The rules are the rules. Yes 2.5 million more people (and counting) voted for Clinton, but they didn't vote in the right places. That's a messaging and strategy problem.

All it means is that at this point we have a president elect that represents the will of the system, rather than the will of the people. That is a problem, but it doesn't mean we didn't lose.

The EC needs an update to be in line with current populations and not work off numbers over 100 years old. That's a conversation worth having. But we did lose.

The rules is the rules I guess.

You miss the point. If the roles were reversed, FOX would be blaring 24-7 how the nation must stop the menace, the outrage, perpetrated by the democrats to LOSE the vote total by over two million votes yet still take office. They'd point to it as an unamerican OUTRAGE, and they'd point to the Washington elites as having arranged it all.

Meanwhile MSNBC AND CNN are holding kumbaya sessions on how to find inner peace and reflect on the meaning of peace at family reunions.

You wouldn't be okay with three fifths votes would you? Even if it was in the constitution?

Yes the EC appears to have been won by President Putin. Fine. We still should be talking about it. And this was not the only problem with this election.

Being that I'm a Californian. I'm furious and totally agree the right would be going absolutely ballistic with outrage if the tables were turned. Instead I keep hearing all this bs about how we're a republic, not a democracy. We can't have mob rule, have to respect states rights etc., etc.

But what about the rights of the majority? The smaller states already have special privileges in the senate. With gerrymandering in congress and the fact that the GOP is going to steal Obama's SC appointment, we'll be under-represented in every sector of government.

Honestly, I think we have to focus on bringing democracy to the United States and then we can start solving our problems.

I have to ask. If Trump was forced into a 50 state campaign strategy would he have lost the popular vote?

Would the old reliable west coast have returned the same results if his campaign had spent something there?

For the record....it's his argument, not mine.........but what do you think?

even if he had campaigned here. And also, Hillary would have been campaigning here as well if we went by popular vote. Maybe it would be a good thing if politicians had to campaign in all 50 states instead of pandering to a handful of "swing states" and writing off other states completely. I get so freakin' sick of hearing about Ohio and Florida every election year.

Uh, no thanks. Minority rights are critical.

should always be protected against majority rule, you won't find me arguing that, but we're talking about the method by which a country governs itself. Wasn't democracy supposed to be the reason we're such a "great county"? By the people, for the people, etc. etc. That's what I was raised to believe. Apparently it was a bunch of bs.

that all of us Americans Abroad voted D by 90% (in the primary) too.

Putin, FBI Director and Fox News won the election for Trump.

Wtf

The EC is updated every ten years to align with current population.

Or are you saying that the House should be expanded?

Al Gore didn't lose either, but he did lose, as he never was president.

Stages of grief, folks--get through them to acceptance. All of this stuff is a feel-good exercise, though clearly all that stuff happened. We heard about all the ways Republicans have regularly shaved votes off, caged and purged voters due to fake felony lists, purging same name minority groups, cut registration offices, gerrymandered, yea, they did all of that.

But we lost, and we knew the rules before we entered the contest. The EC was what determines the winner. It sucks, but it's true. Just like Sanders folks knew the Super Delegates were part of the race, before he entered.

Force as much angst as you can for this maggot. Harass your lawmakers. Take to streets. Call. Whatever. I will not "accept" anything that has to do with this pig.
EVER.

it still favors rural (and conservative) areas, so that voters in Wyoming, say, with a population less than that of the District of Columbia, have several times the voting clout in the EC as voters in California, with a population larger than many European nations. That's because every state is guaranteed at least three votes in the EC (2 senators plus one rep.) no matter how small their population is.

That's how it's possible for us to win the popular vote by millions (and Hillary has now won more votes than any other presidential candidate other than President Obama in 2008) and still lose the f-kin' election.

Gerrymandering is a real problem for the House, lets not dilute it by mis-using it. it does not apply to the presidency.

Gerrymandering is a vicious form of voter suppression in congressional districts. That allows the people of those districts, who see their votes make literally ZERO difference in their representation, EVER, see a truly rigged system. That in turn drives down the opposing vote totals in a completely "legal" way.

It is true that the EC cannot be "gerrymandered", but the Congress absolutely is, and by extension the vote totals in some areas is artificially managed as well.

