5 ms·
Here's the thing though, Trump didn't get appreciably more voter turnout than Mitt Romney. Hillary on the other hand, got a lot less Democratic voters to turn
by GVIrish 10y ago
Here's the thing though, Trump didn't get appreciably more voter turnout than Mitt Romney. Hillary on the other hand, got a lot less Democratic voters to turn out than Obama did.
We don't know how much damage Comey's actions in particular did to Hillary's candidacy but there is no doubt that the email scandal damaged her prospects tremendously.
> There was a time when democrats represented the blue collar working class -- who have watched helplessly as their jobs and security has been outsourced to china and Mexico. Now it's Trump who represents their values and clearly they're not alone.
Trump clearly tapped into that sentiment, particularly on trade deals. However, the Republican party has largely pushed policies that increase income inequality and hurt blue collar workers for some time now. Republicans have consistently attempted to weaken unions that tended to benefit blue collar workers.
Republican voters don't tend to hold them to account for that because the GOP campaigns successfully on wedge social issues, conservative media still largely supports trickle down economics and said social issues. Fake media only reinforces the echo chamber there.
Unfortunately there isn't much honest discourse on what to do about the effects of globalization and automation on the blue collar workforce now and into the future. I suspect that the job-reducing effects will continue to be used as a weapon for grievance politics but effective policy solutions will be hard to come by.
- curried_haskell 10y agoHillary's campaign failed because it was so fucking forced. Come on guys, you have to vote for Hillary because she's a woman and its her turn and shame on you for thinking this was a democratic process. I think a lot of Democrats were put off and disillusioned. Hillary wasn't a candidate to be excited about, she was the candidate waiting in line whom you were told you had to vote for. And so people stayed home.
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoI was very upset at the DNC's very visible (no thanks to Russian hackers) attempt to discredit and downplay the Bernie campaign.
- tomp 10y ago> Come on guys, you have to vote for Hillary because she's a woman For me, one of the biggest WTFs this election season was when I noticed that Hillary was literally selling "woman cards" on her website. The article below mentions at was meant as a joke, though I'm not sure most people took it that way... http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/clinton-issuing-woman-cards/ http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/clinton-issuing-woman-cards/
- micaksica 10y ago> We don't know how much damage Comey's actions in particular did to Hillary's candidacy but there is no doubt that the email scandal damaged her prospects tremendously. I don't understand what logic there is in blaming Comey for actions Clinton made. Her and her staff decided to run the server. The FBI did not fabricate something here that needed to be investigated.
- serge2k 10y agoHe went against standard procedures to bring up the investigation in public days before the election.
- bduerst 10y agoComey violated the Hatch act, which is in place to prevent people of his station from manipulating U.S. elections. He outright disobeyed the Attorney General's (his bosses) orders and released the information before he even had a warrant approved by a judge to investigate, just days before the election.
- matt_wulfeck 10y agoIt's pretty clear that "republican" and "democrat" have largely lost their meanings, as Trump is more independent and pretty much hated by his own party, and the democrat running has a historical record of being friends with Wall Street. This appears to happen every so often. After all, who do you know who votes for the Whig party?