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Its sad how many news outlets grapple to find some excuse for Trump's meteoric rise to power besides the obvious one; a massive voter-base of disenfranchised Am

by 013a 10y ago

Its sad how many news outlets grapple to find some excuse for Trump's meteoric rise to power besides the obvious one; a massive voter-base of disenfranchised American workers, nearly completely ignored by the administrations of the past 25 years. And they're still being ignored by the press, if this article is any indication. Wait. Sorry, I'm the crazy one. Its the memes. The dank pepe memes are what helped him win. How could Hillary have been so blind?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
andrepd 10y ago
A good rule of thumb is that if you are 100% sure of the obvious reason for a problem there is no consensus about you're probably wrong.
- jimmykennedy 10y ago
  This is almost verbatim what my 9/11 Truther college buddy would say. I'm not convinced it's a good rule of thumb. It's way too easy to say "there's no consensus on chemtrails/evolution/etc"
  - derrickdirge 10y ago
    Except that there is a consensus on those things. It's just not unanimous.
- ythn 10y ago
  Maybe not 100%, but Occam's Razor suggests disenfranchised voter groups are the underlying reason Trump won, not dank memes. Of course Occam's Razor doesn't always point to the correct answer, just the simplest one.
  - derrickdirge 10y ago
    Can you demonstrate that the 'disenfranchised voters' argument requires fewer assumptions than the 'meme' argument?
Shivetya 10y ago
the story being sold by the DNC and its sycophants both inside the press and outside is that Trump did not win the election, it was either stolen or given to him. This is the reaction of irrational people who can see no other solution other than those they come up with. In their ordered world all other opinions are those of the ignorant, the bigoted, and racist. As such they are all discounted if not ignored. Trump won because of who he wasn't and he took down to political establishments to do so. Why wouldn't they both be mad and worse the press who for too long decided instead of being journalist that they should be part of the story. I cannot recall a time in my life where I have seen so many stories from the press reporting on the press. So while the linked article has no real place on HN it is just indicative of a narrative being pushed by the losing side. Someone else gave it to him, we were never wrong or disliked, we were cheated. (we as in them)
Chestofdraw 10y ago
> a massive voter-base of disenfranchised American workers, nearly completely ignored by the administrations of the past 25 years. I think most people accept that but it does still leave the question, 'why Trump?'
- mantas 10y ago
  Because those people saw him as lesser evil compared to Clinton? If there was another not-Clinton candidate, they'd have voted for him/her. It'd be interesting to see Sanders vs Trump in parallel universe.
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
    I think Sanders woukd have had a good shot.
  - LyndsySimon 10y ago
    > Because those people saw him as lesser evil compared to Clinton? If there was another not-Clinton candidate, they'd have voted for him/her. As a Trump voter - but not a Republican - this pretty much sums it up. His SCOTUS list and the formation of his "Second Amendment Coalition" nudged me from the "he's better than Clinton" to the "maybe he'll deliver something I want" column, but there are no circumstances where I would have voted Clinton. > It'd be interesting to see Sanders vs Trump in parallel universe. I think it would have been a slaughter in that case, instead of the squeaker it was. Trump's biggest challenge was winning over the libertarian wing of the GOP. If he were against Sanders, that part of the party would have been locked down from day one.
    - lostcolony 10y ago
      That part of the party was never going to vote for Clinton though. The question was do they vote (for Trump), or stay home. Sanders would have had a much better chance with moderates, independents, the anti-establishment groups, etc.
  - ajmurmann 10y ago
laumars 10y ago
And why does he resonate with disenfranchised American workers? He's policies were ill conceived and in many cases worse for that voter base than the administration that preceded him. But because he spoke their language they adopted him regardless of the political blunders he made during his campaign. Which means memes and other non-conventional methods of promotion really helped sell Trump as an alternative to the convention because they speak to the working class in the way that career politicians seldom achieve (not for want of trying). So your comments aren't mutually exclusive from the points made in the article.
- 013a 10y ago
  There's a disconnect between actual policy and campaign rhetoric. His campaign rhetoric targeted, among other groups, the disenfranchised American worker. Whether his policy actually helps this group is irrelevant; the point is that he targeted them and they believed him.
  - bryanlarsen 10y ago
    "he targeted them and they believed him." So memes, then.
alistproducer2 10y ago
I really hate to burn Karma, but I'm going to disagree.None of the polling data bares out your assessment. The majority of his voters were not poor ex-coal miners. The average income was somewhere around $70K/year.
- pottersbasilisk 10y ago
  The majority of anyones base cant be just coal miners. President Trump campaigned heavily in swing states he correctly thought he could flip, while Hillary didnt.
- wopwopwop 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimodal_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimodal_distribution
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Right, the mean is meaningless.
- CPLX 10y ago
  It wasn't strictly about income as measured in numbers, it was about social class. We have a really hard time talking about and grappling with social class in this country, but it's a fundamental force, as it is in nearly all cultures throughout history. There are many divisions and shorthand ways of trying to describe the divide, and none are fully satisfying, but one of them is that some people are economically threatened by rapidly accelerating technology, and some are economically empowered. Another is that some people are threatened by trade, and some profit from it. And so on. The global economy is changing rapidly, the distribution of wealth is becoming more unequal, and not everybody is thriving in that context. Talking about it in raw dollar terms in the aggregate has value, but it's one of many data points. Class resentment is a powerful force that has underpinned nearly every major political realignment in history, I'm not sure why everyone has such a hard time seeing it.
- stagbeetle 10y ago
  From a statistics point of view, mean is a very dubious and untelling metric. Adding a mode, median, and interquartile ranges will help tremendously in finding where the "bulk" of Trump voters lay. If nothing else, I'm sure you know that one big outlier can skew the entire data sheet, for instance, like Peter Thiel?
rev_null 10y ago
Didn't the majority of voters _not_ vote for Trump? The massive voter base is still the minority and it's easier to blame meme magic than to re-evaluate a dysfunctional system of democracy.
- anonnyj 10y ago
  The game isn't raw vote count, so Trump didn't optimize for that.

