Plan B Forum

But my heart hurts even more.

Don't call, I'm not answering.

I wonder if this is how German Jews felt after the election of 1933?

Oh please. Comparing disappointed Democrats to Jews in Germany? Get over it

I'm not happy with the result of this election but at the same time... this is a democratic republic so quit with the whining and understand this result for what it is. A very widespread feeling among so many of having lost "our" country to outsiders, liberals and political correctness. You get counter-revolution, right?

Yes, the house is dirty so let's burn it down. Stupid fuckers.

Meade for once just give us some room to grieve in peace, would you please?! Maybe it doesn't bother you because you're an old white guy who has lived a lifetime with that privilege, but some of us are rightly HORRIFIED that a person who has spewed and stoked hatred racism xenophobia and misogyny now rules this country, and one party rules everything for the first time ever. That's fucking scary.

And no, it's NOT unlike Hitler's rise to power. So STFU, ok? Shit somewhere else for the moment. PLEASE.

quit living as a victim, bsg....

it has become tiresome.

and it is unhealthy for you and our nation.

Meade - Have you not been paying attention to the very many very dangerous very un-American actions Trump has promised to take as soon as he becomes President? For over a year people have been underestimating his capabilities and laughing at his faults. When Nixon was elected, and especially when he was re-elected, I was disappointed. When George W. Bush was elected, and especially when he was re-elected, I was disappointed. This time I'm scared--not so much for myself (I am, after all, an older white straight male) but for my country, and for my daughters.

Notice I specified 1933, not later. To put it another way: Was there some point when people stopped laughing at the wildly gesticulating loudmouth with the funny mustache and began to take him seriously? Was there some point when people realized that the country they had been living in was not the country they thought they had been living in, and that their fellow citizens were not the sort of people they had thought they had been living with?

BoSoxGal wrote:Yes, the house is dirty so let's burn it down. Stupid fuckers.

This accurately describes exactly what happened. This result does not bode well for the USA of the world. The nuclear codes will be in the tiny hands of a man who can't be trusted with a twitter account. Brilliant choice half of America!

MajGenl.Meade wrote:I'm not happy with the result of this election but at the same time...

Maybe it doesn't bother you because you're an old white guy who has lived a lifetime with that privilege, but some of us are rightly HORRIFIED that a person who has spewed and stoked hatred racism xenophobia and misogyny now rules this country, and one party rules everything for the first time ever.

Some part of my non-happiness that you don't comprehend? I voted for the old white woman who has been privileged out the wazoo and is nothing more than a (very rich) corporate lackey.

People aren't going to agree with me with this, and it IS all opinion. I have no facts or numbers to back this up, and it's too late at night for me to put references to it so here goes.

The biggest mistake the Democrats made was to let the Democratic Party Establishment choose the candidate.

In 2000, the Democrats ran a candidate who had basically been groomed for 8 years to become the next president- and lost.

In 2008, the Democrats "establishment" candidate lost in the primaries to a Senator that was not particularly well known outside of Washington or his home State, and that Senator managed to win the White House. The Republicans fought a 3-way battle, eventually choosing the more establishment (but loose cannon) candidate over the more popular (outside of the Party elite) candidate of Ron Paul and ended up losing.

In 2012, the Republicans put an "establishment" candidate in against a President who has dismal approval ratings... and lost.

In 2016, the Democrats put up their "establishment" candidate, who had been basically groomed for the Presidency ever since she lost the nomination in 2008, over the far more popular (among Liberal-leaning but not party diehards) candidate of Bernie Sanders. And they lost- to the Republican Candidate that the Republican Party leaders didn't want. Trump was nominated because the fringe elements of the Republican Party outnumbered the party elite, and was elected because he was seen as an outsider, not a Party elitist. While the liberal but not staunch Democrat "independents" were still mourning Bernie's loss in the nominations, and either decided not to vote or voted for Stein, the Republicans for the most part held their noses and put up a big "hell no to Hillary" campaign that worked.

I voted for Hillary. While I thought she carried way too much baggage, I also thought she was the only qualified candidate. I wouldn't have voted for Trump under any imaginable circumstance, because I think he is a despicable human being. But I also understand WHY some folks voted for him. They might not be good reasons in my mind, but they are reasons and those same folks wonder how I could have possibly voted for Hillary. I live in an extremely Liberal-leaning State, but about half of my friends are quite conservative and were very vocal in their distaste for Hillary, but in most of their cases they are simply anti-Democrat Republicans (they call themselves independent, but they bleed Red). They didn't particularly like Trump, but they were going to vote for whoever had the "R" by his name. I have liberal friends that vote the same way- doesn't matter the candidate, just whoever has the "D" by their name. The only time these folks ever have to make a choice is when 2 from the same party make the general election (happens more than you'd think here in Washington).

So I am saddened, disappointed, and maybe a little fearful at the outcome of this election. Perhaps I have a bit of a sadistic curiosity on seeing how this will actually play out- I didn't want this, but now we have to live it. I could hope that the Republican establishment will reign him in, but this is the same Republican establishment that believes in people having as much freedom as they can pay for. A Republican party whose "small government" mantra also includes forcing their ethical/moral code on others, even if they don't particularly follow it themselves.

My most fervent hope right now is that somehow, in some way, late or absentee ballots (military ballots, for example, from soldiers serving overseas) reverse the seemingly inevitable outcome.

