24 ms·

To me what this election (as well as the 2016 election) illustrates, is what a poor set of choices we have had. In no sane world should it have been difficult

• mancerayder 6y ago
  The journalists Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald talk about this a lot: the question of what happened with Clinton's loss, why Trump, why these shocks and why the persistent support. The argument would be that there's a strong elitism that manifested in the Democratic Party, which abandoned some of its core Progressive principles with things like NAFTA (and the never-ending wars). H. Clinton echoed this, with a haughty campaign that called people she should be wooing 'deplorables,' skipping campaigning in key battleground states, and blaming sexism for some of her campaign failures ("it's about me") instead of self-reflection ("How could I have had broader appeal.") Even today you'll often find people reminding you that Trump appeals to people without college degrees. Outside of a pure data context, saying that over and over again suggests that somehow people with degrees are better capable of selecting the leaders of everyone, which is an extremely elitist perspective. So Trump comes along, attacks NAFTA and free trade, speaks plainly and so forth. Was he making false promises about returning jobs overseas, helping workers and other Sanders talking points? Absolutely. But the self-reflection that needs to happen here (given the loss of two dozen House seats and numerous local upsets) is, what are we doing wrong, here. To wit: Exit polls, which can be unreliable, pegged his national support at 32%-35% of the Latino vote. More tellingly were results in certain counties. Starr County, Texas, the county with the highest percentage of Hispanic or Latino voters — above 95% — voted for Hillary Clinton by a 60-point margin in 2016, but gave Biden just a five point win in 2020. Even more amazing was Trump’s performance among Black voters. The man whose 2016 message to “the blacks” was very nearly a parody of long-ago New York mayoral candidate Mario Procaccino’s pledge that “My heart is as black as yours” must have found a new way to connect. Trump doubled his support with Black women, moving from 4% in 2016 to 8%, while upping his support among Black men from 13% to 18%. Remember, this was after four years of near-constant denunciations of Trump as not just a racist, but the leader of a literal white supremacist movement: [...] Trump’s numbers with the LGBTQ community were a stunner also, jumping from 14% to 28%. In September, a dating app for queer men called Hornet ran a survey that showed 45% support for Trump among gay men. Ever since Trump jumped into politics, media observers have rushed to denounce any Trump-related data that conflicts with conventional wisdom, and the Hornet survey was no different. Out magazine quoted a communications professor from Cal Poly Pomona as saying, “To tout a Hornet poll as evidence of LGBTQ support for Trump is clickbaity, sloppy journalism.” Even the Hornet editor scoffed at his own poll, before it all turned out to be true in the election. Trump even improved his standing among white women, 53% of whom were already pilloried in 2016 for voting for a man who bragged about how you “grab ‘em by the pussy, you can do anything.” (Matt Taibbi, Which is the Real "Working Class Party" Now?, Nov 2020)
  • henrikschroder 6y ago
    > Outside of a pure data context, saying that over and over again suggests that somehow people with degrees are better capable of selecting the leaders of everyone, which is an extremely elitist perspective. If you're educated, if you're middle class, like most people here, you want a president - any politician really - to be better than you. You want people smarter than you running the country, because you understand that governing is a boring job that requires skill. But the second job of the president is to be a role model, to be a good example. And if the president is too good, too perfect, too clean, there's a bunch of people who are going to feel alienated or inferior. And that turns into resentment and hate. So then Trump comes along. A sexist, racist, buffoon who ignores political correctness. And for a lot of people, having him as a role model makes it easier to keep up, to compare yourself. "He says it like it is", they say. His terribleness gives them permission to be equally terrible. If the president can grab women by the pussy, they can grab women by the pussy. I don't know if splitting the Head of State from Chief Executive would help solve it, a lot of other countries have split the role, it's not like they have to go together. But it's clear that the governing job has to be moved away from the idiotic popularity contest that is the presidential election so that we can ensure we get people capable of governing in the role.
    • mancerayder 6y ago
      I think your message missed the point that you're replying to. Or, maybe you've accidentally added a datapoint in the direction of the argument I'm making, which is that it is elitist to believe or desire or suggest or push the notion that people with college or higher degrees are better able to determine leaders than the non-educated. I can expound on this - fundamentally ethical, not rational - argument if desired. I'd argue even that it is an anti-democratic attitude. My argument begins like this. College degrees correlate with wealth, and people without degrees are, on average, lower in the income scale than those with college degrees. 70% of American adults don't have American degrees. Therefore, if you continue down the path of associating college degrees with correct voting, not only are you classist, you're an elitist. And you've also threw in "not politically-correct" into sexist and racist. As if, political correctness the correct approach, and it's on par with sexism and racism. That actually bothers me a lot, because sexism and racism are often actions, political correctness is speech, and speech is considered on par with action. But it bolsters the arguments that elites don't understand what the polling is saying, many Americans don't like political correctness. It skews right-wing, but there are a large number of economically left-wing people who, also, don't like political-correctness. The polls show it. And the two journalists I quoted above also reference this, and I can send some data if desired.
• ardy42 6y ago
  > Had the Democrats put up anyone who was less divisive than Hillary Clinton then we are not where we are today. > Likewise this time around, nobody I have talked to seriously voted for Joe Biden on his own merits. They voted for him because he's not Donald Trump. That might just be a function of your bubble. Biden was probably the Democratic candidate with the broadest appeal, which is in fact his own merit. Biden wasn't running for President of California. He might not have deeply appealed to this or that demographic or ideological slice of the electorate, but if you go too far in that direction with a diverse electorate you risk getting either electable failures that bully the rest of the country (like Trump) or unelectable failures (like some of the other candidates in the primaries).
