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I can't say much more than I'm sorry. Remember: Donald Trump does not represent the will of the American people. He won the electoral college, but around 2.8

I can't say much more than I'm sorry. Remember: Donald Trump does not represent the will of the American people. He won the electoral college, but around 2.8 million more people voted for Clinton than voted for him. He does not represent our values, our morals, or our view of where the country should be going. He represents those straight white males who don't want to adapt to the future, who don't want to give up their power, and who don't recognize that America can only be successful when we help the world be successful. I'll be honest, I think Trump is going to cost universities, labs, and businesses a lot of very smart people. I hope we'll be able to recover from the damage he's going to do, but I honestly don't know just how bad it will get.

adventured 10y ago
Trump very clearly represents the will of an immense number of people and may represent the will of the majority of Americans in fact. For both Clinton and Trump that representation is far beyond those that actually voted. Clinton's camp will be the first to tell you that supposedly a lot of her supporters didn't vote in the election. You say Trump represents straight white males (you imply that's all he represents). Trump won the vote of 53% of white women. Trump won the popular vote in 30 of the 50 states. The popular vote in just two states - NY & CA, neither of which Trump could have ever competed in - determined that popular vote gap. The facts don't support your premise at all.
- panic 10y ago
  The only relevant fact here is that millions more people voted against Trump than for him. The top reason people voted for Trump wasn't to support him or his policies, it was that he wasn't Clinton (http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/21/in-their-own-words-why-voters-support-and-have-concerns-about-clinton-and-trump/ http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/21/in-their-own-words-wh...). His approval rating is below 50% (http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-app...). Trump doesn't represent the majority in any sense of the word.
  - adventured 10y ago
    OP's premise was in part that only straight white males supported him. The fact is, the majority of white women supported him as well. So OP was wrong on a very, very big part of the premise being floated. Trump's approval is 57% http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/prez_track_jan25 http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trum... The notion that it's useful to pretend Trump represents a tiny group of supporters, for personal emotional comfort over facts, isn't going to be useful in actually trying to counter bad policy. Step one is recognizing that Trump has a very large base that put him into the White House. That he only lost the popular vote by 2.8 million (2.x% of all votes) with California and New York included, is astounding and points to just how large his actual base is. Not to mention the fact that Hillary didn't manage to pull a majority of votes, versus eg Obama's 51.1% in 2012, Obama's 53% in 2008, and Bush's 50.7% in 2004.
    - nl 10y ago
      Across multiple poll providers, his approval -7.2[1] (although this hasn't updated with the latest Rasmussen poll). Rasmussen is the only provider that has him in positive territory. Interestingly, Fox gives him the second worst result (only ABC/WashPost gives him worse) [1] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorabl...
  - guildwriter 10y ago
    That's a good way to sweep data like this under the rug: (Left percent is Clinton, Right percent is Trump) White men 31% 63% White women 43 53 White women college graduates 51 45 White women non-college graduates 34 62 White men college graduates 39 54 White men non-college graduates 23 72 (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-over-white-women/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-ove...) Like it or not, the fact of the matter is that claiming that only white men supported Trump is incorrect. Going further and trying to dodge the point by claiming that only numbers matter is reductionist and doesn't address the kaleidoscopic issues that a diverse socio-economic-regional population has.
- tallanvor 10y ago
