Will the Democrats Learn Anything at All from Defeat?
The party's crack-up has arrived, and the fight will revolve around federal interventions and authority.
I will confess that when early Election Day coverage suggested that voter turnout was strong, I thought it was an indicator that Hillary Clinton was going to win. But the coverage was mostly anecdotal and based on observation. In reality, voter turnout was lackluster. Clinton could not get the vote out. She did not maintain President Barack Obama's base of support.
Bernie Sanders warned during the primaries when competing against Clinton that he could get voters out and that the Democrats tend to win when more people go to the polls. But the Democratic establishment won the primaries, Clinton campaigned on being President Barack Obama's third term, and they went down in flames.
The Democratic Party identity crisis that started becoming increasingly visible back during the 2014 midterms has arrived. The Democratic Party will not be able to govern on the basis of popular support for Obama any longer. So what happens next? What will the Democratic Party stand for after it stops being the "Obama Is Great" club?
According to Politico, Clinton's circle is still in denial. To them, losing is a thing that happened for reasons that had nothing to do with them, and they're sure they made the right decisions:
On a call with surrogates Thursday afternoon, top advisers John Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri pinned blame for Hillary Clinton's loss on a host of uncontrollable headwinds that ultimately felled a well–run campaign that executed a sensible strategy, and a soldier of a candidate who appealed to the broadest coalition of voters in the country.
They shot down questions about whether they should have run a more populist campaign with a greater appeal to angry white voters, pointing to exit polls that showed Clinton beat Trump on the issue of the economy. They explained that internal polling from May showed that attacking Trump on the issue of temperament was a more effective message.
Politico notes that the campaign made the conscious decision to embrace all the things that make Clinton Clinton in order to win. After all, a personality-based campaign worked for Obama, right?
"Make a virtue of her longevity," Palmieri advised in an email that month to Podesta, released by WikiLeaks. "Embrace all the Clinton-ness — the forty years in politics, the decades on the national stage…Maybe folks had Clinton fatigue at one point, now they are just seen as part of the fabric of America. (Hillary won't go away, she is indefatigable, she just keeps at it, and you can trust her to get the job done.)"
But that didn't work, and the campaign is still in the Homer Simpson-esque "This is everybody's fault but mine" phase. FBI Director James Comey's last-minute memo about the emails discovered on another laptop is fingered as a culprit—but this is just an example of blaming the messenger for a problem caused by Clinton herself.
One Clinton "confidante" complained that they spent the whole election explaining her "inherited issues," which is apparently code for "everything in Clinton's past that causes voters to dislike her." One of the reasons Obama was able to campaign on the basis over his personality and vague moderate-to-progressive ideals was because of that lack of history. (And then when given the chance, he embraced a technocratic "establishment" administration that fostered a boom in federal regulation and intervention that most certainly contributed to distrust in letting Clinton continue his legacy.)
But even when Democrats in the Politico piece do understand why Clinton lost, there's a deeper problem in their analysis: It's all about trying to figure out which ideological levers to pull for which voter demographics to get them to vote for their candidates. It is an indication of a party that is without an operating philosophy other than trying to maintain its own power.
That's Clinton in a nutshell, and it showed in the race. She ran against Obama years ago by contrasting her policy proposals with his. Then after Obama's two terms she ran by embracing Obama's popularity and promising to continue you every single policy he implemented. Then when Sanders' socialist democrat populism made inroads in the primary, she did her best to pander to the most economically ignorant proposals of massive increases in the minimum wage (which will hurt the rural poor, and they know it) and "free" college.
What makes Clinton the "establishment" is not that she shared the same positions as "beltway insiders," but that she shared the same lack of them. They weren't positions so much as positioning. She didn't stand for anything at all.
But a deeper dive suggests that actually, in the end, she does stand for something, and that's government intervention in every single problem that exists, anywhere. It may not seem like policy played a role in this election, but I suspect in the end that's like saying that water plays no role in fish behavior. It was always in the background.
Clinton's campaign pushed out several policy memos and briefs, and what they all had in common is that they called for federal involvement in every single solution, with very few exceptions. She is known for being an interventionist in foreign policy, supporting military action in Syria and Libya and elsewhere. If she thought any particular outcome was a good idea, she wanted to a federal law to make it happen or a government subsidy or grant to push it along.
In a sense, what made Sanders remarkable as a candidate was not that he was a democratic socialist getting open popular support from Americans; what was remarkable is that there were parts of his ideology—his foreign policy and support for privacy—that were less interventionist than Clinton. To be clear, much of Sanders' domestic economic policy was illiterate nonsense and dangerous—and that was the part Clinton was more than happy to embrace in order to win. Why wouldn't she? It meant even more federal intervention.
As the Democratic Party struggles to figure out what it's going to stand for now, we're going to see a lot of "progressive vs. centrists" framing. What matters for Americans who are looking from outside the party is that this is going to be a fight over how much government control over our lives the Democratic Party will continue to embrace. Just because Clinton was considered a "centrist," that didn't make her better on liberty than Sanders. In the ideological fight over "authority vs. liberty," so many people attempting to shape the future of both parties have a vested, career-based stake in making sure "authority" wins.
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Despite her being a lousy candidate she still won the popular vote – albeit against another lousy rival candidate.
Trump won because he outperformed in the Rush Belt campaigning against free trade. That sucks and proves the GOP doesn’t care about free market libertarianism any more than Team Blue does.
Yes, Trump called for protectionism – that probably helped.
And it’s my understanding that a numerical majority of the voters supported Not-Clinton.
Yeah, 47% Trump, 3% Johnson, 1% Stein, 0.7% Other, that’s a majority for Not-Hillary.
It’s all so deplorably sexist!
NOTA received the most (non) votes of all: 73m registered voters didn’t bother to vs 60m for ClinTrump
My last pay check was $9500 working 12 hours a week online. My sisters friend has been averaging 15k for months now and she works about 20 hours a week. I can’t believe how easy it was once I tried it out. This is what I do… http://www.Trends88.com
We’ll never know for sure, but she likely would have lost in a run-off, especially since Clinton’s numbers were likely run up in early voting.
Eddie, another way of looking at is that less than 20% of the population voted for Hillary. Hardly a majority.
Well maybe if they had worried about the EIGHT PERCENT of undecideds.
You pay up on your bet yet?
The popular vote is meaningless; they campaigned for the electoral vote. You may as well sum up the ages of the votes they got for all the meaning it has.
There was no point campaigning in California, New York, or Texas, because they are winner-takes-all states and so partisan that the result was known years ago. Those states were fund raising nirvanas and nothing more.
If they had been campaigning for popular votes, they’d have been all over those states. but they weren’t, and they didn’t.
Bring up the nonsensical popular vote meme is nonsense, and indication of a nonsense argument.
Exactly. But the popular vote tally is what the leftist agitators are using to justify their protests. As far as I’m concerned it’s just another example of the left deciding to act based on a complete fantasy, and does nothing to expose their own ignorance about reality. But good luck trying to explain the truth to people who are allergic to it.
Somebody did that; talking about how Clinton carried basically everyone 18-25. They seriously said “The future voted Hillary!”
My first thought was, “So, people for whom the frontal lobe is underdeveloped, leading to emotional decision-making with little thought to consequences?”
And people who are not paying much in taxes yet because they aren’t earning much…
Exactly.
