My two kids are white and, as far as I know, straight. I had a hard time watching the returns with them. I can't imagine what it's like for people who lack my privilege -- for people who can't even say, as I did, "It's going to be all right for us."
And, of course, I couldn't even say that without qualifying it.
Is it going to be alright for you? He has basically promised to tear up the international trade system. God knows there's enough wrong with it, but just setting it alight and watching it burn is not a solution; even Lenin understood that (thanks, Tooze.)
I went into full blown denial mode when I saw the first stories this morning. I thought "OK, some jokers have hacked google and redirected searches to bogus 'Trump wins' stories".
Still in numb shock.
For my kids: the climate is fucked for sure. I keep telling myself that the climate was probably fucked regardless--I really wasn't very hopeful about a Clinton presidency on this point. But that's little solace.
We're all fucked. I'm still stunned.
Bye bye Filibuster. Honestly, you won't be missed.
Imagine if you worked at the department of justice?
15 minutes of interview with Arlie Hochschild, UC Berkeley author of Strangers in Their Own Land. No transcript.
a link from "kidneystones" at CT, who has been calling it from the left for Trump for months and getting endless abuse
Also, Kathy Grace, Thomas Frank, Chris Hedges, Ian Welsh, Stirling Newberry.
Time to get radical was 2000 or 2009. Should have let the banks fail, and Obama with them, if they were his real constituency. You can maybe prevent fascism with welfare capitalism/left populism, FDR style. Obama wanted to be all respected and friended by the assholes like Bernanke and Comey.
But you don't fix full-on fascism. You emigrate if you can, bunker down and hide if you have to stay. And suffer and die.
It's too late now.
Oh and never ever forget now:
The Obamas and Clintons are still or going to be very very fucking rich. They'll be just fine.
The only silver lining I can find in any of this is for the British. They won't have to put up with self-satisfied Americans tsk-tsking them about the Brexit vote any more.
Rs have won both houses? I'm afraid bob is right. You just elected a dictator.
11: I hope so, and expect you will get your wish.
Oh golly, why was Bob such a meany asshole who never flatters or makes people feel good? Why does Bob study Meiji and Taisho, trying to see a way good Japanese could have prevented the horror? Or what could be done in the culmination. I see nothing.
Because, ref Weber and Bernstein, I have been seeing this coming since Klein, Yglesias, and Clinton supported the Iraq War.
I used the term Weimerica around 2003.
Wait, Trump outperformed Romney among hispanics?!?
Are we sure the election results weren't tampered with??
Popular vote will land somewhere between 1.0 and 1.5 million.
I wonder how many people cast a protest vote for Trump, confident that Clinton would still win.
That was the Brexit story, right?
My first priority wasn't just avoiding electing a dictator but to elect somebody who was as supportive of economic redistribution and social inclusion as possible. In retrospect, "not electing a dictator" seems much more important. The thing is, if you read more broadly than here and Crooked Timber, there are no small number of people saying the same thing about how I should be fucking myself for backing Clinton except instead of being upset out Iraq, they want things from the right of center. I think I'm going to wait to see how their opinion shifts during the first years of Trump. I'm pretty sure there are more of them than people who were too pure of heart to vote for anybody but Jill Stein.
|>> 3 years and we'll get to hear about how critical it is that we all get behind the neo-liberal, centrist Democrat because SUPREEEEEEEME COOOOOOOOURT!
Re 14, the disconnect between polls and early voting forecasts on the one hand vs. election day "results" on the other hand is really freaking me out.
16: There must have been lots, but that's not the same as people who would have switched their vote or stayed home if they knew she wouldn't.
Also, are people fucking morons or what? Even if every single Jill Stein voter had voted for Hillary, only half of Gary Johnson voters would have had to back President Hitler for him to have an EVEN BIGGER win. There's no way the Greens had anything at all to do with this -- the center right lost this election to the far right through their own incompetence and duplicity.
16: I have thought about that as well.
I'm not blaming the Greens for the loss this time (only 2000). I'm pointing out why they don't matter and will continue not to.
From what I'm hearing Trump, for all his immigration demagoguery, did at least as well among hispanics as Romney did in 2012.
Well yeah, I'm right there with you. They're also a bunch of lying politicians, even if they are the kinder, gentler type.
Polling is obviously fucked up. Some people say it's caller id. Maybe Bradley effect. Maybe people don't like their behavior being predicted as a fucking form of social control by urban elites, and so lie to posters.
Thomas Frank is up early, but he may have had it pre-written
"Donald Trump is moving to the White House, and liberals put him there" is his title.
20: Actually the poll miss will probably end up being a bit smaller than 2012, just in the other direction. The margins in the crumbling blue wall states were not all that big to begin with. The most unusual thing is how they almost all stayed positive. This was precisely the Nate Silver scenario that kept him 15-20% lower than others.
Orange County went Clinton.... by a bigger margin than either Wisconsin or Michigan. (If Milwaukee/Detroit had their 2012 margins those states would have flipped--not true for PA and Philly (and P'burgh Allegheny maintained--in PA it was NE, Scranton etc. that really moved).
26: Thta is what the exits are saying but they are not that reliable with Hipsanics, saw Dave Wasserman mentioning that the county-level data would not seem to support that.
Yes. I'm not reading Sam Wang again (unless I take up recreational neurosurgery). I'll stick with Silver.
This was the revenge of the Juggalos and their rich exurban cousins.
Still halfway in the denial phase here. Woke up every hour or so thinking for sure something would have changed, and still sort of feel like there'll have to be a do-over somehow. Buried my dad the other day and I hate to admit it but this is so much harder to accept. Just got on the train back to DC and it's all I can do not to get off at the next stop and turn around rather than face the incipient institutional wreckage from up close. Completely unreal and disgusting.
Very sorry to hear about your father. My condolences.
Is the latest version of the bob filter on github?
From Frank, just the intro, but kinda important to me:
He has run one of the lousiest presidential campaigns ever. In saying so I am not referring to his much-criticized business practices or his vulgar remarks about women. I mean this in a purely technical sense: this man fractured his own party. His convention was a fiasco. He had no ground game to speak of. The list of celebrities and pundits and surrogates taking his side on the campaign trail was extremely short. He needlessly offended countless groups of people: women, Hispanics, Muslims, disabled people, mothers of crying babies, the Bush family, and George Will-style conservatives, among others. He even lost Glenn Beck, for pete's sake.And now he is going to be president of the United States.
One thing I have taken away is the lack of top-down control for Trump in this election. Obviously Republican or any other elites had very little to do with or for Trump, no control or coordination, this was very much a bottom-up grass roots campaign.
This goes along with my study of cybertheory, politics and power and everything else is now distributed and entrepeneurial, and the mass line may be unavailable.
And the lack of any narratives or organization whatsoever may be the key to the resistance.
I see we are setting up the circular firing squad right on schedule. Have people started posting that they never really thought Hillary was cool? The turn on poor John Kerry was impressively abrupt in 2004 but this may be sharper even than that.
33: Yes, my father died in August (age 91 though) and same here. I think working from home today.
Voting by demographic (In German unfortunately, but charts should be self-explanatory). In comparison to 2012, suport for Democrats was lower among blacks, latinos, asians, young people. White women voted for Trump in basically the same numbers that they voted for Romney.
There was some upstate NY congressional district polling that did seem to pick up what happened pretty well (~10% shifts away from Obama numbers), but not looked at too much because NY.
more Frank:
Put this question in slightly more general terms and you are confronting the single great mystery of 2016. The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent professional (who really wasn't all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone who didn't accept their assessment. And then they lost. Maybe it's time to consider whether there's something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away.
