Contrast her making her candidacy a Feminist (and by absurd extrapolation LGBTQ and diversity) issue with Obama's campaign. Yes, everybody felt good about having elected a black president when it was over but he didn't offer "black cards" for download on his website and show grandiose self-promoting videos about the Black Man's Struggle.
A large part of Hillary's campaign (both officially and via her supporters on social media) was actively shaming people into voting for "the woman" instead of "the bigot". Unsurprisingly that seems to have backfired, leaving many liberals flabbergasted how "Women for Trump" was ever a thing.
I would have been upset with either candidate winning but the entire candidacy showed the worst side of American election cycles: mudslinging, character assassination and trying to convince everyone the other guy is literally the devil. Trump's accusations of Clinton being "a liar" and "a criminal" (IOW a typical career politician) were pretty harmless compared to the hyperbole (deserved or not) hauled at him.
Agreed. Ideas are only as strong as the arguments defending them, and the problem with feminism as identity politics is that it takes a bunch of unconnected ideas and packages them in such a way that if you attack the ideas then you're attacking women. This makes it so that bad ideas and bad arguments don't get weeded out and just keep getting repeated.
For whatever barriers Clinton faced due to her gender, she also wasn't held accountable early enough for a lot of legitimately bad things that she's done, which came back to hurt her in the end.
> Trump's accusations of Clinton being "a liar" and "a criminal" (IOW a typical career politician) were pretty harmless compared to the hyperbole (deserved or not) hauled at him
I'm sorry but that makes no sense to me. Now maybe it's my liberal tendencies talking but the things that have come out of his mouth are flat out dangerous for a person who has that much power (now). Not much of it was hyperbole because it didn't have to be. He was already after foreigners, women, "the washington elite", the internet etc. before any of the media got involved. He was addicted to the cycle coverage but he still said all of those things and you can't wish that away.
I'm not defending either candidate here. I have no skin in this game (and besides, it's all decided now anyway).
But I've never before seen a candidate -- and especially that candidate's supporters -- be so viciously attacked as Trump was in this election campaign. I know certain liberal groups think "tone policing" is fallacious but I don't agree with this and neither do half of the American voters apparently (please excuse the tired phrase).
Throughout this campaign I've seen HRC supporters lump in abstainees and third party voters with Trump supporters in a way that only reminds me of George W Bush's "with us or against us" rhetoric. I've seen HRC supporters sever ties with family members who announced they would vote for Trump. I've seen them shame and ridicule anyone saying they would do anything other than vote for HRC. I've even seen them call for boycotts of companies run by alleged Trump supporters.
It's not that Trump isn't a disagreeable character, its that he has been singled out and denounced with every imaginable slur and every single accusation levelled at him was taken at face value.
I know this is not solely the work of Clinton's campaign and that the election unfortunately coincided with the BLM movement, various Islamist attacks in the West (including the massacre in Orlando) and the peak of SJW conflicts at American universities but this was a despicable crapshoot and you know it.
I think the personal attacks on Clinton were far, far worse: 'crooked Hillary', 'such a nasty woman', 'lock her up' (or 'hang that bitch' from the Trump supporters) without any due process, attacking her for her husbands infidelities, Comey sends an ambiguously worded letter to congress and it becomes 'she will surely be prosecuted', she is 'rigging the election',...
If a family member said the things Trump has said, our relationship would be very strained.
If a company's CEO or owner said the things Trump has said, I would call for boycotting the company until that person no longer ran it.
That has nothing to do with the Democratic party, nor his running for president (I'm not even allowed to vote): It's because Trump's ideas are today's equivalent to being opposed to interracial marriage back then.
In politics, as in real life, it is important to judge people on what they do not what they say.
While Clinton mastered the "experienced, competent" persona, what she actually did was mostly driven by her ambition to become the first female president.
Trump, who has been accused of being a bigot, has always been very liberal towards LGBT (see his interview for Rolling Stone from a few years ago), while Hillary had been strongly against gay marriage until it became very clear public opinion changed in favor of it.
How can one be liberal towards LGBT folks while picking Pence as a running mate?
I can see him being apathetic towards them: if they get married, that's not my problem, but if they get "conversion therapy," that's also not my problem.