Trump won because he was the only Presidential candidate since Bush 43 who didn’t tell the Rust Belt to go fuck themselves and that everything is economically wonderful despite their lying eyes.
Turnout was down just about everywhere in the country except the places that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama said they were going to economically destroy, and McCain and Romney ignored. Who’da thunk it?
“the GOP doesn’t care about free market libertarianism any more than Team Blue does.”
Exactly!!!
Nor do they care about privacy rights, non-intervention in foreign conflicts, ending the drug war, stopping asset forfeiture, pushing through sentencing reform, and any number of other issues any more than Team Blue does.
Why the hell the do you think we’re libertarians here? Or are you just one of those idiots that believes libertarians are just Republicans who like to smoke pot?
Forget it, Inigo, it’s shreektown.
how cute. You think we have free trade
“That sucks and proves the GOP doesn’t care about free market libertarianism any more than Team Blue does.”
You should tell that to Team Blue. Most Dems seem to think Trump is the apotheosis of right wing, free market Koch brothers capitalism.
Even her “victory” in the popular vote is a complete illusion. Remember that under the Electoral College system voters in the minority party in solid red or blue states can’t sway the outcome, and often times don’t bother to vote. This trend limits Republican votes more than Democrats, and exit polls show there were potentially hundreds of Republicans in states such as California who never bothered to consider the option to “hold their nose” to vote for Trump to stop Hillary. Instead they picked third-party candidates or wrote in their friends or other jokes. If they thought the popular vote actually mattered, they would have voted for Trump and likely given him a million vote margin in the popular tally.
But all that is a moot point since the “national popular vote” isn’t actually a thing.
Wrong. When you factor out the voter fraud, rigged machines, and the proven effect the progressive media strangle hold has on a national vote, Trump really got more like 60% of the vote. Maybe more.
Remove the California-New York-DC axis, and it’s even more of a rout.
I would agree. The only people angrily defending free trade are Reason contributors. The people attacking free trade come from all sides of the political spectrum, including the right. And that goes for the most successful politicians, even if while they’re helping another trade agreement get passed. It doesn’t help that the rust belt in particular is full of voters who have been raised to think this way.
Well, DID she win the popular vote? Or is it a case of “the opposition won in spite of all the votes the Democrat machine could steal”? The Democrats have a long history of manufactured votes, and Shrillary certainly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the law. Is it possible that the long reaction to Democrat idiocy is making it too hard for them to commit enough vote fraud in enough districts? They can pile up the popular vote in their strongholds, but that won’t get them electoral votes.
Maybe some of the Anti-Trump hysteria is based on a fear that if Trump starts looking into the Democrat vote, a lot of Democrat foundations could crumble.
Hillary looks the scolding image of the Wizened Christian Temperance Union praying to keep beer a felony in 1932. When the numbers crunch to show she could have won with the pothead votes that repealed prohibitionism in–was it nine states? You can bet those looters will come out for repeal then! Four million hippie and libertarian votes might have done the job. BUT NOOOOOO… her party platform said NO to repeal. FDR and Al Smith would have bitch slapped the Dem platform committee up one side and down the other…
BUA HA HA HA HA!
No
Next question
Just see the first post in this thread for your answer
Podesta ‘s asserts
“to achieve victory… a true political social movement… cannot be handcuffed by data … The power of this approach is that it … fits into what we call the Troglodyte Narrative (anti-women; anti-Latino; anti-gun safety; anti-common sense fiscal policy; and anti-science) that is raising basic trust issues for the Republican Party …”
Woe to the party that forgets troglodytes can vote.
They should probably make those Trogs bake a fucking cake.
I think I will find a bakery owned by some Marxists shitbags, and force them to bake a big Trump cake in celebration of his victory. Then I will sue their ass off if they refuse.
That migh be coming:
https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/09/07/ albertsons-bakery-refuses-to-bake-trump-2016-cake/
I think you can force them to make a trump cake if it’s two trumps getting married.
-jcr
Trump squared!
Oy Vey — ‘anti-gun safety’ is what they call the pro-2A crowd?
“anti-common-sense fiscal policy” is what they call people who think you shouldn’t spend more than you take in?
“anti-science”, of course, only applies regarding global warming for these folks. The science isn’t settled for GMO foods, alternative medicine, etc.
It’s really hard not to hate the Progs.
Not to mention the scientific reality of biological sex and X/Y chromosomes.
Or the epidemiological reality of the public health consequences of male homosexuality.
As a matter of scientific fact, reality is rather homo/transphobic in several regards.
Well, Hitlery said in one of the debates that overturning Heller is about keeping guns out of the hand so of toddlers.
“Will the Democrats Learn Anything From Defeat?”
No. Of course not. (See above).
And she didn’t “win” anything. She got slightly more votes than Trump. And still less than 50% of the total vote (remember those 5 Million people who also didn’t pull the lever for Herself?) And then there’s the 100 million or so who stayed home – now THAT’S a plurality.
Political dissent has many forms. Staying home is one of those. It cost Cankles the election, but no one wants to count the decision to say “fuck this” to the whole shitshow.
200,000,000 Registered voters, of which:
60,467,245 Hillary
60,071,650 Donald
4,123,062 Gary
1,237,116 Jill
820,690 Evan, Daryl, etc
73,280,237 NOTA
At least 2million of those Hillaryvotes were from rigged machines where the people voted otherwise.
It was very careless of Philadelphia and Detroit to post their votes before they knew how many were required to win for the D’s. LBJ and Mayor Daley would not have made that mistake.
So Lysander Spooner’s fears weren’t all that farfetched? Maybe the LP could come out for verifiable voting. Your receipt contains a QR code you can scan later to see of they counted your vote as cast. Than and legalized ballot selfies as a backup hedge. Ex-pats get to waive ballot secrecy, so there is nothing sacred or inalienable about inviting fraud from soft machines.
They will learn that, in order to win, they must be more persuasive in convincing white voters that they are ignorant, racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, cis-gendered, white-privileged shitlords. The activists did not shout this message loudly enough and the media did not repeat it often enough. They’ll do better next time, you can bet on that.
LOL
They need to publish a revised and updated edition of the classic business book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The basic tips for this new edition will be:
1) Assess your most shameful inner feelings and PROJECT them outward. Empathy is the enemy.
2) Communicate with smug superiority at all times. If you must be friendly-sounding, speak condescendingly.
3) Tell them to “check their privilege.” Whatever that means, it always makes you sound cool and erudite!
3) If they voice disagreement, tell them all the experts’ conclusions are “settled,” so just shut the hell up.
4) If they STILL disagree — go to a safe space, recover emotionally — and then get to work outlawing free speech.
Nicely done.
Driving home last night, listening to a discussion of the election on NPR’s On Point. Everyone on the round table was saying a polite, subtle, but essentially identical version of this.
After eight years being wedded to the Obama cult of personality these people cannot conceive of any other way than to be fully invested in the person.
They will wise up eventually, but until then it will be support groups all around – repeating the same shibboleths.
Yes. They have. They learned that they must do a better job of convincing white voters that they are ignorant, racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, white-privileged, cis-gendered haters who aren’t dying off fast enough. The progressive activists weren’t loud enough and the media didn’t repeat the message often enough. They’ll do better next time around. Unfortunately, Trump is likely to give them some good material to advance their argument.
