POTUS 2016

[Sprony]

I know damn well that Jonathan Pie is a satirical news reporter but I agree with everything he said in this video.

 

[Radu]

[text_fish]

Problem solved.

[Jetsetlemming]

[D3ads]

There are now three states left to be counted, Clinton will take New Hampshire and Trump is going to take Arizona and Michigan which opens up the possibility that he could win the popular vote as well as the Electoral College, some people are already saying he has but I can't find any actual sources (it's irrelevant anyway as the EC wins the presidency). I'm looking at the exit polls voter stats from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html

Contradictory to the claims that "whites" tipped the balance, it looks as if white voters were actually only up 1% for Republicans from 2012! Black voters were mostly in the Democrat sphere as would be expected but Black votes for GOP were up by 7%! Hispanic/latinos voting for Republican were up by 8% and take a look at all the Asian voters.. up by 11%! Female voters is even more interesting, women voting for Clinton were only up by a mere 1% next to 2012!! 42% of women voters went for Trump! By religion, others apart from Christians, Catholics and Jews were up 18% for GOP, of which there will absolutely be muslims in there! So it just shows that as you would expect, the voter demographics are are far more complicated like most elections than painting it as just "1, 2 or 3".

 

[Vorontsov]

You can't rig a landslide

[text_fish]

I really don't think you can call it a landslide when the majority of Americans voted for somebody other than Trump.

[Vorontsov]

Has any election been based on the popular vote? People talk about popular vote but he is BARELY behind, she got most of her votes from sanctuary cities. Pretty much all of the states she won, requires no identification when voting.

(I may be talking out of my ass, correct me if I'm wrong)

[text_fish]

You're absolutely right Vorontsov, but "BARELY behind" definitely can't be considered a landslide victory. The fact is a landslide is hugely unlikely for anybody because America and most Western countries are currently hugely divided on many issues.

In my opinion, these divisions have left an opening for opportunists like Trump, Farage, Le Pen etc. to exploit. They're all politicians who sadly choose to point their fingers at largely defenseless minority groups and say "YOU'RE THE ENEMY, YOU'RE THE PROBLEM", and then the victims of massive political failures such as austerity and capitalism (as we know it) say "OH YEAH! IT MUST BE THEIR FAULT THAT I CAN'T FEED MY FAMILY! ... AND ... HEEEEEEEEEEEY WAIT A MINUTE, THEY LOOK A BIT LIKE THAT SUICIDE BOMBER WITH THE BEARD AND THE FUNNY COMPLEXION WHO KILLED THOSE POOR PEOPLE WHO LOOK MORE LIKE ME! ... KICK THEM OUT! BUILD A WALL!"

[laminutederire]

58 minutes ago, Vorontsov said:

Has any election been based on the popular vote? People talk about popular vote but he is BARELY behind, she got most of her votes from sanctuary cities. Pretty much all of the states she won, requires no identification when voting.

(I may be talking out of my ass, correct me if I'm wrong)

Pretty much in all of that country ID isn't required though.

Their system is pretty bad when you think about it since it doesn't take into account abstention at all, and given the numbers I've heard, it was huge, like 45% in some states (I'd have to search numbers though).

17 minutes ago, text_fish said:

You're absolutely right Vorontsov, but "BARELY behind" definitely can't be considered a landslide victory. The fact is a landslide is hugely unlikely for anybody because America and most Western countries are currently hugely divided on many issues.

In my opinion, these divisions have left an opening for opportunists like Trump, Farage, Le Pen etc. to exploit. They're all politicians who sadly choose to point their fingers at largely defenseless minority groups and say "YOU'RE THE ENEMY, YOU'RE THE PROBLEM", and then the victims of massive political failures such as austerity and capitalism (as we know it) say "OH YEAH! IT MUST BE THEIR FAULT THAT I CAN'T FEED MY FAMILY! ... AND ... HEEEEEEEEEEEY WAIT A MINUTE, THEY LOOK A BIT LIKE THAT SUICIDE BOMBER WITH THE BEARD AND THE FUNNY COMPLEXION WHO KILLED THOSE POOR PEOPLE WHO LOOK MORE LIKE ME! ... KICK THEM OUT! BUILD A WALL!"

That and people are fed up with elites (which for the most part isn't the real elite of this world)

[Sprony]

I'm seeking knowledge, so please enlighten me. Also, I'm serious and really looking for facts.

20 hours ago, D3ads said:

Contradictory to the claims that "whites" tipped the balance, it looks as if white voters were actually only up 1% for Republicans from 2012! Black voters were mostly in the Democrat sphere as would be expected but Black votes for GOP were up by 7%! Hispanic/latinos voting for Republican were up by 8% and take a look at all the Asian voters.. up by 11%! Female voters is even more interesting, women voting for Clinton were only up by a mere 1% next to 2012!! 42% of women voters went for Trump! By religion, others apart from Christians, Catholics and Jews were up 18% for GOP, of which there will absolutely be muslims in there! So it just shows that as you would expect, the voter demographics are are far more complicated like most elections than painting it as just "1, 2 or 3".