• alkonaut 6y ago
  > I have had people tell me they don't care if there is fraud and cheating This sounds like you suggest there is/was fraud or cheating, which you shouldn't be doing. Not sure if that was what you intended. I agree with the rest of your post though. Joe here won because of the division in the democratic party. He would have lost to most Republicans. He gathered the most votes ever for obvious reasons. People didn't exactly stay home this year. There has never been more enthusiasm for voting, whether it was for or against something.
  • erichocean 6y ago
    There is fraud every election. It doesn't typically change any of the results, though, and can (and should) be ignored. If Trump voters are really upset about it, states can audit the vote and show that fraud was a very small percentage, and didn't change any outcomes. (Both sides commit fraud, so they tend to cancel each other out.)
    • submeta 6y ago
      That‘s not the point (that fraud may happen in any election). Trump asserts that there was systematic fraud in large numbers, in a way that the outcome of the election was changed. And many of his 70mm voters may subscribe to his point of view. This will increase the hostility between the two parties in the US. When I see Trump talk, I wonder if he really believes what he says or if he knowingly and willfully lies. What this man has done in four years has put a great damage to the democratic culture in the US, and he badly harmed the reputation of the US around the world, especially when it comes to old allies in Europe. Edit: If Trump was not a narcisstic egomanianc („I WON THIS ELECTION BY A LOT“?!? Wtf?!), he would have stepped up in dignity, conceded his loss, congratulated Biden and wished him well. The US is confronted with many challenges in the midst of a huge pandemic, the nation is divided, and all he has to say is he won by a lot (in big letters)?!? This is it?
      • erichocean 6y ago
        > This will increase the hostility between the two parties in the US. The solution to this problem is California: Make the US a one-party state. That'll happen due to demographics as early as 2024, and almost certainly by 2028. It's critical that Biden gives a path to citizenship for all undocumented workers. Also: No one cares what Trump voters think or want, they can go pound sand.
• throw0101a 6y ago
  > Had the Democrats put up anyone who was less divisive than Hillary Clinton then we are not where we are today. You say this like Clinton did badly: she got 2.9M more votes than Trump! * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia... Most of the voting public rejected Trump in 2016. It's just that 77K of those votes were in the "wrong" places (MI 10K; PA 44K; WI 23K).
  • patrickaljord 6y ago
    > You say this like Clinton did badly: he got 2.9M more votes than Trump! That's because a few blue states have huge population such as California.
    • humbledrone 6y ago
      Are you implying that each Californian should count for less than one vote?
      • jessedhillon 6y ago
        Your (implied) counterproposal is not neutral either: you are suggesting that rurals and suburbans should be ruled by young type-As who are willing to pack themselves into tiny, overpriced apartments and make their careers a top priority well into their middle age. Why should that culture dominate? > Are you implying that each Californian should count for less than one vote? In a federalist republic, yes that's exactly what that means. The country was deliberately designed as a collection of independent states, and not a single population whose diversity is merely geographic.
        • jopsen 6y ago
          > The country was deliberately designed as a collection of independent states, Hmm... Couldn't it be argued that this haven't really been the case since the civil war? When I lived in SF, most Americans I met weren't originally from California (not had they lived there long).
• Nican 6y ago
  I really wish that the US voting system did not rely on strategic voting, in which voters are basically forced to choose the lesser of two evils. I am a huge proponent of ranked choice voting, and I donate to https://www.fairvote.org/ https://www.fairvote.org/. Politics have a wide spectrum of opinions and choices, and our government should represent that.
  • CarVac 6y ago
    Ranked choice voting (instant runoff) is flawed and confusing to explain to people. Score voting or approval voting is simpler and has none of the non-monoticity of instant runoff.
  • remram 6y ago
    Unfortunately every voting system is flawed in some way and strategic voting is still rewarded. Not trying to sound like the current one is an intelligent option though, there are plenty of schemes that are strictly better, like the one you linked.
• wan23 6y ago
  To me, this is one of the biggest problems with politics these days. Everyone wants a candidate that they like more than they want a candidate who can ably run the country. The fact is that this country is full of people with different ideas, desires and needs. Donald Trump had real support, but only from a single faction. He was president of his base only. Joe Biden on the other hand, is no one's favorite but it should be pretty obvious to anyone that he's qualified and that he can be a president for all of the United States.
• sova 6y ago
  Score Voting is the solution -- give candidates a score from 0-99 and take the highest average score. Works great to decide Olympian Gold/Silver/Bronze medalists. Plus, no vote is wasted, and bicameralism is transcended.
  • pstch 6y ago
    Is the ballot for olympian medalists public ? What are the incentives for someone not to vote 99 for the candidate he wants to win, and 0 for all others ?
    • CarVac 6y ago
      There's nothing wrong with that. You can also decide to vote against one candidate by giving everyone else 99, and that's okay too.