Damn squirrels.
I’ve learned to paste the entire comment before clicking SUBMIT, so when it shows up twice, it’s the exact same post, not a retyped variation 🙂
Also, try waiting a minute, then doing another F5. Sometimes the refresh will make your comment mysteriously appear!
Fear me, you should.
The population is 9% higher now than it was in 2004. Assuming we haven’t been in the middle of an enormous baby boom, votes cast should be growing as well. Everything being equal, we should have north of 130M voters showing up for something like this.
why are you trying to suppress the baby vote, are you racist?
This plays into the new prog narrative that Trump won because vote suppression and the supreme court gutting the civil rights act (which it did not).
Fuck ’em. I hope they never learn.
It will be fucking hilarious when the next generations of Latinos are considered “white” and start voting like it, just like every ethnic group before them. Where muh identity politics gone????
In 2912 they were telling college students that Romney would take away women’s tampons. Progs are so fucking stupid.
The interesting thing is, if they insist on pushing that narrative (and subtle they ain’t) they gove Trump a ready made justification for investigating voting proceedures.
Shake the voting booths in Democrat strongholds hard enough and who knows WHAT will fall out.
More than 9%higher counting all the new illegals. Though not for long………..
” Those were watershed elections…”
Is the first black man elected President a watershed? Sure
Is the first black President being reelected a watershed? Not so much
And the first woman elected President would not have been a watershed?
Sorry, that excuse does not wash.
Great article Scott
It is a Trumptastic day. I was driving down the Trumpvenue in my Trumpobile enjoying the Trumpshine. Went to the Trumpfood restraunt where I ordered a Trumppounder with cheese and an extra side of Trump. It was Trumplicious
Heh. If only it had been Johnson who won…
Too many syllables, wouldn’t work. You’re obviously new to Trumpening.
Johnson did win. Spoiler vote share up over 300%! With each spoiler vote demonstrably packing 6 to 36 times the law-changing clout, that’s 24 million to 144 million votes’ worth–twice the None ‘O The Above votes. Imagine six states as populous as Virginia going LP and you can imagine how those victimless crime laws are going to die.
That’s persuasive!
Heard those Trumpounders are Yuuuuuuuge!
and they are great, believe me
One of the problems the Democrats are going to have, as John has repeatedly pointed out, is that they have nobody in the bullpen.
They’ve got Liz Warren, and the most formidable Democrat after her might be Stephen Colbert.
That’s junior varsity.
It’s hard enough to right a ship with good leadership.
Chris Rock announced that he is going to run in 2020
Don’t forget Kanye.
His first (second? third?) lady apparently has had cold feet about publicity ever since Paris.
She’ll always have Paris.
They did each other? Is there a video? I bet Oaris Hilton can really muff dive too.
People said the same about the Republicans four years ago. Who were the favorites then? Definitely not Trump.
They had plenty of “good” (for some non-libertarian definition of good) candidates.
Did you not see them all this time last year?
The Republicans had a nice selection of leaders.
From Bush to Carly and from Rand Paul to the Melendez brothers.
“Stephen Colbert” JV huh? That’s what everyone was saying about Trump.
Trump is JV. Hillary lost to him because of her egregious incompetence.
-jcr
I think Elizabeth Warren would have beaten 2016 Donald Trump like a drum. I’m not sure by 2020 whether that will still be true. Depends on whether they can drive minority turnout, and what the Republicans manage to fuck up in the meantime. Donald Trump could only beat Hillary. Because everything that he was weak on, she was as bad or worse on, or could be made to look so by people who were still looking for an excuse to hate her.
Yeah, they have about three years of fucking everything up (and maybe a WAR!) to cultivate some fresh faced Ds.
Don’t count O’Malley out yet. [snicker]
I doubt it. Lizzy is a life-long public servant just like everyone else the Dems have in the bullpen. The overall mood is against that sort of person.
Nobody wants to admit that Trump had support because he’s basically a self-made man – a rebuke to the whole “you didn’t build that” bullshit Obama spewed which alienated a lot of people with jobs (especially the self-employed). Don’t forget the backdrop here is all the public servants whining about how their pensions are bankrupt. Even the functionally illiterate can see “Hey, you run things and you can’t even manage to not fuck up your pension – get the fuck away from me!”
Bottom line – Hilary Clinton is a toxic person. The GOP was told that about McCain and they went with him anyway. In a sense the Dems were lucky Obama was around to hijack Hilary in ’08 or they never even would have won then.
Because she has won one election in one of the Bluest states in the union?
Because she is like Sanders and can complain and promise but have multiple houses and millions in the bank.
You don’t get it. While people did vote against Clinton, it was democrats that have been left behind in the rust belt. I have never heard anything Warren has said that would reach this people. “You didn’t build that” doesn’t work on people that worked there whole live to build something and have it taken away.
How do you explain Congress or the state seats?
Because she has a populist message also, but would have kept all the women excited to vote for A Woman President. And because Hillary Clinton is a uniquely polarizing figure and a technocrat. Two things that never sell the election. It was really close, but I think having a candidate known for punishing her enemies, and then making enemies of 40% of the electorate probably killed her. The alternative is that only black votes can save the identity politics party and no white Democrat could have won. But then the Dems didn’t really “lose” the election, or if they did, it was lost when Corey Booker decided not to run.
I just can’t see Warren playing well outside of the Northeast and the West Coast. Too much snottiness. She doesn’t seem like a person you’d want to have a beer with — which still seems to be a characteristic of everyone elected President in the past fifty years except Nixon.
Bernie, for all his extreme left ideas, excited people with his crazy-uncle going on at the dinner table about what’s wrong with X (something that if you’d had enough drinks at the big family gathering, you always enjoyed, perhaps even looked forward to). It was easy to like him. Lizzie and her tut-tutting wouldn’t excite too many voters beyond those girls in the photos sobbing after Hillary lost.
Nobody wants a moral scold running this whole thing so I doubt the unwashed independent voters in flyover would vote for Lizzie either. Come to think of it, do the Democrats have anybody that doesn’t look like a smug, know-it-all, moral scold, douchebag?
Sheila Jackson Lee?
If the Democrats are so hot and bothered about getting the first woman in the White House, all they have to do is convince Oprah Winfrey or Ellen DeGeneres to run.
-jcr
Warren, despite perhaps being a more ardent feminist than Hillary, generally has been more focussed on class than gender, compared to Hillary (because gender is all Hillary had going for her). So if she spent most of her time beating the class drum, she wouldn’t alienate the anti-PC crowd nearly as much as Clinton
Also, Warren didn’t marry and coast her way into the upper echelon of politics; she is more politically adept and has more of a personality, so I think she might have been smart enough to avoid the SJW crap and make the election as much about the economy as possible.
All this, and the fact that she doesn’t have the record of corruption and insincerity and hypocrisy that Clinton had lead me to believe she would have done significantly better than Clinton, which would be more than enough to beat Trump/
For all of the Rust Belt talk, Trump won MI, WI, and PA by a grand total of about 100,000 people. Combined. Out of around, (lemme see, carry the one…) a little less than 13.5 million votes. Less than one percent of all of the votes cast in those three states.
IOW, a healthy crowd at Ann Arbor’s football stadium was the difference between President Trump and President Clinton.