The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone - except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman. The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these Democrats are the "last thing standing" between us and the end of the world. It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability. Enough with these comfortable Democrats and their cozy Washington system. Enough with Clintonism and its prideful air of professional-class virtue. Enough!
Potchkeh, I'm sorry. My dad fell Saturday m and suffered a TBI and we've been with him around the clock since. Last night they thought he was going to die but it stabilized and now maybe he won't but he probably won't speak again. And with this... I don't even know where the horror and grief are coming from at this point, it's just like an oil-black jello I'm suspended in.
Ugh. Sorry to hear about everybody's fathers.
Checking on turnout this morning, it looks like it was down. In 2012 Obama won with vote totals of 66M vs 61M. This year it's ~59M each. Have they not finished counting, or is it really that low?
Voting by demographic [...]
There's a lot of skepticism about the exit polls, but it really does look like Clinton's high negatives flipped or suppressed turnout of a lot Obama voters, across all demographics. On the one hand, it's despairing that everything Trump did wasn't enough to retain their votes and the false equivalence is mind-boggling. On the other hand, despite being grossly morally irresponsible, a lot of those people look eminently re-capturable with the right candidate and platform (even some non-college whites).
44: Wait -- millions more to come in -- mostly in the west
I really want to see the 2012 -> 2016 county change map.
BTW , my coping mechanism is to nerd into the stats. Also being a hardhead in work meetings (via phone ... working from home not able to face humans yet).
Bob- Not everyone ignored you. For what it is worth (nothing) I value what you have to say.
I think the interesting question now is whether Trump decides to deliver for his constituency or not. I'm sure the priority will be to make his bank balance fatter, but a round of ethnic cleansing could let the Republicans consolidate their gains.
I'm lucky that I don't have to face humans at work.
JP, why were the polls wrong? Unexpectedly high turnout of the deplorables or low turnout of Democrats? Do we know yet?
a lot of those people look eminently re-capturable with the right candidate and platform (even some non-college whites).
Trump, McConnell, Alito (+ Janice Rogers Brown?), and Ryan's successor won't give you the chance. The left's future is not in national politics, for at least the medium term.
Anyway, as I said, Clinton supporters should just shut up, read, and listen.
I am quite willing to let radical Afro-Americans and Latino's take leadership of the party. Drexiclya (sp ?, black, female) at LGM is an interesting commenter.
Women had their chance. They fucked the world all the way up.
The polls underestimated how much of Obama's turn-out was due to Obama specifically, and consequently overestimated Clinton's minority and youth turn-out.
The takeaway - I think - is that Obama's charisma won those elections more than we thought, and Trumps "charisma"* charged people up more than we thought.
*I don't have a better word for Trump's well-executed exploitation of racism/red meat. Plenty of racists don't manage to spew their shit in a way that revs up the base so well.
50 He certainly has to deliver on the promise to repeal the ACA. So, we'll be back at status quo 2009.
He's not going to withdraw from NAFTA, or bring back union manufacturing jobs in the Rust Belt, so the folks voting for that aren't going to get anything.
His dept of education isn't going to intervene on the side of trans kids, so there's that.
If he "builds a wall," all he has to do is under staff the border crossings to repeal NAFTA with Mexico in practice.
His DOJ will do less for police shootings.
He's not going to build a wall, but I wouldn't be surprised to see more deportations. Not the huge round-up his supporters want, but no blind eye.
56 -- Too much money at stake for the people who sponsor Republican congressmen.
In any event, if he 'brings the auto industry back,' it'll be largely automated non-union factories in the South.
A lot of immigrants are going to opt out of Trump's America and decide to leave on their own. In some ways, the reverse brain drain will be good for other countries. The reduction in remittances, not so much.
34, 42: Thanks. Sympathies on your situation, Clytie, hoping for the best. And sorry for your loss, JP.
God, I haven't had a cigarette in 9+ years but have never needed one as bad as I do right now. We really are going to have Giuliani running DOJ, aren't we?
59: If their money being at risk was really enough, Trump wouldn't have gotten the nomination or those congressmen wouldn't have marched nearly in lockstep to support Trump.
...I wouldn't be surprised to see more deportations. Not the huge round-up his supporters want...
Not at first.
He's not going to withdraw from NAFTA
Why not? Or, if not withdraw, why will he not use his power to increase tariffs within NAFTA?
60: I assume so. I did console myself that the central PA voters who think Trump can bring back the coal economy are deluded but I should be able to get a higher salary if immigration is substantially reduced. Then I remember that doesn't apply if the whole economy just implodes.
C'mon, there's really no point in gaming all this out. He has no attention span and no loyalties whatsoever, and is essentially the sum of his mood swings. No telling what he'll actually do.
I am assuming that Trump, himself, isn't going to do shit beyond gold-leafing the White House. The question is who's going to control policy and what are they going to do. Is Pence the de facto president?
Why exactly is it that Bernie wouldn't have won in those rust belt states? I'm not committed to the idea that he would have. I'm just trying to figure out what kind of candidate could have.
Where do we go from here?
Why exactly is it that Bernie wouldn't have won in those rust belt states? I'm not committed to the idea that he would have. I'm just trying to figure out what kind of candidate could have.
Where do we go from here?
I like Ryan Cooper, and I so wish he were right here. So why am I sure he and slate are wrong?
http://theweek.com/articles/660845/why-did-hillary-clinton-lose
I'm still in the denial stage. Can't really wrap my mind around what the next four years will look like. Quite apart from the damage that will be done to others, there's the question of whether his immigration policies will make it harder to bring my mom the the US (already a fucking clown show of paperwork), will I lose my health insurance, and will the grants funding my work evaporate. I'm really nervous about that last one, as energy research seems unlikely to be a priority in a Climate Change denying administration.
There won't be any one answer to that. Pence may be up one day, next day it's someone else, depending on what Trump ate for lunch and how well he slept, who he last talked to, etc.
I think it's pretty easy to tell what he's actually going to do on a few things. There will be large scale deportations of illegal immigrants and the repeal of the ACA.
Best hope honestly is that trump doesn't start liking republican politicians any more than he does now and whitehouse/congress can't work together.
Sure, there's no point gaming things out in much detail, but I'd say if there's one thing he's going to deliver on other than tax cuts for the rich, it's protectionist trade policy. Even if he doesn't have the attention span for it, the representatives and senators who kept or won their seats riding an anti-free trade wave certainly will.
62 They didn't think he would win, and couldn't afford to alienate his supporters. Is the man genuinely some sort of populist, and not just a kleptocrat who stumbled into the right formula? I guess we'll find out. I expect, though, that it'll be Ryanism with a side of assholery that doesn't interfere with Capital. Hippie punching, and "thug" punching will have to do for the supporters, because there's nothing Trump can do to make employing middle aged union guys in the upper Midwest a better prospect for Capital than building automated non-union facilities in the South. If they even decide to set up in the US.
Can he bring back coal? I guess that depends on the Chinese economy.
71: I think research on energy has a good chance of continuing. Just rebrand it as research for "energy independence" and don't mention that it might have the side effect of reducing carbon emissions.
I know everyone complains about circular firing squads & etc., but I do think that some sort of house cleaning in the Democratic party is needed in the wake of this. The whole republican-lite There Is No Alternative crowd that calls the shots couldn't manage to defeat a clowning reality TV star.
I can't believe we have to hand this fucking world over to the kids. I feel so guilty.