Everyone feels marginalized on some level, in some way, on every ballot nationwide.

In this case we are specifically talking about the EC. If we were talking about the House, I'm right there with you. There's no overlap between the two issues.

Basically campaigning instead of working on legislation. They are worse than the FBI in terms of influencing elections. Will they have the balls to investigate Trumps pay to play? They've fallen in line to execute Putins plan to undermine faith in our system,as have much of our media.

And the safer the district, the more important the primary is relative to the general election. And the primaries on the Republican side in particular are where remotely reasonable Republican politicians go to die, because as soon as word gets out that a House Republican MIGHT be open to compromising with the Democrats in general (and Obama in particular) you can be damn well sure that some Koch-founded fire-and-brimstone ideologue will "primary" him or her. That phenomenon affects everything in American politics, not just the House (remember, the Senate and the House both need to agree on a bill for it to be sent to the President).

It is by definition immune to gerrymandering. To Gerry mander one must change district or precinct boundaries to bolster one, or suppress the other party.

State lines don't change.

We have one Repuke who moved from his home to a gerrymandered area safe for Repukes and damn he won. And he is one of the stupidest Repukes out there. Had a great Dem opponent but there is no way in hell a Dem could win there--unless Aaron Rodgers ran on a Dem ticked. And not sure even he could win there.

Every one of my local officials is now a GOPer. This was the first time voting where that was the case. It took me an hour and a half to vote.

That has never happened before.

There were armed police officers inside my polling station.

Stop pretending.

Words have meaning.

Oh look! Here you *are*

Stickler for definitions. Entitlements are the perfect example. Social security is an entitlement, but because republicans have made entitlement a dirty word, some liberals go so far as to claim they're not entitlementa despite being a perfect example of one...

Twenty-five states now controlled by a Republican governor and both houses of the state legislature.

I believe just six states out of the fifty where Democrats have the governorship and state legislature.
That is pathetic.

The decline in the fortunes of the Democrats has been going on at a quickening pace since 2010.

You can track the losses for Democrats with the distance they put themselves from the basic New Deal economic message and the closer they cozy up to Identity Politics.

You cannot frame a proper narrative if you won't even look in a mirror and recognize the plain, cold unvarnished truth.

Applying the same metric to your own data would include that the places getting poorer, faster, are the ones in GOP control.

Cold. unvarnished. truth.

Until we learn this lesson, we will continue to lose.

counties in our nation are under GOP control.

They ain't voting their wallets.

And are completely dominated by Democratic politicians. What are you talking about?

We can't win an argument if we don't even know the facts.

Don't fool yourself.

The positive take-away from the Clinton loss is that especially for Democrats "People vote with their wallets. Period."

Critiques like the OP offer us nothing.

"We was robbed."

So, let's keep doing what we've been doing since 2010 and see how that works out in 2018 and 2020.

By the way, there is nothing 'du jour' about Identity Politics ... real economic progressives have been warning of the danger of practicing Identity Politics since the 1960s (I know, I was there). When establishment Democrats only seem to care about 'what' you are instead of 'who' you are, then people have a natural backlash reaction: don't put me into a box!

The one thing that speaks to virtually all of us is the money in our wallet -- one may lament the materialistic nature of our culture, but that is philosophy and/or sociology -- for success in politics "It's the economy, stupid."

Even those Democrats who supported Obamacare are disillusioned. Why? Because of the escalating expense. Yet we ignore, belittle and excuse away their plight.

We lost this election on economic terms. Nothing more, nothing less.

It was not about abortion, gay marriage, healthcare or any other host of social issues we hold so dear.

It was about a paycheck, and America thought Trump could deliver relief for them.

We lost because of Fox news, and a steady stream of attacks and lies on Clinton. All the GOP did was attack and lie, and Fox broadcast the message. Best described as death by a thousand cuts. The GOP also caged voters, and di all they could to prevent Democratic voters from voting. Trump is a superb con man, and the rubes bought his con. That is what happened.