Any other candidate that didn’t have Hillary gigantic unfavorables—-and I’m including Sanders and Fauxcahontas in the ‘any other candidate’ pool—would have overcome that razor thin margin of defeat.
Now, if President Trump is truly able to slash and burn the Federal bureaucracy/regulatory morass, and the economy skyrockets as a result, then this margin will get a lot greater. But her margin of defeat was really, really tiny. Just about any break in her favor would have changed the final results.
Not that you can convince lefties of this. IME, they are doubling down on the insults and hatred.
Samders was a buffoon who would have lost big because of his wacko commie ideas. Warren might have been more of a threat.
“Because she is like Sanders and can complain and promise but have multiple houses and millions in the bank.”
This, and because she’s a woman.
Warren has a track record of being anti-trade, anti-business, and is a true believer in lefty redistributionsist ideas, which are actually fairly popular among blue collar Trumo voters.
Ironically (from a libertarian point of view) Hillary lost in part because she was seen as too business-friendly and not change-oriented enough relative to Trump. Her ‘Wall Street speeches” actually made me less afraid of her election as it suggested she wasn’t that sincere about her recent populist rhetoric. However, that reality made her less popular with most voters.
Hillary’s not a populist at all. Her whole campaign was “vote for me because of my vagina, and because I have decades of government experience.” That’s not something designed to appeal to blue-collar voters.
The DNC fags plan on running Chelsea in 2018……..
http://nypost.com/2016/11/10/c…..-congress/
Not a surprise, although I can’t imagine what she brings to the table even with her access to her parents’ mafia operation. Chelsea’s even more uncharismatic than Hillary and still gives off a vibe of a college intern trying to figure out where the bathrooms are located. If she got elected, she’d be a parrot of the Clinton machine and nothing more.
They need to get her ready for ‘her turn’.
Liz Warren is like the crazy Aunt at Thanksgiving dinner who won’t shut up about how she’s so much smarter than everyone else in the room.
Was it here that Warren was described as an old Subaru, plastered in bumper stickers, backing slowly into a parking space?
What is Bernie Sanders, then? An old guy with a wispy ponytail taking up a whole traffic lane on his recumbent bike?
Ideally, Bernie Sanders should be living in a NYC alley. Screaming his insane ideas at a garbage can.
Please! Please! Please! Don’t give recumbent bikers a bad name.
Not sure where that came from, but it’s awesome. Need to say what a couple of the stickers are — such as the multisymbol “coexist” and “you can’t hug a child with nuclear arms”. Maybe a tattered “selected, not elected” one barely covering a rust patch.
Darwin fish, NO FARMS NO FOOD, a bunch of scratches on the bumper where the “Nader 2000” sticker used to be.
Also – a bunch of bumper stickers with really long quotes that you can’t read from more than a few feet away.
I suspected there is a correlation between fine print bumper stickers and rear end collisions.
or the ever classic Free Tibet. We need to free Tibet from communist authoritarianism (but impose it here).
Free Tibet you say? I’ll take all you have!
Well behaved women do usually bake awesome pies for the men folk though.
Some years ago I uncovered a fundamental law of the universe which is now known as Animal’s Law of Inverse Bumper Sticker Intelligence, which states “The intelligence of a vehicle’s owner is in direct inverse proportion to the number of bumper stickers on the vehicle.”
It’s doesn’t matter what the stickers say. Only the number matters.
The same was said about the GOP. Then Trump swooped in (against the GOP establishment’s wishes).
In fact, Hilary thought she had 2008 to herself until Obama swooped in, although the establishment was on board with that. Bernie swooped in in 2015 – against the establishment’s wishes but they were able to hold him back just enough to squash Dem voter turnout.
Right, I think the last decade has been a strong case for not overthinking political “bench strength”.
That and a communist and prohibitionist platform…
Should we invoke Betteridge’s Law of Headlines here?
Anti-gay nutjob appointed by Trump to head up “domestic policy”.
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has announced that former Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell will be in charge of handling domestic policy issues in relation to the upcoming Trump administration’s legislative and executive priorities in its first hundred days
Blackwell, who currently works as a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, a Christian lobbying organization that lobbies lawmakers against LGBT rights, abortion and pornography, first gained national attention in 2006, when he was running to serve as Ohio’s governor.
In an interview at the time, Blackwell declared that homosexuality was a “lifestyle” that “can be changed.
“I think homosexuality is a lifestyle, it’s a choice, and that lifestyle can be changed,” Blackwell told the Columbus Dispatch at the time. “I think it is a transgression against God’s law, God’s will.”
http://preview.tinyurl.com/hx9o8fz
When the Great Purge comes, I’m willing to offer asylum guarantees to Tonio, jesse, grizzly and Rhywin. The rest have to find their own Canadian.
I’m exempt, I already live in an area filled with bears.
That’s so sweet of you. However, I already declined once an easy opportunity to become a permanent resident of Canada — my common-law partner had the status for a while. So I guess I’ll just power through in Donald Trump’s America.
You brave, foolish martyr! I’ll put a paper crane on your grave, if we find it after all the mass murders are done 🙁
When the Great Purge comes, I’m willing to offer asylum guarantees to Tonio, jesse, grizzly and Rhywin. The rest have to find their own Canadian.
I’ll offer asylum too, and I’m armed and willing to defend them against The Wrong People In Charge. Funny how that 2nd amendment comes in kind of handy when the monster you created goes out of control.
… which is totally going to usher in an era of anti-gay repression by a man who held up a rainbow flag at a campaign rally and encouraged people to use the bathrooms of their choice in his offices.
Thanks to Hillary not being elected, though, at least Americans still have the right to arm bears.
(It… may have been a while since i’ve read the Bill of Rights.)
We are already beating you in the Bear Arms Race.
Good lord, and Zoolander wants to cut the military funding?!?!
Didn’t you promise to leave if Trump won? Shouldn’t you be moving to Mexico to show you aren’t racist?
You’re asking a guy who doesn’t pay his bets and lies consistently if he’s going to be honest about something he said in the past? Really?
And let’s be honest. How many progressives AREN’T ethically challenged?
Lucky for him, that kind of thinking is a lifestyle choice that he can grow up out of.
Time will tell whether Evangelicals just conned Donald Trump, or Donald Trump just conned evangelicals into voting for him.
Safer than to have those National Socialists think it’s an inherited trait, the way Germany figured altruism was innate back before DNA was known. Those Nazi war crimes trials were still stretching ropes with genocidal stragglers in 1993.
Jesus fucking Christ, they all have to realize this election hinged on a few percentages? It’s not the Great American Realignment ffs.
Honestly you need to look at the Senate, House and State Levels – record Rs everywhere.
Obama’s legacy is he has destroyed his party at every level.
Let’s deport the progs in place of the illegals. Would anyone notice right away? And they’re easier to track.
It still might be, since the general douchery and racism of the alt-right was rewarded on Tuesday, I assume they are only going to be more emboldened going forward.
During elections, it does get a little bad, a few months before and after the votes. Being Muslim in rural America. I have to escort my wife to and from work during those times. Too much “Go back home” upchuck. The irony is, she is a mental health counsellor for their kids, so their kids don’t go on shooting sprees in their own schools.
I sympathize. I get that when I go through poor black neighborhoods pretty much any time of year.
Step one: politicize everything even more.
