2016 US ELECTION: Official Results Thread

[Gandalf]

Right now I'm pulling for some some sort of Booker/Duckworth ticket. I'm not sure who gets the top spot though, and I remember that there was something I didn't like about Booker, but can't remember what it is right now.

[Joun_Lord]

Is anyone else going to call out FireNexus on extolling a candidate's whiteness as a reason for the Democrats to nominate him?

Its not enough that we have Vichy Republicans. Now we have God damn Vichy Democrats.

I don't think FireNexus himself is really saying he believes a candidate being white is a virtue but saying how being white will appeal to some working class whites who probably don't think Obama is their President because of his policies.

Its a fact that to appeal to some people you will need someone similar to them. To get some women to vote you need a woman running. To get some black people to run you need a black person. And to get some white people to vote you need a white person. Thats a fact Jack, people are all tribal and shit.

People extolled Obama's blackness as a reason to nominate him, people extolled Hillary's femininity as a reason to nominate her. People considered Trumps whiteness a reason to nominate him. People might consider extolling Kennedy Episode 3 Revenger of the Shit's whiteness in the future because he would appeal to some white people. Repugnant? Yeah, though I consider using someones physical attributes as qualifiers for office to be repugnant but thats me, but still someone one has to consider with the current voting public. People will consider someones skin color, gender, physical health, age, and everything else. Ignoring this fact sets one up for failure.

[The Romulan Republic]

No, I don't think FireNexus hates women and minorities, or thinks they're inferior. But he's willing to throw them under the bus, to an extent at least, in a mistaken belief that it is politically necessary.

Its not all that different from Trump supporters who say they're not a bigot, that they voted for Trump because he was anti-trade deal or just because the didn't like Clinton/the "establishment", or whatever.

No, you may not personally be particularly bigoted, but you were willing to tolerate and enable bigotry to advance your agenda.

What do the Democrats actually need to do to win?

Well, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. She lost the election based on narrow losses in a few key states, where her existing coalition plus slightly higher turnout from one or two key demographics might have given her a solid win.

The key is not to throw the majority of the Clinton coalition under the bus in the hopes of winning a few more working class white voters over. And for that matter, the implication that the only way to win working class white voters is to throw up some white skin with a dick is pretty fucking insulting to them.

What is needed is to either:

a) Keep the Clinton coalition, and inspire higher turnout from its key demographics.

b) Keep the Clinton coalition and inspire higher turnout from youth voters/independents/anti-trade deal working class voters (i.e. go full progressive).

c) Ideally, both of the above.

Throwing away latino, black, women, gay, and youth voters on the hope that it will gain us back some of the white working class vote (not by addressing concerns over the economy and trade deals, but by trying to compete with the Republicans' pandering to bigotry, which they're much better at than us), is... well, frankly, insane.

[Gandalf]

TRR, what exactly is the Clinton coalition?

[The Romulan Republic]

I would say primarily Black and Latino voters (I would have thought women, but apparently they split pretty evenly, only slightly favouring Clinton), as well as Centre-establishment/corporatist Democrats.

The Bernie coalition being primarily young (meaning under 35 or so) progressives, working class white Democrats, and Left-leaning/anti-big business independents and third partiers.

[Flagg]

You know Firenexus is black, right? I don't agree with him here, but to call him out during your daily hissyfit and insinuate he's some kind of racist is beyond the pale and you should apologize.

And no, I'm not backseat modding.

[The Romulan Republic]

You know Firenexus is black, right? I don't agree with him here, but to call him out during your daily hissyfit and insinuate he's some kind of racist is beyond the pale and you should apologize.

And no, I'm not backseat modding.

I didn't recall that he was black, but I'm honestly not sure that it changes much in terms of my argument, except that it makes me feel less angry at him personally, and more just depressed.

Like I said, I don't think FireNexus is anti-minority or anti-woman personally. But what he's proposing is an unnecessary and ill-advised compromise with people who are.

If anything I said was inaccurate, I am sorry. However, I won't apologize for my belief that what he is suggesting would be both morally wrong, a surrender to bigotry, and potentially a quick road to the destruction of the Democratic Party.

[Simon_Jester]

TRR, what exactly is the Clinton coalition?

The set of all people who think Hillary Clinton would make a better president than Donald Trump.

All the Democrats really need to do, I suspect, is present a candidate who is even more superior to Donald Trump, and they have a good shot at victory in 2020.

Is anyone else going to call out FireNexus on extolling a candidate's whiteness as a reason for the Democrats to nominate him?

Its not enough that we have Vichy Republicans. Now we have God damn Vichy Democrats.

Already did, but less angrily. Because I try to remember that being chronically inflamed and spraying outrage seldom helps, when talking to people on the same side who disagree with me.

My opinion is that the issue should be played by ear.

A black candidate who's actually, you know, a good candidate (like Obama) is preferable to a white candidate who isn't. White racists will vote against them, but minority turnout is likely to go up dramatically to compensate. We know that can happen because it did happen, it's how Obama was able to decisively trounce two Republican presidential candidates who were considerably more mainstream than Trump and got comparable turnout. With racists (Trump included) hollering about his birth certificate all the way.

A female candidate who's dynamic and whose primary qualification for the job is something more inspiring than "it's my turn now" is preferable to a male candidate who lacks that advantage.

As I've said before, either 2008 Obama (Hope and Change!) or 2012 Obama (Voice of Experience!) would have wiped the walls with Trump, which probably helps to explain why Trump didn't throw his hat into the ring either time.