That said, with a 2 million plus winning margin, that in itself should trigger a recount...

and I'll also cop to having been a strong Bernie supporter, but here's my observation of local ground game, and national coverage of 'how it went elsewhere';

The campaign was run like victory was a foregone conclusion. like Trump couldn't POSSIBLY win. Like he'd go down harder than Romney did, and for the same self-destructive reasons, but cranked up to 11.

That's how it looked from here.

And in all honesty, given what the media presented here, that's exactly what I thought it was. But we were wrong. VERY wrong.

And now, we pay.


I am surrounded by terrified people, because of the result. Surrounded. I've seen people frantically changing wedding plans. I've seen people literally break down at work.

We could not have failed harder. I'll say it. They didn't steal it. We gave it to them. When you assume your enemy is down and out, you get fucked, every time. We just got fucked. And it's going to continue to the Mid-Terms and beyond.

I've run out of tears, and I've run out of politeness for people still in the various stages of grief; we have GOT to get our shit together and recognize what really happened here.

This election should NEVER have been so close.

We lost, because we assumed victory in advance. That's what happened. At least, that's what it looks like here in a solid blue state. Prove me wrong, I'd love to see it.

Count me in as one who thought it was in the bag hell, Trump was probably still working on a new post election media venture into November.

Also, in hind sight it also kind of felt like the Democrats enthusiasm level for Clinton was like the Republicans was for Romney...

I, also, credit many here on DU for that very problem. If anyone said anything they viewed as less than 100% positive for Hillary they were labeled a "concern troll", or "NOT a TRUE Democrat".

Moving to the right doesn't work for a party that is SUPPOSE to be left of center.

Many on this board were trying to warn the echo chamber types that the polls were being misread, and Trump was much closer to victory than what they wanted to believe.

I am tired of hearing the same meme of "how could the polls be so wrong?" The Clinton camp just wanted to find the numbers that fit their narrative. Now we have to live with the result of such ignorance.

Last edited Sat Nov 26, 2016, 11:48 AM - Edit history (1)

in at least some Democratic voters seeing their votes as unnecessary.

Completely asinine. And yet anyone who said we should be more vigilant was called a "concern troll."

Btw, these are unsurprisingly the same people who are now denying that anything at all needs to change with our approach. They "claim" they're upset at 4 straight brutal elections, yet they are suspiciously adamant that we not change ONE DAMN THING in our messaging or approach.

You tell me which sounds more like a troll.

:Shrug:

The point is, we Democrats didn't just lose this election -- we've lost a slew of them over the last 6 years. Why? Because we've been fiddling while Rome burns.

The Democratic Party has lost touch with the common person. We can talk all we want about the economic accomplishments of Obama and the Party in the past 8 or 10 years, but unless those accomplishments have a meaningfully positive impact on the common person, we will continue to lose to the hatred, fear and blame tactics so masterfully employed by the GOP.

yeah, who needs them?

But people don't want to hear this.

So many threads start out with some pundit's claims, put in the pundit's language.

they don't get to call themselves journalists anymore.

they fucked us over, big time-- the incessant focus on Hillary's emails and nothing on Trump's real corruption and scandals.

when it was released 11 days before the election. That letter said NOTHING of substance and was certainly no bombshell...but to hear the media go on and on about it for over a week made it look like nuclear war was upon us.

They drilled the emails to death.

It gets you 4 or more years of the dumbest fucking warmongering president to date (Trump isn't sworn in yet).

We need to be a BIT more tactical than 'but we won the popular vote'.

repeated frequently as a reminder of reality.

A claim Shrub made after Kerry vs. Bush 2004. It was bullshit then and it's bullshit now.

Makes it sound like she was only a hit with the hippie surfer community.

Everybody knows we were hacked. They hacked Dem congressional offices easily enough. FBI was supposedly standing by to make sure nothing like that went down. I suspect they were standing by to enable hackers a free playground.

Germany is taking precautions for their elections next year against Russian intrusion because of what went down here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. We may have to change those lyrics soon.

The MSM is totally disgusting. I will not defend any of them when Trump comes for them. In the photos of them coming out of the meeting with him, a good one of Blitzer, they all looked so stupid. They are. They are paid to fuck with our system, well paid. Now they have to be humiliated and maybe worse by Trump. I don't care about any of them anymore.

suppression laws, the media's fawning over Trump, the false-equivalency, etc.

