The Gaming Den

Something someone said on twitter: To what extent do terrorist stop targeting embassies, and start targeting Trump properties?

Kind of can't wait for the first Trump Hotel Bombing in India/Pakistan.

While I'm posting in the election thread, votes cast basically almost identical to 2012. So if your narrative involves "no one voted" you are just wrong.

I think my money is on educated migration. If you get a degree, you get the fuck out of shitville republican states as fast as you can, and unfortunately, that includes Wisconsin and Michigan for the last 4-8 years or so.

In even more election news. Apparently Trump Foundation literally checked the box on the form that says "Yes we totally used charitable money for private purposes in self dealing."

In more related news, absolutely no one cares, because media too busy praising glorious man of the working class Trump, and Republicans too busy frothing about the fact that Ukranian firm that donated to the Trump Foundation donated to Clinton Foundation, which is proof of Clinton's fraud.

In other news, it turns out that some counties certified results very different than the results they originally reported on election day even before Recount issue in Wis. Different in that Clinton had exact same amount of votes, and Trump had thousands fewer in each county. So official pre-recount lead is now like 22.5K has been for a few days now.

Hey remember when the NC voter ID law was struck down and yet 692 provisional votes were rejected for not having ID? I wonder how many people at the polls were told they had to have ID?

Also 24,817 people voted when they thought they were registered, but they weren't because of voter roll purges. But hey, there was no voter suppression at all....

From what I can find of the numbers, it does just seem like the Republicans voted for the Republican, while agreeing with all the positions the Republican party told them to agree with, including the ones that conflict with each other.

The Democrats, meanwhile, in those states that shifted, did not. Not by much, just a couple percent of 'em. That showed up in polling in the last few days after the FBI guy sent his letter. In the exit polls, the Republicans 95% trusted Trump, and the democrats 60% trusted Clinton, and that happened just for a few days leading up to election day.

There's also some terrible racist voter suppression, and straight up criminal vote padding for Trump, and other stuff that would've swung a closer election, but it wasn't actually close enough for that to matter. Almost certainly.

You get a tail-end Trump campaign based on emails, emails, emails, and that's a crime to be locked up for, and then a "neutral" FBI official says there's something to investigate (about some other guy but CLINTON!!! EMAILS!!!) and that is that. For a little chunk of Democrats, that was enough to stay home, and that swung all those states.

The swings in the polls, they're not actually a person deciding to vote for the other side, they're someone staying home instead. There are almost no swing voters at all.


So like four years of constantly planting doubt about Clinton as the presumptive nominee, if you time it just right, you can swing things a couple percent on the back of that. While random fascist dude stands for other party by surprise, ain't no time to swing that shit anywhere, all those voters just going to turn out anyway. Four years ago he was on that TV show "you're fired", haha, good enough. After all, he's the Republican candidate.

tussock wrote:From what I can find of the numbers, it does just seem like the Republicans voted for the Republican, while agreeing with all the positions the Republican party told them to agree with, including the ones that conflict with each other.

Positions?



In other news, the Green's recount effort is making Trump's head asplode. I can't tell if that's genuine concern that his victory might be overturned or just an authoritarian's hatred of being challenged in any way.

tussock wrote:From what I can find of the numbers, it does just seem like the Republicans voted for the Republican, while agreeing with all the positions the Republican party told them to agree with, including the ones that conflict with each other.

The Democrats, meanwhile, in those states that shifted, did not. Not by much, just a couple percent of 'em.

Voter participation rates are nearly identical to 2012. Sorry, your narrative is wrong.

tussock wrote:There's also some terrible racist voter suppression, and straight up criminal vote padding for Trump, and other stuff that would've swung a closer election, but it wasn't actually close enough for that to matter. Almost certainly.

You are delusional. Michigan is still not decided, Wisconsin threw away 50,000 votes for no ID, and Trump is winning by 22.5 votes, and PA has no early voting, and limited polling places in Philadelphia, because fuck black people, and Clinton lost by 100k. That alone is "close enough" that voter suppression matters.

Meanwhile both NC and Florida engaged in heavy voter suppression, and both were won by a little more than 100k. NC had systematic racially targeted voter discrimination, 24k early votes were thrown out because of voter roll purges, actual election day votes turned away are likely to exceed that, 700 early votes were thrown away for not having an ID even though that law was found unconstitutional and stayed pollers asking for ID at the polls and turning people away on election day is almost guaranteed.

Clinton could have won the election losing PA, Wis, and Michigan, winning NC and Florida. Or she could have won it with Michigan, Wisconsin, NC, and still losing Florida and PA.

