I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

There is no way to prove Hank's assertion. Ty admitted as much above. You cannot tease out a conclusion as to which population caused Trump to win. You can call Hank's position math all you like. I can call you Archduke Franz Ferninand from now on if I like. All you have is rhetoric.

People that voted Stein, I've heard some say Hil is as bad because she voted for Iraq, but that is nonsense. No one who is that far left would vote for Trump. As to Johnson voters, I suppose it is possible to hypothesize a voter who would break for Trump rather than hil, but is that a thinking Johnson voter? Hil and a R congress seems like the best a libertarian would want, right? and a man who wants ethnic/religious registers probably not? but you are right, i cannot prove either- still if I'm mostly correct the Pa/Mi difference goes away.

But all that is beside the point. For whatever reason a shit ton voted for neither candidate. Why is the bigger story then, why Trump got sort of the same number of votes as Romney?

I know one third party voter, for certain. He voted that way because Hillary was going to win big. And that one person has an absolute right to his vote, not questioning that, but wondering if that one voter had believed the polls showing the race a toss-up, would em vote 3rd party? or how would em break?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by SEC_Chick

So even I were to detail the at least questionable conflicts of interest on the Clinton Foundation, you would not be persuaded, so I won't bother.

What's the single worst supposed conflict of interest, and how was it handled?

eta: I've said this before in a different way, but somehow it got completely lost that the Clinton Foundation raised money and mostly spent it on good stuff. Assuming that funds donated somehow enriched the Clintons makes only a little more sense than assuming that funds donated to other charitable causes benefited her.

While I was half expecting the GOP to spontaneously combust post election, it has been most interesting to see the Dems response to defeat. If Trump had lost, we would have seen a chorus of joyous "I told you so!" from Never Trump, but the loss of all of those new racist voters would have destroyed the party. But Hillary blames it on Comey. Warren thinks the party didn't go big enough. GGG says she was too wonkish and that's why people don't like her.

Oddly, everyone seems to think that the election results vindicated their own strongly-held views, and that the rest of the party should listen to them going forward. As I've said, in an election this close, many people can correctly point to different things that might have made a material difference

I know you all will argue that the House is stacked because it's gerrymandered, but what about losing the 7 competitive Senate races? Since Obama took office, the Dems have lost 60 seats in the House and a dozen in the Senate. In the states, it's been even worse. Per the WSJ, before 2010, 54.5% of state legislators were Dems, controlling 60 of the 99 state legislatures. Dems totally controlled 17 states. Now they control only 31 state chambers, losing almost a thousand seats since Obama took office and control half as many states. The number of states controlled by the GOP more than doubled.

I blame Obama.

I am fascinated that I have not seen a single possible thought that perhaps a large portion of American voters have rejected Democratic ideas as they have shifted farther to the left (and as I have seen here are unwilling to acknowledge that there has even been a shift to the left at all).

I don't think Hillary is to the left of Obama.

That maybe they should focus less on identity politics and more on the things most people actually care about?

You'll get a lot of agreement there.

Or a real discussion that they pretty much outright ignore almost half the country. That maybe doubling down on ideas voters rejected may not be the best path forward. That polling indicates that the party is far to the left of most Americans on the issue of abortion or that things like the Hamilton cast and the designer who won't dress Melania reinforce the presumptiousness that the Left knows better than everyone else.

And on some of this, too.

That said, one problem with your theory is that more people voted for Hillary. And if Democrats are to the left of most Americans on abortion, Republicans are well to the right.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

That's story makes sense as long as you ignore all of the numbers. Trump didn't win on a wave of angry turnout. He got the typical GOP vote numbers.

ETA: also, what does ignore mean? This group doesn't want the policy help we can offer. They don't want health insurance, education, job training & relocation assistance. They want to crack down on immigrants and brown people. That's not something "we" can or should offer.

That's an assumption, not "numbers." Again, you've no idea which population of voters was most significant.

You just don't get it. These people don't want govt intervention. They want jobs. And stop with this stupid retraining and education fix. That's not going to work, nor is it realistic. These people want jobs that don't exist anymore. They're fucked. So they vote for the guy the dumbest of them think will ring back jobs, and the brightest of them think will blow up the global economy, forcing us to start manufacturing things domestically once more.

Hillary had nothing to offer these people but managed decline. Trump also had nothing to offer, except a lie, or, if he's serious about screwing up intl trade, a dystopian world where some jobs do indeed come back, but our collective standard of living goes to shit.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

People that voted Stein, I've heard some say Hil is as bad because she voted for Iraq, but that is nonsense. No one who is that far left would vote for Trump. As to Johnson voters, I suppose it is possible to hypothesize a voter who would break for Trump rather than hil, but is that a thinking Johnson voter? Hil and a R congress seems like the best a libertarian would want, right? and a man who wants ethnic/religious registers probably not? but you are right, i cannot prove either- still if I'm mostly correct the Pa/Mi difference goes away.

But all that is beside the point. For whatever reason a shit ton voted for neither candidate. Why is the bigger story then, why Trump got sort of the same number of votes as Romney?