You are absolutely KEERECT!

half wanted me to buy towels for our niece and her family who are arriving soon.

The estate tax became the death tax.

Taxes became confiscation.

And the endless cycle of massive military spending became a weakened military.

Oligarchs and minimum wage slavemasters became job creators.

And on and on. The GOP has been framing the political narrative, with the willing collusion of the corporate media.

nm

It is a constant parade of rhetoric meant to reinforce a worldview even as it pretends to be a debate.

Far too many Democrats do not challenge the framing of the debate.

And if they want to be like the BOBers they need to stop trying to infiltrate the Dem party when It's convienent.

And I'm seeing some of their thoughts repackaged here.
The group that split off to form JPR were a good example.
They thought any discussion of social issues took away from their more important issue of economic justice to the extent that it should be silences or squashed. They mocked and staked AAs here all primary season and when they couldn't stay here because all they did was attack Dems, they started their own site where the only requirement was to hate Hillary.

As to JPR, I follow that site as well as DU and also post under my name at JPR.

Personally, I do not see how one can separate social justice from economic justice. There is no way that I as a white male can truly be free if every other worker in the country is not free. I can understand how a Marxist analysis can lead to the conclusion that economics is the only important consideration, but any economic gains won by one small group, in this xase white union workers, can easily be taken away if the rich demonize that one group.

What happened to unions in the Reagan years is just one example. Predominantly white unions were attacked by the GOP and because most workers were not union members the struggle was not seen as a universal one.

And yes I did see that certain people here dismissed non-white issues as "not as important" in the grand struggle.

Guillaume

And POC could suddenly afford lawyers to fight injustice.
Part of me would like to believe he was trolling, but none of the Sanders fans spoke up about crap like that.
In the end for a lot of people it was about what they would gain financially. College or a better salary. I can understand that to an extent, but not to the extent of selling others down the river in an attempt to appeal to voters that hate us. Which is exactly what this aversion to "identity politics" is all about. Bernie was clear earlier in his career that this was his strategy, leaving us behind and calling us a "wedge".

but I feel that some people "rank" issues in importance rather than see that all issues of inequality are equal and interwoven.

The 1% always seek to divide people in order to better exploit them. So they use race, and sex, and language, and ethnicity to divide people who are all essentially the same. And this division is the "wedge issues" that Sanders is talking about. But the wedge is a tool to separate us.

Long time followers of his career have said this is always his strategy to build a wider coalition. I've heard a lot of statements of his that support that too. I'm not sure he should have run at all. I think some of his early statements were super ignorant despite him having "good intentions". I've seen it argued he fell into the divide and conquer trap and others see it as an attempt to transcend the trap.

In my mind, it was a foolish gambit. he appeared to know or care little about the laws and practices that hurt women, children in poverty, LGBT or POC. I don't think it was smart of him to run as a Dem with that deficiency.
I don't feel he's better or worse than lots of other politicians but I do believe it was a fatal blind spot.

In the interest of making it productive, how are "economic progressives" as you call them (maybe us -- I don't know where I stand in your judgement ... geesh) using you for their own ends? Can you enlighten me on that?

Issues aka "identity politics" and focus on economics written by people who identify as "economic progressives". The idea is also being promoted by Dems here. I'm saying nope. That is all.

your vision and priorities are allowing you to see. I'm not seeing any posts that are saying ignore social issues. It isn't an either/or thing. And it's not just about economic issues or the economic message during this campaign. It's about far more than that. It's about the candidate, the Party's behavior in ordaining a pre-selected candidate, and a 30+ year history of selling out to corporatists and globalism at the expense of working class Americans. Pardon my saying, but none of that takes away one bit from social goals or issues.

Republicans treat it as a dirty word.

The electoral college has a similar effect to the Senate. The Senate is essentially a group that represents "land masses." A state with a 400,000 population has exactly the number of Senators as a State with 30,000,000 people. It's why we see these maps that look like we're an overwhelmingly red country, but in truth, we're more equal, because population concentrations are very blue.