That's winning it with only states where we know for an absolute fact that voter suppression killed off more votes than Trump's actual lead.

Claiming voter suppression didn't determine this election because it "wasn't close enough" is missing the forest for the trees. Trump winning multiple states by tiny margins with huge voter suppression doesn't make voter suppression less meaningful, it makes it more meaningful.

EDIT: Also, while Tussock is being wrong about everything, it is important to remember that most Republicans agree with each and every democratic policy, and they are all just idiots who voted against their own interests because the one dumb thing they care about most happens to be the thing Republicans say, whether that one dumb thing is pro-life, or racism, or tax cuts.

Oh look, that media that is totally biased in favor of Clinton, at it again with that totally accurate and not at all Horrifically monstrous headline.

Also the crazy man wants the guy who actually plead guilty of mishandling classified information to be secretary of state. BECAUSE IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT WE CARE ABOUT THE SAFETY OF CLASSIFIED INFORMATION THE SECRETARY OF STATE HAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN ALL OTHER ISSUES COMBINED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hillary should have just sent classified information using Gmail, like everyone else in government does, except for the head of the CIA, who uses AOL to send classified information.

Michigan just certified the count and gave its votes to Trump.

In other news: Trump turning away intelligence briefings since elected. It's almost like there's merits to those concerns about him not knowing what he's doing, having no experience, and being too arrogant.

RobbyPants wrote: In other news: Trump turning away intelligence briefings since elected. It's almost like there's merits to those concerns about him not knowing what he's doing, having no experience, and being too arrogant.

So a worthy heir to the Bush dynasty it seems.

Remember, the USA population still re-elected Bush the Second despite he giving negative shits about intelligence briefings and letting planes being highjacked and crashed into the tallest towers of one of the main cities while Bush II was too busy trying to read a children's book, then failing to catch the supposed culprit despite having the most expensive army in the world at his command.

maglag wrote:

RobbyPants wrote: In other news: Trump turning away intelligence briefings since elected. It's almost like there's merits to those concerns about him not knowing what he's doing, having no experience, and being too arrogant.

So a worthy heir to the Bush dynasty it seems.

Remember, the USA population still re-elected Bush the Second despite he giving negative shits about intelligence briefings and letting planes being highjacked and crashed into the tallest towers of one of the main cities while Bush II was too busy trying to read a children's book, then failing to catch the supposed culprit despite having the most expensive army in the world at his command.

I'm really glad that you regularly say dumb things about Democrats too, so that I can point to those to prove that you are BOTH SIDES! idiot, if anyone brings you up as an example of stupid liberal.

I found this opinion piece super interesting. Though I don't imagine it'll play well with the idiotic narrative of "Hillary was equally trustworthy and inspiring as Obama, and she only lost because Dems are traitors and/or sheeple who were hoodwinked by Comey" that Frank and Matticus are trying so hard to make true through stubborn repitition.

It turns out that building your campaign around "Well, at least she isn't Candidate B!" plays about as well as it did for Kerry against Bush, and that it isn't enough to try to persuade republicans to stay home, unless you also galvanise your own base. Who'd have thought??

http://inthesetimes.com/article/19674/h ... eral-trump

Trump casually tweets about fucking with the first amendment.

What, is burning the flag now personally offensive to him because he's going to be President? I know he was against flag burning before, but when he's President he's head of the Executive Branch and he needs to respect the fucking law.

Speaking of which, Trump also won despite his campaign spending half the money that Clinton did.

And considering that Trump probably surely spent more than a good chunk of his campaign money on booze and hookers and financing his own businesses, he actually beat the campaign

"B-But Trump lost the popular vote!"

So what? Popular vote doesn't get you the president post. While Clinton was busy burning money trying to win by huge margins, Trump simply won more electoral votes by smaller margins in a much more efficient way.

That's right.

Trump is a goddamn master optimizer. He won the USA elections while spending a fraction of his opponent's resources, thanks to clever reading of the rules.

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:I know he was against flag burning before, but when he's President he's head of the Executive Branch and he needs to respect the fucking law.

Dude, he ran on committing war crimes and imprisoning his opponent on false charges. It has always been clear that he was running for dictator.

angelfromanotherpin wrote: Dude, he ran on committing war crimes and imprisoning his opponent on false charges. It has always been clear that he was running for dictator.