  • elihu 6y ago
    Yeah, that (or approval voting, or STAR) would be a good system in a primary. In the general election, using plain score voting is a bit dangerous; if you consider a Trump vs Clinton race where all the Trump voters give him a ten out of ten, and most of the Clinton voters give her a six or seven, then Trump wins by a bigger margin than he did in 2016. (STAR fixes this with an immediate runoff of the top two after maximalizing everyone's vote.) But in a primary election, it might be good to get the candidate with the most enthusiasm behind them. One difficulty in implementing something like this for the Democratic primary is that it isn't very compatible with the delegate system. Maybe that's not entirely a bad thing and delegates should be done away with, but sometimes it's good to have a group of people at the convention who can make decisions if something unexpected happens to one of the candidates. You could have individual states adopt different voting systems for their primaries and just use them to allocate delegates. For instance, instead of allocating delegates proportionally to anyone with more than 15% of the vote using first-past-the-post ballots like we do now, allocate delegates proportional to their candidate's total score, perhaps with some cut-off (like, no delegates awarded if your score average is less than 4 out of 10) or a rule that only the top N candidates are awarded delegates.
• leftyted 6y ago
  > Likewise this time around, nobody I have talked to seriously voted for Joe Biden on his own merits. They voted for him because he's not Donald Trump. Yeah, same here, but that's because we live in progressive bubbles. Dem voters chose Biden over many other candidates that progressives preferred. > We need better candidates who generate real support and appeal other than just not being their opponent. Not sure how to get there. You cannot imagine someone actually liking Biden without being soft in the head. And other people cannot imagine someone liking Trump without being racist. But these assumptions prove nothing except lack of imagination. People need to understand how heterogenous the US is...in every way. We have to regain the ability to see the world from other people's perspectives and extract the grain of truth from those perspectives.
  • Shivetya 6y ago
    I disagree, Democratic voters again did not get to choose their candidate. A candidate was selected for them. Even better one of the worst candidates during the primary was penciled in as Vice President; she is a good little party follower having the approved opinion and not one of her own. If anything it shows that the party rules above all. The lesson of Trump is that we have two political parties so immune to outside challenge it took someone of his level of money, fame, and more, to beat both parties and make no mistake, be beat both. Hence going forward, when Congress tells you they want to pass laws preventing certain monies from entering politics always understand it is to prevent anyone challenging their two party rule
    • enraged_camel 6y ago
      >>I disagree, Democratic voters again did not get to choose their candidate. A candidate was selected for them. This is quite wrong. Biden crushed Bernie in the primaries.
      • sigzero 6y ago
        But Harris was still a very horrible choice.
• polynomial 6y ago
  I've had people literally tell me they didn't care if it was Hitler, they would vote for him over Trump. And they're weren't making a joke, they were dead serious.
  • kybernetikos 6y ago
    You'll find people to say stupid stuff in support of nearly any position. Try not to let it affect your views too much.
    • polynomial 6y ago
      They are the equivalent of mindless downvoters on hn, lol.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• tracer4201 6y ago
  > Likewise this time around, nobody I have talked to seriously voted for Joe Biden on his own merits. I voted for Biden because although I didn't always agree with Team Obama/Biden, they weren't 10% as divisive as Donald Trump. Anecdotes aside, I'd love to see any real data you have on this topic.
  • akhilcacharya 6y ago
    I for one love both Joe and HRC as inspiring figures and would have voted for them even if the other candidate was not a bigoted wannabe authoritarian.
    • throwaway201103 6y ago
      I'm curious, what do you find inspiring about Joe Biden?
      • tracer4201 6y ago
        Life in public service, continuing to keep his family together after the death of his wife, daughter, and more recently, adult son. Also, my dad was able to get healthcare under the ACA, at a time we really needed it. I don't know how much credit for that belongs to Biden alone, but he was a part of it. He's passed away now, but I'm thankful my mom didn't have to mortgage their home at the time.
    • leesalminen 6y ago
      Lifelong politicians with a less-than-stellar background as attorneys are inspiring figures to you? Seriously?
      • tracer4201 6y ago
        I don't think lifelong politician is bad in itself. We did try out someone without a political background, but all he managed to do was normalize racism. My family lived about 15 minutes outside of Stillwater, OK. Thanks to DJT's rhetoric, my black in-laws only saw open racism and derogatory comments, because of both their race and religion. I'll pick lifelong politicians over any candidate that wants to make me a third-class citizen.
• akhilcacharya 6y ago
  The final popular vote is going to match Bidens favorables at around 52%. This was not a "poor set of choices", this is a pretty decisive victory.
• skrebbel 6y ago
  > We need better candidates who generate real support and appeal other than just not being their opponent. Not sure how to get there. Stop giving a single person that much power. The US is huge, it made sense back when news took a month to make it across the country, but now it doesn't. Many of the best-run democracies in the world have a history of unappealing presidents, prime ministers, and so on. You don't need better candidates, you need the President to matter less. You want the seats in the houses to dominate the media, not the figurehead. (free bonus: it'll also help you get rid of that ridiculous two-party system)
  • nemo44x 6y ago
    I’d go further and say we need the federal government to matter less. I think everyone would be happier if we gave more power to local governments. Power should flow up from the people to the federal government but today it flows downwards. This is why both sides think the other is intolerable. Because the federal government collects so much of the tax revenue they have so much of the power. Politics is mainly deciding who gets the money. I’d prefer if my state and my town had more to do with it than pols from places I have nothing in common with.
  • dhimes 6y ago
    We're supposed to have checks and balances. It seems a few key individuals were terrified of DJT and wouldn't stand up to him. Someday maybe we'll know why.