His blackness would have been at most a neutral factor and at best an asset. Because the right (Trump included) can (and has) shrieked about his birth certificate all they want. It never stopped him.

Apparently she also didn't take Trump's strategy seriously until it was too late. She wasn't even conducting polls in Wisconsin until late October. She thought she could ignore the Rust Belt, and she wasted resources in places like Georgia and Arizona. In other words, she ran a bad campaign. And even a good candidate can't get away with that.

See, that's another thing. After spending most of her adult life in politics (and it is a long adult life), you'd think she'd know how the hell to run a campaign.

This is essentially my point.

Conventional analysis largely ignored the issue of Clinton's terrible 'brand,' the fact that she is widely hated on the right and little loved on the left.

Conversely, I think it also largely ignored the fact that Trump has long since mastered the art of winning the love of every would-be sycophant. For something like 40-50 years he's been projecting himself as the God-Emperor of Used Car Salesmen. The man every person with even an ounce of greedy, amoral sleaze in their character wants to look up to.

That turned out to be a powerful asset.

Again, I don't really think Donnie Douchebag won, so much as Clinton lost, if that makes any sense. I still believe Clinton's high poll numbers caused many who would have voted, and voted for her, stayed home because her win seemed inevitable.

The thing is, Trump had some powerful weapons in his corner or he couldn't have won even with Clinton making every tactical mistake in the book. He couldn't even have won the primary if he didn't have something going for him.

Hypothetical question: What if Trump succeeds? Forget about your feelings on his policies, what if after 4 years, the country hasn't burned to the ground and is in as good or better shape than it is now?

I will take it as evidence that Freemasons or whoever really are running the country in secret, because Trump does not have a good track record of not running things into the ground.

A man who can bankrupt a casino is very unlikely to suddenly grow enough responsibility to successfully run a large country.

By conventional standards, Hillary Clinton looked like a good candidate.

Image has always been an incredibly important factor in a candidate's viability. HW Bush got a boost against Dukakis by successfully painting him as being unpatriotic. Everyone thought of Al Gore as being "boring" and no different than Dubya. John Kerry had a perception of lacking in patriotism due to protesting the Vietnam War... Perception is, and basically always has been, more important than your actual ideas or actual experience. If Hillary looked like a good candidate by conventional standards, conventional standards have been inaccurate for many decades at the very least.

Honestly, I'm not sure that'd be wrong.

I mean, the Democrats keep nominating these people- Gore, Kerry, Hillary Clinton. It's not like this isn't a recurring pattern. There seems to be something fundamentally screwed up about the Democratic nomination process, such that it keeps turning out bland, uninspired and uninspiring candidates who have "paid their dues" politically and worked their way up patiently through the system. Heck, if it hadn't been for Obama appearing out of nowhere in the 2008 election cycle, the Democrats would probably have run Clinton then, too.

[Gandalf]

TRR, what exactly is the Clinton coalition?

I would say primarily Black and Latino voters (I would have thought women, but apparently they split pretty evenly, only slightly favouring Clinton), as well as Centre-establishment/corporatist Democrats.

Yeah, I think it may be time to rethink this coalition and relying on it the way that they did. The coalition didn't show, and a bunch of others changed their votes.

All the Democrats really need to do, I suspect, is present a candidate who is even more superior to Donald Trump, and they have a good shot at victory in 2020.

Get thee to a think tank!

[Flagg]

Simon, Clinton won the popular vote, she knows how to run a campaign. The problem she had was mostly low Democratic turnout, likely from Sanders Suckers and people who looked at the polls and stayed home assuming Clinton had it in the bag rather than stand in line for 5 hours due to Republican voter suppression.

Rapist Pedophile Donnie Douchebag also whipped the fuckwits that would vote for him/it into a frenzy where at the end people in the crowds were calling for Clinton to be executed.

By all accounts she had a hell of a ground game. If this election teaches us anything it's that maybe with social media being so prevalent, boots on the ground just don't matter as much.

[Gandalf]

Simon, Clinton won the popular vote, she knows how to run a campaign. The problem she had was mostly low Democratic turnout, likely from Sanders Suckers and people who looked at the polls and stayed home assuming Clinton had it in the bag rather than stand in line for 5 hours due to Republican voter suppression.

Yeah, this election will go down as a great big lesson in complacency. The GOP primaries were a lock for either Cruz or Bush, with a few outside shots like Rubio or Walker. Trump was a joke nobody addressed until it was too late.

Same thing with Clinton's campaign, which just assumed that they could get a repeat of 2012's turnout and coast to victory over a scarier white guy.

[FireNexus]

Actually, I am going to dismiss those reasons a little bit. Because they were all amplified by Clinton's vagina.

Already, Trump was able to mobilize misogynists and racists against the Democratic Party. If you think that Clinton's scandals resonated so hard just because she was Clinton, I have a wall to build you. It was misogyny that enhanced Clinton's flaws to the point that Trump was able to beat her with white women. They stated in exit polls and interviews that they wanted a "strong man" to fix the country. So while Clinton was a Clinton, the hypocritical backlash against her and not Trump where their flaws overlapped is because Trump as a tough talking white man got benefit of the doubt.

Trump's whole political career was additionally built on the fear of the Other with Obama. Years of "Not a citizen" and constantly using racially-tinged attacks against him. I'd say that probably the strength of the tea party was the same. The race of the sitting President and the fact that the incoming President was a woman amplified every other negative or misstep in the campaign to the point that Trump was able to win. And he won among poor white people. Poor white people who are going to spend years getting charged up over him trying to deport brown people and start a trade war with China and probably attacks from terrorists who happen to be Muslims.

