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I'm still struggling to understand where this obsession with explaining how Trump got people to vote for him comes from. The real killing blow was the low turno

by pluma 10y ago

I'm still struggling to understand where this obsession with explaining how Trump got people to vote for him comes from. The real killing blow was the low turnout for the Democrat candidate. Trump only had to beat Clinton and practically nobody (outside the most progressive parts of the US) voted for Clinton. Trump may have swayed some undecided voters in his favours as a protest vote but all he had to do was rally the Republican voters and make Clinton look so bad the Democrat voters wouldn't want to get her elected. The question isn't why Trump won, the question is why Clinton lost. In terms of absolute numbers, Clinton couldn't even match the numbers with which Obama was re-elected. She won the popular vote but the popular vote is not where you win the presidency and she knew that. The voters who should have been Democrat voters didn't have faith in their candidate and I think they didn't even have faith in their party. Trump's election is not simply a weird victory of a Republican outsider, it's a massive defeat of the Democrat establishment.

nailer 10y ago
I know a Trump voter who voted for him because of his Orlando speech where he was apparently the only candidate to state what actually happened: Islamists were killing gay people. Everyone else apparently didn't talk about either or both of those things.
- derrickdirge 10y ago
  Because that's not what 'actually happened'. A single young man with a sordid past and complicated relationship with the gay community claimed allegiance to Islamists immediately prior to massacring dozens of people at a gay-centric dance club.
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    According to Wikipedia, no credible evidence for the "self-hating, closeted gay" narrative has been found by the FBI. The killer was upset about the US presence in Iraq/Syria and had been preparing the attack for some time, possibly helped by his wife (arrested and charged with helping him). Both were Muslims. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Orlando_nightclub_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Orlando_nightclub_shootin... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/us/politics/noor-salman-arrested-orlando-shooting-omar-mateen.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/us/politics/noor-salman-a...
    - derrickdirge 10y ago
      But of course it's not that simple. From the wiki: >Mateen's ex-wife, however, claimed that his father called him gay while in her presence. Speaking on her behalf, her current fiancé said that she, his family, and others believed he was gay, and that "the FBI asked her not to tell this to the American media"
      - jazzyk 10y ago
        Because conservative, old Muslim men never call anyone "gay", right? For wearing a trendy piece of clothing, for example? My male friend has been called "gay" a few times because he likes Broadway shows. You can believe in any hearsay you want, but at the end of the day, this was a US-hating, Muslim guy/couple, killing LGBT people (for whom many Muslims have special hatred, and like to throw them off the roofs).
        derrickdirge 10y ago
        My point is that we should be cautious about assuming that his motives were uncomplicated. For what it's worth, the FBI also found no evidence linking him to ISIL. We can't possibly know what he felt in his heart, but making policy decisions based on the assumption that we can is reckless and only serves to further smooth over any of hint of subtlety left in American public discourse.
        nailer 10y ago
        So there's no evidence connecting him to Isil (which there generally isn't: Isil spread messages to sympathetic people telling them to do things - ask employees of one well known company who have an unlisted London office because someone wants to slit their throats). Recapping: - The FBI has investigated and found no links that he was a patron of the club. - He has, for a fact, murdered people in the name of Islam. We can't know what he felt in his heart, but also we don't have any reason to believe his stated motives aren't his actual ones. It an uncomfortable fact, but a large percentage of Muslims say they believe in Sharia which holds some pretty awful beliefs about gay people (and women, and others).
fmihaila 10y ago
The article [1] and video [2] below shed some light on the "how". The video is mentioned directly in the article. The text explains how highly sophisticated targeting was deployed by the Trump campaign, and how it differed from Clinton's campaign. Highly informative. [1] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/big-data-cambridge-analytica-brexit-trump http://motherboard.vice.com/read/big-data-cambridge-analytic... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc
mikeyouse 10y ago
The tricky part about Clinton "not matching the numbers" of Obama's reelection is that she received more votes than he did. She received more votes than everyone who has ever ran for President with the exception of Obama in 2008. Nobody is claiming that Trump's win is illegitimate due to the electoral vs. popular mismatch, but it's clear that something is seriously wrong when a candidate can win an election by several million votes and still lose the presidency. If I were a Democrat, I'd be even more annoyed that my party had won the popular vote four times in the 21st Century and only won the presidency twice. I think the obvious answer is to increase the number of representatives in the House. Wyoming residents currently have 3x the influence in presidential elections as people from Texas, which is seriously askew given the relative power of the two.
- jartelt 10y ago
  Isn't the obvious answer to eliminate the electoral college? The president effects all citizens equally, so it makes the most sense that each citizen's vote should have equal weight in the presidential election. We don't need the electoral college to promote state's rights. States already get 2 senators regardless of population and get to make their own state laws (as long as they are constitutional).
- pluma 10y ago
  > something is seriously wrong when a candidate can win an election by several million votes and still lose the presidency I'm not an American so the electoral college is completely alien to me but what you're saying is basically that you disagree with the entire point of having the electoral college. Clinton lost in almost every state. The reason she won the popular vote (which, again, doesn't matter in the presidential election) is that she won in some of the states with the highest population, like California. Yes, this means she won more people over, but they still only represent a fraction of the demographics. The electoral college has obvious flaws like swing states being the primary concern of candidates during much of their campaigns. But it's important to understand that without the electoral college there would be other problems, specifically the most populous states practically deciding the election. So either way it's unfair: either it's unfair to a large portion of the overall population by putting states above people, or it's unfair to a large number of states by putting population above state rights. It's really a question of what the US wants to be. Do you want to be an alliance of sovereign states united under a federal government, or do you want to be a singular nation with a central government that delegates to the individual states for bureaucratic reasons? It seems a lot of Americans say they want the former but secretly think they have the latter. A weighted state-based system will always result in "undemocratic" results like the 2016 election, a direct vote will always be unfair to smaller states. You can't have it both ways. In my opinion the electoral college should be abolished and the US elections (all of them) should be reformed in a way that no longer necessitates a two-party system but in practice state rights are an important issue to Americans. The US motto may be "e pluribus unum" but that doesn't mean the political landscape can be treated as a homogeneous playing field.