    • rrss 6y ago
      It's not just about Trump, though. The U.S. Congress has been consistently ceding power to the executive for decades. It would be nice to see a shift in the other direction, but I'm not optimistic.
    • hef19898 6y ago
      I'd say judges. Now they have them, and with the exception of some die hard Trump converts and supporters I would be surprised if the Republican establishment abandons Trump rather quickly.
• grumple 6y ago
  A prominent propaganda outlet had been slandering Clinton for decades, including 20+ politically guided hearings over an issue caused by the opposition party and an outrageous politically motivated investigation by a supposedly impartial law enforcement agency. To compare Clinton, who had been a senator and Secretary of State, and cast her as a bad choice compared to a billionaire heir and reality tv star who had no experience is sort of absurd. Politics is a popularity contest and heavily influenced by media and irrational thoughts and behavior.
• nojvek 6y ago
  Biden wasn’t just selected. People voted for him from a pool of 20-ish candidates in the democratic race. Yes, Biden is soft. He is not an entertainer. He probably has many missing qualities that Trump had. However he has almost half a century of experience in Congress driving bills and fighting for his constituents. He was the safe bet. Out of the 20 candidates, Biden was the most likely to defeat Trump. He is a realist compared to the other candidates. People realized that and voted for him. If Bernie was chosen as the candidate, Trump would have won a second term. The bet panned out. I feel it’s so easy to live in a Democratic bubble in Washington state. I guess same goes to California. Middle America thinks in a very very different way than we do.
  • claudeganon 6y ago
    I would say having Obama promise Biden’s competitors sweetheart deals so they’d drop out of the primary is pretty close to having been selected. There’s no way he would’ve came out ahead on Super Tuesday without Obama putting his hand in the scales on this manner. > If Bernie was chosen as the candidate, Trump would have won a second term. And yet centrist candidates lost across the country, Biden won by slimmer margins than Hillary in many places, progressives won a slate of seats, as well as measures they sponsored like drug decriminalization and minimum wage increases. There’s not much use arguing a hypothetical, but the circumstances of Biden’s victory don’t jive with this sentiment.
    • gnaritas 6y ago
      You're making the incorrect assumption that people want the same thing for their local government as for their national government; this isn't correct. One should expect centrist candidates to dominate national elections and more extreme candidates to win state and local elections. When you're trying to sell something to the whole nation, the more bland, the more it'll sell, extreme is niche, this applies in music, movies, and political candidates. Local candidates answer to local populations, they should be what that population wants; national candidates have to represent everyone, they should not be extreme in any direction or they'll be despised and hated by half the population that swings the other way.
    • 6y ago
• 2020election 6y ago
  Agreed. Have not met a single person who despised Trump who didn’t feel disgusted after seeing this compilation of Biden: https://joebiden.info/ https://joebiden.info/
• hintymad 6y ago
  I guess it really depends on people's preferences on issues. It turned out more people hated Trump as a president than liking his presidency, and Trump supporters should accept such choice. I weigh more on the culture side, and I'm abhorred that institutions can blatantly teach racism like critical race theory, which discriminates an entire race. I don't believe ACAB. I'm disgusted that Pelosi thinks that people can topple statues if they want, and AOC says "Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future? ", and the media kept spreading hoaxes like "fine people on both sides". I certainly don't agree that different political views should be moralized. Well, none that that matters now, I guess. American people have decided that left view is what they want, and we should respect and accept the decision.
• rhacker 6y ago
  Meh, we've had lots of unexciting presidents in the past. In my own lifetime the only president I was ever actually excited about was Obama. I think the only thing that does eclipse that excitement IS not having Trump anymore. I disagree with the notion that we need to be excited about a president in general because that's what GOT us Trump. The president should be boring, and move the country forward like a normal, boring job. I yearn for a president that might pop up every 45 days (oh yeah he's the president and he's doing something). Instead of what we just had. With Trump I feel like we dangerously moved towards having super celebrity presidents that are more interested in being King. I don't think the US should have a King. It should have someone that "PRESIDES" over governments boring ass functions.
  • ArnoVW 6y ago
    Emanuel Macron, président of France since 2017 famously decided that France needed just that, after 10 years of hypermediatisation of his predecessors. I tend to think he was right.
    • andrepd 6y ago
      Needs what? Macron is always in the spotlight.
      • ArnoVW 6y ago
        I'd argue differently. Yes, his name is dropped often in the press. However, if you compare the number of interviews, speeches, or other public interventions, they have been greatly reduced since the hyperprésidences of Sarkozy and Hollande. As Dominique de Villepin predicted at the time (2010): a president that is omnipresent, managing everything directly, ends up being isolated, and paradoxically powerless since he is overloaded.
    • esfandia 6y ago
      Francois Hollande is the one who campaigned on the fact that he wanted to be a "normal" president, as opposed to Sarkozy's taste for the spotlight.
• sp527 6y ago
  Democrats can only win at the margin of the electoral college. That margin is not progressive. The coastal Democratic strongholds are always going to vote blue. It makes absolutely no sense to adopt their platform. Political game theory favors appealing to the margin and the margin is moderate. The margin doesn’t take an extreme stance on social issues a la San Francisco. Quite the opposite: they hear things like “defund the police” and liberals shouting down “all lives matter” and they feel rightfully as if Democrats are threatening their place in society. The progressive politics of exclusion and contempt are totally unfit to the task of winning the electorate just as much as the equivalent conservative extreme.
