The Many Faces of US Politics...

[AZOffaly]

I think ye are putting too much weight on the popular vote. It's like a comfort blanket. Trump won, but he didn't win the popular vote.

My point is, it's irrelevant. The popular vote was never up for grabs, so it doesn't make it any better at all.

I'm not saying it is a comfort nor am I putting much weight on it. Trump will govern from the way out on the right regardless and there's nothing anyone can do about that for now.

I'm merely saying that Trump's win was very narrow and given that he lost the popular vote, he doesn't have much of a mandate and it wouldn't take much to swing things back. It was hardly a ringing endorsement from the people, in other words.

But, I don't see that making a difference. Just like it didn't with Bush.

Apologies J70, I might be mixing you up with other guys. I've seen this sentiment on facebook and in the media. The 'at least most of the country voted for Clinton, so we are not so bad'. It's another flavour of the 'only rednecks vote for Trump'. And I just believe it's irrelevant at best, and unhelpful at worst. I've seen petitions to change the electoral system, and we've all seen the protests by people who are not happy at the result.

If people focus on the electoral system, believing that an election fought on a national popular vote would have produced a different winner, then they are looking at the wrong problem. The problem is not that Trump won the electoral college, it's that their campaign was poorly run, and they never managed to find a logical connection with the people Trump was engaging with. Surely there's a saner approach to illegal immigration and the security situation than 'Build a Wall' and 'Send them all home'. That the Democrats never managed to get that message over is the biggest issue. Again, looking at demographics, more people in the 50k to 100k demographic voted for Trump than Clinton. That should frighten the Democrats.

[screenexile]

Did you need a dog to pet after President Trump got elected? Maybe a cup of coffee or some counselling after such an unfair Democratic election?

Send me your address and I will send you a participation trophy petal.

Very few Americans are happy right now, Trump needs to surround himself with centralists from both parties, people who can come together and get things done, he needs experienced, organized people and be needs to clean house at the dept of justice and FBI.

I literally have no idea what you are talking about... as you have noted previously it must be due to my unedudication!!

[Main Street]

i suppose the big surprise was that Hilary lost, but after that in essence there is not that much to choose between them.
Did anybody read (during election campaign)  those quotes from both candidates and try to figure out who said what? I got most wrong.

I don't think it matters much who got elected. Already we've seen Trump, Clinton and Ryan do a 180° flipflop in terms of what they had
been saying just days ago.
Democrat presidents are just a supportive of destructive capitalism as republican presidents are and just as warmongering. Perhaps republicans are that bit more strident.

The vast majority  (85%?) of election promises are broken. Obama promised to shut down Gitmo and  8 years later it's still there. Trump promised to build a wall on the border of Mexico, a wall that Mexico will pay for. I don't see that happening. The Republicans have long wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and now it is pretty certain that they will make some changes. But those changes are not likely to be as radical as some may fear.

Probably there will be more polarization with Trump as president,  more scope for radical social  protest, social change.

[Declan]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tobias-stone/history-tells-us-what-will-brexit-trump_b_11179774.html

Historical review?

[Gmac]

I think ye are putting too much weight on the popular vote. It's like a comfort blanket. Trump won, but he didn't win the popular vote.

My point is, it's irrelevant. The popular vote was never up for grabs, so it doesn't make it any better at all.

I'm not saying it is a comfort nor am I putting much weight on it. Trump will govern from the way out on the right regardless and there's nothing anyone can do about that for now.

I'm merely saying that Trump's win was very narrow and given that he lost the popular vote, he doesn't have much of a mandate and it wouldn't take much to swing things back. It was hardly a ringing endorsement from the people, in other words.

But, I don't see that making a difference. Just like it didn't with Bush.

Apologies J70, I might be mixing you up with other guys. I've seen this sentiment on facebook and in the media. The 'at least most of the country voted for Clinton, so we are not so bad'. It's another flavour of the 'only rednecks vote for Trump'. And I just believe it's irrelevant at best, and unhelpful at worst. I've seen petitions to change the electoral system, and we've all seen the protests by people who are not happy at the result.

If people focus on the electoral system, believing that an election fought on a national popular vote would have produced a different winner, then they are looking at the wrong problem. The problem is not that Trump won the electoral college, it's that their campaign was poorly run, and they never managed to find a logical connection with the people Trump was engaging with. Surely there's a saner approach to illegal immigration and the security situation than 'Build a Wall' and 'Send them all home'. That the Democrats never managed to get that message over is the biggest issue. Again, looking at demographics, more people in the 50k to 100k demographic voted for Trump than Clinton. That should frighten the Democrats.

i think Hillary is up 1/2 million votes nationwide but over 2 million of that is in California which is so far left and has a huge Latino population plus she got 55 for that state , trump has 290 right now and will end up with more ,he kicked her ass big time plus the dems lost both houses and really it's a rejection of the direction the country is going in imore than anything else

[Declan]

Wayne Barrett, Who Wrote the Book on Trump, Is Still Reporting
By Jennifer Gonnerman , November 10, 2016

At 10:30 on Wednesday morning, the investigative reporter Wayne Barrett, who is seventy-one years old, sat propped up in bed, covers pulled up to his chin, a green-eyed cat curled up beside him. An oxygen tank stood at the foot of his bed; his pillbox was nearby. On the television in the corner, Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump's campaign manager, was gloating about her candidate's victory in the Presidential election.