Now, I'm not sure that bigotry is the right word for that. But it is something at least as monstrous.
(Also, as a tangent: let's please not confuse gay marriage with "LGBT" as a whole. Trump has come down firmly on the evangelicals' side about trans people and bathrooms. If we mean "LGB" or "gay marriage", we should say what we mean.)
Yes, Pence's position is unfortunate, but he was brought in to please the religious supporters.
I believe Trump's administration will focus on pressing trade/economics and foreign policy issues, not bathroom identification issues, which affect 0.3% of the population.
To people disappointed with his victory, the consoling fact should be that Trump is not a religious nut. Yes, he said things about Supreme Court/abortion - as a Republican, you have to, to win the primaries.
Well, one would have hoped that the federal government would have stepped in and voided the laws being made by religious nuts at the state/local level. Obama was trying to do that. It seems exceedingly unlikely that Trump will continue trying to do that.
Also, while these issues directly affect 0.3% of the population, it is a subset of the 99.7% of the population that's calling for these bills. Perhaps enough of a subset that he'll continue wanting to please the religious supporters.
Yes, I remember that. I would not have called 2004 Obama liberal on LGBT issues.
Also, and maybe I'm missing something because I'm not personally affected by this, but I think there's quite a difference between telling two adults they can't get married, and telling a child that they're going to be miserable and flawed their whole life if they don't figure out how to be straight, and we'll give you electric shocks to condition you out of being gay.
Or between telling two adults they can't get married, and telling an adult they can't use the bathroom. (Which is the effective result of the bathroom bills: a trans person is legally unwelcome in one restroom and socially unwelcome, to the point of causing legal trouble until a judge looks at their birth certificate, in another.) I would much prefer never to be able to get legally married than never to be able to use a public restroom.
There are plenty of anti-gay-marriage people, even evangelicals, who don't support "conversion therapy" and who don't believe that government should be regulating which bathroom you're using. I would be very willing to call someone liberal on LGBT issues despite picking, say, Obama of 2004 as their running mate.
Not to specifically defend the people you mentioned, but democracy really is twisted that way.
People associate "democracy" with "fairness". With "representation". They associate it with "everybody's voice is heard". When 40+% of the people vote for something, and that something doesn't come through, that's 40+% of the voices being ignored. Don't disregard those simply because they didn't break the 51% barrier.
We can also agree that Trump played the entire electorate. He strategically chose to run as republican, he played the media like puppets to have a free platform to shout from, etc. Those things don't feel fair.
In fact, the entire election really seemed to be a pissing context at times. People also associate democracy with "elevated discourse" and I don't think anyone can claim this happened.
And of course, the US democratic system is really poor compared to other countries (France has one of the best, by comparison: two round voting and none of that electoral college nonsense). But that's another topic.
To me, this is the advantage of a Republic (which is what the US federal gov't really is). It can have some of the same issues of the tyranny of the majority, but ultimately you have a human being in charge who needs to listen to what others say. If we simply voted on every issue at hand it would quickly devolve into emotional appeals for everything, rather than letting a representative listen to expert opinion on the consequences of a decision.
If you can run a Republic with little hatred and division, a nifty opportunity opens up if the nomination process proposes wise and respectable candidates. For example I dislike Obamas ideas but I can respect the guy as someone who's not a crook and has a solid brain on his head and a bit of wisdom. So if the guy who agrees with me wins, I'm chill because we have a comfy echo chamber. If the other guy wins I'm a little bummed but I'm still chill because the have a who's wrong about some things, but wise enough to keep us out of complete disaster.
That's the tragedy of not running Bernie. He's respectable and wise and no crook. I voted for Trump and I'm glad he won, but if Bernie won, I'd be chill enough till next time.
Sort of like mate selection, where kids childishly try to find an appropriate gender photocopy of themselves, whereas once you're over a certain age, its more important to find a mate who's wise. Its OK if my wife likes my hobbies when we were young, but now that we're old its OK if she doesn't, because we respect each other and think each other are wise enough that it'll be OK.