Step two: further demonize those with which we disagree.
Step three: support terrible candidates.
Step four: remind people that you’re cool and they’re not.
Step five: we’re the cool kids and you’re the losers.
Step three-point-five: run Chelsea asap
And Michelle Obama.
If they can manage to hold that wookie down and shave it
The current administration should offer her a position fighting Chris Christie’s obesity.
Perfect, BP.
I would pay big money to see those bitches throw down. Or at least have a toddler eating contest to see which one can eat more.
If a special prosecutor is appointed, Chelsea might have her hands full soon too.
When they all go to prison, maybe we can find a nice evangelical right wing Christian family to raise her baby for her.
Step six: after we fail, blame (insert country here, maybe it’ll still be Russia), 3rd-party voters, millenials, flyover-state hicks who drink drip coffee, Bernie Bros, Facebook, Julian Assange, misogyny, James Comey, and…well, basically everybody but us.
Next week we’ll find out if they learned anything. Right now they are still to busy lashing out in anger (see the attacks on People of all things). They’ve got to get over their feels first.
New Balance shoes hardest hit.
I wonder if they’re going to return all the money the UAW donated to Dems over the years after the UAW president said he agreed with Trump’s views on trade as well.
I wear 12.5 4E. NB is one of the few companies that makes shoes that actually fit me. Good to know they didn’t back Hillary.
Christ, put that thing away, you’re scaring the womenfolk.
They have learned “no more white women candidates or party members.
They will rally around the Native American candidate Elizabeth Warren
She will be the first whiter-than-white, scolding schoolmarm-type lady who will actually be able to make public appearances dressed in traditional native garb but who won’t be guilty of cultural appropriation.
I mean, she proved she was 1/64 Native American, right?
I’ve learned that my schadenfreude boner is bigger than my boring normal one.
Pics pls.
It’s Friday. I’m gonna farm this out to HM.
Oh man, did you fall for HM’s “i’m a famous boudoir photographer” schtick again?
I think they learned that they’re going to need to run a charismatic young minority candidate in order to replicate their 2008 & 2012 winning coalitions of which they don’t have that many. Unlike the Republicans.
Will Smith. I’m calling it now.
Cory Booker, Julian Castro, and Kamala Harris are a few.
Booker is actually charismatic, and can be pretty reasonable. I can see him going places.
Castro I haven’t seen much of, but I do know that he’s quite close to being a Marxist. Scary.
Kamala Harris is a black Lizzie Warren. She’s very condescending and has no time for the little people. She won the CA Senate because she was anointed as the Next One. I don’t remember her even campaigning for the post, it was just assumed she would win, and she did. They haven’t even interviewed her since the election on local California news, far as I can tell.
All I know about Booker was he gave a speech where he said we are called to be a nation of love, and I immediately thought, ‘no, no we aren’t.’
Kamela Harris is the black/Indian Hillary Clinton, if Hill never married Bill and became a San Fran lawyer instead. Ds trying to pretend she is some sort of savior are fucking delusional – she is probably the absolute worst candidate they could possibly run – corrupt, mendacious, condescending, stupid and utterly indebted to corporate interests. Good luck to ’em.
I fucking hope the first woman president is an R. Jesus that would be fantastic schadenfreude.
I would be considerably less distressed by a President Mia Love than by many other Republican possibilities.
-jcr
Given the last 24 hours, I fear not. I hear some rumblings in some corners that there’s some soul searching going on. But if I make the same mistake the media makes to measure things– it doesn’t look good.
One of the things that concerns me greatly are the absolutely batshit headlines I’m seeing on what should be considered straight news sites.
It’s one thing to find moonbattery on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity or Breitbart after an election. That’s what these people do, they have their place. I don’t judge Rachel Maddow tweets as the Zeitgeist of the nation any more than I do Hannity or Bill O’Reilley.
When Obama ran in ’08, there was similar crackpottery on the right, and the media gave it the treatment it deserved: they either ignored it, or pointed to it critically.
But this Trump thing? They’re giving serious consideration to the most extreme interpretations of the next four years– and while I’m sure the media would defend itself by saying, “We’re just reporting what people are saying”, we never got the uncritical attention being paid to the legions of Breitbart fans whining about the New World Order as a serious possibility.
The more they do that, the less Trump will care about the press. They are actually in a very precarious position now, as just about everyone knows they’ll lie, cheat, and steal to support the left.
This could actually help Republicans start to defy the press. Historically, they’ve been laughably fearful rather than mockingly defiant.
Historically, they’ve been laughably fearful rather than mockingly defiant.
“mockingly defiant”.
Nice.
I never have understood why they bothered with worrying about the press. If they are going to call you Hitler, anyway, why not pass that law that allows an exception to the EPA on Aunt Maude’s property?
I never have understood why they bothered with worrying about the press
Gatekeepers of Democracy, broheim. You wanna talk to the people, you gotta clear it through Dan Rather.
Easier to slowly erode them. It might be a good time to bring back HUAC on the heels of a Clinton prosecution.
They really don’t have to learn anything. If history is any indication, they just need to sit back and wait for the Republicans to fuck up and the pendulum to swing the other way. That’s the great part about a duopoly. Eventually you’ll get your turn again without having to do anything.
Damn. I cannot believe you posted this like right before me.
Yep. The only really significant trend is the GOP taking over the states. Which is what the LP should be doing.
Thankfully we have Bill Weld’s full support in that effort.
Ironically, people who oppose most of Trump’s agenda on classical liberal grounds are going to suffer due to the backlash against him.
Nah, no party ever learns anything.
They wait for the current incompetent government to fail so that it’s their turn to run an incompetent government that will fail. Just switch out the team of assholes every now and again.
Just waiting for the Republicans to start talking about 100 year majorities again.
Holy shit, talk about schadenfreude! Mike Pence takes over Trump transition from Chris Christie
Will Christie wind up with nothing when this is all said and done?
I’d make him head of CDC. He could volunteer for their obesity studies. “I liked their work so much, I took over the agency” /steals idea from the owner of Norelco
Must not make dog-fucker jokes.
Head of the DOT.
Head of Education, then he fires everyone else in the department.
Victor Kiam is spinning in his grave: he didn’t buy Norelco.
It’s Christie’s own fault of course, so he should just be happy if he can get a janitorial job inside the White House.
Trump could dress him in motley and make him dance at state dinners.
Close, He’ll just be the White House gimp.
And pretty much everyone hates Christie aside from a handful of neocons. The only thing he can do for Trump is be one of the very few political class types to endorse him in the campaign, and he’s already done that.
Maybe Chris Christie and Bill Weld can start a foundation to help people suffering from reciprocated political favors.
Maybe a year long pass to Golden Corral Buffet?
On derpbook, they’re talking about running Michelle Obama for president.
I’m talking people who are friends of both me and former New Republic Editor Peter Beinart.
And they’re not getting laughed at. Rather, they’re complimenting each other on how delectably ambrosial each others’ policy brain-farts smell.
These people are… fucking…. delusional.
And I hope they stay delusional.
Yes, running the wife of a former President has worked out so well in the recent past. Good plan.
As TOK & TFG pointed out above, if they weren’t constantly swapping places as the Stupid and Evil parties, they’d never get back into office.