We can pretend that the best way to beat Trump is to occupy the moral high ground and that if we only nominated a candidate who passes the progressive purity test we'd not be in this situation. We lost because poor racist misogynists were unhappy with their lot in life, and they already felt justified because they elected a black president so they're obviously not racist. And Clinton was particularly bad because of stuff that Trump made look like minor clerical errors.

Any white male Reublican would not have beaten Hillary Clinton. But any white male Republican who was willing to make the dog whistles audible the way Trump did would have, and Trump is the opponent in 2020. If you don't remove his ability to appeal to the gender or the race of the candidate, you are giving him an advantage. So in 2020, whiteness and maleness are virtues for a Democratic challenger. I don't think they'd be make better Presidents, but my faith in he American electorate has decreased enough that I think they make for a better candidate at the moment.

I do not believe that the voters who voted for Obama then Trump will vote for another non white male candidate for the rest of their lives, honestly.

It sucks, but I'll return to my morals when the danger is passed.

[FireNexus]

throw them under the bus

How and i throwing them under the bus? I'm trying to nominate a winner. I wouldn't say no to Cory Booker or some similarly inspirational figure. But i think that the takeaway for a lot of progressives is "nominate a person of color because Obama" and I expect that to backfire spectacularly. I expect any effort to "appeal to the Obama coalition" is going to be a failure. Because I expect the Trump coalition to turn out and vote for Trump unless he's undeniably shitty (not unlikely) and we make an effort not to alienate the people who flipped to him (going to be very hard for self-righteous liberals not to start saying Trump voters are all racist after the shit Trump pulls).

And frankly, there's no way that nominating a person of color is not going to result in every liberal in America doing just that. Nominate a woman or a person of color who is not Barack Obama-level charismatic and inspirational, and people like you will do exactly what has been done by liberals this year (also by me) and talk about how racist/misogynist/hateful Trump is. You're not the kind of person who can avoid turning it into a "you're a racist" conversation, despite its failure to land his time, and there are a lot of you going to be aging into the more politically engaged demographic by then.

We'll spend the entire Election n making it a referendum on how shitty Trump is and going all basket of deplorables and prevent the campaign from being about the issues AGAIN. I want the campaign to be about issues and not identity. I want it to be about how Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc are worse off and the wall isn't built and nobody has healthcare. If we nominate a white man who is a dead ringer for his uncle, Liberal Jesus, we can have that. If we nominate a woman or person of color it's back to a discussion of identity and we lose that.

[Lonestar]

Right now I'm pulling for some some sort of Booker/Duckworth ticket. I'm not sure who gets the top spot though, and I remember that there was something I didn't like about Booker, but can't remember what it is right now.

Man I'd vote for Duckworth

[FireNexus]

Right now I'm pulling for some some sort of Booker/Duckworth ticket. I'm not sure who gets the top spot though, and I remember that there was something I didn't like about Booker, but can't remember what it is right now.

Man I'd vote for Duckworth

I'LL add to that. The last guy who tried to rub his whiteness in her face got a robot foot up his ass.

[The Romulan Republic]

throw them under the bus

How and i throwing them under the bus? I'm trying to nominate a winner. I wouldn't say no to Cory Booker or some similarly inspirational figure. But i think that the takeaway for a lot of progressives is "nominate a person of color because Obama" and I expect that to backfire spectacularly. I expect any effort to "appeal to the Obama coalition" is going to be a failure. Because I expect the Trump coalition to turn out and vote for Trump unless he's undeniably shitty (not unlikely) and we make an effort not to alienate the people who flipped to him (going to be very hard for self-righteous liberals not to start saying Trump voters are all racist after the shit Trump pulls).

Yeah, its hard not to say all Trump voters are racist because, well...

If they didn't vote for him out of bigotry, they were at least willing to accept, condone, and enable bigotry to achieve whatever it was they wanted out of him.

But I agree that its probably not helpful, however stomach-turning it is to have to try to grit ones' teeth and try to play nice right now.

Unfortunately, its a very fine tightrope for the Democrats to walk. If we go around condemning every Trump voter as a bigot, we aren't going to be wining a lot of them over. We could still win without them, if we get higher turnout from the rest of the electorate, especially given demographic trends. As you know, Clinton's loss was actually very, very narrow, and that she won the popular vote. But that's going to be hard to do with four years of Republican government putting in new voter suppression laws, I suspect.

But if we overlook the bigotry, or try to appeal to prejudice by only running straight white men, we risk losing support with minority and female voters, and I don't for one minute think we're going to get enough working class white men that way to make up for it.

I don't think we necessarily have to nominate people of colour, or anything like that. But we should damn well not be acting like we have to veto any candidate who isn't a straight white man.

And again, you haven't really demonstrated that its necessary. Trump didn't win by a huge margin. He lost the popular vote, and barely won the Electoral College because he won by tiny margins in a few states. In no small part due to dislike of Clinton personally, and the corporatist pro-trade deal establishment she represented to many voters. Hell, the FBI interference alone might have swung it, and probably did.

This is not some overwhelming tide of white supremacism and misogyny that we cannot turn back, only appease. Literally if everything had been the same, minus the emails, we'd probably be looking at a solid Clinton victory right now. If we had run someone who appealed to women and minorities to the same extent Clinton did, but also held anti-trade deal positions or just didn't have Clinton's baggage, same deal.