  • arrrg 6y ago
    Why rightfully?
    • sp527 6y ago
      The Democratic Party supports policies that privilege minorities over White people or are even outright racially discriminatory, such as affirmative action. Affirmative action strives to achieve top down equal results at the expense of privileging certain people on the basis of their biological character. The right solution is bottom up economic stimulus to create equal opportunity, and it should support poor Black/Hispanic Americans as well as poor White Americans (of which there are a sizable and growing number). You need look no further than the failure of Prop 16 - which sought to remove language from the California Constitution that provides equal protections and consideration to all Californians irrespective of race, gender, etc - to understand how deeply unpopular these sorts of strategies to rectify societal imbalance really are. While I am personally largely socially liberal, I’ve never understood how Democrats unironically adopted a policy agenda that explicitly preferences certain people on the basis of race, which is quite possibly the worst way to address racial injustice.
  • confidantlake 6y ago
    Another take is the "moderate" will always vote for their party regardless. By nominating an extremist you get out the vote of those who normally stay at home. Trump was an extreme candidate but the "moderate" Republicans stuck with him. I feel the same thing would have happened with Bernie. The "moderate" Democrat might have shaken their head a bit, but they it wasn't like they would vote for a Republican.
• js2 6y ago
  > nobody I have talked to seriously voted for Joe Biden on his own merits. Okay, I did, so you can't say that anymore. I didn't vote for him in the primary, but I voted for him in the general. There's good stuff here: https://joebiden.com/joes-vision/ https://joebiden.com/joes-vision/ He's a centrist. I expect him to be right in the middle of the Democratic party. It's not as bold as I would like in some places and has things I don't like in others, but it's progress. It's substantive policy proposals to try to make headway on climate change, healthcare, covid19, jobs, and on and on.
  • rytor718 6y ago
    Agree with you, but completely understand the original comment. Its true that, similar to previous elections, people aren't voting For. They're voting against. That said, the reason Biden, despite his substantive proposals, isn't well-liked by Dems is because there seems to be broad disappointment with the Democratic party's failure to nominate and elect someone who is representative of the future we all want. There's a comment in this thread to the tune of "why are only 70 year old men running and winning the presidency in the USA" today. Indeed -- there's so much political failure in our government across the board that it's hard to believe in Biden and the party.
    • js2 6y ago
      I volunteered as a Democratic poll greeter on Election Day with two women, a woman from Cincinnati who works for the NC government as an economist and an African American woman from New Jersey retired from Johnson and Johnson so she could raise her son who had a hearing disability and “blacks kids with disabilities don’t get the help they need in public schools.” They both voted for Biden in the primary. I asked them why. Both said “because I thought he had the best chance to win the general.” The Democrats keep picking centrists because we’re a centrist country, I guess. I was going to vote for Buttigieg in the primary and voted Warren after he dropped out, but that was a symbolic vote since Biden had already locked it up. I’ve recently shared my thoughts on how I think we got here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25004795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25004795
• natchy 6y ago
  I was hoping for the Dem ticket that had a more anti-establishment leaning. Biden isn't a nemesis to big-tech like Trump is. He's an established politician who served while the Patriot act was in place. Seems scarier to me for increased surveillance and censorship.
  • minkzilla 6y ago
    Probably why every tech company told me every day for the last 6 months to vote. I think the thing I’m most excited about with this election is to stop being bombarded by every site to vote!
• CJefferson 6y ago
  I think this is down to your bubble. I know quite a few people who want Biden, and said they would have voted for Trump again over Sanders (who was the most notably discussed other person). I know a bunch more people who are as you describe of course.
• m0zg 6y ago
  The DNC had at least _half a dozen_ better candidates this time. They had better candidates last time, too. It's just that the establishment wants to be in control, so they put Biden in (and Clinton last time). If that's not obvious, I don't know what to tell you. The GOP establishment tried that too, with Trump, but they're less organized, so Trump tore them up pretty easily due to his unorthodox campaigning.
• dougmwne 6y ago
  I think it's a mistake to dismiss Trump in this way. I see Biden as a very safe and strong choice. Trump was extremely well-liked by his base. I think he is the most magnetic candidate that Republicans have fielded since Regan. It took a huge effort, a strong and widely palatable candidate, a safe platform, a great campaign, a pandemic, mail-in voting, all the pooled power of the tech companies, and a lot of luck to take him down. Seeing how difficult it was just cements it for me that I am in a bubble and that tens of millions of people have very different worldviews and values than I do. It is very hard to admit to myself that my core values might not be widely shared by others.
  • bra-ket 6y ago
    Trump has been blatantly slandered by the mainstream media as racist evil orange man, it was 4 years of '1984' style brainwashing by the left. Everything else is secondary when the media controls the masses like 'Ministry of Truth' in some dystopian novel. Just watch real-time CNN headlines when president Trump speaks on ANY subject. One of the big reasons for voting Trump was standing up against this propaganda machine, lies, censorship and intimidation. 70M people thankfully did just that, which gives hope in the future of this country.
    • Freestyler_3 6y ago
      And it worked, and all the media outside the USA ate everything up too. Thank you for speaking up.
    • gnaritas 6y ago
      It's not slander when it's true, it's just reporting. 75M people thankfully see through his con man act, and override the 70 million rubes that can't see it and incorrectly assume the entire media is wrong and Trump is right rather than seeing the obvious, Trump is exactly what the media says he is. Nor is this a surprise, he's been a known con since the mid 1980's.