To be fair to Michelle Obama, she just scolded us for eight years because we didn’t eat enough organic Kale. She hasn’t been the mastermind of an ongoing criminal enterprise while first lady, and was given top policy positions in secret, circumventing the rest of the president’s staff like, oh, the Vice President.
Say what you will about the strategy, while I wouldn’t vote for Michelle Obama, she seems to be a reasonably decent person (if woefully misguided on numerous policy issues) and would probably go the way Bob Dole’s wife… or something.
I think it’s a great idea. The electorate will naturally let the wookie win.
A woman whose sole claim to fame is sleeping with a prominent elected official went on national TV and bullied an Olympic gold medalist over the medalist’s food choices.
Exactly this. In modern parlance… pretty harmless.
I don’t come snider any ideological Marxist to be a decent person. Every one of them is soulless, and inherently bad.
These people are… fucking…. delusional.
And I hope they stay delusional.
I’m the worst at this. A couple of my friends are flipping out about Trump and doubling down on the stupid (i.e. “Bernie could have easily beat him!”, “They’re all white nationalists!”, etc.). I tried to explain to them how ‘their side’ lost due to the likability of their candidate, the dishonesty of both the Democrats and their media sycophants, the constant accusations of racist, sexist, etc. and their cultural gatekeepers being fundamentally out of touch with large percentages of the public. I then explained how if the Democrats are smart this is four years where they can reflect on why they exactly lost and what they can do to be more appealing in the future.
I was accused of being a Trump supporter, and insulted because “if I knew all this why aren’t libertarians winning elections huh?”. Then they immediately went back to blaming everyone else.
It’s like trying to help a goddamn alcoholic.
At least the alcoholic will eventually pass out or die.
Yes, but often they lead painfully long lives, despite a love affair with the bottle.
It’s rather absurdist, practically an art form. Really, isn’t promoting First Ladies exactly the opposite of showing that women can do this without massive help? It’s not like there aren’t intelligent, competent women out there, though with the way the left acts, you’d think otherwise.
they sure don’t hesitate to crucify actually accomplished women like Carly Fiorina, etc. Really it is the same with any black person that’s not a democrat. Suddenly he’s an Uncle Tom, because there’s no possible reason he could honestly disagree with their ideas.
They know that the best way to prove that a woman can be just as smart, successful, and high-achieving as a man — entirely on her own merits — is to only promote who came to prominence by marrying or being the daughter of one of their team’s TOP.MEN.
Meanwhile, any woman from the enemy team, no matter if she never rode anyone’s coattails, is 100% fair game for the most hateful misogyny imaginable. Just like it’s totally okay for them to be racist against non-liberal black people.
hmmm, great minds
Ya know what the real problem with this ticket was? Not enough Nepotism. I mean, who the fuck is this Kaine guy related to? No one! Think about it: why do people love Game of Thrones so much? Because they LOVE royalty!
It’s only logical. Michelle Obama – Chelsea Clinton, 2020, and then we’ll dig up some descendant of Jimmy Carter to be Secretary of State.
According to Politico, Clinton’s circle is still in denial. To them, losing is a thing that happened for reasons that had nothing to do with them, and they’re sure they made the right decisions.
McAuliffe 2020 FTW!
[vomits]
Another reason to prosecute The Hildebeast. McAuliffie will likely be indicted along with them.
I’m positive the Democrats will take this to heart just like the Republicans did. I’m sure, going forward, that we will have a chastised establishment ready to tackle the important issues of the day – employment, real social security, debt levels, etc etc. I’m sure they’ve learned their lesson, the error of their ways, and are prepared to be responsive to the needs of everyday people. It would only be a cynic who thinks the Democrats and Republicans will join ranks against Trump being effective and preserving the status quo.
I have no doubt the bureaucracy is poised to execute every last order issued by Trump with vim and vigor. If there’s truly going to be staffing level freezes put in place, and attrition is the watchword, the careerist bureaucrats will execute their duties fairly and timely up until their last day, with full maturity and dignity.
More derp from DerpBook from an acquaintance:
When the first two public positions the President Elect takes in politics are 1 questioning the birth certificate authenticity of its first black president, and 2 calling Mexicans rapists, its not unreasonable to make those assertions. The degree with which Trump supporters have gone to ignore the deficiencies of their candidate is astonishing. On the other hand, it is the Democratic party who did not properly elect their representative and conducted the campaign from a defensive posture; it was the political dealings exposed with the help of wikileaks (and possibly Russia), and it was an FBI who consistently broke protocol to undermine the Clinton campaign. Ignoring the racism and misogyny that has been unleashed by this campaign needs to be addressed and quickly. What I fear is that Republicans will take the Democratic ideas they have been obstructing for the last 8 years and adopt them and take credit for their achievements while simultaneously undermining civil liberties and shifting the tax burden further toward the working class if not ballooning the deficit.
This was by someone I know.
It’s funny because if you distill it down and set aside the racism/sexism canards, what your acquaintance is really saying is that the Republicans under Trump are likely to bring about the Democrats’ stated objectives but in a more honest and transparent way.
Shifting the tax burden to the middle and working class could be just as well phrased as “making the U.S. more like Europe” which last I heard, was what many Democrats claim to want. They also talk about the glorious social welfarism of Europe but they never bother to mention that the tax burden is higher on everyone.
The guy is a huge partisan hack. I called him out once for ignoring the civil liberties violations done by the Obama Administration and his response was: ” Well he has to do those things because the GOP are obstructionists.”
Yeah.
European politicians also get a free pass on grabbing p***y,
“What I fear is that Republicans will take the Democratic ideas they have been obstructing for the last 8 years and adopt them and take credit for their achievements”
HOLY !@#$
Yes, i too am afraid of the Republicans adopting Democratic ideas.
That statement is amazing on just so very many levels.
It is and it shows you the mind of a Progressive. They don’t give a shit about people….they want power.
“What I fear is that Republicans will take the Democratic ideas they have been obstructing for the last 8 years and adopt them and take credit for their achievements”
Because the important thing is not getting the policy you want implemented, but who gets credit for it.
(And, yeah, I’ve got to echo Citizen X above; I, too, am afraid that Republicans will do so.)
Reposting in a live thread: SWPL women on my FB have moved on to Harry Potter analogies. I guess this is progress. “Black people are like Muggles, see. And Trump voters are like DeathEaters. That makes us Hermione! We’re so smart and brave.” I think it also makes people of color the Weasleys, which seems like a pretty racist stereotype to imply that blacks and hispanics have lots of kids, no money, a may lack a soul. I mean, its one thing to represent gingers that way, but…
It’s a testament to how infantilized these women are that they have to look for comfort and meaning in a bunch of books written for 13-year-olds.
Oh, good, I’m glad we haven’t completely abandoned the nonsensical Soviet sleeper agent talking point.
ballooning the deficit.
Wowwwww.
No one on the left gets to pretend to care about this after the last 8 years.
“ballooning the deficit”
WTF? I thought they all agreed to use to term “investing in the future!”
Mentioning deficits as such, except to say they don’t matter, is a direct attack on families and children, along with people of color.
Obviously Trump’s corrosive influence is so bad, it’s even starting to cloud up previously woke minds!
No, these deficits are always a problem when the OTHER party is in charge. When WE do it, it is investments.
Pretty simple to remember, actually.
Pseudo-logic is powerful shit.