  First, there is no real way to measure "the will of the majority" except through votes cast and, to a lesser extent, through polls. The majority of votes were cast for Clinton, not Trump. That's a clear fact. The polls are also clear that Trump had lower approval ratings than past presidents, and his disapproval ratings were far higher than any other president when they came into office. This is also a fact. We can, of course, argue with who Trump represents, because depending on who we are, his words and his actions are going to be interpreted differently. My interpretation is that he represents straight white men. More specifically, wealthy straight, white, men. New York and California make up over 18% of the population. Those citizens are absolutely just as important as citizens of any other state when it comes to discussing the popular vote. While Trump might have won the popular vote in 30 states, that does nothing to diminish the fact that Clinton won the popular vote by close to 2.8 million votes. While I'll admit that some of what I said can be considered opinion, the other parts of what I said are VERY clearly supported by fact.
- BryantD 10y ago
  The NY/CA popular vote gap argument makes no sense. If you ignore the votes of the 38 million people living in states which supported Trump the most, to balance the votes of the 38 million people living in California, you get the same result -- Trump loses the popular vote.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    It's so ridiculous. Guess what, if you ignore 58.5 million people's worth of red states, then Clinton would have won the election! It's not only ridiculous, it's rather offensive. It pretty directly implies that Californians and New Yorkers should somehow count less, and more indirectly implies that Democrats aren't worthy Americans the way that people in flyover country are.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Still, a thin majority is the most pathetic kind of mandate. This counts for everybody by the way, I lean left but am not particularly enamored with the approach the Democratic Party takes to governance.
SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
Your post is racist, sexist, and factually wrong. Trump represents a repressed ideological view that has failed to be directly engaged, instead preferring othering and slander, as you demonstrated here. The left-wing in the US is going to continue to lose elections as long as they prefer slander to understanding why people disagree with them and why their racist and sexist platform is falling out of favor. I am for a lot of progressive policies, but the Democrats jumped the shark in to advocating bigotry, slander, and nonsense. Recent example: 1 in 10 posters I saw at the women's march was outright sexist, yet 3 in 10 posters were bemoaning the "sexism" of other people for having similar numbers at their marches. Remove the plank from your own eye, etc etc. Ed: I would genuinely enjoy someone explaining how dismissing the right-wing as sexist is any different than dismissing all of feminism as sexist because there exist sexist feminists.
- guildwriter 10y ago
  "I would genuinely enjoy someone explaining how dismissing the right-wing as sexist is any different than dismissing all of feminism as sexist because there exist sexist feminists." You just said OP is demonstrating othering and slander and then you expect intellectual honesty? And then you get ferociously downvoted? I think you're better off spending time with the following writer than expecting a serious response to your question. "Conservatives have made incredible hay out of the perception that liberals sneer at people who don’t live in coastal enclaves. These arguments accept that frame even as they dispute its conclusions, which is not a good argumentative strategy. Additionally, many of these tweets have replies sneering at “rednecks.” Why are you doing that? What is the political value? Aren’t you trying to win elections precisely in the places where these statements would appear most insulting? This is the unfortunate reality: neither the Electoral College nor the Senate are going anywhere anytime soon. They are facts of life. You can refuse to do what’s necessary to win back power in a country structurally designed to make red states disproportionately powerful while Republicans set about implementing an agenda. Or you can develop a strategic political discourse that demonstrates a sensible attitude towards how you frame your appeals. I get it: these aren’t campaign slogans or TV ads for Democrats. But the communal rhetoric of an ideology matters. The day-to-day messaging of the members of a political party matters. What exactly is the political advantage that you think you’re getting from