But if we conclude that we have to put appeasing prejudiced white men above everything else, then we are going to lose female voters, lose minority voters, lose progressives, lose young voters. Any gains we may make with working class white voters (and I suspect they will be small, since the Republicans are far better at appealing to that kind of prejudice) are not likely to make up for those losses. And we could likely make small gains with white working class voters (enough to have flipped last week's result to a Clinton win) simply by running Clinton minus the emails and the history of supporting trade deals.

Are you prepared to address this argument?

Because if the Democrats were to refuse to give women and minorities representation in politics, at a time when they are particularly threatened, in order to pander to those who are threatening them, and do it when their is no actual political need to do so... yes, I'd call that throwing them under the bus. And I would certainly expect many to perceive it that way, and possibly to abandon the Democrats. And I couldn't blame them for it.

So your argument hinges on proving that such a course of action is politically necessary, that their are no viable alternatives.

As to Corey Booker, I'd say he's a dubious choice, but not for his race. He's a Wall Street Democrat, and that definitely got repudiated this year. He's charismatic and likeable, no doubt, and that might be enough to make up for it. But surely we can find someone who's charismatic and likeable but not a Wall Street Democrat?

And frankly, there's no way that nominating a person of color is not going to result in every liberal in America doing just that. Nominate a woman or a person of color who is not Barack Obama-level charismatic and inspirational, and people like you will do exactly what has been done by liberals this year (also by me) and talk about how racist/misogynist/hateful Trump is. You're not the kind of person who can avoid turning it into a "you're a racist" conversation, despite its failure to land his time, and there are a lot of you going to be aging into the more politically engaged demographic by then.

Is it such a terrible thing to take a stand against bigotry? Can you demonstrate that we cannot win by doing so, beyond the fact that Trump narrowly won this election?

Or Democrats could simply choose to run female and minority candidates and not make the issues surrounding that the basis of the campaign.

Actually, at the risk of pissing everyone off, I'm going to bring up Bernie again.

Bernie was the first Jew, and indeed the first openly non-Christian person, to ever win a Presidential primary. Yet he did not spend his entire campaign talking about racial or religious divides. In fact, I recall remarkably little talk about his Jewish heritage during the campaign, from him or anyone else, compared to how big an issue Clinton's gender or Obama's race were, even at the primary level. He addressed prejudice and civil rights issues, certainly, but his focus was on economics and reforming a corrupt political system.

And got criticized for supposedly being a single-issue candidate and treating racial issues as economic issues.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't I guess.

We'll spend the entire Election n making it a referendum on how shitty Trump is and going all basket of deplorables and prevent the campaign from being about the issues AGAIN. I want the campaign to be about issues and not identity. I want it to be about how Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, etc are worse off and the wall isn't built and nobody has healthcare. If we nominate a white man who is a dead ringer for his uncle, Liberal Jesus, we can have that. If we nominate a woman or person of color it's back to a discussion of identity and we lose that.

Again, you have not demonstrated that America will not vote for women or people of colour despite the fact that Trump lost the popular vote, barely won the EC due to tiny margins in a few key states, and is succeeding a popular two-term black President.

And of course, bigotry, equality, and civil liberty are issues, and particularly vital ones now.

If we are at a point as a country where a minority or woman cannot run for office without that becoming the sole issue of the campaign (I think this is an exaggeration, but just for the sake of argument), then that is a huge problem that is not going to go away by ignoring it or worse, pandering to prejudice. It will not go away by brushing the issue under the rug. Or at least, that's my opinion.

[The Romulan Republic]

Right now I'm pulling for some some sort of Booker/Duckworth ticket. I'm not sure who gets the top spot though, and I remember that there was something I didn't like about Booker, but can't remember what it is right now.

Booker is problematic to me because, again, he's a Wall Street-friendly Democrat, and unless the mood of the electorate changes very much in four years, that is a liability.

His personal charisma might off-set it, but I'm not sure he's what the party needs to be promoting right now.

[Gandalf]

Right now I'm pulling for some some sort of Booker/Duckworth ticket. I'm not sure who gets the top spot though, and I remember that there was something I didn't like about Booker, but can't remember what it is right now.

Booker is problematic to me because, again, he's a Wall Street-friendly Democrat, and unless the mood of the electorate changes very much in four years, that is a liability.

His personal charisma might off-set it, but I'm not sure he's what the party needs to be promoting right now.

How friendly is friendly, though. Is it at Clinton's level, and how has it affected his politics? If the answer is "not so much," then he might be worth a decent look in.

[The Romulan Republic]

True enough. I wouldn't be opposed to a Booker run, though if it was a primary between him and a good progressive candidate along the lines of Bernie, Warren, or Gabbard, I'd almost certainly pick the latter.

[Gandalf]

True enough. I wouldn't be opposed to a Booker run, though if it was a primary between him and a good progressive candidate along the lines of Bernie, Warren, or Gabbard, I'd almost certainly pick the latter.

But would the party base?

[The Romulan Republic]

True enough. I wouldn't be opposed to a Booker run, though if it was a primary between him and a good progressive candidate along the lines of Bernie, Warren, or Gabbard, I'd almost certainly pick the latter.

But would the party base?

Possibly. I really can't say.

Bernie lost, of course, and against someone who was frankly far less charismatic than Booker. And some of his support will have bled off to third parties or just not voting after the Bernie or Bust people walked out on him for "betraying" them by supporting Clinton. Although they might come back for a different progressive, I suppose.

But I think the credibility of the Democratic Party's Centre-Left establishment has taken a real beating this election, and I also think the next primary will likely be a much more open field than the last one, where it was basically overwhelming Centre/establishment backing for Clinton from the start, with pretty much everyone who was against Clinton rallying around Bernie.

