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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.

#151

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...

I'd argue you're missing the most important point in this election.

Both leading candidates were despised by a large number of people. Many people were heard talking about having to vote for the lesser of two evils. Therefore it makes sense to frame the election in this way. What we have today is not a pro-Trump victory, but an anti-Clinton victory.

I don't think the Democratic establishment realised what a gamble it took by favouring Clinton over Sanders, if they had just let open primaries decide who their candidate would be I'm fairly confident a Democratic candidate would now be heading for the White House.

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

#155

This is utter madness. If we're lucky, this wheels fall off this whole enterprise and these people are discredited before they do too much harm. It's deeply frustrating to hear so much crap analysis of what's been going on. If we're really honest with ourselves about what's happening, we're seeing a massive vote for protectionism of a particular demographics that have long enjoyed it. People talk a lot about the forg…

> To be really blunt, Trump's entire track record says "if you're white and wealthy, I've obviously got your back", and his words have said, "if you're white and struggling, it's brown people who stand in your way". In that way, he's managed to get an extremely energetic white vote. yeah and exactly because of this kind of insane, bogus "analysis" you lost. When or if you find back the connection to reality, you will…

Those are the real issues that were discussed. People talk as if it's normal that blacks and latinos mostly vote as a block, well now white working class does as well.

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

#156
post #14

So as a European ... Clinton didn't spend enough time in the Upper Midwest expecting to carry those states, but Trump had an actual message for them (NAFTA, etc.) while Hillary didn't, and they don't care that he is racist and sexist, they want their jobs back, so the election was called by a 40+ white demo in an economically depressed region just like old Middle England called Brexit. About right?

> they don't care that he is racist and sexist,

They don't care that he got called racist and sexist.

They know it's a club regularly used to bludgeon opponents.

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

#157
This election proved that virtually the entirety of the election prediction space has no idea what the hell it's doing.

We live in a world of big data with vast computational resources, and this outcome is somehow an upset—a totally unexpected surprise.

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

#159
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...

The fact that the electoral college exists probably distorts the popular vote. People in non-swing states may not vote in the same proportions if the president were decided by popular vote. Of course, this trend could go either way.

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

#160
It will be most interesting to see the fallout from this on the Republican side.

Will there be consequences for all those high level Republicans who dared to publicly come out against Trump? Will they still be against Trump now that he's won, or will they start supporting him all of a sudden?

I, for one, can't see any scenario where Trump is as mild and easy going once he has power than he's been when trying to get the popular vote. If anything, he'll be far more extreme now. Will such extremism further fracture the Republican party? Or will they look the other way and act as apologists for it as they have so often in the past?

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