78: I expect Ryan to lose his speakership.
Maybe he will be so unstable as a boss that nothing much gets destroyed? Lurches from one enemy du jour to the next? Tries to fire Pence?
I don't doubt that Paul Ryan and Mike Pence are in for the four worst years of their lives, but it's ridiculous self-delusion to figure that their influence or Trump's character flaws will prevent him from carrying out most of what he repeatedly emphasized.
30: It's early days yet, so the story may change, but 538 seems to be confirming that Trump actually did better among latinos than Romney did.
Amazing.
61
We really are going to have Giuliani running DOJ, aren't we?
No fear. Chatter around my office is that he'll be the Secretary of State instead.
77 Anti-trade guys like Sen. Portman?
I agree that we won't see new trade deals, unless he gets to negotiate them, and present his own calculations of winners and losers. Changing existing deals messes too much with investment backed expectations.
80 Well, Clinton is definitely done. We'll see who/what emerges for '20. There's certainly no obvious standard bearer for Clintonism.
Michelle? Or is the whole presidential spouse thing forever destroyed as well?
Counterpunch: + Hillary, who based much of her campaign strategy on decisively winning the women's vote, lost among white women by a 10-point margin: 53-43. Think, for a moment, about that 53 percent number for Trump. It's safe to say that Hillary ran the worst campaign since Al Gore. In fact, it was worse than Gore's in almost every respect."
I mean shit, rural white women are suffering so badly under neoliberalism that their fucking life expectancy is declining.
You would think coastal ivy league feminists, even discounting compassion, would see rural white working class women as an incredible opportunity.
But they want to all live in the big city. Ewwww, crackers.
87: If I understand U.S. legal precedent well enough (and I may not), it would just take an act of Congress to pull out of NAFTA. Assuming the filibuster dies and the election results hold as they are now, that means you'd need every Democratic senator to hold plus three Republicans willing to flip, stand against their own party, and either not up in 2018 or able to win a primary.
It would of course take less than an act of Congress to just set the Border Patrol and Customs to inspecting things so slowly that trade with Mexico is severely hampered.
I'm trying to figure out if I should write to my state reps to ask them to reinstitute Rombeycare if the ACA goes away.
41. Yes everybody's read Frank's article, and yes, he makes a number of true point that would be obvious to any random middle schooler, but, in his own words, he might consider whether there's something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away.
87, 92: Here's what he can and can't do about existing trade deals.
96-TLDR summary imperial presidency FTW!
Still halfway in the denial phase here. Woke up every hour or so thinking for sure something would have changed, and still sort of feel like there'll have to be a do-over somehow.
This is my experience, exactly. I'm working from home today; I don't think I can leave the house. I don't even feel up to talking to friends or family yet so I've turned off my phone. Somehow it's easier to talk to sympathetic internet strangers, so thank you to all of you.
I'm really sorry about your fathers, everyone.
I'm not in denial, but it does feel like the last eight years were all make-believe, and now we're plunged back into the real world of Bush's presidency.
Is the rest of my life going to be spent watching Americans re-learn the same, most painful lessons, over and over again?
As I woke up this morning, I had a few moments of hazy bliss before remembered what happened last night. I've been bouncing like a pinball between the various stages of grief since then. It feels like I've been punched in the gut. I can't even imagine how much worse it must be your those of you also dealing with family tragedy. My heart goes out to you.
96 Yeah, I'm not counting on legal restraints, but on the titans of the economy talking him out of doing something rash and hugely harmful to them, of only slight (if any) benefit to his followers.
Coal, on this side of the country at least, only comes back if the Chinese buy it. Seems to me that a trade war would be a pretty bad deal. .
Obviously, huge price increases on imported goods, unaccompanied by increased wages/opportunities in the upper Midwest, are going to be a huge net loss to all the folks who voted for the guy.
With solar and wind cheaper, natural gas dirt cheap, and low wholesale electricity prices, the only way he could "bring back coal" would be to literally have the feds build a bunch of coal power stations. As the alternative option is just to forget it and screw a fairly small group of people who voted for him, I'm actually not that worried about him for climate reasons - US coal is still dying and everyone else still signed on to Paris.
now, every other damn thing...
Thank you MAE, jms, Moby, NickS, potchkeh. I'm a little worried the election was my fault because last night I told god that if my dad pulled through it was ok to make Donald Trump president. So feel free to blame me. But my dad's prospects not looking so great so maybe everything -isn't- a consequence of my desperate magical thinking.
I have not watched a thing but 2nd hand exposure to the media via twitter is making me ever more choleric. I'm going to expire of rage. I have work to do, but cannot look away.
Blizzard of lies wins. Who knew?
Last November at about this time I was getting ready to go spend time with my dad in the hospital. My brother had been there for a week and needed to get back to work. He pulled through, but crossed the line into what the doctors call "frail".
I can't believe white women broke for Trump. How are we so bankrupt.
96 Yeah, I'm not counting on legal restraints, but on the titans of the economy talking him out of doing something rash and hugely harmful to them, of only slight (if any) benefit to his followers.
When has anyone ever been able to talk Trump out of doing something for more than about 20 minutes?
Other than Ivanka? Think she wants a trade war?
105: Blizzard of lies wins. Who knew?
That was actually my first thought: that the Republicans' longstanding quest to render the electorate as dumb as possible has finally won the day. Martin Longman has pointed out that Trump's flipping some Obama states to red isn't really that shocking, given the increasing preponderance of Republican domination at the state level, which influence was reflected by polling results in those states showing John Kasich beating Clinton in a match-up.
But the stupidity: voters apparently continue to believe that huge tax cuts for the rich (and a reduction in the corporate tax rate) will result in a comparatively gigantic boost to the economy. And they believe that Trump can bring back manufacturing jobs ... and coal.
I'd actually intended to speak to that "can he bring back coal?" question, but Alex beat me to it: from what I understand, a not insignificant amount of coal industry infrastructure has already been dismantled. It's not like it's continued to sit around, waiting.
My second thought -- as far as I can think at all (as I periodically think I might cry) -- has been: can we obstruct a Trump agenda to the degree Republicans have obstructed Obama?
Their Senate majority is razor thin. They obviously don't have a supermajority.
Take Obamacare: I'm not sure they can get a flat-out repeal through the Senate, though I seem to recall that they'd be able to defund the subsidy part with a simple majority. Right? I forget what that's called, when you can declare something is a budgetary/fiscal matter, so you just need a simple majority to pass it.
Trump hates smug liberals, and the media (but I repeat myself), and isn't afraid to say so. There's a substantial slug of people for whom this alone is sufficient motivation. And so long as he continues to manifest this, which he will, showman that he is, they'll be getting what they want from a Trump Administration.
And cutting off people of color from health insurance. Can't put a price on the gratification that will bring.
If they really want, they can abolish the filibuster with a simple majority.
Parsi, they'll probably get rid of the filibuster. There's no chance of a Dem Senate majority before 2020, and probably not much of one then. Definitely a risk worth taking.
Glurg. My third thought: congratulations, Osama bin Laden. You poked the US into idiotic and destructive war(s), contributing to the trashing of our economy, followed by such destabilization in the Middle East that refugee migration triggered a rise in xenophobia, leading to the rise of enough dumbfucks scared out of their minds that they elected a fascist. Good job.
Possibly I'm being histrionic.
Oh. Abolish the filibuster. Somehow I'd gotten it into my head that you couldn't do that with a simple majority. I ... dunno why I forgot. I guess because every time it's been considered, factions on both sides have hedged.
