course part of the game is to discourage the people who might vote for your opponent, the biggest change is that the language used today is by comparison quite tame.
mikeash 10y ago
And the weird way we pick the winner. I've now voted in five presidential elections, and in two of them the winner did not have the most votes. I'm shocked that's not getting more discussion this time around. I seem to recall that it was a huge complaint for ages after it happened in 2000.
- hga 10y ago
  It's so embedded in our Constitutional order, the great compromise that made it possible in the first place, the 2 Senators per state, and the 2 extra Electoral College votes each state gets, that it's not really "a huge complaint for ages", unless, of course, it's your side that lost. It's happened, what, 4 times now? Note also that at least in this election the unofficial margin (at least per the AP, which hasn't called Michigan and New Hampshire yet) is rather small, and one also has to count 3rd parties. Putting the shoe on the other foot, what do you have to say about both of Bill Clinton's elections, where Perot resulted in more people voting against than for him. For that matter, just checking now (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016#Results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...), every third party candidate but the Constitutional party's, and independent Evan McMullin, earned more votes than the margin between Hillary and Trump. So it's really hard when you look at those non-major party vote total to say that in any way she won the popular vote, especially if you claim this didn't matter for her husband in the '90s.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    "A huge complaint for ages" was a reference to what I saw people talking about after the 2000 election. If you say that it's wrong based on how the Constitution came about in the 18th century, then you've completely misunderstood what I was saying there. I'm not saying that people have been complaining about it for hundreds of years, I'm saying that people were complaining about it for months (or years?) following the 2000 election. 2000 was the first presidential election I was old enough to vote in. I have voted in every presidential election (and every midterm and local one except when I was living overseas) since. Of the presidential elections I've voted in, the electoral college has flipped 40% of them. So don't try to dismiss my complaint on the basis that it's rare. Maybe it is throughout history, but it has become distressingly common lately. And don't assume I'm complaining just because "my side" lost. I didn't vote for Gore in 2000. I did vote for Clinton in 2016, but I do not identify as a Democrat, and only voted for her because I believe Trump is a terrifying and dangerous choice. I was too young to vote for Bill Clinton in the 90s, and while I think he did a decent job, I think HW Bush and Dole would have too. I don't really see how Bill Clinton is "putting the shoe on the other foot." My ideal system wouldn't be a simple first-past-the-post arrangement. I would like to have runoff elections or ranked-choice voting or something like that. You seem to be imagining a whole slew of arguments on my behalf that I didn't make and don't believe. If you want to reply to me, please reply to what I'm saying, not whatever you imagine I must think.

hga 10y ago

Embrace the power of "and", both can be true, except I'd quibble with disposable099 and say many of us, I would not be surprised if most, believed Trump could win. For me, that was through a combination of his refusing to play the game by the other side's rules (a restatement of disposable099's point) and how terribly awful a politician Hillary is. In fact, I go so far as to say she's an almost total failure in life, aside from graduating from the good schools she went to, the one good decision she made in life was to accept Bill's outstanding offer of marriage, everything successful in her life after law school flows from that. To give you a hint of that, it's pretty obvious the reason she accepted and self-exiled to Arkansas in the 1970s was that between failing the D.C. Bar Exam and being terminated with extreme prejudice from the Watergate Investigating Committee, she had completely burned her potential future career in D.C./East Coast politics. There's lots more if you want more details, but, I can close with the obvious facts that she twice reached for the highest brass ring in US politics with serious campaigns and failed both times, to rather different sorts of people (weasel words since, for example, both Obama and Trump are master level trolls).

zimpenfish 10y ago
> being terminated with extreme prejudice from the Watergate Investigating Committee She wasn't fired from the WIC. http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/zeifman.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/clintons/zeifman.asp
- hga 10y ago
  Echoing my point at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12930056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12930056 when you cite a totally biased when it comes to politics site like Snopes, our response is a simple "We Don't Care." But, tell me, why did she exile herself to 1970s Arkansas? As someone who grew up 3 counties north of the state, I can assure you back then it was considered to be a massively worse place than my native Missouri, and the very close states of Kansas and Oklahoma. There was something qualitatively different about it, in a bad way. Note that she went from working on the Watergate Committee, which was the highest pinnacle of the Left in the '70s aside from perhaps the Carter Administration years later, to being a partner at a politically well connected law firm in Arkansas, one no one ever heard of outside the state before the '90s. What's your explanation for her move? Surely she could have tried again to pass the D.C. bar exam.