Relitigating the 2016 U.S. Election

[Mischief]

So, here it is - a thread for relitigating the 2016 election, so that that issue doesn't have to continue to be dragged into a variety of other threads.

 

[Spang]

The DNC did everything in its power to ensure that a highly flawed and unpopular candidate became the Democratic nominee, thus maintaining the status-quo.

Also, the corporate media normalized and empowered the fascist with no political experience.

Bernie Sanders campaigned poorly in the South, otherwise he'd likely be the president-elect right now.

 

[Joe]

Spang, if I remember correctly, shortly after the election you posted somewhere about what could be done despite Trump's election, to resist him. It might have been just a link to a webpage. But I meant to go back and read this later, but I forgot where it was. Would you please re-post that information here?

 

[FortyTwo]

The DNC did everything in its power to ensure that a highly flawed and unpopular candidate became the Democratic nominee, thus maintaining the status-quo.

As much as I despise the things she's done, Clinton was a great candidate. Unpopular maybe, but no one doubted her political experience. The DNC selected her because it thought she would win. It did a lot of unscrupulous **** to ensure that, but by no means stepped outside legal and moral bounds. It's a political organization, it can put forward whoever it wants as its nominee. And this is coming from someone who absolutely believes Bernie was cheated out of the nomination, deserved better, and would have been orders of magnitude a better choice for President than Clinton.

Also, the corporate media normalized and empowered the fascist with no political experience.

No disagreement there. CNN and folks can go suck a big one as far as that's concerned. Their obsession with what would bring traffic to their websites and viewers to their channels legitimized Chump, and we paid for it dearly.

Bernie Sanders campaigned poorly in the South, otherwise he'd likely be the president-elect right now.

Ehh. As many others keep bringing up, the Republicans and certainly Chester Cheeto would have found ways to disparage him and sow the seeds of distrust among undecided voters. He's openly socialistic, Jewish, and supports all the things that conservatives love to rage about on Facebook. If undecided voters couldn't compromise on an extremely moderate candidate, why should they have been attracted to Bernie, who is about as radical as someone could be without totally removing themselves from mainstream politics?

I could be totally wrong about that and Bernie might've stolen the election if he'd been nominated. But hindsight is 20/20 and unfortunately it's hard for me to look back and see a scenario where the Orange Abortion would have failed to incite all the ugliest parts of America to vote him into office.

 

[ledboots]

Yes, the DNC had plans to use Bernie's religion against him in Kentucky, where the Democrats figured a bunch of religious bigots resided.

The ends don't justify the means. If the Democrats and the media had put anyone else besides a Clinton on the ballot, Trump would have lost in a landslide. Karma came around and bit the entire country in the ***.

 

[shyvas]

Yes, the DNC had plans to use Bernie's religion against him in Kentucky, where the Democrats figured a bunch of religious bigots resided.

The ends don't justify the means. If the Democrats and the media had put anyone else besides a Clinton on the ballot, Trump would have lost in a landslide. Karma came around and bit the entire country in the ***.

 

[Andy_T]

The DNC did everything in its power to ensure that a highly flawed and unpopular candidate became the Democratic nominee, thus maintaining the status-quo.

I disagree with you ... I would not consider President Obama a highly flawed and unpopular candidate, so no maintaining of the Status quo....

 

[Spang]

As much as I despise the things she's done, Clinton was a great candidate. Unpopular maybe, but no one doubted her political experience.

I think Clinton's experience hindered her more than it helped her. She had a record, unlike her opponent, but it wasn't a very good one, and her campaign rhetoric rarely mirrored it. For example, you could listen to her proclaim "Black Lives Matter" on the campaign trail, but then look at her record and see that she doesn't actually believe that.

As many others keep bringing up, the Republicans and certainly Chester Cheeto would have found ways to disparage him and sow the seeds of distrust among undecided voters. He's openly socialistic, Jewish, and supports all the things that conservatives love to rage about on Facebook.

Republicans may not agree with Bernie Sanders on much, but they don't hate him. In fact, many respect him. On the contrary, even though Republicans have a lot more in common with Hillary Clinton than they'd ever admit, they despise her.

Additionally, being openly socialist makes it more difficult to use "socialist" as a pejorative. And I don't think anti-Semitism would have helped the "crotch-fondling slab of rancid meatloaf" (credit: Samantha Bee).

If undecided voters couldn't compromise on an extremely moderate candidate, why should they have been attracted to Bernie, who is about as radical as someone could be without totally removing themselves from mainstream politics?

Bernie Sanders isn't heavily disliked.

 

[Spang]

I disagree with you ... I would not consider President Obama a highly flawed and unpopular candidate, so no maintaining of the Status quo....

I would disagree with me too, if I had posted that.

 

[Second Summer]

What is clear is that the Democrat establishment conspired with each other and their friends in the media against Sanders because they wanted Clinton as their candidate. Maybe the worst known example is the leaking of debate questions by Donna Brazile. It's not entirely clear whether this cost Sanders the nomination, but that could well be the case. Many Dem big-shots came out in favour of Clinton, including president Obama. We remember the super delegates.

Many voters thought both Clinton and Trump were terrible choices. Both had big unfavourability ratings. As Sanders didn't become the Dem candidate, he was never fully exposed to the full force of the Republican election machine, but had it gotten to that point, he would also have the Dem machine for protection.