Does anyone remember the aftermath from the 2008 elections and all the articles about the Republicans learning their lesson? No? Me either.
All I remember were PSAs with celebrities promising to serve “my president”, a lot of moving, sweeping images of Our New President, and people wearing Dear Leader Obama tee-shirts.
Thankfully, the tee-shirts went away pretty quick.
Yep-one good thing about this election is a giant middle finger to Obama’s cult of personality.
Now, all they need is a big ol’ pitcher of Jones’ Special Batch Kool-Aid.
Actually there were article about that in 2008 because McCain was such a shitty candidate. There was nothing after 2012 though, just a few things like Romney should never had pointed out the ‘47%’.
Once Hilary uttered the “40%” thing I knew Trump had it in the bag.
In celebrTion of Veterans Day, I starded drinkong at 9. God Trump ‘merica.
0900 Zulu?
Good piece scott.
My leading theories for why Hillary lost are currently
(1) They did not insult and demean Trump supporters enough. Yeah, they repeatedly called them stupid racist hicks and gleefully wished for their deaths, but they need to do it harder. Double down on this going forward.
(2) Not enough negative coverage of Donald Trump himself. Seriously, did anyone see a single anti-Trump ad or negative news story about Trump in the past 18 months? I’m racking my brains and can’t think of even one.
5 stars.
Would read again.
My favorite example has to be someone decrying all the “free press” Trump was getting sandwiched between hysterical rants about how he would usher in the next Holocaust. Self-aware, they are not.
(3) Too much focus on wonky policy and plans to address the anemic economic ‘recovery,’ not enough focus on the personality flaws of Trump the man.
(4) Gender fluidity not getting enough attention and policy provisions.
I’m leaning toward ‘Moar Celebs pledging undying support to Herself’.
Really, Wisconsin union guys just love them some Lena Dunham and JayZ.
I wonder how many percentage points Hillary lost in Wisconsin when Lena Dunham removed her pants.
The celebrity “Fight Song” sing-along was powerful, but their failure to follow up with Katy Perry’s “Roar” just left me cold.
I like how this obviously joking post on Reason is probably also an actual email that Jen Palmieri just sent to someone at the DNC.
Kirk Douglas is still alive?
He’s a month short of triple digits.
I am Spartacus!
Yep. Still going fairly strong. He just doesn’t sound all that good since that stroke some years back.
Part II of Derp for FB:
“All levels of government should be restrained by the Constitution and provide oversight of the other Branches. When politics gets in the way of this functioning, then a breakdown occurs. When the Executive Branch acts within and outside of his authority, then it is up to Congress to reign the branch in. Your past comments in criticizing Obama in regards to the war on terror are legitimate issues, but it was Congress that failed to act, not a fault of the President. Now will all the branches controlled by the Republicans, they will actually be forced to govern: a position they haven’t been in a long time.”
The guy who said this basically said that if the GOP weren’t meanies, Obama wouldn’t have had to violate some of our civil liberties.
Jesus Christ on a Crutch!
I hope he lives in a desert, because a person that stupid would likely drown the first time he walked out into a rain shower and looked up to see where the water was coming from.
He once called me an anarchist because I believed the federal government needs to cut down on spending.
Oh, so he’s a sane, rational fellow, huh?
Ah, the old “I only hurt you because I love you so much” excuse.
So basically your friend is like someone defending a wife beater. “Well, he wouldn’t have had to bust three of her ribs and give her a concussion if the bitch just listened the fist time. Totally not his fault!”.
I dunno….I feel like I can still criticize a guy for murdering American citizens just because Congress failed to impeach him for said murders.
I wonder what his response would have been had Congress impeached Obama over the violations of the war powers act in the bombing of Libya.
In the future, this guy will tell you the earth is flat. His “logic” bears all the markings of people with that sort of propensity.
Of course the earth is flat! Every map I have ever seen, and all of the monitors I use to look at Google earth are flat, so the earth must be flat. If it is on the internet, it must be true.
*trips over globe on way to get more beer*
See, government is like a shark. It has to keep moving to survive. For all of us to survive, really. If government isn’t fiddling around with something, isn’t implementing some world-changing plan, if it’s just sitting there, being, then the world will literally implode. The president has to do anything, no matter what, to keep the government doing stuff. A thankless job, of course. But when Congress refuses to approve his trillion dollar budget deficit, you must understand, he then has no choice to but to renew the Patriot act and go to war with Syria.
So they basically made a more boring, lifeless version of Alien Planet?
Whoops meant this for the dumb Mars documentary thread.
Not that they’ll do it but… Dems ought to look at this map and ask themselves if they want to be the city (and rich inner-suburbs) party. That’s all they are now. Once you leave any large city and drive past the first ring of suburbs, you are now in a place openly despised by many Democrats – and the feeling is mutual.
The GOP should be asking the same question in reverse – can they afford to concede every major city? They better find a way to market themselves to voters in urban areas.
http://www.usatoday.com/pages/…..-unfolded/
Money is power and the dems have become the party of the rich and their spoiled brat progeny. If they want to take away the electoral college, I say fine. But then give states more autonomy so that the rich can’t impose their will on the rest of the country through the federal government. Otherwise, we might as well have a monarchy.
They can’t do that. They have to get rid of the EC so they can maintain their power and influence. Sorry flyover, just kneel down and accept you’re in the Hunger Games universe now.
I think they learned a lesson. California wants to secede. At least Texas waited to Obama’s second term, CA is wants it before Trump is sworn in.
I wish them luck on their own!
Texas never really wanted to secede anyway in great numbers. It was a hyped up “gee they’re dumb” story from the media.
I expect the same is true of California.
The progs want out. I say let them go. Except they don’t get to keep any land or assets. Just deport them and keep the Mexicans.
yeah I live there but need to get out. Californians conveniently forget that the only way the state is afloat is due to payments from the also bankrupt US government. They like to believe they are floating the US because “of our great economy, look at Silicon Valley!”. Ironically, Silicon Valley relies on being the least regulated and least taxed industry on the planet.
Kind of like far left Hollywood. They constantly support higher taxation out of one side of their mouth. While asking for huge tax industry tax breaks out of the other side.
Team Blue continues to live in a self-absorbed fantasy world-now calling for petitions to electors to make Hillary president. I’m sure that would go over great with other half of voters who supported Trump. Please just move to Canada where PM Zoolander will welcome you with open arms. Or if not, get it together and figure out why so many of your voters chose Trump: http://www.npr.org/sections/al…../501613521
“COUNT EVERY VOTE! COUNT EVERY VOTE!”
*phone call letting them know the count isn’t going their way*
“STOP THE COUNT NOW! STOP THE COUNT NOW!”
they conveniently forget Canada and all other countries have immigration policies and you can’t just move there and plop down and get a job.
You have to show a valid ID to vote in Canada, too.
If that happened, the progs would find out how many guns are owned by the other side. And how proficient they are with them.
Anytime an article title on Reason starts with “Can” or “Will” the answer is almost always “sadly, no.”
You’re just mangling Betteridge’s Law
Are you serious?
I don’t understand what you think the joke is.
Oh no, they learned. In 2010, during the UK election, PM Gordon Brown ran into a Labour voter who wasn’t pre-cleared.
The part I had in mind was at 4:40. Clinton certainly never had to deal with such things.