talking like this?" http://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/01/10/ok-lets-get-constructive/ http://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/01/10/ok-lets-get-constructive... "His point is pretty simple: as political segregation increases, with people from dramatically different political camps less and less likely to interact, the really bitter political arguments are intra-group, not inter-group. That is, the battles that are most personal and toxic stop being Democrat-Republican but left-liberal, alt-trad, insurgents-establishment. Alexander names a few indicative examples. Online atheism is a really good one, with battles within atheists of different dispositions being far more frequent and ugly than those between atheists and believers, precisely because the latter groups interact so rarely. Primary season 2016 was the ur-example. The actual presidential campaign was ugly in many ways. But the Sanders vs. Clinton and alt-right vs. establishment GOP fights were more personal, more tiring, more toxic. The perpetual tendency of Clinton partisans to say that Sanders supporters are “just as bad” as the alt-right – a Nazi-influenced far right extremist group, mind you – exemplifies this tendency. Fargroups are further away politically than neargroups, but they don’t live in our shared social and professional spaces while neargroups do, and so they don’t inspire quite the same kind of personal animus." http://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/01/11/i-know-my-own-group-by-defining-whos-not-in-it/ http://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/01/11/i-know-my-own-group-by-d...
Amezarak 10y ago
> I'll be honest, I think Trump is going to cost universities, labs, and businesses a lot of very smart people This is absolutely terrible for the OP, but is there really a shortage of smart and skilled people? Given the low pay for many scientific positions and notoriously awful conditions for postgrads and the like working in labs, I have my doubts. Maybe the upside is that with the tap of smart people turned down a little, conditions will improve for the people who are left.
- D_Alex 10y ago
  >is there really a shortage of smart and skilled people? Hell yes, and there always will be, for the right values of "smart" and "skilled". >Given the low pay for many scientific positions... etc The sad fact is that the low pay you mention causes so many really smart people to turn away from science as a career. >Maybe the upside is that with the tap of smart people turned down a little, conditions will improve for the people who are left. If you turn down the tap for the smart people going into science and non-zero-sum businesses (like stock trading etc), I am certain the conditions "for people who are left" will become worse than they would have been. Absolutely certain.
  - Amezarak 10y ago
    If there is a shortage, then why aren't they paid more highly and treated better?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - wfo 10y ago
      Because if you want to actually do science it doesn't really produce profit, it produces knowledge and results which someone else may use for profit decades or centuries later and the idea of "shortages" or "supply" or "demand" are all ideas that come from the market which is not relevant here. There's high pay for brilliant scientists who want to work on weapons manufacturing or oil drilling or high frequency trading or building scalable advertising platforms but not for doing actual science.
libeclipse 10y ago
I agree with most of what you said, but I don't see why you had to bring sexuality and ethnic background into it. I myself don't fit into the group that you specified, but I can still see that it is a stupid classification. Our opinions and beliefs are not reliant on what group we are categorised into. Edit: I'm not a trump supporter.
- AshleyGrant 10y ago
  He didn't just say "straight, white males." He said "He represents those straight white males who don't want to adapt to the future, who don't want to give up their power, and who don't recognize that America can only be successful when we help the world be successful." In short, read the entire statement, not just three words.
  - iainmerrick 10y ago
    (Also very much not a Trump supporter) I too think this language is a little divisive, even if it's mostly accurate. Plenty of straight white women voted for Trump too, and more than enough non-whites, sadly. Maybe a better way to phrase it would be: "He represents those people who don't want straight white males to give up their power"