I know one third party voter, for certain. He voted that way because Hillary was going to win big. And that one person has an absolute right to his vote, not questioning that, but wondering if that one voter had believed the polls showing the race a toss-up, would em vote 3rd party? or how would em break?

I thought I might vote for her in a pinch for a while, and there's no way to know how I'd have acted facing different projections, but if I had to guess, I'd have done what I did. As I noted earlier, I really had no choice.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

That's an assumption, not "numbers."

No. It's not. Trump did not get a big wave of turnout. Those are numbers. That undermines your story. We don't need to get into who stayed home to know that what you are selling is at least incomplete, perhaps even flat out wrong.

You just don't get it. These people don't want govt intervention.

Of course they do ("keep government out of my Medicare"). They just want government intervention that they perceive as benefiting themselves and not "those people." How can you still be this clueless after the election we just went through?

And stop with this stupid retraining and education fix.

This is part of the problem. You and they reject out of hand the only things we can do.

And they do work. They help those who actually want jobs get them. But you're talking about people who don't want jobs, they want the past. We can't do anything for them.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

What's the single worst supposed conflict of interest, and how was it handled?

Prominent foreign interests, e.g. the royal family of Qatar, gave money to the CGI. CGI used it to pay for AIDS drugs that it gave away. Clinton family got reputational benefits for doing good. Hillary was nicer to Qatar than she otherwise would have been as SoS.

I mean, that's not super crazy, except that no one has been able to identify a single instance of such favoritism, despite unprecedented access to her emails.

And that story is far less direct corruption than a campaign finance system, in which elected official get money directly for their own benefit that gets spent on nothing at all useful.

But the incoming administration is about to make it look downright quaint with how much it diverts government money and the money of those seeking to do business with the government into it's own pockets.

[ferrets_bueller]

The discussion of the utility of retraining the chronically unemployed steel workers and coal miners is depressing. It simply isn't going to work. Perhaps in small slivers of the economy it might work for a short time. I think, or hope, that solar power may be one area where manufacturing and installing jobs may increase significantly.

For those of you who are insufficiently depressed about the outcome of the election, I offer last year's Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford. I just finished it.

Combine:

(1) the bleak job prospects Ford projects in "Robots", which The Economist not too long ago described as "forced leisure"'

(2) the collapse of municipal finances and the concomitant collapse of municipal pensions (see this morning's news about the implosion of Dallas, which is just the tip of an iceberg with New Jersey and Illinois as dominoes), and the inability of those pensioners to support themselves,

(3) my fellow baby boomers who have saved nothing for their retirement, and those that were counting on pensions, are in for a shock,

(4) the drastic insolvency of the PBGC,

(5) the shrinking number of employed people who support an increasing number of social security beneficiaries, who will live much, much longer than their parents,

(6) the anger that will increase when Trump can't deliver on jobs, because nobody can,

And the result is as bleak a ten-to-twenty year economic picture as has existed in my front-edge-of-the-baby-boomer cohort lifetime. Drink up!

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

The discussion of the utility of retraining the chronically unemployed steel workers and coal miners is depressing. It simply isn't going to work. Perhaps in small slivers of the economy it might work for a short time. I think, or hope, that solar power may be one area where manufacturing and installing jobs may increase significantly.

For those of you who are insufficiently depressed about the outcome of the election, I offer last year's Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford. I just finished it.

Combine:

(1) the bleak job prospects Ford projects in "Robots", which The Economist not too long ago described as "forced leisure"'

(2) the collapse of municipal finances and the concomitant collapse of municipal pensions (see this morning's news about the implosion of Dallas, which is just the tip of an iceberg with New Jersey and Illinois as dominoes), and the inability of those pensioners to support themselves,

(3) my fellow baby boomers who have saved nothing for their retirement, and those that were counting on pensions, are in for a shock,

(4) the drastic insolvency of the PBGC,

(5) the shrinking number of employed people who support an increasing number of social security beneficiaries, who will live much, much longer than their parents,

(6) the anger that will increase when Trump can't deliver on jobs, because nobody can,

And the result is as bleak a ten-to-twenty year economic picture as has existed in my front-edge-of-the-baby-boomer cohort lifetime. Drink up!

Best book I've read in years.

Could be retitled, Why No One Should Read Adder (Or Anyone Else Still Married to the Assumptions of Conventional Economics)

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

No. It's not. Trump did not get a big wave of turnout. Those are numbers. That undermines your story. We don't need to get into who stayed home to know that what you are selling is at least incomplete, perhaps even flat out wrong.

Of course they do ("keep government out of my Medicare"). They just want government intervention that they perceive as benefiting themselves and not "those people." How can you still be this clueless after the election we just went through?

This is part of the problem. You and they reject out of hand the only things we can do.

And they do work. They help those who actually want jobs get them. But you're talking about people who don't want jobs, they want the past. We can't do anything for them.

1. You're not considering how many GOP voters Trump lost. That's a huge #. He made up for that by turning out Trumpkins like mad.