For the moment, I guess I'll consider that a significant test of what kind of power establishment Republicans can manage to maintain under Trump. I'll hold out hope that they'd be leery of that. Please don't tell me I'm dreaming, not right now.
As more or less idle speculation: some of you have worked for U.S. employers while living overseas, right? How does it work? Do you get paid in dollars and get exchange fees scraped from each paycheck if deposited into a local account? Do you pay double taxes? My old boss relocated to a western European country with her husband and kept working for her U.S. company for at least a year. I can do my own research but anecdata is welcome.
Clytie, I'm so sorry about your father.
I spent the Bush years hoping for a few perverse happy consequences of repugnant policies, but man, I don't think we got any. The Republicans are so fucking committed to hiring and promoting incompetent people to execute plans. Every plan ends up good and executed.
Christ, now I've seen twice (a Slate headline and an unrelated Twitter reply) recommendations that liberals move to swing states. Sure, millions of people upending their lives, and relying on money and options they don't have, is easier to contemplate than changing some words on paper.
The first $100K or so of money you make overseas isn't taxed by the US, on the theory that its taxed locally. I try to get most of my pay in dollars to a US bank account. There is some that comes to me in local currency, but I think my employer absorbs the FX cost.
I hereby declare the Clinton 2016 voters to be the Moral Majority.
Coal is not "gone." Coal mining is still very actively destroying the environment in my state. Water, air, nature, people's health, all being polluted and destroyed. In many cases irredeemably.
Coal is "gone" as a large-scale provider of high paying jobs. I think even in your state.
I just met my first remorseful Trump voter. He didn't believe Trump would actually win. He works on a government contract and now is very afraid for his job. I felt no sympathy. But I'm still so angry that I also felt no schadenfreude. Nothing but anger.
Tell him to go fuck himself from me.
118- I'm on a non-working temporary resident visa, working remotely for my US company, which is only allowed because my company has no presence in the country I'm in. So as far as the company is concerned it's the equivalent of telecommuting from home- I'm still a US employee being paid in USD paying taxes as if I were still living in the US, and it's my responsibility to figure out how to pay living expenses here. (FYI I use Transferwise which is ~1% fee)
If the company had any presence here I imagine there would be local taxes even if I were only working for the US site. The only tricky thing is health insurance, for the resident visa we're required to have local insurance here but had to maintain insurance at home to avoid ACA penalty so right now I'm doubly insured. (At least as far as emergency situations that occur out of country- since US insurance wouldn't pay any non-urgent care here it's a pretty clear divide which insurance covers what.) Of course our premiums here for no copay no deductible 6-month preexisting window are less than just the employee-side contribution for my company coverage.
My overseas health insurance is shit. When I go to the doctor, I have to pay all the money for the service up front, and then submit the bill to the insurance company, which may or may not decide to pay several weeks later. And they won't cover me or my family for non-emergencies while in the US, because the costs there are considered too high.
I've had interesting conversations about the health care system here. It sounds like the huge difference is doctor is considered similar to most other professions- teacher, accountant, etc.- in terms of training investment, at least financially- still takes additional time. Med school is $900 per year so there are plenty of doctors, none of them have any school debt, they're compensated similar to other professionals.
I've been seeing some circular firing squad stuff start to be posted, so I'm just going to go ahead and say that at this point, given the outcome and what we know about its basis, I don't think this was ever a winnable election for the Democrats, regardless of who they nominated and how they campaigned. Trump has awakened a sleeping giant, and nothing his opponent did could have overcome the enthusiasm of his supporters, which he was able to bring out using minimal resources. (This is basically the same argument heebie made in 54.) Better polling would have helped, but it seems like the Clinton campaign's internal polling was quite good and they saw where this was headed, based on their decisions in the last week or so.
(Which is not to say that the Democratic Party doesn't need to make some big changes for other reasons, which is probably true independently.)
the Clinton campaign's internal polling was quite good and they saw where this was headed, based on their decisions in the last week or so.
Good point. Clinton visited Pittsburgh on Friday (my wife and a friend attended), and then this past weekend she announced that she was coming back Monday for a rally on Pitt's campus. We couldn't comprehend it. Oops.
My only hope is that when I end up working in a coal mine, the resulting black lung will kill me swiftly enough I won't have to worry about my healthcare coverage.
Good point. Clinton visited Pittsburgh on Friday (my wife and a friend attended), and then this past weekend she announced that she was coming back Monday for a rally on Pitt's campus. We couldn't comprehend it. Oops.
Right, and everyone was equally puzzled by their late push in Michigan. Turns out they knew what they were doing. They failed, but not from incompetence.
130- Nah I'm not buying it. Sanders would have boosted turnout and enthusiasm in our base, and he would have taken away some votes from Donald's base particularly in the rustbelt.
I don't think this was ever a winnable election for the Democrats, regardless of who they nominated and how they campaigned.
I disagree. The fundamental strategic fuckup was to make it a referendum on whether it is ok to be a terrible person. But that meant the whole campaign was fought on the terrible person's terms.
If the campaign had been fought over policy - specifically "I have these policies that will help you, the voter, personally" - it would have been very different, and Trump would have been out of his element, because he doesn't know shit about policy. But instead it was fought over personality, which is a mistake when going up against a reality-show host. So the Democrats picked the wrong battle, and the terrible person won.
Sanders would have boosted turnout and enthusiasm in our base, and he would have taken away some votes from Donald's base particularly in the rustbelt.
I agree that Sanders would have gone over much better in those areas, which have a tradition of support for labor and socialism that he would have appealed to.
If the campaign had been fought over policy - specifically "I have these policies that will help you, the voter, personally" - it would have been very different, and Trump would have been out of his element, because he doesn't know shit about policy.
Isn't this exactly how the debates went? And yet. But in any case, I don't think a more wonkish approach would have driven Dem enthusiasm to the extent necessary to offset the Trumpites' enthusiasm.
Sanders would have boosted turnout and enthusiasm in our base, and he would have taken away some votes from Donald's base particularly in the rustbelt.
Yes, but let's not kid ourselves about how broad the Democratic coalition still is ideologically. I mean, Sanders couldn't even win the primary despite all the turnout and enthusiasm he boosted among certain demographics. I think the only candidate who could have beaten Trump is Obama (for the reasons in 54). The one person in the entire country who was literally barred by law from running.
I'm not super-committed to this view, btw, and as we learn more about demographics and so forth I may change it. It's just how I see it right now based on what we know so far.
If the campaign had been fought over policy - specifically "I have these policies that will help you, the voter, personally" - it would have been very different, and Trump would have been out of his element, because he doesn't know shit about policy.
As far as the voters who propelled Trump to victory are concerned, they think "Make America great again!" counts as policy. So I'm doubtful that would have worked.
136 last- Most people know nothing about ideology, and care nothing about ideology. Sanders was handicapped in the primary by the fact that the party elites were locked into supporting HRC long before the campaign began. If they had chosen to let the best person win instead of putting all their thumbs on the scale there would have been a different outcome.
I see no point in rehashing the same old arguments from the primary yet again, so I'm just going to say that I disagree that Sanders would have been a better candidate in the general, for many reasons, and leave it at that.
If the campaign had been fought over policy - specifically "I have these policies that will help you, the voter, personally" - it would have been very different, and Trump would have been out of his element, because he doesn't know shit about policy.
I became convinced, over the course of the election, that both campaigns were happy when the other was the focus of the news. For example, I don't think that the Comey letter hurt Clinton much, directly, but it helped Trump a lot that in the final two weeks people were talking much more about Clinton than about him.
