meloshouldgo wrote:The doorway to fascism is now wide open. This is where or failed democratic party has led us. The republicans are a failed party as well, populism is winning big, historically this had never ended well.

Bonn1997 wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It

NEW YORK CITY - APRIL 9 2016: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton campaigned in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, appearing with Congressional representative Nydia Velazquez.
Photo Credit: a katz / Shutterstock.com
Hillary was always going to be a weak candidate and the evidence was there for anyone willing to see it. The only surprise was how hard many people worked not to see the obvious. For one, she was exactly the wrong candidate for 2016. Indeed, in May 2014---two and a half years ago---I wrote on these pages:
By every metric, voters are in a surly mood and they are not going to be happy campers in 2016, either. Why should they be? The economy is still in the toilet, not enough jobs are being created even to keep up with population growth, personal debt and student debt are rising, college graduates can’t find jobs, retirement benefits are shrinking, infrastructure is deteriorating, banksters never were held accountable for melting down the economy, inequality is exploding — and neither party is addressing the depth of the problems America faces. As a result, voters in 2016 will be seeking change and there is no way Clinton can run as a “change” candidate — indeed, having been in power in Washington for 20-plus years as First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, she is the poster child for the Washington political establishment, an establishment that will not be popular in 2016. http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-hillary-you-probably-havent-thought-about

This, of course, is exactly what happened, which is why the Washington Post's chief political writer Chris Cilliza could write today:

This was a change election. And Trump was the change candidate. To me, this is the single most important number in the exit poll in understanding what voters were thinking when they chose Trump. Provided with four candidate qualities and asked which mattered most to their vote, almost 4 in 10 (39 percent) said a candidate who "can bring needed change." (A candidate who "has the right experience" was the second most important character trait.) Among those change voters, Trump took 83 percent of the vote to just 14 percent for Clinton. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3

On top of this problem---which to be fair to Clinton was not a problem of her making---she was extremely unpopular and had a long history dating back to 2007 of polling badly against Republicans. In December 2007, while leading national polls among Democrats by 26 points, in head-to-head polls against Republicans, she polled weaker against Republican presidential candidates than John Edwards and a relatively unknown new black Senator from Illinois. In fact, when matched up against Republicans---who had a very weak field themselves in 2008---she even polled behind an unnamed generic Democratic candidate. We saw this inherent weakness repeated in 2016, when she was challenged by a 74-year old Senator from a small state who wasn't even a Democrat, who had virtually no financial base, but went from 3% in national polls to winning 22 contested primaries and 47% of the votes in those primaries, in the process regularly pulling 20,000+ enthusiastic people to his rallies, while Hillary spoke in small gatherings to large donors and never attracted more than 800 people to an event.

What this obvious lack of enthusiasm for Hillary translated to in this election is the single most appalling---and definitive---statistic of this campaign: Hillary got almost TEN MILLION fewer votes than Obama got in 2008, despite the fact there are millions more registered voters now and six million less votes than Obama got in 2012. Trump did not win this election. Hillary lost it. In fact, Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney in 2012! We are not surrounded by more Republicans. We are surrounded by Democrats who were not inspired by the Wall Street-friendly candidate their party pushed on them.

Hillary's utter tone-deafness about her connections to Wall Street was another huge liability. In November 2014, I wrote:

On nearly every important issue, except women’s issues, Clinton stands to the right of her Democratic base. Overwhelmingly, Democrats believe that Wall Street played a substantial role in gaming the system for their benefit while melting down the economy, but Clinton continues to give speeches to Goldman Sachs at $200,000 a pop, assuring them that, “We all got into this mess together and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it.” In her world — a world full of friends and donors from Wall Street — the financial industry does not bear any special culpability in the financial meltdown of 2007-'08. The mood of the Democratic base is populist and angry, but Clinton is preaching lack of accountability.