However, should Trump actually become the occupant of the Oval Office, I also hope that no one decides to try to overturn the results of the ballot with a bullet or two.  The absolutely *LAST* thing we need is for some misguided moron to turn this racist, bigoted, xenophobic, misogynistic, and incompetent sunuvabitch into a political martyr.

-"BB"-

MY PRESIDENT, Donald J. Trump.

"He bombed the SHIT out of 'er!" America is angry. Let the exposé begin.

Oh, and God bless America.

Before anyone tells you that this is the result of some great voter "uprising", it's worth pointing out that at the moment, (more votes are being counted , so perhaps he'll wind up slightly ahead) Trump trails Mitt Romney's 2012 in the popular vote by two million votes...

Here's the final popular vote from 2012:

Obama: 65,915,795 Romney: 60,933,504

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... tion,_2012

Here's the current popular vote count for Clinton and Trump (this link updates the vote in real time as it continues to come in)

Clinton: 58,879,610 Trump: 58,844,024

http://www.cbsnews.com/elections/2016/election-center/

You'll notice that at the moment Hillary has a tiny 35,000 vote lead, (which could change) but the number that really jumps out is that she has run about seven million votes behind Obama's total in 2012....

So the real story of this election isn't about how Trump motivated legions of new people to come to the polls; it's about how the collapse in Democratic turnout enabled him to win despite getting fewer votes then Romney...

And this despite the most extensive and sophisticated get-out-the-vote effort in the history of American politics...

If "only" three or four million fewer voters had shown up for Clinton than did for Obama in 2012, she would have won...

But seven million (even with Trump running two million behind Romney) was simply too much to be overcome when you break it down state by state...

The inescapable conclusion based on the numbers is that the real reason Trump won the election is because a huge chunk of the Obama Coalition failed to show up for Hillary Clinton; not because Trump tapped into some massive "movement"....

Despite what he and his supporters will claim....

The Republican hate machine wins again.


Thanks, Republicans.


Yrs,
Rubato

Bless you LJ, you are exactly right, and that helps. I'm stealing this and sharing it with my friends.

I agree, good point, LJ. There are several key reasons for the election results, and much of it has to do with choices and actions by the D-side.

Not so fast Long Run. Don't forget -- as one of my friends pointed out this morning -- the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 is probably responsible for a lot of that loss of turnout. Millions of people have been disenfranchised, in places like North Carolina and Ohio, and other key states. And THAT piece of work is laid squarely at the feet of the Republican Party.

Guinevere wrote:Not so fast Long Run. Don't forget -- as one of my friends pointed out this morning -- the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 is probably responsible for a lot of that loss of turnout. Millions of people have been disenfranchised, in places like North Carolina and Ohio, and other key states. And THAT piece of work is laid squarely at the feet of the Republican Party.

The third parties also have to accept some of the responsibility as well.  According to reports, the Libertarians and the Greens garnered 5% of the vote in Wisconsin:

• Donald Trump (R) .........................................................1,404,376  (48%)
  Hillary Clinton (D) ........................................................1,377,588  (47%)
  Gary Johnson (Libertarian) ............................................... 106,091  (4%)
  Jill Stein (Green) ............................................................ 30,899  (1%)

So if some of those people who showed their opposition to Trump by voting Libertarian or Green Party had instead voted for Clinton, Trump would not have carried the state.  And I'm sure we will see similar results in some of the other 'battleground' states that ended up in the Trump column.

-"BB"-

It's pretty clear that for what it's worth, (which is well, zero) that Hillary is going to win the popular vote nationally...

Her margin is now up to about 150,000 and most of the votes left to count are from the three West Coast states that she won handily; California , Oregon and Washington...

Her margin is likely to grow further with only 65% of the vote counted so far in Washington state...

Here's a really good interactive map that is continuing to update in real time (put your browser over any state to see how the vote went and what percentage has been counted)

http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president

I agree Guin and LJ, but I also think that some consideration has to be given to what Trump did. Who really thought he could generate a sizable margin, let alone win (or virtually tie) the popular vote? there is something there that many of the strategists did not see or understand, and it led to this result. Certainly Hillary failed to generate the votes that Trump did, and I think that could be for a number of reasons (including the Voting Rights Act curtailments mentioned by Guin), but the simple fact is that trump generated a lot of turnout and votes without a discernible policy or platform (or at least one having any real details), and I think that has to teach us something.

In the meantime, this is not the end of the world (I hope); I trust our nation and the checks and balances of our constitution (and our people), and think that many of the over the top scenarios are pretty much impossible. He is not a republican and has alienated a good number of republicans, and while some will crawl back to lick his hand for the crumbs he offers, I predict many will not (and a good number of those that do will quickly tire of him). And I also doubt he will surround himself by accomplished insiders the way some earlier presidents have done, making it harder to get anything done. Certainly he can still cause a lot of trouble, but there is no real chance of him becoming fuhrer or president for life or whatever.

That being said, I think this places a big responsibility on the shoulders of the loyal opposition to stand up and challenge him when he tries to overstep his bounds or do some of the things he talked about. We must start thinking about the 2018 congressional elections and start generating policies that will get the grass roots support to reshape congress in 2018. And, most importantly, we will have to stand up to him and shine a light on what he does every step of the way. It's a big job, but change must not mean stepping backwards. the people have spoken through their votes, but we must continue to speak through our actions.

So yes, by all means grieve for a day or two; but then start planning to stand up and engage in the political process.