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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.

#121

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…

Immigration and gay marriage and women’s rights etc. are scapegoats. The real problems are international competition (unskilled workers in developed countries have to compete with unskilled workers in Thailand and Bangladesh and Indonesia), automation (the US has higher industrial production than ever before, but it takes much less labor), changing tax laws and easier travel/communication/money movement (letting rich people live far away from production and markets, and siphon their wealth into tax havens), break-down of civic institutions (labor unions, churches, public services, local newspapers, etc.).

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

#123
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.

Comedians appear to have been more perceptive about Trump's appeal and Clinton's weaknesses than the media: Scott Adams and Dave Chappelle both made some salient pints this cycle. Mainstream media:0; reclusive comics:2.

Agree. I was glued to Adams' observations, who called this result in August of last year (one month before Trump's first big surge).

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

#124
post #68
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?

Clinton losing in the midwest is what the polls missed. The analysis of why and how, that's probably going to be hot topic for a while.

Florida and Pennsylvania are not generally considered the mid-west. If she carries Minnesota as projected, they would have been enough.

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

#125
post #79
post #15

I, like many, did not see this coming and I am truly afraid for the future of the USA. We sure showed up Brexit, though.

Go USA. I've got to admit it, your insane failure of democracy literally Trumps ours.

So many blame or give credit to Trump for winning the election.

I think the real fault lies with DNC. Why were they so hell bent on having Clinton picked when Sanders excited so many young Democrats and did better in earlier polls?

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

#128
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.

It's more of a case that us upper-middle class liberal elites think we are shaming this segment of the population when we are calling them bigots and racists and stupid and uninformed and homophobic and hicks and white trash, because those are horrible things that we don't want to be called.

But a large part of the population don't share that sentiment, they're not shamed, they don't care that you're screaming "RACIST!" at the top of your lungs.

And when you address their actual concerns that globalization and automation are killing their jobs, killing their communities, and killing their people with a shrug, with an "I'm so sorry, move to the cities, get an education!", they'll get angry. And political. And here we are.

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

#129
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.

It's not the media, it's the Republican Party. They had a tumour growing inside them and they failed to take strong action early enough to cut it out. Once Trump was the candidate for a mainstream party with an electoral machine full of people who live to serve the machine, it was too late for the Party leadership to get rid of him. The party machine went into automatic. At that point, for a Republican to reject him would be to admit that their beloved party was deeply flawed and capable of making a terrible mistake. That's a big challenge if you deeply believe in your party. If they can be wrong about this, what else could they be wrong about?

That wasn't enough though. Trump representing a mainstream party implicitly made him a viable choice to vote for beyond the Republican core. If he's the Republican candidate, he must be a valid choice that can be taken seriously, right? He can't be a joke.

Finally a big problem here in the U.K. with Brexit was people assuming the vote would fail and not bothering to vote remain. I wonder how big a factor that was in this case especially as Hilary was ahead in the polls for so long.

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

#130
post #5

Peter Thiel is not looking so foolish right now...

I don't know why anyone would think he is foolish. Listening to his speech at the National Press Club a few days ago it's hard to find many things to disagree with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob-LJqPQEJ4

No it isn't. http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=32058
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