    • dash2 6y ago
      Yes, but the media and the left also said that George W Bush was terrible. Trump was different: he really did say outrageous things, like "hell, yeah we should torture them", or saying "Mexicans are rapists", or calling McCain a loser for being captured. Or think about his dismissal of Covid. That's not propaganda. Or his self-dealing in the White House. None of these things were invented. There's a liberal mainstream establishment in the US, which will always want to bash conservatives. Trump presented a very large target to them. They quite fairly took aim at it.
• watwut 6y ago
  She still got quite a lot of votes. I think that what people don't want to admit is that Trump is what half of America wants. He is the right kind of masculine man and has all the right approaches.
• ljm 6y ago
  I'm not from the US, and I'm happy with how the election has turned out, but I agree for similar reasons. I was telling my friend the other day, why is it that the presidency is a competition between retiree geriatrics of the same generation? Biden and Trump have 4 years difference in age. Where's the representation for people significantly younger than post-retirement age? Even Bernie Sanders, a favourite, is hitting his latter years, and it seems the Democrat candidate is just chosen by the DNC rather than what their voter base would like. So, it's great news that Trump avoids a second term, but I don't see a progression in the political system yet.
  • saalweachter 6y ago
    > I was telling my friend the other day, why is it that the presidency is a competition between retiree geriatrics of the same generation? I mean, I'm not thrilled it turned out that way this election, but that's not really the rule for Presidential elections; Carter, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama were 52, 46, 54 and 47 when elected.
• mandeepj 6y ago
  You missing a big point from 2016. Hillary lost due to social engineering hack behind that election. Social media cos were better prepared this time
  • tuna-piano 6y ago
    Downvoted because in 2016 there was a "social engineering hack" and Trump received 63 million votes. In 2020 I haven't seen much evidence of that and Donald Trump received at least 70 million votes. He's a popular guy among a very significant percentage of the population... like it or not.
  • andrewzah 6y ago
    Hillary lost due to being an extremely unlikable candidate. In addition, she faced a charismatic and controversial wildcard candidate who promised to shake up the system in a time where people were sick of career politicians. And a portion of dem voters were pissed off about how Sanders was treated by the DNC, though I have no idea if that caused any meaningful portion to abstain or vote for Trump.
• fl0wenol 6y ago
  I don't trust Biden any further than I can throw him, but he is a known devil who is under scrutiny for his neoliberal legislative history. It was a smart move to veep Harris. In a way his tough on drugs/crime history was necessary to pull in the hand-wringing boomers and fingers crossed he's flip flopped there and wants to be the cool grandpa who gets to legalize it before he croaks as his legacy or whatever. I'm paraphrasing and streamlining several people's opinions on the matter here.
  • whateveracct 6y ago
    Biden has already said the crime bill was a mistake. In his final town hall (that was a debate substitute) iirc
• RedBeetDeadpool 6y ago
  What I disliked so much about this election was that I believed based purely on policies drafted by both parties, that the democrats did not bring anything better to the table than what republicans did, and this is against a party that spent billions and counting building a wall that will basically not work as advertised. What Trump got right and why he won against Hillary back in 2016 is that US is on the brink of losing its hegemony. Nationalistic Americans flocked to his appeals to close off borders, to renegotiate trade deals, back out of agreements that hurt the US, and promise bringing manufacturing back into our borders. Biden is a career politician so he knows how to say all the right words to appeal to as many people as possible, but where those words fail is in their over-promise in that the sum of policies put forth simply don't add up. Not that trump hasn't made promises he couldn't keep, but he has taken and put into motion a lot of things that represent a very nationalistic ideology. Personally I think that even with the dysfunctional pathologically lying brain that Trump had, he was on the side with the better economic playbook. Regardless of what one may think about him, Trump is the one with business experience, and Biden is the one with political experience. And as much as I would love to believe that we live in a world where we can make allies, and negotiate, and hand out financial aid, and work together to green the earth, the reality is we live in a Corporatocracy, and that even Biden came to power by its merits. I was very much on the fence. Lets just say I wasn't feeling very positive about the next four years even before the election was called.
  • grego 6y ago
    I can be argued that Trump inherited the good economy from Obama. But there is so much more to life than just economy.
    • RedBeetDeadpool 6y ago
      Trump did in fact inherit a good economy from Obama, but that's not really what I was talking about. I was talking about actions, not so much where the economy was.
  • evgen 6y ago
    Trump's only business experience is in running them into the ground. He is horrible at business and even worse at understanding the sort of macro-economics you would hope that a president might know a little something about. His pathetically short attention span is probably the only thing that kept him from doing more long-term damage.
• beamatronic 6y ago
  I voted for Kamala
• InTheArena 6y ago
  We need to reform the system so that people feel like they can afford not to be tribal. Key to this is the unbalanced wildcard that is the United States Supreme Court. While the Supreme Court has the ability to basically make any law or any decision no matter how flimsy the textual language support, the United States is not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship. without that fear of what a court could and would do, Trump would have never won his first campaign. I always hope that some moderate politician will come along in deemphasize the power of the bases. A strongly pro environment Republican, or a true honest pro life Democrat. Unfortunately what we’ve seen, and continue to see in this election is at the wings in each party are all powerful. We need to rebuild institutions that have been shaped by decades of imperial President rule. I agree with the chaos engineering example that was given earlier. We now know what part of the system don’t scale. Something that we cannot permit if we want to continue having a democracy is presidents acting like they can ignore law, make appointments were not in recess, pass executive orders with the force of law. We also need to stop excusing his behavior because of parties and links. Obama gave trump the weapons that he used in office with a national Labour relations Board debacle and his immigration orders. Trump orders were simply the flipside of that coin. It’s time to re-factor America. we may want to consider going as far as making the presidency more of a Prime Minister role, as opposed to an independent position. The country and the stakes are now so high that we cannot afford to have another Donald Trump.