by 013a 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

andrepd 10y ago

A good rule of thumb is that if you are 100% sure of the obvious reason for a problem there is no consensus about you're probably wrong.

jimmykennedy 10y ago
This is almost verbatim what my 9/11 Truther college buddy would say. I'm not convinced it's a good rule of thumb. It's way too easy to say "there's no consensus on chemtrails/evolution/etc"
- derrickdirge 10y ago
  Except that there is a consensus on those things. It's just not unanimous.
ythn 10y ago
Maybe not 100%, but Occam's Razor suggests disenfranchised voter groups are the underlying reason Trump won, not dank memes. Of course Occam's Razor doesn't always point to the correct answer, just the simplest one.
- derrickdirge 10y ago
  Can you demonstrate that the 'disenfranchised voters' argument requires fewer assumptions than the 'meme' argument?

Shivetya 10y ago

the story being sold by the DNC and its sycophants both inside the press and outside is that Trump did not win the election, it was either stolen or given to him. This is the reaction of irrational people who can see no other solution other than those they come up with. In their ordered world all other opinions are those of the ignorant, the bigoted, and racist. As such they are all discounted if not ignored. Trump won because of who he wasn't and he took down to political establishments to do so. Why wouldn't they both be mad and worse the press who for too long decided instead of being journalist that they should be part of the story. I cannot recall a time in my life where I have seen so many stories from the press reporting on the press. So while the linked article has no real place on HN it is just indicative of a narrative being pushed by the losing side. Someone else gave it to him, we were never wrong or disliked, we were cheated. (we as in them)

Chestofdraw 10y ago

> a massive voter-base of disenfranchised American workers, nearly completely ignored by the administrations of the past 25 years. I think most people accept that but it does still leave the question, 'why Trump?'

mantas 10y ago
Because those people saw him as lesser evil compared to Clinton? If there was another not-Clinton candidate, they'd have voted for him/her. It'd be interesting to see Sanders vs Trump in parallel universe.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  I think Sanders woukd have had a good shot.
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  > Because those people saw him as lesser evil compared to Clinton? If there was another not-Clinton candidate, they'd have voted for him/her. As a Trump voter - but not a Republican - this pretty much sums it up. His SCOTUS list and the formation of his "Second Amendment Coalition" nudged me from the "he's better than Clinton" to the "maybe he'll deliver something I want" column, but there are no circumstances where I would have voted Clinton. > It'd be interesting to see Sanders vs Trump in parallel universe. I think it would have been a slaughter in that case, instead of the squeaker it was. Trump's biggest challenge was winning over the libertarian wing of the GOP. If he were against Sanders, that part of the party would have been locked down from day one.
  - lostcolony 10y ago
    That part of the party was never going to vote for Clinton though. The question was do they vote (for Trump), or stay home. Sanders would have had a much better chance with moderates, independents, the anti-establishment groups, etc.
- ajmurmann 10y ago

laumars 10y ago

And why does he resonate with disenfranchised American workers? He's policies were ill conceived and in many cases worse for that voter base than the administration that preceded him. But because he spoke their language they adopted him regardless of the political blunders he made during his campaign. Which means memes and other non-conventional methods of promotion really helped sell Trump as an alternative to the convention because they speak to the working class in the way that career politicians seldom achieve (not for want of trying). So your comments aren't mutually exclusive from the points made in the article.

013a 10y ago
There's a disconnect between actual policy and campaign rhetoric. His campaign rhetoric targeted, among other groups, the disenfranchised American worker. Whether his policy actually helps this group is irrelevant; the point is that he targeted them and they believed him.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  "he targeted them and they believed him." So memes, then.

alistproducer2 10y ago

I really hate to burn Karma, but I'm going to disagree.None of the polling data bares out your assessment. The majority of his voters were not poor ex-coal miners. The average income was somewhere around $70K/year.

pottersbasilisk 10y ago
The majority of anyones base cant be just coal miners. President Trump campaigned heavily in swing states he correctly thought he could flip, while Hillary didnt.
wopwopwop 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimodal_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimodal_distribution
- mirimir 10y ago
  Right, the mean is meaningless.
CPLX 10y ago
It wasn't strictly about income as measured in numbers, it was about social class. We have a really hard time talking about and grappling with social class in this country, but it's a fundamental force, as it is in nearly all cultures throughout history. There are many divisions and shorthand ways of trying to describe the divide, and none are fully satisfying, but one of them is that some people are economically threatened by rapidly accelerating technology, and some are economically empowered. Another is that some people are threatened by trade, and some profit from it. And so on. The global economy is changing rapidly, the distribution of wealth is becoming more unequal, and not everybody is thriving in that context. Talking about it in raw dollar terms in the aggregate has value, but it's one of many data points. Class resentment is a powerful force that has underpinned nearly every major political realignment in history, I'm not sure why everyone has such a hard time seeing it.
stagbeetle 10y ago
From a statistics point of view, mean is a very dubious and untelling metric. Adding a mode, median, and interquartile ranges will help tremendously in finding where the "bulk" of Trump voters lay. If nothing else, I'm sure you know that one big outlier can skew the entire data sheet, for instance, like Peter Thiel?

rev_null 10y ago

Didn't the majority of voters _not_ vote for Trump? The massive voter base is still the minority and it's easier to blame meme magic than to re-evaluate a dysfunctional system of democracy.

anonnyj 10y ago
The game isn't raw vote count, so Trump didn't optimize for that.