This time around I don't think the right could trust Hillary so it was win at all costs. Meanwhile we "have to" social signal the opposite, but the left pretty much trusts Trump because lets face it, if you think he's an idiot or lunatic, make sure you mention your billion dollar self made net worth first to even qualify... lets face it, a guy who's worked successfully side by side with corporations and banks and unions and politicians for decades resulting in a billion bucks can certainly navigate a giant complex country pretty darn well; he's proven over a couple decades that he's wise enough that its gonna be OK, even if you disagree with everything he believes in and everything he's ever said. So I simply don't think the left wanted it as bad as the right.
It fundamentally comes down to you've got one candidate that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to New York, which is pretty darn cool, and another that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Benghazi, ... so obviously one side is a little more motivated than the other.
This comment started off well and went off the rails pretty quickly. My main point is that whoever wins regardless of your party affiliation, there's a real person in charge and we aren't subject to the will of the majority.
It fundamentally comes down to you've got one candidate that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to New York, which is pretty darn cool, and another that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Benghazi, ...
You are grossly misrepresenting the facts and policies of both candidates. It's hard to take any of the rest of your post seriously when it closes with that paragraph.
First of all, how do you know his net worth? Are you taking his word for it? He said that his net worth fluctuates “with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings” [1]. Any accountant will tell you that a person's net worth does not fluctuate with the feelings of that person.
Unfortunately, we will probably never know, because he hasn't released his tax returns (which would at least have given us a partial picture).
The Economist tried to compare his financial performance with the S&P 500 [2] and is not impressed: on the longest timeframe (since 1986) he grossly underperforms the S&P 500.
Then there is the question of how he got his money. He seems to have left a long string of investors, banks, suppliers and partners that he essentially conned [3]. In the latter part of his carreer no American bank wanted to do business with him anymore (one of the reasons he switched to licensing his name instead of developing projects himself).
Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet's partner at Berkshire Hathaway, a staunch republican and a man of brilliant insights who knows a thing or two about business (he made his fortune by evaluating companies and their management) says this about Trump [4]: "Do I consider Donald Trump an ideal decision maker or manager of anything? And the answer is no. The last person almost I'd want as the president of the US".
If you voted for this man because of his business acumen, I'm afraid you are the latest in a long line of people he successfully conned.
People associate "democracy" with "fairness". With
"representation". They associate it with "everybody's
voice is heard".
Which is really a matter of perspective. The people claiming that "democracy is dead" would be crowing about the "power of the people" if they were in the 51% and not the 49%.
Fairness doesn't mean "I get my way". And unfortunately, it's binary. Your candidate wins or loses. A loss feels like being ignored, not representation of your 49%.
That's a feature of specific choices about the electoral system and system for government. One'such which are not universal among modern democracies and which empirically lead to lower satisfaction with government and less effectively representative government.
To which we have to look at ourselves. We continue to set ourselves up for these binary choices. Where are the moderates that appeal to 80% of the population, not 40% at each extreme?
Part of this is due to the fact, I think, that Hillary won the popular vote. In fact, the Dems have won the popular vote 3 elections in a row, and 4 of the last 5. But they only have Obama's 2 terms to show for it.
My guess is that is where some of the "broken democracy" language comes from.
A difference of 0.2% (around 250k votes) in popular vote is not conclusive.
If USA chose the president by popular vote, the campaigns would have been run differently, and some people especially in "sure" states could have had different voting behavior.
I do agree that the US Electoral College system feels obsolete and should be modernized.
Democracy is not just voting (which the US is doing badly at, given it's system).
It's also respect for the rule of law (Rechtsstaat), democratic processes, democratic institutions, respect for minorities, women, separation of church and state, accepting dissent, and a pluralism of opinions.
Trump is not very good at these.
And the voting itself may become an issue in itself - now with total control by Republicans, they can increase the voter suppression to keep old white men in power for a couple more decades.
The "RIP Democracy" bit is maybe a bit dramatic, but the concern for the already weak democracy is very real.
This election results, the way I see it, is a big middle finger to the political establishment. Again, this has happened in my own country's capital citiy's election, an outsider won majority. If he does anything +ve is not the question, politicians need to stop acting as the elite, that's the underlying problem.
Well, let's not forget that Hillary won the popular vote and lost the electoral college. More Americans wanted Hillary than Trump. And given all the flaws with the electoral college that are well documented (and the overwhelming majority of Americans that want to abolish the system), it's hard not to feel slighted. Especially when this happened before in 2000 and it appears it will continue to happen.
