I believe what is hard to understand for us living outside of the US is how is it possible that the person who is declared President is not the candidate that the majority of people voted to be President. I tried to explain to my peers how the US election system works multiple times but I mostly got back puzzled faces and disbelief.
Donald Trump Is Elected President
551–560 of 1001 posts
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#552If you want to know why Trump won:
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#553Everyone seems to be talking about what a strong repudiation this is of the Obama, Clinton, and liberalism in general, but at the time of this writing Clinton is actually ahead in the popular vote by a 200,000+ vote margin and it looks like she'll maintain the lead. Yes this was far closer than many expected, but Trump's victory is largely an anomaly of a system that heavily favors rural, geographically distributed voters. So I'd be careful to take this as a signal that America has been suddenly overtaken by a surge of populism and anti-minority sentiment.
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not saying this out of anger or angst. If that was done the civility of the disenfranchised electorate, which showed up in force this election, would erode and devolve into violence at a pace that would astound those on the left.
You think anything can astound the left after last night?
some of us on the left were not surprised at all. a class program is a strong one, even if it's a right wing program.
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in a relatively small suburb of Seattle. I'm a software developer. There are no jobs for me where I live. None. None within 20 miles. The only job for me is in Seattle or Bellevue or Redmond, an hour-long commute. I love where I live, and I don't want to live in Seattle (which I could barely afford anyway-- I like owning a house). I also don't want to exclusively work-from-home and be cut-off socially from my…
>The only job for me is in Seattle or Bellevue or Redmond, an hour-long commute I don't mean to belittle your situation but..an hour seems like fantastic commuting time. Most people I work with take an hour to an hour and a half to get to work. Up until our office moved there was two guys that had a 2 hour trip into work every day. Most people I know would kill to have an hour commute.
Now you are making me feel bad for my 15 minute bike commute.
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#556Now that the voices of the disenfranchised blue collar workers have been heard, what actually can be done to help them? I'm less worried about the accusations of racism, etc. because it appears to me a majority are voting because their livelihoods have been lost and, despite economics saying globalization will bring new jobs, they aren't showing up in the critical areas where they are needed. So, what policies can be…
I believe you're incorrect in asserting that the election was about "disenfranchised blue collar workers". My daughter and her husband make about $200k per year and they voted for Trump. She's describes Trumps win as a great big middle finger to career politicians.
Except the hundreds of thousands of people who swung Florida, WI, and MI do not make $200K a year. The election was very much won by this majority.
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you elaborate on what these things are? PC, SJW, safe-space, trigger-warning an micro aggression(?)
PC means politically correct. According to wikipedia[0], this is defined as "used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended primarily not to offend or disadvantage any particular group of people in society." In short, thinking before you speak because words have consequences and can make people feel things. SJW means social justice warrior. It carries a negative connotation, being defined[1] as "[…
>>Most of those people are not members of any marginalized groups.
Can you give some examples ? Are white "priviledged" marginalized ? Are the people that voted for Trump, deplorables, marginalized ?
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In general, making the case against someone else rather than the affirmative case for yourself doesn't work. It's reaction versus action. Well that's blatantly false. That was Trump's entire campaign. All I've heard all year was "Benghazi", "emails" and "crooked", all of which were just rephrasing of the same thing, repeated in perpetuum. It most definitely worked.
That's one piece of the puzzle though. I wouldn't say he won only on that platform. He also won on platforms of change, law and order, and a return to old school America. I personally thought it was a disgusting campaign that used fear mongering and hate to vilify numerous parts of the nation, but I would not say his only platform was "don't vote for Hillary". But for Hillary I would definitely say the opposite was h…
Anecdotally I think I have to agree with you. Most of my friends are the sort of college educated millennials that voted overwhelmingly for Clinton but even when talking about her there seemed to be a social stigma to saying that Clinton is a good candidate. She made a very good case for being the lesser of two evils but it seems that she failed to convince even many of her supporters that she was actually good.
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can do what the democrats have talked about, which we have successfully done in Nordic countries which is to spend a lot of money on re-educating the workforce and making sure those at the bottom get decent skills. I grew up in a rustbelt like industrial town in Norway. We has shipyards, glass factory, paper mill, textile industry, lock systems etc. Almost all of it got closed down and moved overseas as I grew up…
USA does not have an oil fund that amounts do $150k per capita to pay for "free everything" (university education, universal health care, childcare) and good pensions for everybody. Norway generates more revenue with oil than the entires US of A, for 5 million people, and is third worldwide exporter for Natural Gas just behind Qatar and Russia, again with only 5 million people to serve (less than the population of Ne…
> Norway generates more revenue with oil than the entires US of A, for 5 million people
I find this hard to believe. The US generates what looks to be close to 5x the barrels of oil per year as Norway, and since oil is globally prices, that should lead to approximately 5x the revenue. It will obviously be less per-capita, but that's not what you said.
> and is third worldwide exporter for Natural Gas just behind Qatar and Russia
Your facts are also slanted here. The US is the worlds largest natural gas producer[2], at over 6x the production of Norway, and 25% more than the second place, which is Russia.
That said, it's not like the US is a poor country, or doesn't have credit available to finance anything it wants. Training jobless workers would be a net benefit to the economy after a few years, and would pay itself off. We could easily finance that if we decided to. It's a matter of will, not capability.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#560In an election largely between two epically bad candidates, the outcome fell in the direction I'd felt would be less bad, but in a way that's worse than I'd expected. I had strongly criticized both Clinton and Trump, but felt that in the balance, Clinton was a more dangerous candidate. Seeing how the chips fell, though, I'm even less confident that this was the preferable outcome. There are two key factors leading me…
> And I hope that my Conservative friends who criticized President Obama for overreaches will remain consistent.
Unlikely. A majority of people just want to pick a side and rabidly defend it.
For example, the democrats contesting the Bush-Gore Florida results was just "sour grapes," but conservatives clamouring to see Obama's "long form" birth certificate to prove that he wasn't eligible for office wasn't?