I thought he was just doing that to appeal to the Republican base and because he's an ignorant strongman with tiny genitals hands who wanted to sound tough. Now that he's president elect that rhetoric becomes a lot more real and scary because there are presumably real adults advising him about this shit. He backed off the war crimes and he backed off coming after Hillary after getting elected. Why not back off the "fuck your speech" bit?

Sure everything about his administration is shaping up to be...just wow, more terrible than anyone could have imagined, but he paid lip service to regular politics for a little bit!

maglag wrote:Speaking of which, Trump also won despite his campaign spending half the money that Clinton did.

And considering that Trump probably surely spent more than a good chunk of his campaign money on booze and hookers and financing his own businesses, he actually beat the campaign

"B-But Trump lost the popular vote!"

So what? Popular vote doesn't get you the president post. While Clinton was busy burning money trying to win by huge margins, Trump simply won more electoral votes by smaller margins in a much more efficient way.

That's right.

Trump is a goddamn master optimizer. He won the USA elections while spending a fraction of his opponent's resources, thanks to clever reading of the rules.

Jesus fuck, you're stupid.

When you have eight years of tribal resentment, favorable demographics, and a system of disenfranchisement working for you, you don't have to spend shit on shit.

What would be less dumb of you to say (i.e. what you will never say) is that Trump is very good at working the media, since that's what he's done for 30-some years now.

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:He backed off the war crimes and he backed off coming after Hillary after getting elected. Why not back off the "fuck your speech" bit?

He 'backed off' the war crimes? How? Seriously, every single relevant person he's appointing is a torture supporter.

And his backing off coming after Hillary lasted exactly as long as he didn't feel threatened.

SlyJohnny wrote:I found this opinion piece super interesting. Though I don't imagine it'll play well with the idiotic narrative of "Hillary was equally trustworthy and inspiring as Obama, and she only lost because Dems are traitors and/or sheeple who were hoodwinked by Comey" that Frank and Matticus are trying so hard to make true through stubborn repitition.

It turns out that building your campaign around "Well, at least she isn't Candidate B!" plays about as well as it did for Kerry against Bush, and that it isn't enough to try to persuade republicans to stay home, unless you also galvanise your own base. Who'd have thought??

http://inthesetimes.com/article/19674/h ... eral-trump

God damn I am tired of seeing your fact-averse know-nothing posts.

That article wrote:This one isn't so much why-Hillary-lost but why-the-Democrats-lost: the Clintons did the most thorough job of clearing the Democratic primary field of any candidate in modern history.

You might think that link goes to a list of various primary scandals (most of which would have turned out to be a hogwash, because one of the biggest primary scandals (even among Sanders supporters) continues to be Nevada, the time when Clinton won the initial results and Sanders supporters got very angry when they were unable to flip those results by the end of a convoluted multi-stage caucus. That is not what the article does. The article is from late 2014, a full half-year before anyone had even started campaigning. It's a general article on the concept of "a clear field," and it is information-lite and rhetoric-heavy. You won't actually learn much reading it, but it's the kind of thing people might pat themself on the back for having read afterwards. So we're off to a great start.

That article wrote:The Clintons have a history of punishing perceived disloyalty, so it’s easy to see why these groups knuckled under.]

Again, you might think that's an incriminating link of some kind, but then you read it and... well... here it is in a nutshell.

After her primary against Obama, Clinton kept a list of people she owed favors and middle fingers to. She helped McCaskill with a congressional race, and McCaskill endorsed Obama. This angered Hillary Clinton so much that she retaliated by continuing to hold fundraisers on McCaskill's behalf. At least, until McCaskill went on T.V. and more or less called Bill Clinton a sexual predator. Unsurprisingly, that got the fundraiser cancelled. McCaskill apologized, they'd later meet personally and sort things out, blah blah blah. So sinister. So petty. So evil.

That article wrote:Yes, the email scandal was a load of bunk, but why in the world would she make the stupid decision to set up a private server in the first place, which gratuitously provided endless rounds of ammunition for her many political enemies?

Because that is almost exactly what former state department administrations did whenever they could be assed to use email. Condoleeza Rice claimed not to use email at all, but plenty of her top aides used personal accounts with private email services. Colin Powell used a personal account with private email service. And that's it. That's the exhaustive list of Secretaries of States for whom this question is pertinent.

Anyone who can write about the email scandal like it was a predictable mistake instead of standards being deliberately moved as part of a Republican smear campaign is a fucking idiot. I mean, it was a mistake in the sense that we now have hindsight and can see the specific mechanism by which Republicans were going to move those standards and turn it into a weapon, but without the benefit of time travel to guide us Hillary Clinton's decision not to use a state account on state servers was fucking routine and mundane.