2. You're so fucking predicatable. When I wrote that last post, I thought, "Adder will cite the 'don't touch my Medicare' thing." Putting aside that was one dumb sign that created a meme, what of all the Trumpkins who are nowhere near retirement. What do they want?

3. If the best you can do for these people is nothing - and retraining and education are useless to 90% of these people - why shouldn't they take s chance on Trump?

4. Retraining works for a very small % of these people. Your solutions sound nice, but as you admit, they're not effective. They're just "the best [Democrats] can offer." Someone else promised these people a possible better deal. They took the chance. Logically, even the slightest possibility of what you seek is preferable to a scenario under which you have zero chance of getting it.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller

The discussion of the utility of retraining the chronically unemployed steel workers and coal miners is depressing. It simply isn't going to work.

You cannot provide jobs to people who don't want them. The only thing we can do for people who don't want them is income support, which Sebby tells us they don't want either.

Perhaps in small slivers of the economy it might work for a short time. I think, or hope, that solar power may be one area where manufacturing and installing jobs may increase significantly.

They're aren't many human jobs in a chip fab. But installing perhaps.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

1. You're not considering how many GOP voters Trump lost. That's a huge #. He made up for that by turning out Trumpkins like mad.

No, these are assumptions. Might be true, and we all know of an anecdote or two, but given that his support - in numbers and distribution - looks a lot like Romney's and McCain's, I'm skeptical that this effect was huge.

Definitely fits in the "not really knowable" category though.

Putting aside that was one dumb sign that created a meme, what of all the Trumpkins who are nowhere near retirement. What do they want?

Apparently they want to register Muslims, stop Muslim immigration, build a wall, adopt national stop and frisk and erect barriers to trade.

3. If the best you can do for these people is nothing - and retraining and education are useless to 90% of these people - why shouldn't they take s chance on Trump?

Perhaps they should. The rest of us shouldn't, and believe it or not, there are actually more of us than them.

They're just "the best [Democrats] can offer."

No, they are the best anyone can offer.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

With the selection of an apparent KKK apologist for attorney general at a time when mistrust between law enforcement and communities of color is at an all time high, it is time for Sebastian to stop the contorted rationalizations and give us the apology he has owed us for a long time. He is too obstinate/delusional to do so, so he has asked me to pen something for him:

Ahem . . . well, this latest appointment is a bit of a stunner and I'm sure you all remember me repeating over and over with absolute certainty that Trump (if elected, which was not going to happen) would surround himself with moderate dullards who would blunt the sharp edges of Trump's extremism and ensure our country would maintain an almost completely unchanged status quo for the next four years, at least in terms of substantive policies. It is time for me to concede that I was and am completely full of shit. Despite being repeatedly told that nobody could predict what Trump would do, I pretended that I held some magical knowledge of the future, and that the chicken littles clucking around me were alarmist kooks. It turns out that I was the crazy one. I said many things that, at best, had no basis and, at worst, were either internally contradictory or in complete opposition to common sense. I did so for a number of reasons. One, I am argumentative, and I am desperate to create myself as some sort of irreverent Hunter Thompson/P.J. O'Rourke character, but I lacked the political insight to do so effectively. Two, I cannot concede any argument, so I would paint myself into corners with increasingly-improbable pronouncements in order to defend my earlier, somewhat-less-improbable pronouncements. Three, I felt attacked all the time by the seemingly monolithic opinions on Trump and these attacks were personal and so I attacked back, more for the point of attacking back then for the purpose of making a substantive political point. Finally, I admit it -- I completely underestimated how completely unhinged and horrible a person Trump is. They say his attackers took him literally but not seriously, and his supporters took him seriously but not literally. Now I realize we will all pay dearly for the mistakes of both sides. I am sorry for my conduct on this board.

Sebastian, it's Flower as Flower again. I for one accept your apology and implore you to leave this vile place and come back to the FB where GWNC, NotBob and I await you with open arms.

It truly takes a big man to have the Flower apologize for him.

TM

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Again, that's prison reform.

Are you actually crazy?

TM

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

These flyover voters want jobs. And they don't want to be dictated to by people like us. Stop trying to understand it and look at this country as two nations. There are those positioned to survive in the modern economy, and those unable to do so. These groups also have divergent cultures. One outvoted the other this election.

We're moving into a period of what I'd call soft Balkanization. A hiccup in globalization. But it's just an ebb in a flow taking place over a glacial timeframe. The Trump voters had the bad fortune of being born at a time during which their skills were made obsolete. You and I have perhaps the bad fortune of living through a time in which they amassed voting power adequate to pull us backward with them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/up...ower.html?_r=0

This is one of the biggest problems this country faces.

TM

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The media's fucked. Yes, they contributed to getting Trump elected in some regards. But they also kneecapped the shit out of him. WaPo, the Times, and CNN did more than adequate hit jobs on him to offset any generosity they showed him, and any hit jobs they did on Hillary.

I wish anything you said was based on substance instead of what you feel is true.

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/03/the-...icy-proposals/

TM