adventured 10y ago

Trump very clearly represents the will of an immense number of people and may represent the will of the majority of Americans in fact. For both Clinton and Trump that representation is far beyond those that actually voted. Clinton's camp will be the first to tell you that supposedly a lot of her supporters didn't vote in the election. You say Trump represents straight white males (you imply that's all he represents). Trump won the vote of 53% of white women. Trump won the popular vote in 30 of the 50 states. The popular vote in just two states - NY & CA, neither of which Trump could have ever competed in - determined that popular vote gap. The facts don't support your premise at all.

panic 10y ago
The only relevant fact here is that millions more people voted against Trump than for him. The top reason people voted for Trump wasn't to support him or his policies, it was that he wasn't Clinton (http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/21/in-their-own-words-why-voters-support-and-have-concerns-about-clinton-and-trump/ http://www.people-press.org/2016/09/21/in-their-own-words-wh...). His approval rating is below 50% (http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-app...). Trump doesn't represent the majority in any sense of the word.
- adventured 10y ago
  OP's premise was in part that only straight white males supported him. The fact is, the majority of white women supported him as well. So OP was wrong on a very, very big part of the premise being floated. Trump's approval is 57% http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/prez_track_jan25 http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trum... The notion that it's useful to pretend Trump represents a tiny group of supporters, for personal emotional comfort over facts, isn't going to be useful in actually trying to counter bad policy. Step one is recognizing that Trump has a very large base that put him into the White House. That he only lost the popular vote by 2.8 million (2.x% of all votes) with California and New York included, is astounding and points to just how large his actual base is. Not to mention the fact that Hillary didn't manage to pull a majority of votes, versus eg Obama's 51.1% in 2012, Obama's 53% in 2008, and Bush's 50.7% in 2004.
  - nl 10y ago
    Across multiple poll providers, his approval -7.2[1] (although this hasn't updated with the latest Rasmussen poll). Rasmussen is the only provider that has him in positive territory. Interestingly, Fox gives him the second worst result (only ABC/WashPost gives him worse) [1] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorabl...
- guildwriter 10y ago
  That's a good way to sweep data like this under the rug: (Left percent is Clinton, Right percent is Trump) White men 31% 63% White women 43 53 White women college graduates 51 45 White women non-college graduates 34 62 White men college graduates 39 54 White men non-college graduates 23 72 (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-over-white-women/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-ove...) Like it or not, the fact of the matter is that claiming that only white men supported Trump is incorrect. Going further and trying to dodge the point by claiming that only numbers matter is reductionist and doesn't address the kaleidoscopic issues that a diverse socio-economic-regional population has.
tallanvor 10y ago
First, there is no real way to measure "the will of the majority" except through votes cast and, to a lesser extent, through polls. The majority of votes were cast for Clinton, not Trump. That's a clear fact. The polls are also clear that Trump had lower approval ratings than past presidents, and his disapproval ratings were far higher than any other president when they came into office. This is also a fact. We can, of course, argue with who Trump represents, because depending on who we are, his words and his actions are going to be interpreted differently. My interpretation is that he represents straight white men. More specifically, wealthy straight, white, men. New York and California make up over 18% of the population. Those citizens are absolutely just as important as citizens of any other state when it comes to discussing the popular vote. While Trump might have won the popular vote in 30 states, that does nothing to diminish the fact that Clinton won the popular vote by close to 2.8 million votes. While I'll admit that some of what I said can be considered opinion, the other parts of what I said are VERY clearly supported by fact.
BryantD 10y ago
The NY/CA popular vote gap argument makes no sense. If you ignore the votes of the 38 million people living in states which supported Trump the most, to balance the votes of the 38 million people living in California, you get the same result -- Trump loses the popular vote.
- mikeash 10y ago
  It's so ridiculous. Guess what, if you ignore 58.5 million people's worth of red states, then Clinton would have won the election! It's not only ridiculous, it's rather offensive. It pretty directly implies that Californians and New Yorkers should somehow count less, and more indirectly implies that Democrats aren't worthy Americans the way that people in flyover country are.
maxerickson 10y ago
Still, a thin majority is the most pathetic kind of mandate. This counts for everybody by the way, I lean left but am not particularly enamored with the approach the Democratic Party takes to governance.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago

Your post is racist, sexist, and factually wrong. Trump represents a repressed ideological view that has failed to be directly engaged, instead preferring othering and slander, as you demonstrated here. The left-wing in the US is going to continue to lose elections as long as they prefer slander to understanding why people disagree with them and why their racist and sexist platform is falling out of favor. I am for a lot of progressive policies, but the Democrats jumped the shark in to advocating bigotry, slander, and nonsense. Recent example: 1 in 10 posters I saw at the women's march was outright sexist, yet 3 in 10 posters were bemoaning the "sexism" of other people for having similar numbers at their marches. Remove the plank from your own eye, etc etc. Ed: I would genuinely enjoy someone explaining how dismissing the right-wing as sexist is any different than dismissing all of feminism as sexist because there exist sexist feminists.