I think the Clinton campaign made a deliberate choice to emphasize stories which Trump couldn't avoid; which would force him to respond and to become the story, and that seemed strategically wise. So I'm skeptical that trying to campaign on "policy" would have been any better.
Joe Biden would also have beaten Trump.
I too am skeptical of the "unwinnable" hypothesis.
Also, as a practical matter moving forward, the "unwinnable" idea supports the emerging consensus among the architects of this debacle that the blame lies with anyone and everyone except the Clinton campaign and the Democratic party. I think it would be disastrous if that particular bit of bogus conventional wisdom becomes locked in.
Joe Biden would also have beaten Trump.
Also, as a practical matter moving forward, the "unwinnable" idea supports the emerging consensus among the architects of this debacle that the blame lies with anyone and everyone except the Clinton campaign and the Democratic party. I think it would be disastrous if that particular bit of bogus conventional wisdom becomes locked in.
Question about the "unwinnable" theory: If we imagine multiple timelines and that we could somehow "replay" the phase of the campaign between the last debate and the election, in what percentage of scenarios do you think Clinton would have won?
I'd feel optimistic that Clinton would win more than half, but maybe that's wrong. I don't think either campaign (specifically) made major errors or successes during that time but the e-mail leaks and then the Comey letter sapped a lot of energy from the campaign, and I don't know that was inevitable.
Turnout 2012 Obama: 65.9m 2016 Clinton: 59.1m = -6.8m 2012 Romney: 60.9m 2016 Trump: 59m = -1.9m You tell me what happened
Joe Biden beats Trump in the rust belt. PA certainly, maybe not Ohio, but Wisconsin and Michigan were super close and he would have tipped the balance on account of not being the second-most loathed politician in America.
I don't think it was unwinnable but I don't care either. It wasn't won.
I don't think it was unwinnable but I don't care either. It wasn't won.
Come on now. If we can't establish exactly what happened, we can't properly apportion blame, and blame is a very important step in the ritual.
the problem with working overseas is that you can get an incompetent tax attorney like mine who arranges it to be the case that you don't pay into social security at all, thus leaving you in danger of total immiseration when you have minimum SS payments and can't get medicare. my saintly brother-in-law is fixing this for us also, since he just goes around saving our lives, apparently.
You know how last week, I was all: and we'll have beaten them with our most handicapped (in the horseracing sense) contender?
Right now I don't understand why we ran with the handicapped contender.
Question about the "unwinnable" theory: If we imagine multiple timelines and that we could somehow "replay" the phase of the campaign between the last debate and the election, in what percentage of scenarios do you think Clinton would have won?
Hm, good question. In keeping with the "unwinnable" theory, I would say less than half; I think the effect of the email stuff was overblown (the polls had already been tightening before Comey's first letter, but then again the polls were so far off that it's hard to say if the apparent trends reflected anything real), and I think Trump all along has had a sort of invisible firewall of hard-core supporters concentrated in certain key states, most of which Clinton's campaign did about as much as they could to target.
alameida! I thought of your nephew when we were exchanging my kid's Halloween candy for $$ at the dentist's office (money then used to purchase an ice cream cone at the nice ice-creamery, which seemed like a fair trade for a pound of shitty candy).
Boy, I tell you people, I cannot find any fucks to give about my day job today. I continue to ruminate about the role of the Internet in this election, and what the lessons are this time around.
Just talked to my second remourseful Trumo voter, although this one was only semi-remourseful. Voted Trump because he thought a Trump presidency would be "very entertaining", because Trump is "so out-of-the-box and unpredictable". Still believes that, but didn't actually imagine that trump could win. Is now concerned that those qualities might not necessarily make for a good president.
I want to believe that someone younger and more charismatic would have done better, but Sanders and Biden aren't that and O'Malley was bad, so.
I want to believe that someone younger and more charismatic would have done better, but Sanders and Biden aren't that and O'Malley was bad, so.
I hope we can at least get someone younger and more charismatic in 2020. People are talking about Elizabeth Warren, or even Sanders, and I'm just like, enough with the fucking old people. Maybe Kamala Harris.
You're thinking maybe Zuckerberg? In 2020 he'll be old enough.
Maybe Kamala Harris
Yes, as a start, but I'm basically on board with this now, and think the entire inner core of the party needs to cashiered, certainly everyone associated with the Clintons, and the entire over-educated, goo-goo coastal elite faction. Their only viable way forward is to become the party of the poor, PoC, and organised labor, not just as their alleged constituents, but as their candidates and leaders.
I can think of a guy who could do a bang-up job spearheading all this, and who's suddenly about to have a lot of free time on his hands...
to sort of pick up the point in 153, the polling is so bad, we have no reason not to think that Trump was basically leading this thing from the end of the Republican convention. His supporters thought he won the debates, because he didn't take any crap from the smarties.
I'm just like, enough with the fucking old peopleEasterners.
Not really buying the argument in 159, and that Slate piece was the sort of thing I had in mind in 130. Democrats already are "the party of the poor, PoC, and organized labor," and a lot of the candidates already come from those groups. It's true that the top leadership is dominated by over-educated coastal elite types (a group to which Obama definitely belongs), and they should try to make it more reflective of the party as a whole, but even if this election wasn't unwinnable I don't think that's why they lost it.
I think charm/charisma are the only thing mainstream voters vote on. Romney and McCain lost on charisma, and so did Kerry and gore. And Dole and bush sr, for that matter.
162: It sure looks like they blew it to me.
The only possible excuse I can see would be voter suppression, but I'm not sure how much of that accounts for the gaps between 2016 and 2008/12.
The only possible excuse I can see would be voter suppression, but I'm not sure how much of that accounts for the gaps between 2016 and 2008/12.
Well, there was way more of it once the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. And I don't think all the 2016 votes have been counted yet, so those bars on that chart are probably not accurate.
Agreeing with Heebie that charm is what voters vote on.
Agreeing with Heebie that charm is what voters vote on.
Damn, you didn't waste any time getting the world all figured out, again.
So, do the Dems have anyone on the bench who might be charming enough for 2020? I don't think O'Malley being in a Celtic rock band is going to cut it.
I don't think I like this term "over-educated" that's being tossed around here. What is the level of educational attainment that disqualifies a person from leadership positions in the party? I feel like "over-compensated" might be closer to the real objection.
I think high-level politicians and political operatives may actually tend to be less educated than people at comparable levels in other fields. This may be more true for the operatives since politicians tend to have law degrees.
So, do the Dems have anyone on the bench who might be charming enough for 2020?
Michelle?
I feel so personally betrayed by the pollsters. I believed the polls so deeply.
OTOH, at least I didn't spend the last year feeling tormented.
171: Seems a little fast? Not that the slow route worked.
163: and alpha maleness. I'm having a really hard time imagining a woman who could swing it. Do Americans generally have a favorable view of any women in positions of power and influence, one that crosses party lines even remotely? I can't think of a single model. Thatcher wouldn't win here, but I can see why she won in England; Merkel wouldn't win here, but ditto for Germany. I just can't figure out the dominant-feminine formula that would fit in this country. Even the other Objectivists held Ayn Rand in contempt. I don't get the impression that female generals get much respect. It's all out of the Huck Finn playbook: boring girls follow the rules and if they're really boring they make them; boys break the rules and forge reality etc. Only a man is allowed to be both serious and fun (i.e. charismatic, charming in the relevant way); for women it's either/or.