Its really too soon to say. I suppose it depends on what direction the party as a whole goes, how the next few years play out (including 2018), and who's running.

So, that's a long way of saying "no comment", I guess.

Edit: I do think Bernie would have faired quite a bit better if, say, Keith Ellison had been chair rather than Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

[FireNexus]

Yeah, its hard not to say all Trump voters are racist because, well...

Do you see how you might have trouble finding common ground with someone who you reduce to a single position, shitty and unpleasant as it is, and basically disregard everything else about them? Do you see how easy it was for me to bait you into it? Do you see how doing this again when it was a losing proposition the first time is such a bad idea?

Unfortunately, its a very fine tightrope for the Democrats to walk. If we go around condemning every Trump voter as a bigot, we aren't going to be wining a lot of them over. We could still win without them, if we get higher turnout from the rest of the electorate, especially given demographic trends. As you know, Clinton's loss was actually very, very narrow, and that she won the popular vote. But that's going to be hard to do with four years of Republican government putting in new voter suppression laws, I suspect.

But if we overlook the bigotry, or try to appeal to prejudice by only running straight white men, we risk losing support with minority and female voters, and I don't for one minute think we're going to get enough working class white men that way to make up for it.

Dude, I'm not talking about until the end of time going white and male. I'' talking about in 2020. And Trump won white women. So let's not talk about female voters as if they're a monolithic in the bag democratic voting bloc right after they showed they'll literally vote to be grabbed by the pussy. They aren't in the bag, and apparently that has a lot to do with internalized misogyny.

I don't think we necessarily have to nominate people of colour, or anything like that. But we should damn well not be acting like we have to veto any candidate who isn't a straight white man.

I never said that. I expressed that it's a point in favor because of that tendency whose relative meets you had an argument with yourself above, and which research has shown to be counterproductive. In fact, I named a few nonwhte and non male candidates who I think would be good. But I'm not going to sit here and pretend that deciding to nominate a white man to cut loose the white supremacy and misogyny X factor while the voter suppression and demographic issues are unsettled doesn't make tactical sense without doing as much strategic damage as you're implying.

And again, you haven't really demonstrated that its necessary. Trump didn't win by a huge margin.

But he won, and he took a not-insignificant downballot wave on his coat tails, in fact not losing any of the senate races in states he won.

He lost the popular vote, and barely won the Electoral College because he won by tiny margins in a few states.

He broke the blue wall. He won the state containing Philadelphia. He won white women. He won the whole rust belt. And he won Congress, the Supreme Court and a lot of state houses. He'll also be an incumbent, which is its own advantage.

You're the one always bitching about his authoritarian tendencies. Do you think this motherfucker isn't going to use that to tilt the machine in his favor?

In no small part due to dislike of Clinton personally, and the corporatist pro-trade deal establishment she represented to many voters.

Says the guy who dislikes Clinton personally. And, it should be noted, Clinton was better liked than Trump. Trump had his own series of problems. Clinton lost because of misogyny.

Hell, the FBI interference alone might have swung it, and probably did.

It's a good thing the current guy in the White House is such an upright straight shooter then. So nothing like that happens again.

This is not some overwhelming tide of white supremacism and misogyny that we cannot turn back, only appease. Literally if everything had been the same, minus the emails, we'd probably be looking at a solid Clinton victory right now. If we had run someone who appealed to women and minorities to the same extent Clinton did, but also held anti-trade deal positions or just didn't have Clinton's baggage, same deal.

It's a tide of white supremacy and misogyny that managed to turn a lot of state's red that have been blue for decades, given to a man and party that are going to use the power to entrench that misogyny and white supremacy. Maybe don't start minimizing Trump again before he's even sworn in. We lost this game, remember?

As far as the emails, you can't know that. What you can know is that a candidate better than Trump on every measure managed to lose. That candidate happened to be a woman and many of the pivotal white women voters specifically said they were voting for Trump because he was a strong man (internalized misogyny).

But if we conclude that we have to put appeasing prejudiced white men above everything else, then we are going to lose female voters

Trump didn't.

, lose minority voters,

Happened already. Obama is the only candidate guaranteed to bring out the Obama coalition. Pretending otherwise just lost is an election.

lose progressives,

Uh huh. Listen, if after four years of Trump a "progressive" voter won't vote for anyone with D next to their name or up their butt, th y're impossible to please without losing everyone. Shit, this time they were begging for the straight white man.

lose young voters.

Are you ever going to fail to pretend that young voters are some sleeping giant? Young people don't vote. They have never voted. They will never vote. Going far out of your way to court young voters (rather than just getting them through the audacity of hope) is a waste of time. You know who might gain a bunch of young voters? A handsome liberal 39 year old who likes like JFK's nephew...

Any gains we may make with working class white voters (and I suspect they will be small, since the Republicans are far better at appealing to that kind of prejudice) are not likely to make up for those losses. And we could likely make small gains with white working class voters (enough to have flipped last week's result to a Clinton win) simply by running Clinton minus the emails and the history of supporting trade deals.

Nobody is recommending speaking to prejudice. I'm saying maybe just don't shove it in their face. And that you and yours are as much a part of he problem of alienating white working class voters as anything. You can't stop calling them racists at every opportunity.

You want to just ignore them, and for that they gave you Trump. And you want to rub your little butthole about it, of course.

Are you prepared to address this argument?

