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Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.

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Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.

#111
post #81

It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend. The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is…

>The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. A majority of something, but probably not the population: http://www.nytimes.com/elections/forecast/president?action=c...

I mean Trump currently does have the majority of votes.

Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.

#112
post #81

It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend. The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is…

>The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. A majority of something, but probably not the population: http://www.nytimes.com/elections/forecast/president?action=c...

[deleted]

Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.

#113
post #2

Every pollster/pundit quit your job now. Edit: I know, not EVERY one of them.

Where are the Nate Silver fans right now?

He put Trump's chances at near 30% leading up to the election. How can you ask for better than that? I don't think you can argue that an upset like this would be expected to happen more than thirty percent of the time.

Nate Silver's calls for caution are looking like some of the most reasonable pre-election commentary at this point.

Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.

#114
post #32

This event and Brexit are proof that you cannot shame people into voting how you want. Calling them bigots over and over just galvanizes them if anything.

This is exactly the moral of the story. If you want to blame somebody for Trump, blame yourselves. Democracy, especially in the US is ruled by consensus. If 30% of the people are extremely opposed to something, like gay marriage, you cannot shove it down their throats. You cannot disregard their feelings and opinions. You just have to swallow it and move on. Because if you don't, somebody will take advantage of your foolishness.

Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.

#115

Such a watershed moment. A few things strike me: * A Republican just won without being very religious and being wishy-washy on abortion. * The loser out-spent the winner by huge amounts. Does money really buy elections? Maybe, but not this one. * The rich abandoned Republicans, but many poor and working-class abandoned Democrats. [1] 1: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/elections/e...

Regarding your first observation, I think that people who are very religious and anti-abortion expect their agenda to now be championed by the new administration. I have my doubts whether that will actually come to be.

Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.

#119

It is possible to view this as an isolated event or a trend. Coming on the heels of BREXIT this is a trend. The attempts at building an interconnected globalised world are beginning to fail. A bunch of elites decided to create their own trans-national utopia unchecked by borders and dismissed all criticism as racist or bigoted. The globalisation project has been rejected by a majority of the population. Whether it is…

Globalization isn't the problem. Computerization is. Other countries are not taking "our" jobs. We simply don't need those jobs anymore. Taxes on foreign labor will only do one thing: subsidize robots. We're going to spend billions of dollars on a big wall, and I guarantee you we're not going to have a lot more jobs after that. (The wall itself is a pretty big project though.)

There probably won't be a wall.

Most likely, few of the promises / threats of the campaign will materialize.

It just might turn out that Trump will be a very moderate republican president. He just might have played a role for the last few years. A role that got him voters.

Then again, he might not care at all about doing the actual job and let Pence run most of it.

I still can't believe how Americans could actually elect someone like that. I understand a protest vote, but with that candidate...

I guess the majority of voters just didn't care that he has no actual opinions, is an entitled, rich, insecure, macho, old generation 'man', and just projected their wishes for change, ignoring all of him they didn't want to think about.

Republicans hold both houses and the presidency now, though. I guess Obama's legacy has been wiped out today.

Oh well, the world will go on.

Re: Donald Trump is the president-elect of the U.S.

#120
post #55

Call Trump what you will, but he played the media like Hendrix. They took the troll-bait and reported every outrageous soundbite gleefully, all in pursuit of a few clicks and ad-bucks. Meanwhile, Trump gained more and more of a platform and eventually established a cult of personality.

Given all the barefaced lies told during the Brexit campaign and the US campaign it does lead to questions about democracy, i.e. should the average man on the street really decide?

To be sure I'm not advocating Communism but perhaps up until 20 years ago the lack of social media helped contain outright lies and extreme views, perhaps with people asking the intellectual(s) in their social circles about candidates. There was also the social engineering aspect of TV soaps (e.g. featuring gay characters to make homosexuality more accepted). Social media has done away with that and allows anyone to broadcast to the world.

The media report the lies and it's impractical to research everything politicians say. Even if someone reports that the lie was a lie, by then the damage is done. Trump played this game all the way through. He knew what he said would be reported far more than the accuracy of the statements.

This result raises a lot of questions, few of which I suspect will be answered and will lead to even fewer changes I imagine.

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