The education thing is simple: voters are consumers and you need to market the candidate to them. Only business know-how is required or useful. (Acting like you're above the sales pitch, or want something more from them than a business transaction, inspires mistrust and makes you seem manipulative or "political.") Consumer behavior is so strongly reinforced in this country that it's the only behavior you need to manipulate. Have your brand beat the other brands, be disruptive, add value, get buy-in, all that shit. My gut feeling is that Trump didn't win because voters are angry or whatever; he won because he was an exciting brand and people were happy to see what would happen once it gained market domination.
People in this country do have democratic instincts about expertise. They want to believe that everyone has valuable analysis to contribute, and that's not what you elect an official for, particularly not the president.
I'm not sure I really believe those last two paragraphs, but I'm savagely angry enough to type them out. This is the first test of how my roaring hatred of cults of personality will fare in the presence of a real, live one.
I just can't figure out the dominant-feminine formula that would fit in this country.
Sarah Palin.
175: I meant specifically from First Lady, but you're absolutely right. It's probably time for me to retire my intuition as to what constitutes sufficient experience to be president.
176: No way! She's been tabloid fodder for years.
Decades, in his case. And yet, here we are.
I'm willing to pay you a significant sum of money if Sarah Palin is ever elected president of the U.S. I can't see it. I can't see the Republicans even pretending to take women seriously after this round; it would take a pretty significant shift.
Trump received exactly the same share of the voting age population (25%) as George W. Bush, and slightly less than Romney (26%) and McCain (26.6%). There was not a sudden out pouring of support for Trump, nor is he unprecedentedly popular.
The big difference is that the Democratic share of the voting age population dropped from 31% in 2008 to 28% in 2012 to 25% in 2016.
I mean, she personally is not going to be elected president. But that's the type that could, I think.
182 is very interesting, and does make me more hesitant about the "unwinnable" theory. It does support the theory that the pollsters totally fucked up their turnout models by basing them on 2008 and 2012, which I have also heard.
There is something very wrong that you only need a quarter of the voting age population to win.
I dunno if anyone mentioned it, but a referendum passed in Maine to do instant runoff (they called it something else) for all state and federal elections (presumably not including president). Yay.
Also, in the key swing states that flipped (PA, OH, MI, WI, IA), turnout for Trump was nearly identical to turnout for Romney. But turnout for Clinton was ~15% lower than Obama in 2012.
But turnout for Clinton was ~15% lower than Obama in 2012.
That's what makes me suspicious of the "unwinnable" judgement -- it seems easy to imagine that the difference could have been cut in half (~7% lower than Obama) based on fairly small variations in people's moods near the end of the campaign.
If I'm wrong about that; if there was little the Clinton campaign could have done to narrow that gap, then I agree that Clinton was a deeply flawed candidate and that nominating her was a mistake. But I'm not at that conclusion yet.
The idea that this election was "unwinnable" for Democrats is patently absurd. Trump was an extraordinarily flawed candidate with huge unfavorables. The Democrats just managed to nominate someone with matching unfavorables. When the polling was close this summer there was a lot of chatter how people in both parties felt like they nominated the only possible candidate who might not beat the candidate on the other side. And at the end of the day, that was true--they battled to essentially a draw, with Clinton winning the popular vote (barely) and Trump winning the electoral vote (barely).
I mean, blame the media if you want (they deserve plenty of blame) but most americans think clinton is more dishonest than trump. They don't trust anything she says.
That's not just republicans. That's most people.
Well, yeah, Obama could have won it. But I can't think of another Democrat who could have. The last 15% of a winning candidacy's electorate is driven by charisma. Maybe it's 10%. Biden has a certain je ne sais quoi, but he's not obviously firing up minority voters looking for change.
189 The media bears huge responsibility for that. Huge.
Yeah, now that I see those turnout figures (which I had not seen before), I'm much less committed to the "unwinnable" argument, which was based on the impression I had gotten that Trump had in fact increased GOP turnout contrary to expectations. If it's actually that Democratic turnout dropped, that makes me wonder about that allegedly top-notch ground game. Still not sure if there's anything the Clinton campaign could have done about it or if the problem was Clinton's personal popularity, but presumably as we get more information there will be more clues.
Jerry Brown? Authentic as hell and I doubt Trump could have successfully bullied him.
But 191 is a good point, and I'm not totally giving up on "unwinnable" yet. Maybe Obama was just sui generis and no other Democrat could have won in 2008 or 2012 either. (I don't buy that at all for 2008 given the economic conditions, but maybe for 2012.)
Yeah, the Clinton ground game. That was supposed to be the special sauce to turn it from a comfortable win into a near-landslide. But it went the other way instead. WTF?
Another interesting data point: Democratic share of the voting age population has been steadily increasing since 1980, at a rate of about 0.2% per year based on a simple regression. Almost every election year lies exactly on this regression line with two exceptions: Obama in 2008 outperformed the regression by 4%, and Clinton this year underperformed the regression by 3%. That's a lot to read from a stupid regression, but it is interesting.
F, do you have a link to your source for these numbers?
Also, maybe Hillary shouldn't have picked Blandy McBlanderson as a running mate. If she's gone with Bernie in the #2 slot, would that have tipped those rust belt states?
I'm calculating them myself from Wikipedia numbers for elections up to 2012, and the best estimate of total turnout and margin for 2016 (which I admit could be off until the official numbers are released).
over-educated, goo-goo coastal elite
Hey, now, they may be coastal and they may be elite and they may have a lot of education, but very few are goo-goo. If they were, you'd see less contempt for people like Lessig. Not that this means much in terms of winning. The goo-goos are mostly just irrelevant.
I think it's a problem that CAP seems to have sucked all the air out of liberal non-governmental institutions.
Ah, okay. I'd be hesitant to make any firm conclusions until the official numbers are released, but that sounds like a reasonable approach.
The Trump campaign has explicitly said that they were working on voter suppression -- not by passing laws or putting physical barriers in place per se, but by targeting ads at certain voters to dissuade them. Looks like that may have been effective. Wisconsin passed aggressive laws to curtail voting between 2008 and this year; they were overturned, but I bet they had some effect. Other states, similar effects.
But I really suspect the biggest problem was the complacency induced by the polls. Even I stopped panicking, which I regret, although I don't know how much I could have done.
As I said, I'm not looking forward to finding out how big a coward I am over the next four years.
Also, maybe Hillary shouldn't have picked Blandy McBlanderson as a running mate. If she's gone with Bernie in the #2 slot, would that have tipped those rust belt states?
Probably not. Running mates rarely confer any electoral advantage.
Although that's not the kind of advantage people are usually talking about with running mates, so I guess maybe it would have worked better.
But I really suspect the biggest problem was the complacency induced by the polls.
The polling community is sure going to have some explaining to do. I don't a sense for how likely it is that this was the deciding factor, but it does seem plausible.
Currently they don't seem to have a clue what happened.
538 deserves the "delete your account" meme, except for real they should go down.
208: They haven't figured out smartphones allow people to avoid them? I haven't answered even one unknown number all year.
210: Me either. Also my area code doesn't match my current state of residence, so random digit dialing wouldn't work at all for me. I wonder how big a problem that is for polling in general.
I mean, how is "turnout models" not at least half of the problem, if not more?
Probably not. Running mates rarely confer any electoral advantage.
Sure, when people like Tim Kaine get picked. But there was a lot of genuine passion around Bernie in the primary, and it would shock me not at all if those ended up being a lot of the voters who stayed home.