Because if the Democrats were to refuse to give women and minorities representation in politics, at a time when they are particularly threatened, in order to pander to those who are threatening them, and do it when their is no actual political need to do so... yes, I'd call that throwing them under the bus. And I would certainly expect many to perceive it that way, and possibly to abandon the Democrats. And I couldn't blame them for it.

You keep saying "refuse to give representation" or somezuch. That's not what I'm suggesting, and I've explained that to you, and I'd like you to stop misrepresenting it.

So your argument hinges on proving that such a course of action is politically necessary, that their are no viable alternatives.

My course of action is basically for democratic voters to give a plus one to candidates who are basically a white Obama. And to give minus 1 to candidates for party leadership that are going to be seen as racist against whites in a disturbingly large number of the states they're trying to turn when a viable contender with a track record of success exists.

I'm not saying the words you keep trying to put in my mouth.

As to Corey Booker, I'd say he's a dubious choice, but not for his race. He's a Wall Street Democrat, and that definitely got repudiated this year.

Vaginas got repudiated this year. You can try and say it was Wall Street all you like, but it will not make your dream of Bernie Sanders being the President happen.

He's charismatic and likeable, no doubt, and that might be enough to make up for it. But surely we can find someone who's charismatic and likeable but not a Wall Street Democrat?

I'm not convinced Wall Street, directly, actually got repudiated. I think you want that to be what happens because it agrees with your preconceptions. Trump wasn't exactly on Wall Street, but I don't see that there is a meaningful distinction between he and it. A pretty small subset of D primary voters got pretty mad about it, but they're really not going to be pleased with anything that is not perfect.

Is it such a terrible thing to take a stand against bigotry?

Your self-righteousness is showing. Democrats could simply choose to run female and minority candidates and not make the issues surrounding that the basis of the campaign. Also:

One telling study, conducted by researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Stanford shortly before the election, found that if people who strongly identified as white were told that nonwhite groups will outnumber white people in 2042, they became more likely to support Trump. That suggests there’s a significant racial element to support for Trump.

See, making race front and center as the subject actually helps Trump unless you can guarantee high minority turnout. Since you can only do so for sure with Obama, maybe stuff it.

Actually, at the risk of pissing everyone off, I'm going to bring up Bernie again.

No, fuck you. Ignoring anything you ever say about Bernie Sanders. Starting now.

Again, you have not demonstrated that America will not vote for women or people of colour despite the fact that Trump lost the popular vote, barely won the EC due to tiny margins in a few key states, and is succeeding a popular two-term black President.

And of course, bigotry, equality, and civil liberty are issues, and particularly vital ones now.

See the above referenced study.

If we are at a point as a country where a minority or woman cannot run for office without that becoming the sole issue of the campaign (I think this is an exaggeration, but just for the sake of argument), then that is a huge problem that is not going to go away by ignoring it or worse, pandering to prejudice. It will not go away by brushing the issue under the rug. Or at least, that's my opinion.

[/quote]

Not what I said. I said they cannot run AGAINST TRUMP without that becoming the sole issue of the campaign. In fact, becoming the sole issue of the campaign with a deep assist from exactly your brand of self-righteous bullshit. And Trump has proven his ability to turn that issue against Democrats. Because people like you and I in our bubbles can't help but counterproductively bring it up.

Bu you'll probably continue to strawman the nuanced argument that's i've made on the subject, rather than admitting to yourself that maybe it makes tactical sense to intentionally not make about race the election against the guy with the ability to make the race issue work even while his campaign manager is a well-known white supremacist and he gets ringing endorsements from KKK papers.

[The Romulan Republic]

Cutting some of your more pointless/redundant points to keep down on the length. If I miss anything substantive, my apologies.

Do you see how you might have trouble finding common ground with someone who you reduce to a single position, shitty and unpleasant as it is, and basically disregard everything else about them? Do you see how easy it was for me to bait you into it? Do you see how doing this again when it was a losing proposition the first time is such a bad idea?

Simply acknowledging the presence of bigotry in voters is not reducing them to a single position. Like you did when you claimed that Clinton lost because of misogyny.

And your admission of trying to bait me is hardly a point in your favour. I believe another term for that is "trolling".

Dude, I'm not talking about until the end of time going white and male. I'' talking about in 2020. And Trump won white women. So let's not talk about female voters as if they're a monolithic in the bag democratic voting bloc right after they showed they'll literally vote to be grabbed by the pussy. They aren't in the bag, and apparently that has a lot to do with internalized misogyny.

I just see no reason, need, or justification for giving straight white male dominance four to eight uncontested years, which will make it that much harder to undo the damage later.

As to female voters, I am well aware that they are not a monolithic block, but at the same time, Trump did lose them overall, albeit not by as much as I would have expected. And I do believe that what you propose would cause us to lose ground among women who voted Democrat this time.

I never said that. I expressed that it's a point in favor because of that tendency whose relative meets you had an argument with yourself above, and which research has shown to be counterproductive. In fact, I named a few nonwhte and non male candidates who I think would be good. But I'm not going to sit here and pretend that deciding to nominate a white man to cut loose the white supremacy and misogyny X factor while the voter suppression and demographic issues are unsettled doesn't make tactical sense without doing as much strategic damage as you're implying.

You have been pushing the idea of favouring white male candidates pretty hard. And you have not demonstrated that it makes tactical sense.

But he won, and he took a not-insignificant downballot wave on his coat tails, in fact not losing any of the senate races in states he won.

You have not demonstrated that he won because the voters don't want female/minority candidates, or that running white men is necessary, or even the most effective way to counter him.