By the same token, the EC negates huge overages in New York, and California, and to be fair, Texas too, though that's being whittled down a little at a time. Overages in red states, even overwhelming ones percentage wise, in states like Alabama, are nearly insignificant, to California. But does California get an extra package of electoral college votes because of that? Nope.

It all goes back to the founders essentially giving property owners most of the power. And it's going to be hard to get rid of these things, if we ever can.

All if what you note is true, but its the rules of the game AND the will of the people because they accept it.

Balling around about it does nothing but allow the rs, the media and tge sheep to think of us as sore losers.

What are we going TO DO?

Are we willing and able to fight tough and dirty, to fight tge kong game like they have?

We have to outsmart them, which on the face of it shouldn't be difficult. Still, they have way more practice at dirty tricks and I'm not even sure that fighting fire with fire is the right approach.

Do you have something in mind?

companies and political entities in this country to whom I would offer
no help and no money. In other words, silence. I will not patronize their
agendas, products, duties. Silence. I know nothing, thank you Sargent
Schultzie.

Because there will be future elections and whining today doesn't help us win tomorrow. It doesn't help us make the case for why Democratic policies are better for people.

It kind of doesn't matter that we got more votes, because the way our system is set up and divides voters, it means that we lost.

Yes that is an argument for court cases on gerrymandering (as the recent Wisconsin case demonstrates), but it doesn't actually change the math in the House or the Senate or in terms of who is going to be President. No matter how many times you use the word fuck.

Everyone here said all along that getting people excited to vote was an issue.
As I pointed out elsewhere, trump got DOUBLE the black & hispanic votes that Romney got. THATS the result of apathy

your propaganda.

But only because the US population is more than it was in 2012, in theory every election should have a record turn out. Percent of eligible voter turnout was slightly lower than 2012 so he is right in that aspect and that dip seems to have been on the Democrats side in key states.

WAY below 08 & not even 1% above 12; and my point was DEMOCRATIC turnout was much lower. Yes, I should've specified that, but the total difference is minimal. Population growth, as mentioned in a previous answer, means eligible voters really were lower

That's some pretty weak tea there sweets.

Court orders against their voter suppression that the KGB/GOP roundly ignored.

Russia in daily contact with Trump.

Keep. fucking. pretending.

What happened is exactly what 90% of everyone here SAID would happen if the Democratic base ddint get energized .
I said i shouldve worded the post specifically mentioning Dem voters

1: Let THEM frame the narrative.
2: Stubbornly refuse to evaluate the Democratic Party to change what needs to be changed.

Refusing to even evaluate what we can do better would play into their hands.

the KGB had nothing to do with this.

Or the FBI, or the corporate media? Certainly not me.

What you don't seem to understand is that multiple factors came into play, including some things the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign might have done better. However, without an objective evaluation no improvements will be made.

still in the midst of what happened to us.

4 years or more?

Sorry, but your post is bereft of logic. If we can't look at everything with open eyes and open minds we are willfully blinding and confining ourselves in a bubble.

Nt

There are enough top rate anchors with their own following to staff it. There are technicians, sales people, programmers and resources to produce it.
We already have to run against the House, the Senate, The Courts, the FBI, the Russians and the entire Fox clone news world.
Now is the time we have to jump in before it will not be allowed anymore. Most of us don't need access to Trump and his ilk anyway because we are sick of hearing his voice.
You can see how powerful they are by looking at the Governorships and State Legislatures on the local levels as well.
We don't have time to wait for a meeting of Oligarchs Anonymous to get started. Any billionaire could swing this financially on their own and a small group of them wold have no problem whatsoever.
Time to put up or shut up.
That is, if you give a shit, Warren Buffett, Mark Cuban, and the rest of you.
Oh yeah...it also makes money after a couple years.

for sure. I hope it happens. I'm tired of being disgusted at what I see and hear on tv, even MSN. Fantasizing now -- I would like to see actual reporters instead of bland robots and hostile news readers for a change. I'd like to see an hour each of Keith Olbermann, Katy Tur, Rachel Maddow (of course) Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Hayes, Larry Wilmore, Samantha Bee, Bill Maher, end to end, and unrestricted in what they're allowed to say.

Remember that one?

I think I suggested big names and professionalism. Why are you stuck on failure?