Sanders had something Clinton never had: enthusiasm among the voters. It's been speculated that this lack of enthusiasm among core Democrat voters is what cost Clinton the victory.

So all in all, I think Sanders, perhaps with a slightly more moderate VP running mate, would have fared better against Trump than did Clinton.

 

[Spang]

According to a post-election poll, a large number of left-leaning registered voters stayed home.

More harmful for Clinton was which young voters stayed home: minorities. Among white voters, voters 18-29 years old made up 30 percent of voters who did not participate in the November election. Among young Hispanic voters, that climbs to 43 percent. Among young black voters, it was an even higher 46 percent. That generally matches the findings of the voter data released in some Southern states showing that young black voters were especially likely to stay home in this election. Younger black voters were far more likely to support Bernie Sanders in the primary, suggesting that there simply was not the enthusiasm for Clinton’s candidacy as there was for Obama’s in 2012. Clinton’s favorable rating, for instance, was about 10 percentage points lower among the youngest black voters compared to the oldest black voters in the SurveyMonkey poll.

Shocking. Young Black people just weren't that interested in voting for a candidate who in 1996, while giving a speech in support of a crime bill that put more Black people behind bars, proclaimed Black youth to be "super predators".

 

[FortyTwo]

Oh, definitely. The Left tore itself apart in the wake of this ****, all while cackling about how the Republicans were doing the same thing when in reality they were cautiously uniting around a demagogue.

Literally the only responsibility the Left had in this election after the butcher job the DNC made of choosing its candidate (and I will acknowledge that's what we were dealing with; I would've much rather had Sanders) was stopping Tang Baby from being elected. Everything everyone (rightfully) hated about Clinton, he also did, except amplified and more carelessly. It's not even really a lesser of two evils, it's a lesser of two injuries. If you have to choose between being shot in the foot and being shot in the heart, you go for the foot, because it's overall less damaging, even though no one wants to be shot. And a good amount of the Left, even people who would've suffered less under Clinton, chose to ignore the bullet.

 

[beancounter]

 

[FortyTwo]

So, today happened.

The Lesser of the evils we were dealing with wouldn't have banned Muslims from entering the country.

I still don't understand how some people aren't getting this. President Hillary Clinton might have held deep-seated racial biases and had terrible foreign policy. Cheeto has both those things and then some. There was a clear choice here. It didn't mean necessarily voting with perfect conscience, but it meant voting to stop **** like this from happening, which it clearly was going to. Do you want a turd or a heaping pile of ****, basically.

Progressives, even radicals, said this over and over, and they were right. But people just did not listen.

 

[Second Summer]

I watched about 10 minutes of that. Election fraud in the primaries? Sanders won all the hand-counted precincts in Massachusetts? But the machines were switching Sanders votes into Clinton votes in the other precincts? Bill Clinton was canvassing at an election station?

 

[Spang]

Bernie Sanders is still fighting for us. Hillary Clinton hasn't done ****.

 

[Andy_T]

So, today happened.

The Lesser of the evils we were dealing with wouldn't have banned Muslims from entering the country.

I still don't understand how some people aren't getting this. President Hillary Clinton might have held deep-seated racial biases and had terrible foreign policy. Cheeto has both those things and then some. There was a clear choice here. It didn't mean necessarily voting with perfect conscience, but it meant voting to stop **** like this from happening, which it clearly was going to. Do you want a turd or a heaping pile of ****, basically.

Progressives, even radicals, said this over and over, and they were right. But people just did not listen.

But 42, that is not the point.

NORMAL people, of course, do know that "the lesser of the two evils" would not have done that.

But, there are too many people who did not care about that (or whether Trump is going to take away their health insurance) but who cared more about their fragile white identity, so they voted for Trump (or stayed home).

 

[FortyTwo]

But 42, that is not the point.

NORMAL people, of course, do know that "the lesser of the two evils" would not have done that.

But, there are too many people who did not care about that (or whether Trump is going to take away their health insurance) but who cared more about their fragile white identity, so they voted for Trump (or stayed home).

Oh totally. I'm mostly addressing the apathetic left here.

Bernie Sanders is still fighting for us. Hillary Clinton hasn't done ****.

I mean, yeah. Clinton is pretty awful. But she wouldn't have done the vast majority of the truly evil **** Cheeto's putting us through. She has a reputation to uphold, as we've unfortunately seen with her total (and, I agree, very disappointing) inaction since the election ended.

 

[FortyTwo]

I watched about 10 minutes of that. Election fraud in the primaries? Sanders won all the hand-counted precincts in Massachusetts? But the machines were switching Sanders votes into Clinton votes in the other precincts? Bill Clinton was canvassing at an election station?

As ridiculous as it sounds (and as over the top as that video is IMO), a lot of that actually did happen. The DNC screwed over Sanders big time. It was well within its rights to do so and mostly did so through activity much less sketchy than the video described, but it wielded its authority pretty effectively to stop Sanders from having even a shot at the nomination.

 

[Spang]

I mean, yeah. Clinton is pretty awful. But she wouldn't have done the vast majority of the truly evil **** Cheeto's putting us through.

That's true, but if we truly want "abnormal" people to vote for the alternative (after we're done alienating them for staying home) the candidate needs to be a lot better than awful.