by pluma 10y ago

nailer 10y ago

I know a Trump voter who voted for him because of his Orlando speech where he was apparently the only candidate to state what actually happened: Islamists were killing gay people. Everyone else apparently didn't talk about either or both of those things.

derrickdirge 10y ago
Because that's not what 'actually happened'. A single young man with a sordid past and complicated relationship with the gay community claimed allegiance to Islamists immediately prior to massacring dozens of people at a gay-centric dance club.
- jazzyk 10y ago
  According to Wikipedia, no credible evidence for the "self-hating, closeted gay" narrative has been found by the FBI. The killer was upset about the US presence in Iraq/Syria and had been preparing the attack for some time, possibly helped by his wife (arrested and charged with helping him). Both were Muslims. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Orlando_nightclub_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Orlando_nightclub_shootin... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/us/politics/noor-salman-arrested-orlando-shooting-omar-mateen.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/us/politics/noor-salman-a...
  - derrickdirge 10y ago
    But of course it's not that simple. From the wiki: >Mateen's ex-wife, however, claimed that his father called him gay while in her presence. Speaking on her behalf, her current fiancé said that she, his family, and others believed he was gay, and that "the FBI asked her not to tell this to the American media"
    - jazzyk 10y ago
      Because conservative, old Muslim men never call anyone "gay", right? For wearing a trendy piece of clothing, for example? My male friend has been called "gay" a few times because he likes Broadway shows. You can believe in any hearsay you want, but at the end of the day, this was a US-hating, Muslim guy/couple, killing LGBT people (for whom many Muslims have special hatred, and like to throw them off the roofs).
      - derrickdirge 10y ago
        My point is that we should be cautious about assuming that his motives were uncomplicated. For what it's worth, the FBI also found no evidence linking him to ISIL. We can't possibly know what he felt in his heart, but making policy decisions based on the assumption that we can is reckless and only serves to further smooth over any of hint of subtlety left in American public discourse.
        nailer 10y ago
        So there's no evidence connecting him to Isil (which there generally isn't: Isil spread messages to sympathetic people telling them to do things - ask employees of one well known company who have an unlisted London office because someone wants to slit their throats). Recapping: - The FBI has investigated and found no links that he was a patron of the club. - He has, for a fact, murdered people in the name of Islam. We can't know what he felt in his heart, but also we don't have any reason to believe his stated motives aren't his actual ones. It an uncomfortable fact, but a large percentage of Muslims say they believe in Sharia which holds some pretty awful beliefs about gay people (and women, and others).

fmihaila 10y ago

The article [1] and video [2] below shed some light on the "how". The video is mentioned directly in the article. The text explains how highly sophisticated targeting was deployed by the Trump campaign, and how it differed from Clinton's campaign. Highly informative. [1] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/big-data-cambridge-analytica-brexit-trump http://motherboard.vice.com/read/big-data-cambridge-analytic... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc

mikeyouse 10y ago

The tricky part about Clinton "not matching the numbers" of Obama's reelection is that she received more votes than he did. She received more votes than everyone who has ever ran for President with the exception of Obama in 2008. Nobody is claiming that Trump's win is illegitimate due to the electoral vs. popular mismatch, but it's clear that something is seriously wrong when a candidate can win an election by several million votes and still lose the presidency. If I were a Democrat, I'd be even more annoyed that my party had won the popular vote four times in the 21st Century and only won the presidency twice. I think the obvious answer is to increase the number of representatives in the House. Wyoming residents currently have 3x the influence in presidential elections as people from Texas, which is seriously askew given the relative power of the two.

jartelt 10y ago
Isn't the obvious answer to eliminate the electoral college? The president effects all citizens equally, so it makes the most sense that each citizen's vote should have equal weight in the presidential election. We don't need the electoral college to promote state's rights. States already get 2 senators regardless of population and get to make their own state laws (as long as they are constitutional).
pluma 10y ago
> something is seriously wrong when a candidate can win an election by several million votes and still lose the presidency I'm not an American so the electoral college is completely alien to me but what you're saying is basically that you disagree with the entire point of having the electoral college. Clinton lost in almost every state. The reason she won the popular vote (which, again, doesn't matter in the presidential election) is that she won in some of the states with the highest population, like California. Yes, this means she won more people over, but they still only represent a fraction of the demographics. The electoral college has obvious flaws like swing states being the primary concern of candidates during much of their campaigns. But it's important to understand that without the electoral college there would be other problems, specifically the most populous states practically deciding the election. So either way it's unfair: either it's unfair to a large portion of the overall population by putting states above people, or it's unfair to a large number of states by putting population above state rights. It's really a question of what the US wants to be. Do you want to be an alliance of sovereign states united under a federal government, or do you want to be a singular nation with a central government that delegates to the individual states for bureaucratic reasons? It seems a lot of Americans say they want the former but secretly think they have the latter. A weighted state-based system will always result in "undemocratic" results like the 2016 election, a direct vote will always be unfair to smaller states. You can't have it both ways. In my opinion the electoral college should be abolished and the US elections (all of them) should be reformed in a way that no longer necessitates a two-party system but in practice state rights are an important issue to Americans. The US motto may be "e pluribus unum" but that doesn't mean the political landscape can be treated as a homogeneous playing field.