538, to their credit, and alone among aggregators, maintained that there remained a reasonable chance of a Trump election. And they took a lot of shit for it. Wound up looking a whole lot better than Sam Wang, though.
The polls this cycle were a great example of how poll averaging is subject to the "garbage in, garbage out" problem. At least now those guys probably won't get treated like oracular geniuses anymore.
146: Turnout 2012 Obama: 65.9m 2016 Clinton: 59.1m = -6.8m 2012 Romney: 60.9m 2016 Trump: 59m = -1.9m You tell me what happened
Good. I was going to post about the most misleading stat of the day that I have seen everywhere but you posted it for me. You are comparing final end numbers against number we have today. Earlier today Nick Cohn estimated 7M votes to be counted. There will be a drop-off but not nearly of the magnitude everyone is trumpeting today, and Trump will probably end up with more than Romney. So hold off on that comparison unless someone finds the day after 2012 numbers
For instance see this map from the NYT dated 11/29/2012 that has it 62,600,000 to 59,100,100. ~5.1M votes registered after that (primarily California). I've been trying to find day-after the election counts from day after the election but not finding them (I did find comments from me having the spread at 2.8M).
This is also why Arizona is not called despite a decent Trump margin; I believe I saw where there is an estimated 700K votes to count in Arizona.
216 also to 164. Get the actual facts first.
216 also to various other pontifications about turnout, you ill need to wait until December/January to do those analyses; I'd guess Clinton has 5-6% of her vote not counted (Trump somewhat less because it is mostly from non-gooderific states.)
But I'm sure everyone's conclusions are totally fucking right anyway...
The number I saw today that *was* truly interesting was from Michigan. Margin right now is 12K (down from 17k last night ...). 2012 (or it may have been average over several prior elections) hasd ~45K ballots with nothing marked for President. This year 110K. Now that there is an interesting data point.
Local news is reporting that some CA counties now have so many vote by mail ballots it's taking longer than ever to count. Ballots postmarked yesterday are still going to count if they're received on or before Monday. The rules say ballots count if properly postmarked and received within three working days after election day, and Friday is a holiday.
Also the polls were not as far off this year as people are claiming. Nationals were closer than in 2012 (bu tin that case it extended the winner's margin). States more suspect; a lot of them were close, but almost none in the 3 blue wall losses went negative (I think it was 110 out of 114 show HRC tied or winning).
Probably is some form of response bias.
221: California returns (and Unprocessed Ballots Status) can be tracked best on the SoS site. (They probably won't start showing unprocessed numbers until next week when they get them all in). The counties have *28* days to get them all counted... so check back in early December.
It occurred to me just now that due to the fact that a lot of neocons repudiated him in the primaries and even after, Trump may not have the usual neocon foreign policy apparatus in waiting that Republicans ordinarily have. We'll see who he appoints to Defence and State, but my fingers are crossed that it won't be neocons. Basically I'm holding out for petty vindictiveness on Trump's part.
This 538 article is a must read (maybe someone linked above) on the closeness of the election and how a 1 in 100 voter switch would have changed the map (Clinton win 307 to 221), and the likely commentary (which I think is probably pretty correct).
And it also shows how "almost no one switched" events like Comey can really fucking matter. (The dude now has a very negative place in history.)
Earlier today Nick Cohn estimated 7M votes to be counted.
Thanks Stormcrow. 47 had reassured me, but once I started seeing the turnout numbers everywhere I got confused.
225.last: Also see this.
Late leaners break in key states.
PA T 54 C 37
WI T 58 C 31
MI T 50 C 39
FL T 51 C 43
226: It really is a staggeringly large number.
I had already added 4M uncounted votes from CA and WA. But let's say you're right and there are 7M uncounted votes. And they break for Clinton 2:1. Then the total percent of voting population who voted for each candidate surges to ...
26.3% Clinton/25.3% Trump.
Trump's vote share is still nearly the same as GWB's 24.5% in 2000 and lower than Romney's 25.9% in 2016. And Clinton's vote share is exactly halfway between Gore's 24.8 in 2000 and Obama's 28% in 2012 and well behind his amazing 30.8% in 2008.
Turns out the voting ago population is a really big number too.
And just when I was thinking I had a handle on what was going on with turnout, JPS shows up to knock that down. Who the fuck knows what happened and whose fault it is. It's going to be a hard four years, though, and I am going to be leveraging my white male privilege to the max to make sure the less privileged don't get as fucked over as they might.
Local developments are actually a lot more promising than national ones, though. This is a huge step forward in addressing our budget crisis.
You could move to a red state with more electoral votes, teo.
My vote means more in a state with fewer.
It occurred to me just now that due to the fact that a lot of neocons repudiated him in the primaries and even after, Trump may not have the usual neocon foreign policy apparatus in waiting that Republicans ordinarily have. We'll see who he appoints to Defence and State, but my fingers are crossed that it won't be neocons.
John Bolton has been floated for State.
It's going to be all neocons. We're going to have a government that is antisemtic domestically and more pro-Israel than usual for a U.S. government.
I am kind of entertained that the KKK supported a man who, on the campaign trail, literally had a Jewish financier whispering in his ear every evening to help him sleep.
Quite literally, the main focus is doing things that liberals don't like because liberals don't like them. There isn't any other unifying factor possible.
I look forward to journalist's coverage of the reopening of the steel mines and the subsequent glory days for catering businesses in the Laurel Highlands.
There are no good jobs in the steel mines these days. They're all in the car foundries.
I picked that up from a local economics blogger. He was also pointing out the coal mines were very much not booming in 1987. Cheap natural gas was the most recent blow to PA coal employment, but mechanization and strip mining in states without environmental rules already cut employment well before I was born.
I suppose "steel mines" was supposed to be either "iron mines" or "steel mills". There were both there, but the irons mines must have played out early in this century. The steel mills were going until 1992, but the main collapse was done by the early 80s.
Anyway, if there's one thing Johnstown should be used it, it's suffering the consequences of rich fucks amusing themselves.
Blame racist white people all you want (they deserve a huge amount of blame), but at the end of the day I'm uninterested in any analysis of this election that doesn't wrestle with the fact that Trump did better among latinos than Romney did.
If it's true (I haven't seen the numbers), I blame Cubans and established immigrants figuring (probably correctly) that they are more likely to get the jobs of deported immigrants than the guys in central PA who voted Trump.
I'm uninterested in any analysis of this election that doesn't wrestle with the fact that Trump did better among latinos than Romney did.
Wrestling fans?
I also wonder about the influence of the supermarket tabloids -- I can't remember an election where they were so totally one-sided -- I was at Giant Eagle the day before the election and both the Globe and Enquirer had huge headlines proclaiming that Hillary was corrupt and a traitor.
Maybe we can trick them into printing something about Peter Theil?
Let's figure which countries took the mining and manufacturing jobs and invade. Decolonization was bad.
242: I don't know anything, this is pure speculation. But were Republican voter suppression tactics possibly much more effective than we thought they were going to be?
"Latinos" is a diffuse enough category that if there was very successful voter suppression aimed at the poorer, more recently immigrated, segment of the category, it's not surprising that the remainder (not that he's a Trump voter, but people who are Latino in the sense that Yglesias is. It's not wrong to call him Latino, but it'd be demographically unsurprising for him to vote like a white guy) looked more pro-Trump.
but it'd be demographically unsurprising for him to vote like a white guy
Except that the part of him that isn't Latino is Jewish.
(am I racist or what?)
Which, admittedly, brings him right back to voting like a Latino. But leaving Yglesias specifically to one side, you take my point in general.