guildwriter 10y ago
"I would genuinely enjoy someone explaining how dismissing the right-wing as sexist is any different than dismissing all of feminism as sexist because there exist sexist feminists." You just said OP is demonstrating othering and slander and then you expect intellectual honesty? And then you get ferociously downvoted? I think you're better off spending time with the following writer than expecting a serious response to your question. "Conservatives have made incredible hay out of the perception that liberals sneer at people who don’t live in coastal enclaves. These arguments accept that frame even as they dispute its conclusions, which is not a good argumentative strategy. Additionally, many of these tweets have replies sneering at “rednecks.” Why are you doing that? What is the political value? Aren’t you trying to win elections precisely in the places where these statements would appear most insulting? This is the unfortunate reality: neither the Electoral College nor the Senate are going anywhere anytime soon. They are facts of life. You can refuse to do what’s necessary to win back power in a country structurally designed to make red states disproportionately powerful while Republicans set about implementing an agenda. Or you can develop a strategic political discourse that demonstrates a sensible attitude towards how you frame your appeals. I get it: these aren’t campaign slogans or TV ads for Democrats. But the communal rhetoric of an ideology matters. The day-to-day messaging of the members of a political party matters. What exactly is the political advantage that you think you’re getting from talking like this?" http://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/01/10/ok-lets-get-constructive/ http://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/01/10/ok-lets-get-constructive... "His point is pretty simple: as political segregation increases, with people from dramatically different political camps less and less likely to interact, the really bitter political arguments are intra-group, not inter-group. That is, the battles that are most personal and toxic stop being Democrat-Republican but left-liberal, alt-trad, insurgents-establishment. Alexander names a few indicative examples. Online atheism is a really good one, with battles within atheists of different dispositions being far more frequent and ugly than those between atheists and believers, precisely because the latter groups interact so rarely. Primary season 2016 was the ur-example. The actual presidential campaign was ugly in many ways. But the Sanders vs. Clinton and alt-right vs. establishment GOP fights were more personal, more tiring, more toxic. The perpetual tendency of Clinton partisans to say that Sanders supporters are “just as bad” as the alt-right – a Nazi-influenced far right extremist group, mind you – exemplifies this tendency. Fargroups are further away politically than neargroups, but they don’t live in our shared social and professional spaces while neargroups do, and so they don’t inspire quite the same kind of personal animus." http://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/01/11/i-know-my-own-group-by-defining-whos-not-in-it/ http://fredrikdeboer.com/2017/01/11/i-know-my-own-group-by-d...

Amezarak 10y ago

> I'll be honest, I think Trump is going to cost universities, labs, and businesses a lot of very smart people This is absolutely terrible for the OP, but is there really a shortage of smart and skilled people? Given the low pay for many scientific positions and notoriously awful conditions for postgrads and the like working in labs, I have my doubts. Maybe the upside is that with the tap of smart people turned down a little, conditions will improve for the people who are left.

D_Alex 10y ago
>is there really a shortage of smart and skilled people? Hell yes, and there always will be, for the right values of "smart" and "skilled". >Given the low pay for many scientific positions... etc The sad fact is that the low pay you mention causes so many really smart people to turn away from science as a career. >Maybe the upside is that with the tap of smart people turned down a little, conditions will improve for the people who are left. If you turn down the tap for the smart people going into science and non-zero-sum businesses (like stock trading etc), I am certain the conditions "for people who are left" will become worse than they would have been. Absolutely certain.
- Amezarak 10y ago
  If there is a shortage, then why aren't they paid more highly and treated better?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - wfo 10y ago
    Because if you want to actually do science it doesn't really produce profit, it produces knowledge and results which someone else may use for profit decades or centuries later and the idea of "shortages" or "supply" or "demand" are all ideas that come from the market which is not relevant here. There's high pay for brilliant scientists who want to work on weapons manufacturing or oil drilling or high frequency trading or building scalable advertising platforms but not for doing actual science.

libeclipse 10y ago

I agree with most of what you said, but I don't see why you had to bring sexuality and ethnic background into it. I myself don't fit into the group that you specified, but I can still see that it is a stupid classification. Our opinions and beliefs are not reliant on what group we are categorised into. Edit: I'm not a trump supporter.

AshleyGrant 10y ago
He didn't just say "straight, white males." He said "He represents those straight white males who don't want to adapt to the future, who don't want to give up their power, and who don't recognize that America can only be successful when we help the world be successful." In short, read the entire statement, not just three words.
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  (Also very much not a Trump supporter) I too think this language is a little divisive, even if it's mostly accurate. Plenty of straight white women voted for Trump too, and more than enough non-whites, sadly. Maybe a better way to phrase it would be: "He represents those people who don't want straight white males to give up their power"