  • ardy42 6y ago
    > I always hope that some moderate politician will come along in deemphasize the power of the bases. A strongly pro environment Republican, or a true honest pro life Democrat. Unfortunately what we’ve seen, and continue to see in this election is at the wings in each party are all powerful. Me too. When I was a kid, I lived in a conservative farm state whose federal representation was 100% Democratic (just like most of its neighbors). Things just seem a lot more dysfunctional now, because the polarized conformity doesn't allow for enough heterodox party members who can help forge compromise on issues that actually have broad support. IMHO, what the country really needs is a truce in the culture wars, and forget this winner-take-all battle for countrywide conformity.
• TimTheTinker 6y ago
  > They voted for him because he's not Donald Trump. That’s very interesting (but not surprising) to hear. I’m in a conservative bubble, and many people I know voted for Trump because he’s not a Democrat and opposes policies of the modern Democratic Party. There were many discussions among conservatives on how to set up criteria for what feels to many like a choice between good policy and good character — though others argue that’s a false dichotomy to begin with when most of the job in question is policy (i.e. policy is character in this case).
  • simonbarker87 6y ago
    The thing that those of us outside the US find interesting is that you don’t have a left and a right party. You have a just right of center party and a far right party. Pick any Democrat (with a few exceptions) and pop them in another countries left party (Uk labour for instance) and they would be sent over the aisle with jeers. My assumption is that the Cold War and fear of anything vaguely “commie” pushed the US that way as the gov in the 50s and 60s seems (from anecdotes) to have been very progressive. I would love to see what would happen if you had single transferable vote (or similar) that picked the single issue voters away from the GOP. You might find a situation where the dems become everyone’s second choice because they are firmly in the Center and it would show just how unprogressive they really are (or at least how they appear to be to an international audience) It still blows my brain that there isn’t wide spread single payer/NHS style health care in the richest country in the world. And don’t get us started on gun control, I’ve travelled to dozens of countries around the world and nowhere have I felt less safe than SF/Buffalo/NY/Miami/Jackson.
    • rootusrootus 6y ago
      > It still blows my brain that there isn’t wide spread single payer/NHS style health care in the richest country in the world. And the odds are good it won't ever happen. It is deeply ingrained in the culture of this country that the gov't is bad, and private corporations are good. So we willingly accept death panels as long as it's some faceless insurance company, because hey, it's not the gov't. Nevermind that we arguably have more control over the gov't than we do a faceless corporation. Short of changing jobs, I don't really have any leverage over my insurance provider.
• esalman 6y ago
  > Likewise this time around, nobody I have talked to seriously voted for Joe Biden on his own merits Did you talk to the black voters in Clayton county, Atlanta or Philadelphia? Because it was them who put Biden over the line and put the election results beyond doubt.
  • setr 6y ago
    What? Every vote put biden over the line, those just happened to be the last counted (to declare a victor) -- and has nothing to do with how strongly they felt about Biden
    • esalman 6y ago
      Biden would never win PA and GA without 80%+ margin in those counties. No other dem candidate would come even close.
• akudha 6y ago
  One of the biggest problems we have today is lack of good leaders. Not just in politics but in business and other fields. Among those holding highest office across the planet - how many can you name that you genuinely love and respect? Maybe a handful? In a sane world, how can people like Trump, Bolsanaro, Duterte etc hold the highest office in their countries? Business world isn’t that great either. Somehow we have reached a situation where it is getting harder to find good leaders
  • Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    Simple fact is one person is incapable of directing millions. Forget about hundreds of millions.
  • discreteevent 6y ago
    Materialism. The culture gets what it values.
• karmasimida 6y ago
  Not US citizen but currently resides here. I think Biden prevails on one thing: the public don't believe Trump will contain COVID.
• NearAP 6y ago
  >>>nobody I have talked to seriously voted for Joe Biden on his own merits.<<< On the other hand, I know lots of people who voted him on his own merits which and they listed them as - he is centrist, he was a senator/VP which means he has the experience and knowledge to navigate congress, he has good ethics/morals (which means they could tell their kids to look up to him), he is a Christian, he believes in climate change. I know lots of Democrats who are moderates/centrists and preferred Biden over Bernie and Warren. Personally, I also found him to be a good candidate and not a 'he is not trump so automatically he is better'
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• jollofricepeas 6y ago
  The problem is that even if you had “better”, the majority of voters wouldn’t vote for “better candidates.” Voters like users of a software application are hostile, irrational and often unqualified to use the system. The question is what will we do and how will we improve our form of government now that the stress test of Trump’s presidency is over? How do we make a more perfect union in the face of often uninformed, unqualified voters? How do we really ensure that our officials are ethical and responsible individuals seeking to serve? I have no clue.