---

---

---

And now my patience for the article has run out. Three strikes and all that.

The fact is that Hillary Clinton is not a structurally weak candidate. Her approval rating was in the high 50's as a senator. Her approval rating was in the high 50's when she started her primary campaign against Obama. It was in the high 60's during her tenure as secretary of state. It would not start slipping until Benghazi emails Clinton Foundation. You'll note absolutely none of those scandals make any fucking sense whatsoever, but they worked anyway because shouting "SHAME" into a megaphone apparently works. And unfortunately you can do that to anyone.

angelfromanotherpin wrote: He 'backed off' the war crimes? How? Seriously, every single relevant person he's appointing is a torture supporter.

And his backing off coming after Hillary lasted exactly as long as he didn't feel threatened.

I thought he talked to Mattis and said something akin to "oh, I guess waterboarding isn't so great." I haven't been following Trump too closely lately outside of his administration being a train wreak and this thread, but somebody showed me that tweet today and it struck me as worse than he usually is.

Should have figured his speech backing off in this instance didn't mean shit since his appointments have all been complete and utter trash who go against any of the (very few) more reasonable statements he's made. I need to stop reading our media outlets outside of appointments. The reporting on words does seem kind of useless with a guy like Trump.

SlyJohnny wrote:I found this opinion piece super interesting. Though I don't imagine it'll play well with the idiotic narrative of "Hillary was equally trustworthy and inspiring as Obama, and she only lost because Dems are traitors and/or sheeple who were hoodwinked by Comey" that Frank and Matticus are trying so hard to make true through stubborn repitition.

It turns out that building your campaign around "Well, at least she isn't Candidate B!" plays about as well as it did for Kerry against Bush, and that it isn't enough to try to persuade republicans to stay home, unless you also galvanise your own base. Who'd have thought??

http://inthesetimes.com/article/19674/h ... eral-trump

Again, if you can't tell the difference between the campaign Clinton tried to run, and the campaign the media decided to lie and claim she was running, your opinion is always going to be wrong. If you look at every "Oh God, Hillary is talking again" joke about the debates, all of them were Clinton talking about herself and what she would do, and she basically got as close as anyone could imagine to not mentioning the grab her by the pussy video. Clinton tried to run a policy focused campaign about how she would help America, especially the working class. She did that because that's what she likes to talk about. But the media decided that wasn't fun so they just pretended she was running on not being Donald Trump, and emails.

Pseudo Stupidity wrote:

angelfromanotherpin wrote: Dude, he ran on committing war crimes and imprisoning his opponent on false charges. It has always been clear that he was running for dictator.

I thought he was just doing that to appeal to the Republican base and because he's an ignorant strongman with tiny genitals hands who wanted to sound tough. Now that he's president elect that rhetoric becomes a lot more real and scary because there are presumably real adults advising him about this shit. He backed off the war crimes and he backed off coming after Hillary after getting elected. Why not back off the "fuck your speech" bit?

Sure everything about his administration is shaping up to be...just wow, more terrible than anyone could have imagined, but he paid lip service to regular politics for a little bit!

He didn't back off the War Crimes basically at all. One guy told him torture doesn't work, and he said "oh, then I guess I won't" and then appointed 8 people who will tell him torture works every day, and a guy who want to put millions in Guantanomo, and a guy who wants to set up a Muslim registry, and a several people who think internment camps for "illegal" "aliens" is a good idea. Six weeks into the presidency, he will be saying "all my advisers tell me torture works, so I'm going to do it."

His backing off of Hillary was itself, specifically a dictator thing "I won't prosecute her because she's a good person" is a statement that going to jail is 100% at his forbearance and that crime has nothing to do with it, and that he if she pisses him off at will, he would do it again. And then lo and behold, a recount happens and now he's threatening it again.

Everything about President Elect Trump was very predictable. I mean I didn't think it was the most likely turn of events, but literal Hitler who sells foreign policy for Hotels was always on the playing field as a possibility that we were worried about.

I am more and more agitated with Obama. Was it not clear by 2012 from the behavior of Republican Congress that no amount of bipartisanship would get the Republicans to play ball?

Chamomile wrote:I am more and more agitated with Obama. Was it not clear by 2012 from the behavior of Republican Congress that no amount of bipartisanship would get the Republicans to play ball?

2nded. It's frustrating to no end.