There may be no journalist in the nation who knows more about Trump than Barrett. He started writing about him at the Village Voice in the late seventies, when Trump was a young real-estate developer, and published a book about him, "Trump: The Deals and the Downfalls," in 1991. The book investigated Trump's career to that point, including his company's record of racial bias in choosing tenants for its buildings.

During the campaign, more than sixty journalists made the trip to Barrett's house, in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood of Brooklyn, to talk to him about the candidate. (Jane Mayer spoke to him for her profile of Tony Schwartz, Trump's ghostwriter for "The Art of the Deal.") The lucky ones got a chance to go down to the basement and dig into his cartons of Trump documents. In the final months of the campaign, as Rudy Giuliani became Trump's most visible surrogate, reporters were calling Barrett with Giuliani questions, too, because he'd written two books on him as well. The morning after the election, journalists were still calling: a radio host interviewed him on air, a Washington Post reporter wanted to talk. But their sense of urgency had faded. In seventy-three days, Trump would be sworn in as the next President of the United States.

I've known Barrett for many years—we were colleagues at the Voice—and I still remember the days when he would lean over his desk, hollering into the phone at bureaucrats who refused to hand over public documents. When I visited him on Wednesday, he never left his bed. He was still fiery, but sombre. "Donald just has no interest in information. He has no genuine interest in policy. He operates by impulse. And I don't see any of that changing," he said. "Why would you change it? You got to be President of the United States. This personality has prospered in two universes now—business and politics—without discipline. Why would you acquire it at seventy?"

He had heard the talk that Giuliani would become the next Attorney General, but he was not convinced that the former mayor, who served as Associate Attorney General in the Reagan Administration, would want the job. "He's been No. 3 in the Justice Department—he's been at that level already. It could fuel the desire to be No. 1, but it's just as likely that he'll want to be chief of staff in the White House and extend himself a bit," he said. Barrett could also imagine a scenario in which Giuliani remained at Greenberg Traurig, the law firm where he now works. "With a Trump White House, Greenberg could become the No. 1 lobbying firm in the United States, and Rudy could make tens of millions of dollars," he said.

These days, Barrett is still doing his own reporting, even though he is largely confined to his bed. When I visited him, he had a telephone, a laptop, a copy of the Times, and two remote controls beside him. He has interstitial lung disease, and he used to go to rehabilitation twice a week, but he collapsed at rehab in February and hasn't been back. "By then I was so deep in Trumpland, I kept putting it off," he said. "And, of course, the longer you put it off, the worst you get." At the start of the campaign, he could walk from his bedroom to the front door several times each day. Now crossing the first floor leaves him breathless. That morning, his wife had made lunch for him before she went to work, leaving it on his bed in a backpack.

Hillary Clinton appeared on television to give her concession speech. He reached for a remote to turn up the volume; the sound of applause filled the bedroom. "This is her farewell," he said. "She'll speak on women's issues every once in a while, but she's going to just disappear into the sunset." He listened closely. "Donald Trump is going to be our President. We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead," Clinton said. Barrett's lips pressed into a frown. "Never stop believing that fighting for what is right is worth it," she added.

As Clinton finished her speech, he turned down the sound. "I don't know what she means by 'open mind,' " he said. "I don't know how you can look at the guy with an open mind and ignore everything he's said and done up until now. You don't look at him with an open mind; you look at him with all the information you can assemble, and you try to get him to not do the terrible things he promised."

Barrett's own strategy was to keep reporting. In the week before the election, he published two stories on the Daily Beast. The most recent one revealed that a pro-Trump super PAC, backed by the billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, had been making payments to Giuliani's law firm. Barrett had been working on two other stories, too, but had been too sick to finish them by Tuesday. One was an investigation into Trump's eldest daughter and her husband—"I did a tremendous amount of work on Ivanka and Jared," he said—and he was hopeful that he would be able to publish it soon. For the weeks ahead, his plan was to keep on working, to keep scribbling notes on a reporter's pad while making phone calls from his bed.

[whitey]

I stopped into my local coffee shop this morning on my way home from the gym

Had a nice chat with the owner about the election (he's a conservative like me)

Seeming quite a few  of the teenagers from the local prep school (14-18 yr olds) were crying their eyes out and consoling each other on Wednesday morning. 

Their parents pay $50k a year to send them there and this is what theyre turning out....fvckin nanny pambies......I'd be looking point for a refund if I was them.