• sam0x17 6y ago
  We have fallen out of touch with working class voters. We need to reconnect with them and their needs. We also need to undo the damage conspiracy theories have done in the red parts of this country -- many extremely blue collar meat and potatoes should-be-core-of-the-democratic-party people wince when they hear that you are a democrat because they have been taught by fox news and facebook that democrats are evil coastal elites who don't care about the working class and are part of the deep state. Right now everything we say to them tends to push them further away (e.g. the voter fraud court cases getting immediately thrown out in court because they were without merit will be seen by these voters as PROOF of the deep state). To win over voters like this, we have to actually _watch_ the media they consume to figure out how to inoculate them from the cult-like conspiracy theories they have become vulnerable to.
  • joeldg 6y ago
    This is the problem with America in general.. the Red's just have a bad case of it.
• maerF0x0 6y ago
  > We need better candidates who generate real support and appeal other than just not being their opponent. Not sure how to get there. IMO the democrats did themselves a big disservice by having such popular alternatives to both trump _and_ biden. eg: yang was popular, sanders was popular, harris was popular. People wanted their candidate to be running for president, and were left with re-evaluating who they'd vote for (trump or biden) when their favorite was cut. I really think the presidential election needs the following reforms: Electoral votes map to popular vote in each state. Runoff voting allowing parties to run multiple candidates without fearing the dilution of a "leader" (eg One could have voted "Yang, Sanders, Harris, Biden" and still be generally assured their vote benefitted their party. Minor parties such as green + libertarian need to be invited to debates.
• rayiner 6y ago
  You’re reading this wrong. Biden won because he was someone voters in suburban Atlanta could stomach. Any of the further left candidates would’ve seen Trump win. (The idea of a more left candidate juicing the base further is bananas. Democratic turnout in this election was pretty much maxed out.) If you don’t know anyone who likes Biden you live in a bubble. My parents like Biden and they dislike the Squad. The riots scared them. They’re older, and immigrants, and they think Carter was really swell. Biden is exactly who they wanted. And there are a lot of people like them. They’re the kind of people that turned northern VA blue.
• opportune 6y ago
  I have a theory that non-progressive Democratic voters are so concerned with candidates' perceived "electability" that they're repeatedly picking unexciting candidates who end up being less electable. The Democratic party needs to focus on increasing turnout (a potentially huge pool of new voters) rather than swaying an extra 2-4% of consistent moderate voters over, IMO. Republican voters don't seem to have the same problem. I mean, Trump was probably the least "electable" candidate of all time. But he got a lot of people excited about voting.
• fabianhjr 6y ago
  > illustrates, is what a poor set of choices we have had. > We need better candidates who generate real support and appeal other than just not being their opponent. Not sure how to get there. This is in great part due to First Past The Post voting method[1] employed. The US isn't interested in democracy if they can't at least move from FPTP to something at least as good as Approval Voting. (Which is one of the simplest alternatives) Some criterions FPTP does no meet from Wikipedia[1][2]: 1. Mutual Majority Criterion: if a majority (more than 50%) of voters top-rank some k candidates, then one of those k candidates must win. 2. Condorcet Winner Criterion: if a candidate would win a head-to-head competition against every other candidate, then that candidate must win the overall election. 3. Condorcet Loser Criterion: if a candidate would lose a head-to-head competition against every other candidate, then that candidate must not win the overall election. 4. Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Criterion: the election outcome remains the same even if a candidate who cannot win decides to run. 5. Independence of Clones Alternatives Criterion: the election outcome remains the same even if an identical candidate who is equally-preferred decides to run. 6. No favorite betrayal: Can voters be sure that they do not need to rank any other candidate above their favorite in order to obtain a result they prefer? At least consider how 2, 4, and 6 affect alternatives like Howie Hawkins, Bernie Sanders, or Gloria la Riva to name some examples. I find it hypocritical when US government officials criticize 1-party states when the US is a 2-party state and as if that was a big qualitative difference. [1]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/First-past-the-post_voting#/Effects https://www.wikiwand.com/en/First-past-the-post_voting#/Effe... [2]: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Comparison_of_electoral_systems#/Mathematical_criteria https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Comparison_of_electoral_systems#...
• yyyk 6y ago
  >Had the Democrats put up anyone who was less divisive than Hillary Clinton then we are not where we are today. Sanders would have lost too, once Trump begun to paint him as a socialist commie. Oddly, O'Malley would have won easily.
• baumandm 6y ago
  > Had the Democrats put up anyone who was less divisive than Hillary Clinton then we are not where we are today. Fun fact I recently learned, but a 2013 Quinnipiac University poll found Hillary Clinton to be the most popular US politician with 61% approval. I was shocked when I learned this, but it makes me wonder if the idea that Clinton is broadly unpopular is mostly just a meme? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-clinton-idUSBRE9170NZ20130208 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-clinton-idUS...
• AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  Demographics show that whites really really really like Trump, and everyone else doesn't. Which mirrors the rhetoric of Trump I (hope) any rational person can agree. In the case of such polarized racial politics, the Democrats needed a white male to try to not further inflame the white base and pick off as many white voters as possible. That left a nonrepresentative candidate for the almost-majority minority "everyone else". Racial politics have underpinned presidential elections since... well, slavery. This one was no different, it just had the sad spectacle of overt racism rather than at least SOME window dressing overlaid on the "Southern Strategy" since the civil rights era.
• loco5niner 6y ago
  Agreed. This is why we need to push voting in the primaries