Jesus, it’s really just sad at this point.
in the end, she does stand for something, and that’s government intervention in every single problem that exists, anywhere.
“It takes a village council.”
It Takes Some Pillage.
Will the party that fired the DNC chair for being in the tank for Clinton (who Clinton then hired herself) and replaced her with another person who was in the tank for Clinton learn?
Is that a serious question?
They punished her for getting caught. They will learn to set up more secure servers.
Just need to offer more free stuff.
Also do not vote for the easy to beat candidate in open primaries. D’oh.
Didn’t Hillary make it absolutely clear she wanted police to continue to harass, pester, arrest, asset-forfeiture-pluck and shoot pot smoking hippies and sand-people alike? I recall reading that in Reason. When the Liberal Party in 1931 demanded that beer be legalized (weed wasn’t illegal) the Dems promptly co-opted that plank and won six presidential elections in a row. People understood that prohibition had caused the crash and depression per Clark Warburton’s 1932 analysis. But the Dems covered up the Bush asset-forfeiture crash completely, and kept pushing cops to murder more kids, just like the other prohibitionist soft machine. I spit on their cowardly communist grave.
First, I wasn’t aware Hillary had any policy as regards Tusken Raiders. Second, what the fuck is up with your constant obsession with everything that happened circa 1930?
Over in the UK, The Pointman has published a very interesting take on Donald Trump’s victory:
…
Man, hadn’t seen that clip before; that must have infuriated Trump.
Gosh, so the whole thing, involving trillions in fraud and data tampering, was just a personality spat over someone acting uppity. Thanks for re-re-sharing that valuable information.
Can’t it be both? Some of us have minds that are soemwhat complex, and are capable of mustering a number of motivations towards and undertaking. Is that not something you can understand?
Obama was just being funny.
Not his strong suit. Nor is effective governance. I would say being an honest person is also beyond him.
He is pretty good at being a soulless communist piece of shit though. Much to our ‘collective’ chagrin.
he’s so arrogant I doubt he sees any mistake in anything he’s ever done, especially this
Will the Democrats Learn Anything at All from Defeat?
If the violent protesters and vile social media hipsters are any indication, no.
How can they learn anything when they think they know it all already? Never mind how poorly their solutions work. It’s the INTENTIONS that count! That, and being in power.
Hillary campaigned on the basis of her most heartfelt, personal convictions once the focus group report told her what they were.
Yesterday I read one of the many liberal rants, in the Washington Post I think, where the writer said, “We’ve learned absolutely nothing about politics from this election.” Hey, yeah, you convinced me.
The Democrats’ “best” candidate was a failed Secretary of State under FBI investigation running around in Coal Country telling them her proposed income tax increases wouldn’t affect them because she would close their coal mines and unemploy them.
Learning isn’t on the same planet as the Democrat skill set.
Anytime an article title on Reason starts with “Can” or “Will” the answer is almost always “sadly, no.”
Damnit. Can I learn how not to double post?
Yeah! With this one weird trick
Um, you answered your own question.
“the campaign is still in the Homer Simpson-esque “This is everybody’s fault but mine” phase. ”
Psychopaths are never to blame. Clinton lies under oath. The “Right Wing Conspiracy” made him do it.
The Clintons are scum who think that have the right to rule the peasants. How could it be their fault? They are better than everyone else.
Of course they learned not to run someone with a 30 year record of criminal activity. But you say she was never convicted. I say neither was Al Capone for 30 years.
jennifer malbieri’s email reads like it was plagiarised from mad men. Those characters are supposed to be “morally flexible” and kinda seedy though. Not so sure about Hilary.
Could have saved you the time needed to write this article. The answer is no. Next question.
The lesson is perfectly clear: sooner or later, the voters will refuse to eat the turd sandwich, even if it’s running against a Giant Douche.
-jcr
“Will the Democrats Learn Anything at All from Defeat?”
Need bigger hissy fits
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Democrats are all about deception and incrementalism towards an unstated goal. They learned that they nominated the wrong liar.
With dumbasses like Joe Biden they should have seen the writing on the wall a long time ago when Biden marched out the Violence Against Women Act(1997?) , a sexist piece of garbage. Out of touch. Bernie was right there in their face and they refused to recognize him. Small sign of why I vote Green.
“Will the Democrats Learn Anything at All from Defeat?”
No.
They will go back to their collective “drawing boards” to find a better way to convince the majority that they are too stupid to exist without the superb genius of big government.
The GOP will do likewise. How else can a lecherous system survive?
Bad news, boys. Some people actually read the party platform.
No, it is clear . They will double down on their condescension , hate, and PC antics.
It wasn’t anything they did, all their failures are a result of Bush. Therefore the reason Trump was elected was because George Bush and trickle down economics. It wasn’t the demonizing of their fellow citizens as the deporables as racist, homophobic, misogynist xenophobes. Oh and we are supposed to keep voting until they are declared the winners.
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i’ve seen the gamut. everything from understandable disappointment to actual threats, and this is just from people i know. most have calmed down now, but few of them aren’t seemingly interested in learning any lessons. others have started to recognize that not all trump supporters may actually be evil, but they’re still the enemy of all that’s good in the world. the rest are truly lost souls.
sort of a sampling of where some are at right now…
-fdr was so compassionate that only his death could extinguish his love for the little guy. and for 50 years, you couldn’t question anything he said or did and get elected dog catcher. now it’s all disappearing.
-believing that not all trump people are racists, etc, but if you’re really not, and you don’t understand why people want to riot and/or kill themselves b/c of the election, then you don’t get it. oh, and by the way, you have to prove you’re not a racist, etc. no benefit of the doubt allowed.
-yes, i believe in civility and so forth, but you can’t call me a hypocrite for doing the very stuff you did when obama was elected. you started it!
-and of course….sanders would’ve won! i told you all along, but no one would listen to me.
I don’t recall any burning of cars and mass protests when Obama was elected…?
Will the Dems learn anything from this fiasco? Well, they’re thinking of making the head of the DNC a black Muslim, so you tell me.
No, the Dems will run Stalin II in 2020 and will get crushed again if Trump is a bad president or gets impeached.
chances are they do run someone much more liberal. they tend to think sanders would’ve won, which i think is questionable at best. even though that’s not the right way to go, i think they might beat trump in 2020 with such a candidate, so long as they’re not politically inept. now, that will be despite the liberal ideology, not because of it, and so much depends on what trump does too, which we’re nowhere even remotely close to figuring out. i’m not sure he even knows.
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Yes, they learned that America is MORE bigoted, sexist, racist, homophobic,… than originally thought and must quadruple down their efforts to push the Narrative and Agenda by any coercive means necessary.
The media must push EVEN MORE the efforts of creating Useful Idiots and Agents of Change.
Manufacture consensus.
No actually what they really learned: “We need Chauncey Gardiner”.
Mrs Clinton lost the election. Sure wish I could stop seeing her bulldog face every time I turn around.
So let me see, will this election make the Democrats rethink their positions or angles? Nope. The election was clearly a lot about immigration and about shipping Muslims to America knowing their don’t assimilate well and what is the DNC talking about now? A Muslim running the DNC. You can’t make this shit up.
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Of course not! Commentators on NPR today were getting all worked up about Breitbart, the “alt-right”, and musing about how they can reeducate those angry, racist, white male voters.