I just came across this gem in the NYT, talking about the SC nomination by Obama:

But White House officials said that Mr. Obama and his aides made the calculation that focusing on finding a nominee with impeccable legal credentials would expose the Republican opposition as based solely on politics.

HAHA that's cute rage-inducing, by now it's 2016 and after 8 years Obama and his team STILL think the "Republican opposition" care about image or playing fairly or anything like civil politics.

Chamomile wrote:I am more and more agitated with Obama. Was it not clear by 2012 from the behavior of Republican Congress that no amount of bipartisanship would get the Republicans to play ball?

He thought, like the technocratic wing of the Republican Party thought, that the "populist"/nativist wing of the Republican Party would come to heel at the behest of their masters. Since he himself was center-right, he (naively) thought that being bipartisan would allow him to work within a Congress that went red or blue, as well as making himself seem like Black Lincoln healing a deeply divided country. If the Republicans wouldn't play ball, he would and did invoke his executive orders to muscle things through. And that would have (and kind of did) work. The spanner in the works was government shutdown brinksmanship to the level we got. There was no expectation or precedent for a part of a party holding the government hostage for no real reason other than to look good for the cameras/their constituents. And the cameras normalized this behavior without calling out the perpetrators, thus giving the people that started this mess more ammunition with which to dismantle the government.

Obama was always a centrist who had a healthy fear of the GOP machine. The GOP did not learn to fear their own machine until it carried Trump to the Republican nomination, and by then they remembered they were a party of used car salesmen who enjoyed power more than dignity or the strictures of democracy (cf. news media).

So I see a lot of circle-jerking and rationalization about how the country was TOTALLY LIBERAL THIS WHOLE TIME but the heart and soul of the people was overridden by a magic evil conspiracy.

Now this is a very inspiring narrative to tell ourselves about how we need to keep doing the same shit that we've been doing this whole time and the inherent rightness of our cause, but quite frankly getting wasted this badly indicates that there is something inherently wrong with what we're doing. Sure, there were voter suppression laws, but that doesn't explain why white working class voters flipped to Trump, why Trump got nearly 30% of the Hispanic vote, or why everyone in this thread sounds exactly like right-wing news blaming the mainstream news media for shooting their dog.

Liberals appear weak and incoherent
Anyone remember the Occupy Wall Street protests? Does anyone remember any effect they had or coherent position they espoused other than 'Wall Street bad?' No?

How about the modern Trump Tower protests? Did anyone come out with an actual position aside from "Trump bad"? Was there an actual plan to resist Trump, or any actions taken that he'd actually care about? No? Mostly ineffectual whining? Sure, there were vague comments about 'standing up for minorities' and 'letting Trump know we're watching him' but there sure as hell weren't any "let's organize for the midterms" or "let's gather some evidence to impeach Trump" or even a lawsuit.

Compare this to the Republicans, especially the Tea Party. The Tea Party had a set of actual goals (repeal Obamacare! Cut taxes!), actual organization and planning (look at all the people in Congress they put there) and enough political clout to break John Boehner. Their opening salvo was "make Obama a one-term president" and while their causes were horrible and stupid, their political strength was never in doubt.

Hell, we can even extend this to the actual powerful people in the Democrats. I like Obama. I like Obama a lot. I spent time running around on the streets with the Obama campaign in 2008, and he got my first presidential vote. Yet he still managed to look really weak because he couldn't get Congress under control and couldn't get anything done. Look at the red line in Syria - he talked a good game, and when push came to shove, he didn't do anything*. The media and the American people understood that the Republicans were shutting down the government - I remember quite a bit of reporting on Ted Cruz' dumbass brainchild - and Boehner made it his last act to avert another one because the first one made the Republicans look really bad, but at the end of the day the president is still perceived as the most powerful man whose job it is to get Congress to fall in line and get things done, and Obama...didn't.

Hillary really didn't do much to dispel this perception - quite frankly, it didn't matter what policies she set because it was understood that the Republican Congress would fight her to the death on anything. There would not be a new Supreme Court justice. There would be no Zika spending. It would not matter what Hillary attempted to do to restore jobs, because the Republicans would insist that this was super bad and filibuster for 3 weeks.

To sum this up, when the Republicans lost they decided to fight and formed a coherent plan for doing so. When the Democrats lost they scheduled therapy sessions.

Our team is too tolerant so you can't be on it!

So a recurring theme through the campaign was how Hillary was running as the forces of justice against Donald Trump the Nazi slavemaster who was endorsed by the KKK. Despite what a lot of people in this thread have declaimed about the media, they really spent a lot of time pointing out Trump's dubious associations, history of racism, and him saying or tweeting dumb racist shit.