Latins are not monolithic. I assume Cubans would been weighted toward Trump, Mexicans against, but I'm curious about Puerto Ricans. Puerto Rico has been undergoing an economic meltdown and I think a lot have moved to Florida recently. If a higher than expected proportion went for Trump it could have made the difference.
Among many interesting suggestions in that Politico article by Michael Lind:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-election-realignment-partisan-political-party-policy-democrats-republicans-politics-213909
Such as that the Democratic party was jettisoning its last ties to a traditional labor agenda, and would before too long be more pro-free-market than their opponents, was the long-term trend of Hispanics to identify as white. If that trend develops, he suggests, we will be a white majority country for the rest of the century.
Latins are not monolithic.
Ancient Britons are trilithic!
When organized labor was having one of its last gasps in Madison, Wisconsin, a few years back, Obama never showed up. And now he's likely to spend the lame duck session trying to push through TPP before the boom falls. Yet another reason it has come to this.
255: The idea that the Republican coalition is pro- Medicare and Social Security doesn't seem to match reality. Though it would make them more appealing if they did. . .
Side note, one thing I'm not looking forward to about the next decade is the increasing number of articles framed around the pundit's fallacy, "saying what I want them to say is the best way for politicians to win." Let me say, speaking only for myself, that I know nothing about winning elections. There are ideas I support that I would like politicians to support as well, but I have no idea if they are the key to building a political coalition.
My sister is disabled and in chronic pain and takes a cocktail of expensive medicine every day just to be able to handle being alive, and she's going to lose her health insurance. She's terrified the existing conditions clause will be repealed, and she'll be uninsurable even if she could afford to buy insurance. I think she can be ok, her husband can get a different job just for the health insurance, and worst case scenario they can sell their home and move in with his parents so they can afford some healthcare, but it makes me so angry I want to puke.
I'm concerned that I'm probably going to get diagnosed with a pre-existing condition tomorrow, and also I was really hoping to quit my job. But if ACA goes, independent consulting could be right out.
259 and 260: my guess is that the pre-existing condition protection won't go because of the filibuster. They'll use the Budget reconciliation process which will make it easy for them to drop subsidies. many more people will find insurance "unaffordable" under the law and will be exempt from the mandate. this will create a death spiral and premiums will soar to unsustainable prices. This was what happened in NY before the ACA. The law won't change but the market won't function.
Spike- MA would be an option. we've had community rating for a long time and high rates of insurance so there wasn't a big adverse selection problem. Maybe we'll bring back Rombeycare.
Just found out my schizophrenic god brother is suicidal. I'm trying to avoid despair, but it's so hard. :(
Oh, Lord, Buttercup. That's awful. I'm so sorry.
Oh, Lord, Buttercup. That's awful. I'm so sorry.
Thanks guys. I just talked to him, and he seems ok for now, but hard to tell.
I'm still laughing so hard about the steel mines and the car foundries. Giddiness has taken over.
259 and 260: my guess is that the pre-existing condition protection won't go because of the filibuster.
Nah, I think the filibuster is toast. I can see them taking the death spiral option, though.
Cry al you want. But NMM to Leonard Cohen.
Anybody here link this yet? Official and detailed
I also clearly haven't processed any of this emotionally and I'm not sure it will happen anytime soon. I feel strong emotions surging and I tense up and clamp them down, and they dissipate. I think lourdes found it mildly infuriating to deal with me calmly babbling about strategy and tactics and so on while he was shaking with rage on election night. It's going to hit me sometime, though. Or become an un-process-able trauma lasting a decade.
It's all just bitter defiance, though. These fuckers are not going to get tears out of me, not ever. See if I flinch or beg for mercy as they parade my world in front of me to be destroyed, etc. I'm a little surprised at how reflexive that has become.
SIXTH, a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for American elections
But it's OK for them to run a candidate's campaign?
In the wake of the election I have now several times violated my own longstanding principle against ever getting involved in political discussions on facebook. My emotions are so high that I just can't help myself. Such a terrible mistake. Always and every time a mistake.
I mostly don't discuss anything on Facebook, but it was hard to keep to that when my old high school superintendent put up a post hopeful that Trump would be an modern analog to the role Cyrus played in the Bible. Presumably he's a captive Jew in this analogy, not a Babylonian or a Greek or something.
4 Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah,
5 And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.
6 But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord.
[...]
10 And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king.
11 And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.
12 And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
13 And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
14 And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
15 And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.
16 And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
17 He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
18 And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.
19 Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;
20 That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.
21 And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the Lord.
22 And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king.
Honestly, what the fuck do you say to somebody who whose view of modern America is that Obama requiring employers to pay for birth control is the metaphorical equivalent of being physically disposed of a country? Or believes that people who voted for Trump and for the restoration of the death penalty on the same ballot were motivated by their deep commitment to Catholicism?
276 to 277, I guess. I may go back and post that there.
13 And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
"Make me a sammich!"
And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you
"your king which ye shall have chosen you" is a great construction. You did it, assholes! I'm going to say you again to make sure you know it's your own damned fault.
It's I Samuel viii, if you need the reference. One of my favourite passages from the Bible. What's the only sin that would make the Lord refuse even to hear your prayers? Not murder, not massacre, not blasphemy... it's electing some bomb-happy egotistical lunatic as your head of state.
I recall the passage. Very possibly the person I want to send it to assigned it to me at some point.
280: it is great. But I think it's "your king which ye shall have chosen [for] you[rselves]". As in "I went to the shop and I bought me a hat" = I bought a hat for myself.
Also, I literally CAN. NOT. HANDLE. the hyper-patriotic Veterans' day ceremony going on at my work right now. I have nothing against veterans; some of my best friends are vets, etc. But I just can't be asked to salute the goddamn flag and sing the national anthem and thunder in applause for our glorious military right now. I just can't do it.
Oh, thanks. Making it a closer parallel construction in first person, "my hat that I shall have bought me." And that would explain why they used "you" instead of "ye." Interesting that "bought" feels better without a preposition or reflexiveness for the indirect object than "chosen."
285: it's a known finding in empirical linguistics. Highly frequent verbs with stereotyped usage like e.g. "buy" generally sound more acceptable within more parsimonious syntactic frames than less frequent verbs do.
276, v.13,"confectionaries" s/b "confectioners"? I mean I'm sure the daughters of the Israelites were all sugar plums, but it seems a bit odd in context.
286: The great thing is that the more I think about this, experimenting with different verbs, the more it sounds reasonable to me with any verb, totally eliminating my ability to empirically self-examine in a normal context. Thanks, brain! Good job adapting. It's like how saying a word too many times makes it lose meaning, but in reverse.
288: yeah, that's an occupational hazard for linguists. You get to a point pretty quickly where your intuitions are misleading and you just have to ignore them and go by the data.
As far as occupational hazards go, it seems O.K. Certainly better than black lung.
I'm reminded of an interview with Russell Hoban in which he said that writing Riddley Walker permanently ruined his spelling. .
My spelling has noticeably gotten worse in the last two years. That might be due to autocorrect, but I'd like to believe that getting an intuition for Irish spelling has slightly broken my English spelling intuition.
Ha, yes. Íontughaíseán. Mostly it only gets me on unstressed vowels; I put i's and e's where they don't belong.
Judging by that example, Irish speakers seem to think they belong pretty much everywhere.
Pretty much. I just made that up, but I put it in this Irish TTS and it came out sounding more-or-less right.
Without proof, I believe that the information consonant of a vowel is almost zero. Much less than the presence of a fada/acute accent.