I can't fathom why minorities and women would vote for a guy with such a long and well documented track record of discriminating remarks? Why would  a woman, Muslim or Hispanic vote for him? I find it hard to believe that they dislike the establishment so much that they are willing to let that slide. What am I missing?

If it's really against elitism, why vote for a guy who's tax plans revolve around making the rich richer and the poor poorer?

Here, we have Geert Wilders who's party program is one page and is all about getting rid of Muslims. He wants to ban the Koran, close the borders, demolish the Mosques and basically ban the entire religion all together. His party is currently the most popular but none of his proposals are ever going to be possible, even if he wins by a landslide. So why are people listening?

They say the left is labeling everyone with a different opinion as a racist or discriminating. But why is it then, that with these so called right wing movements like Trump and Brexit, all the racists come out to play? @Vorontsov calls it anecdotal evidence and I believe that. There are always two to blame in a fight. But you can't deny how well racist extremist identify with them.

[laminutederire]

34 minutes ago, Sprony said:

 

When you think about it, those figures are meaningless since the voter turnout is so high... I watched the official numbers 45% of Americans haven't even voted (see that Spreadsheet for the source). The representation is therefore hugely biased and could represent a contrary trend to what it should be. In France for instance, the best result of the extreme right wing were during the municipality election where the turnout was equivalent, but when we have presidential elections it is much less present (around 20% at most) (source: French reliable source and Less reliable Wikipedia article ). Because of that, the extreme wings never pass on at those election and do a little bit better at the ones with high turnout. That could be because the minorities suffer from such a despair they don't want to vote, and that leads to results where only zealous voters go. In those, you can have racist people from minorities, or anti feminist women. They have a flawed view on the world where they think they have to serve men, or that migrants should go back to their country when they are themselves in families who emigrated. The common denominator is often education, and the fact that they do not realize their own position. Like once I talked to a second generation Algerian, and he told me Arab from the magrehb area should go home, but when I told him, his grand parents did exactly that, he told me: "who cares I'm french, they're not? ". He didn't realized that he was indeed french because we let his grand parents stay when they came. Does that help a bit understanding where it could sometimes come from?

In Europe, or at least in some European countries, elitism is looked at as the people who have done a lot of studies or who are rich ( see Farage comments about experts during the Brexit). They think those people are out of touch, even though they're sometimes not, or that they shouldn't, and they don't feel like they're heard. A guy like Trump made them feel heard, and even though he clearly don't give a flying **** about some inequalities issues, people voted for him because they felt like it. I'd have to find that article again, but I read about an analysis of Trump semantics, and he was in a feeling lexical register and not a rational like Clinton, which made people be passionate and not reasoning  (that's caricatural I know, but there may be a part of truth lying underneath that generality). Starting from there, his proposition don't matter, because it is in the register passion that it went down.

Then, people might be listening to absurdities like that because they're angry, and they don't think it through, but when they do, they change their mind and don't let it happen. That sound probable at least. It is the same argument as before I admit, how uninnovative of me.

And damn I Wang to use that same argument of feelings and passion for that last part as well, because racism can ne considered as anything but rational. It revolves around fear, desire to be better or even jealousy, feelings related thoughts in summary. And because it is their way of thinking,it is appealing to them!

 

[spa]

1 hour ago, Sprony said:

I can't phantom why minorities and women would vote for a guy with such a long and well documented track record of discriminating remarks? Why would  a woman, Muslim or Hispanic vote for him?

One of the theories for why the latino vote was so relatively strong for Trump was that Obama actually deported more mexicans than Bush did (2.5m vs 2m). There is a high chance that some of the latinos that voted for Trump knew about familty members or friends who were recently deported by the democrats.

With women I really have no idea..

Edited November 14, 2016 by spa

[dux]

1 hour ago, Sprony said:

I find it hard to believe that they dislike the establishment so much that they are willing to let that slide. What am I missing?

Nothing, you answered your own question. He presents change to the status quo no matter how it was been presented. If you noticed on the map how the votes came in it was red everywhere in rural america. They are always ignored and he offered them something. The silent majority came out in force while everyone laughed off the fact they would have no impact.

Edited November 14, 2016 by dux

[Buddy]

On 11/9/2016 at 5:01 PM, Lizard said:

I really don't want to call you out here since I want to keep this conversation at decent level.
But you can use some simple logic here. The ruling party have majority of votes. If they would vote "yes" it would pass right away. Did it? No... educate yourself please.

Sooo... exhumating presidential plane crash bodies for the 9th time for nothing but political exploitation is another one of their liberal moves yes?

 

Please elaborate!