God bless them the poor crathurs, their feelings have been hurt.  There's want a good week in a he bog to harden them up....and a good kick up the hole too

[Keyser soze]

I stopped into my local coffee shop this morning on my way home from the gym

Had a nice chat with the owner about the election (he's a conservative like me)

Seeming quite a few  of the teenagers from the local prep school (14-18 yr olds) were crying their eyes out and consoling each other on Wednesday morning. 

Their parents pay $50k a year to send them there and this is what theyre turning out....fvckin nanny pambies......I'd be looking point for a refund if I was them.

God bless them the poor crathurs, their feelings have been hurt.  There's want a good week in a he bog to harden them up....and a good kick up the hole too

For some reason this conjured up a mental picture of Zed and the other guy in the shop in Pulp Fiction.

[heganboy]

there are less than 30 high schools in the US at 50k pa. Majority of those are boarding.

They may be namby pamby but they will make up the 1 per cent very soon with about 80% of them likley to hold advanced degress (90%  if Whitey lives in New Hampshire Vermont or Delaware). And there in lies the rub.

The future is changing, Bernie's equality story resonated with the very rich and the very poor.

What is going to be interesting is whether anyone can come to the people of the US with a plan for equality of access to opportunity. The GI bill and the new deal allowed the middle class of america to shine, and created the actuality (not promise) of a fair days pay for a fair days work.

The infrastructure play is one of those opportunities. 

[whitey]

Just double checked their website-$49,400 tuition, room and board  (it is a boarding school)

These are the children of the people who now fund and run the Democratic Party

Hard to the think that (at least this cycle) the Republicans have become the party of working people

I view the Democrats as similar to the Labour Party where the elites has lost their ouch with their base

[stew]

Did you need a dog to pet after President Trump got elected? Maybe a cup of coffee or some counselling after such an unfair Democratic election?

Send me your address and I will send you a participation trophy petal.

Very few Americans are happy right now, Trump needs to surround himself with centralists from both parties, people who can come together and get things done, he needs experienced, organized people and be needs to clean house at the dept of justice and FBI.

I literally have no idea what you are talking about... as you have noted previously it must be due to my unedudication!!

I deleted this part of the post, it was aimed at the wrong man, I apologies for that, as for uneducation, you do sarcasm at all? )

[Franko]

Just double checked their website-$49,400 tuition, room and board  (it is a boarding school)

These are the children of the people who now fund and run the Democratic Party

Hard to the think that (at least this cycle) the Republicans have become the party of working people

I view the Democrats as similar to the Labour Party where the elites has lost their ouch with their base

I find myself agreeing here... Hillary and the Democrats = Blair and New Labour.  And we saw how New Labour ended up.

[foxcommander]

Obama put his legacy on the line here, he stated it was and yet the people rejected it, why?

Liberals, do you have the intestinal fortitude to ask were it all went wrong?

By the way, eat as much pizza as you want, cuddle puppies as much as you want but the fact remains America is sick of your shit!!!

True story.

It went wrong because a flawed, status quo candidate was beaten, in the electoral college, by a demagogue playing to the basest instincts and manipulating the fears of a lot of scared, frustrated and misguided people.

It's happened many times before in history. Why would the US be immune?

Trump lost the popular vote. More people wanted Hillary. He would be well advised to heed that. He won't, though.

J70
You might say that Trump played to basest instincts but do you not think that the policies of Obama and Hillary are also to blame for the result? The pandering to minorities (including siding with BLM over the police) and blatant policies like affirmative action would make anyone scared for their own futures. If you ever lost a job due to affirmative action you'd understand this.

A case in point is the Grads of life 'initiative' put forward by Hillary during her campaign. Don't have an education ? Don't bother. Just turn up and tell an employer you have life experience and you'll get a job. It's like a silent affirmitive action plan.

What sort of message does that send across to middle america who break their back earn money to send kids to school, see them spent years studying and then and watch them being looked over again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx55C2zc8OE

[Denn Forever]

i think the Dem party threw it away. Hilary and Sanders were poling similar figures until the Super Delegates got involved. Hilary was the safe bet and she deserved to picked.  Sanders may have lost anyway (being a socialist)  but he connect with people better than Hilary.

Hope that Trump achieves all he's promised but he  will have to contend with the establishment all over again (senate and congress) and I don't imagine he'll be able to bully them.

[seafoid]

i think the Dem party threw it away. Hilary and Sanders were poling similar figures until the Super Delegates got involved. Hilary was the safe bet and she deserved to picked.  Sanders may have lost anyway (being a socialist)  but he connect with people better than Hilary.

Hope that Trump achieves all he's promised but he  will have to contend with the establishment all over again (senate and congress) and I don't imagine he'll be able to bully them.

Trump resorted to misogyny, antisemitism , racism and hatred to get the vote in. Plus all the lies. The GOP didn't play fair