He broke the blue wall. He won the state containing Philadelphia. He won white women. He won the whole rust belt. And he won Congress, the Supreme Court and a lot of state houses. He'll also be an incumbent, which is its own advantage.

Unless the incumbent royally fucks up. Also, none of this in any way proves that he won because the voters want white dicks.

You're the one always bitching about his authoritarian tendencies. Do you think this motherfucker isn't going to use that to tilt the machine in his favor?

And that will be true even if we run straight white men.

Says the guy who dislikes Clinton personally. And, it should be noted, Clinton was better liked than Trump. Trump had his own series of problems. Clinton lost because of misogyny.

Now who's oversimplifying?

Ignore the emails. Ignore dislike of Clinton personally. Ignore that she was an establishment candidate in an anti-establishment year. Just repeat your assumption, without proof.

It's a good thing the current guy in the White House is such an upright straight shooter then. So nothing like that happens again.

My point is that their are a lot of factors behind Trump's win, any one of which could have cost him the election if things went just a little differently. A point which apparently flew right over your head while you were being smug and sarcastic.

It's a tide of white supremacy and misogyny that managed to turn a lot of state's red that have been blue for decades, given to a man and party that are going to use the power to entrench that misogyny and white supremacy. Maybe don't start minimizing Trump again before he's even sworn in. We lost this game, remember?

Yeah, we lost. But that's no excuse to lose all perspective, and ignore how and why we lost in favour of a simplistic, knee-jerk, and ultimately counterproductive response.

Jesus, and I'm the one who constantly gets called alarmist and accused of hyperbole.

As far as the emails, you can't know that.

No, but given when that last email scandal broke and how close the key Midwestern states were, its a fair bet. Its certainly as well supported as your "Clinton would have won if she had a dick" hypothesis.

What you can know is that a candidate better than Trump on every measure managed to lose. That candidate happened to be a woman and many of the pivotal white women voters specifically said they were voting for Trump because he was a strong man (internalized misogyny).

Which does not preclude other factors playing a decisive role in Clinton's defeat, especially in such a close race.

Trump didn't.

Overall, he did, albeit more narrowly than I would have expected. But allow me to clarify: We will lose female voters who vote Democrat- liberal/progressive female voters.

Uh huh. Listen, if after four years of Trump a "progressive" voter won't vote for anyone with D next to their name or up their butt, th y're impossible to please without losing everyone. Shit, this time they were begging for the straight white man.

You'd think this election would have taught Democrats not to take progressive votes for granted. A few hundred thousand more of them turning out in the right places could have swung this race.

Are you ever going to fail to pretend that young voters are some sleeping giant? Young people don't vote. They have never voted. They will never vote. Going far out of your way to court young voters (rather than just getting them through the audacity of hope) is a waste of time. You know who might gain a bunch of young voters? A handsome liberal 39 year old who likes like JFK's nephew...

Clinton didn't have to win every youth vote. Just slightly fucking higher turnout in three states. Which Bernie Sanders would probably have gotten.

But yeah, just keep chanting your mantra, "young people don't vote", to justify writing off a large chunk of the electorate so you can focus on winning racists and misogynists.

Nobody is recommending speaking to prejudice. I'm saying maybe just don't shove it in their face. And that you and yours are as much a part of he problem of alienating white working class voters as anything. You can't stop calling them racists at every opportunity.

I am not calling all white working class voters racist. You, on the other hand, implicitly are, by arguing that the only way to win them over is to run white dicks. In other words, speaking to prejudice.

You want to just ignore them, and for that they gave you Trump. And you want to rub your little butthole about it, of course.

Must you substitute vulgarity for sound arguments? Oh, and lie through your teeth of course.

I am the one saying that we should address white working class voters' concerns about trade deals.

You're the one saying "We can't call them bigots, but we need to give them white dicks in order to get them to vote for us, because otherwise it won't be about the issues, but its only race and gender that matter, not trade deals." Or something.

You keep saying "refuse to give representation" or somezuch. That's not what I'm suggesting, and I've explained that to you, and I'd like you to stop misrepresenting it.

No, you don't want to refuse to give them representation. Just favour candidates with white dicks.

My course of action is basically for democratic voters to give a plus one to candidates who are basically a white Obama. And to give minus 1 to candidates for party leadership that are going to be seen as racist against whites in a disturbingly large number of the states they're trying to turn when a viable contender with a track record of success exists.

I'm not saying the words you keep trying to put in my mouth.

If that is what you are suggesting, perhaps you were unclear. You seemed pretty damn emphatic that the Democrats needed to run white male candidates. But then, as I demonstrated a couple points up, your entire argument is a mass of contradictions and hypocrisy.

You can try and say it was Wall Street all you like, but it will not make your dream of Bernie Sanders being the President happen.

This is bigger than Bernie Sanders and we both know it. This is a choice between a progressive Democratic Party that stands for something the voters can believe in, or a party of regressive cowards.

I'm not convinced Wall Street, directly, actually got repudiated. I think you want that to be what happens because it agrees with your preconceptions. Trump wasn't exactly on Wall Street, but I don't see that there is a meaningful distinction between he and it. A pretty small subset of D primary voters got pretty mad about it, but they're really not going to be pleased with anything that is not perfect.

Trumped conned a portion of the electorate into thinking he was "anti-establishment" despite being born with a silver spoon in his mouth. And its not just that Trump voters were trying to repudiate Wall Street- its that the issue kept some voters who might otherwise have voted Democrat on the sidelines.