What is less convenient for the circle jerk is how the white working class guys were kinda not made welcome by Hillary's campaign at all. Remember when Hillary said something that sounded a lot like "we're gonna put coal miners out of jobs" and was angrily confronted by coal workers? Or how about when she called Team Trump a "basket of deplorables" and insisted they were "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic"? Sure, the racists were very vocal, but are there really 62 million closet KKK members in America?

Meanwhile Trump is telling these people they can say whatever they want and he's going to save their jobs. Hell, half of Trump's platform was that political correctness is bad and ineffectual, and people listened.

Take Hillary and "first female president". This was something the media and her supporters would not shut up about. And, what does this mean exactly? She's somehow more fit to fix the economy based on virtue of her gender? Sexism goes away? Women are smarter? I don't know, but we sure spent a lot of time talking about it to the point that her official campaign slogan was "I'm with her". What are her positions on the issues? Who cares! FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT! Everyone look at the dancing bear!

Yet whenever this kind of argument is made it detracts from what the candidate has to offer. No one can actually cite Hillary's policies, but all the women crying in the Washington Post photos and the bitter allegations of how America is sexist because they wouldn't elect a woman president stick out. This is despite judging the individual and not the demographic supposedly being a core tenet of the liberal philosophy. The names on the ballot were not "a white dude" and "a white woman", they were Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton who each have a long and storied history. The fact that the nation rejected ONE woman does not translate into the nation rejecting ALL women. Saying that Hillary is exceptional just because she's a woman distracts from the fact that she's extremely intelligent, hard working, well versed in policy, and has legislative experience as a Senator. When you make it about her femininity people focus on that rather than any of the above.

However, this is what an extremely vocal segment of the left is trying to sell, and people are genuinely sick of it. People are sick of having white liberals like Clinton explain to them that they just don't understand black people/Muslims/gay people/whoever, unlike her, who as a rich straight white woman hasn't had to go through what black people/Muslims/gay people go through either. No one thinks that the white people putting on safety pins are actually doing anything to help <insert group here> as opposed to putting on a show so they can go to bed and tell themselves all about how they helped the poor <insert non white straight man> here so they can feel better about themselves.

This isn't even getting into the whole "cultural appropriation" debate and people screaming about how a white person wearing dreadlocks is racist to the point where the -ism epithets have gotten overused to the point where they're meaningless and get ignored.

The end result of this is that the die-hard leftists form a coalition of approved people and don't bother reaching out to the other side to figure out what's going on.

An act of desperation

So let's talk about Trump's mandate, or rather, lack of one.

Pretty much everything I've heard from the Trump voters I've interacted with is that Trump was the lesser of two evils this time around. A lot of Trump voters seemed more worried about jobs and the economy than arguing over identity politics. Sure, Trump was a showman who said stupid shit to get attention - but at least came blatantly out with the stupid shit, unlike Hillary and her penchant for secrecy. Frankly, Trump was saying things that a lot of candidates wouldn't say either - there was no leadership in Washington, government is going downhill, NATO members are dumping their defense bills on the US, etc - and plenty of people were eager to listen. Even Trump's voters don't know exactly what he's going to do, making their decision less a calculation and more of taking a risk against what they perceived as a known slide into deterioration.

HOWEVER, instead of working to address these issues, the left would rather scream about how they're all racists...which drives them back into the arms of Trump and the Republicans. This isn't how you win an election, this is how you get a Bolivian Army Ending, but instead of being made into a popular movie that people watch you die on a hill unmourned.

To sum up, I voted Democrat and volunteered with the Democrat campaign, but from what I've seen the party is going in the wrong direction. Screaming incoherently and alienating a large portion of the electorate is not going to get us where we want to go.

Remember how Occupy Wall Street had enough specific demands to publish a manifesto? Of course not. Because none of that got covered by the news, despite it all happening. The fundamental problem with the Democrats isn't that they are incoherent, it's that they have their own captive media network to get their message out. It isn't that they call everyone who doesn't vote for them racist, it's that "Hilary Clinton is calling you a bigot" makes a better headline than "Hilary Clinton announces new immigration policy", and so everything that could be remotely construed as the former rather than the latter gets reported as such, while the boiler-plate, inoffensive, mealy-mouthed statements get ignored as 'boring'. The Democrats have to rely on Fox News hatchet jobbers and centrist ratings chasers to tell the public what they said. And that, more than anything, is what's killing them.