> What I find truly amazing is how people say "RIP Democracy" (not all of them), when it were the people of the US who elected Trump, didn't they?
The plurality winner of the popular vote was Hillary Clinton; Trump's victory is directly dependent on the ways America's Presidential election system defies democracy.
If the majority of your electorate allow themselves to be manipulated by a blatant demagogue; whose stated policy goals are clearly ruinous; who blatantly disrespects women, veterans, and non-whites; and who not-so-subtley advocates violence against his political opponents...
...then yes, your democracy might as well be dead.
There are emotional and rational ways to make any particular argument. She just chose to focus on arguments that only her staffers care about, rather than appealing to the (obviously) very real populist energy and anger.
Facts do matter, and I think it's disingenuous to really argue that they don't, even to the American electorate. I think the overriding truth is that politics is about engagement, and it's a battle - just because you have the 'right' ideas doesn't mean you will win. You need to engage, encourage, and motivate people to vote for you - which the Clinton campaign could not do.
Obviously. I think the point being made though is that they seem to matter less than many people thought. Trump ran a campaign that was light on facts, and in many cases used misinformation in lieu of facts. The fact that this is less important than what, if it's true, amounts to a very slight level of corruption in the other candidate (I'm unsure why I should have considered the idea that money given to a charity would get you semi-favorable treatment with regard to an audience as the horrible thing it was presented as) is something I find upsetting.
I understand that people are upset with their governance, but the only thing that comes to mind when I think of this situation is "to cut off your nose to spite your face."
So? It's not like she's taking it out to buy herself houses and cars? At most, I think you could make a case that she's used the profile of the charity to boost her political career. If that's the case, and the charity gets income that it spends on worthy causes and she gets clout, well that's not the best outcome, but it's sure far from the worst.
> 2. charity or "charity"? - valid question, given large percentage of its income is spent on overhead
I'm fairly sure this has been thoroughly debunked. The amount of income to that charity that goes to overhead is average by all accounts I've seen that are reputable[1]. I've looked, because this has come up before. If you have a source that says otherwise that is not some random blog that references some other random blog[2], I would be happy to read it.
2: I'm way too tired of debunking what people consider a valid source once they've decided that all the mainstream media is biased and untrustworthy. It's hard to tell whether in some cases the errors are due to incompetence, negligence or with purpose. Undoubtedly a useful feature to some.
I realise it's probably too late to correct facts, and it doesn't seem to matter much anyway, but a large percentage of the charity donations did not go on overhead. They operation was very highly rated by charity watchdogs.
The soundbite you often hear is about X% spent on salaries and only Y% donated to charity. Which is true, but misleading because the Foundation actually pays people to administer medicine. It's not the type of charity that just hands the money to other groups.
How do you figure 2. ? The foundation's 990 and audited financials[1] show ~90% of FY2104 revenues ($217mm) going to program services, with the majority of that ($143mm) going to provide healthcare overseas via [2], and the rest disbursed over a collection of other programs.
> Facts do matter, and I think it's disingenuous to really argue that they don't, even to the American electorate.
Facts matter, but emotion matters more. Foe example, some Trump supporters believe that parts of the US are now governed by Sharia law. The fact is wrong, but the underlying fear and racism is real and so much more powerful. The fact doesn't really matter.
> This campaign was all about emotion, not rationality.
Keep thinking that and you'll lose the next election as well. Amongst Trump supporters I know it was about jobs, the economy, the wars and a feeling that politicians no longer represented them.
I have no doubt there are some Trump supporters who are racist and sexist, but that doesn't win you the middle swing states and the rust belt (especially those states that voted Obama but went against Clinton)
> Amongst Trump supporters I know it was about jobs, the economy
Aren't unemployment and the economy doing better now than 8 years ago? My impression is Trump just fueled the emotion of pessimism (things are awful, they were great before), without neither the facts to back it (because he didn't care) nor a plan beyond the old "the more you cut taxes, the better the economy".
Even for the people that think the economy is important enough that the racism and sexism should be ignored, that's still playing to their emotion.
I couldn't disagree more. This campaign was all about emotion, not rationality. Apparently facts don't matter and that's very hard to deal with.