And considering that opposition to Wall Street was one of Sanders' main issues, and he got upwards of 45% of the Democratic primary vote, perhaps you should not so cavalierly dismiss that portion of the party.

Your self-righteousness is showing. Democrats could simply choose to run female and minority candidates and not make the issues surrounding that the basis of the campaign. Also:

One telling study, conducted by researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Stanford shortly before the election, found that if people who strongly identified as white were told that nonwhite groups will outnumber white people in 2042, they became more likely to support Trump. That suggests there’s a significant racial element to support for Trump.

See, making race front and center as the subject actually helps Trump unless you can guarantee high minority turnout. Since you can only do so for sure with Obama, maybe stuff it.

I actually suggested precisely that, that Democrats could run women and minorities without making racial and gender issues central to the campaign, as opposed to your preferred option of "favour white men". But I guess you ignored that because I mentioned Bernie Sanders.

And no shit their's a racial element (don't mention it though, because then you're reducing people to a single issue and you might alienate the bigots). I simply think you're placing too much emphasis on that, and too little on everything else, for reasons that frankly baffle me somewhat.

No, fuck you. Ignoring anything you ever say about Bernie Sanders. Starting now.

"Lalalalalal I can't hear you!"

Stay the course establishment Democrats, stay the course.

See the above referenced study

One study of a very specific group of people responding to a very specific question does not show that voters will not support female or non-white candidates, nor does it show that confronting bigotry and defending equality and civil rights are losing issues. Hence it does not refute this point.

Not what I said. I said they cannot run AGAINST TRUMP without that becoming the sole issue of the campaign. In fact, becoming the sole issue of the campaign with a deep assist from exactly your brand of self-righteous bullshit. And Trump has proven his ability to turn that issue against Democrats. Because people like you and I in our bubbles can't help but counterproductively bring it up.

Bu you'll probably continue to strawman the nuanced argument that's i've made on the subject, rather than admitting to yourself that maybe it makes tactical sense to intentionally not make about race the election against the guy with the ability to make the race issue work even while his campaign manager is a well-known white supremacist and he gets ringing endorsements from KKK papers.

I made a nuanced argument. You tried to substitute your simplistic, hyperbolic straw men, while accusing me of the exact shit you are engaging in.

And even if you're referring to running against Trump, when facing an opposition lead and dominated by Trump, it comes to much the same thing. Yes, Trump will try to make any campaign about bigotry. And why the hell should we meekly surrender that ground?

If this election teaches us anything, it should be that you win an election by engaging the emotions of the voters, by offering them something fresh and bold. We cannot expect to compete with Trump's hate, anger, and fear without offering a comparably compelling positive vision to oppose it.

Edited to fix typo. And I do apologize for the length. But since you decided to dissect and nitpick my argument line by line, and their was too much here to succinctly summarize in a few key points, I had little choice but to respond in kind.

[Dragon Angel]

I'm seeing two points being made:

1. Make it about issues, not identity.
2. Let's nominate a white man specifically.

This is inherently contradictory, FireNexus. You literally are making this about identity the first moment you say "we should ignore any potential candidate who is not a straight white man".

If we really want to focus on the issues, trying to look for the nearest "most qualified" white male candidate is tunnel vision and madness. Believing in your view of realpolitik will only get you so far until you realize the party you're telling to be more "realistic" is supposed to be the one fighting against the conservative party, not adopting even more of their views. The Democrats would water down or outright alienate whatever base they have left, and it would so very much reinforce the progressive base's views of it being spineless to the establishment and to the right.

"But a straight white man has the best mathematically objective chances to beat Trump in 2020!", you may say. I remember metric tons of people saying Obama had absolutely no chance almost a decade ago, 2008. History, as it would seem, proved them wrong. Would it really behoove you to step into the same fallacy? Hasn't the last week already proven that trying to make a prediction using any models without looking them over is destined to have you walk off a cliff?

I know you despise TRR, but he is right in that Hillary had much more than uber-conservative misogyny against her. Progressives within the base did not like her right-leaning beliefs, especially regarding foreign policy. Conservatives had everything Fox News and co. have been telling them for years. Both ends especially did not receive her close ties to the establishment / corporates well. There were plenty of progressives who did not see that she would be an improvement over Trump, or saw that she would lead the country into a different brand of worse direction from Trump.

I vehemently disagreed with those views--I thought they ranged from innocently or terminally naive to utterly moronic--but they are what they were. I voted for Hillary in spite of my dislike for her as I saw her leagues better than Trump, but others in the base did not see it that way and chose not to vote. Looking at the charts for the 2008 and 2012 elections, it is very likely if Hillary had been a much stronger candidate with a better image among the base and a better character and history, we would have seen turnout much closer to those.

I'm going to be perfectly honest: You come off as the person within the bubble. Your singular focus on Hillary's loss because of her vagina and only her vagina is completely ignoring the other hundreds of factors that played into people either not voting for her, or deliberately voting third party or, god help us all, Trump. Ironically, your berating of TRR is just making me scream internally at you to take a look in the fucking mirror. Shit, I don't agree with what he says sometimes but having also personally received your brand of smug back during the NCGOP discussion (oh, abandoning your high and mighty higher ground now that it's inconvenient? That's so cute!), I can say you're the type of person you speak against.

[ArmorPierce]

Good point about stating that it's hard to say that all of trumps voters areally not racist because by voting for him they at least condone a candidate making racist statements.

I've struggled to find a trump voter that could explain or rationalize supporting trump with the racist comments and they mostly just either evade the question or ebrace the racism.