She got hammered by Sanders, and later Trump, for her reliance on Wall Street money, and then added to her problems by not releasing transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street banks to the public, which exacerbated the perception that she was not transparent and was rigging the system with the financial industry in ways that did not serve the public. So when her email problems arose, it all seemed part of the same pattern of duplicity. Polls with voters rating her 65% "untrustworthy" soon followed.

She also never explained why she had supported the deregulation of Wall Street, never explained why she had promoted NAFTA, why she had called the NAFTA-like Trans Pacific Partnership the "gold standard" of trade deals, despite the damage NAFTA had caused to America's manufacturing base and the millions of jobs that had been exported to lower-paying countries. And the DNC Democrats who fixed the primaries to nominate her have never explained how they expected to win the industrial mid-west with a candidate who had contributed to their economic demise or why they favored Clinton over a candidate who ran ten points stronger against every Republican presidential candidate, including Trump, in match-up polls.

This election was always going to be a plebiscite on the status quo and the status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton. For awhile many thought Hillary could pass it because she was matched against the weakest candidate imaginable. In the end, she could not overcome her many liabilities, the fact that her party had forgotten they needed to deliver results to the working class, nor the surly mood of voters who had figured out what a rigged system looked like and were willing to try a long-shot who might just bust up the system.

Guy T. Saperstein is a past president of the Sierra Club Foundation; previously, he was one of the National Law Journal’s "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America."

I disagree. Her approval ratings from 2008 to 2015 were in the 50s and 60s. Trump won the election by tearing Hillary down. He said things (lock her up, crooked Hillary, etc.) in a way that no other Republican would have. It wasn't enough to win the popular vote but apparently it was enough to sway the electorate in many critical swing states.

Keep telling yourself that. It wasnt Clinton's tacit approval for legislation and policies that has caused great suffering to Americans for years now. Legislation and policies she watched her husband enact, that she also supported and promoted as a Senator. It wasnt any of that.

Clinton lost not because she supported policies that has caused misery on a biblical scale in this country. Hillary lost because Trump said mean things about her.

Huh? Are you saying that negative attack messages don't work? The things you mentioned likely had very little to do with the outcome. Her favorability ratings were in the 50s and 60s even after all the events you cited happened.

Those same pollsters claimed Clinton would coast to an easy victory. Clinton's attack ads were much more frequent, and much better.

Get your head out of the numbers for a minute and consider the role the Clintons policies have had on the outcome. You don't seem to appreciate the suffering they have caused. You have to add a BC next to the date the last time inequality was this bad. You cant just brush that fact aside, ignore the Clintons role in us getting to this place. It shouldnt have even been close.

Amen. This is the part annoy how hard Hillary supporters worked to ignore the obvious.

The pollsters were off by about 2 points in the national election and swing states. So her average approval rating was closer to 54 than 56 during that interval? OK I could grant something like that.

You can't take the fact that the polls were off by 2 points and conclude you'll never look at another poll again. If you wanted to look at them and give a 2 point larger margin of error, that would make more sense.

See? Case in point, I wasn't talking about the numbers or about polls. I was talking about how democrats have ignored the middle class forever, and how the middle class has figured it out. You can take comfort from the polls and ignore the real message the people just sent, or you can take the blinders off and see what really has happened to the democratic party. One way or another it won't change the movement that has started and I can only hope it keeps gaining momentum.

Well he mentioned a lot of things and you didn't add anything specific. So I had no way of knowing what you were referring to. If you're talking about ignoring the middle class, then BOTH parties have done that, and Trump's policy proposals will put that problem on steroids.

People making 25,000 to 50,000 paying 10% tax and 0% Capital Gains is hardly ignoring the middle class, so no, no steroids, quite natural and nice.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis-donald-trump-s-tax-plan

So taking less in taxes will just bring the middle class out of the recession they have begun in since 2008?

I think you understand that the economy and the middle class are more complicated than one variable in a huge equation? So why mention 1 thing?
The middle class will have more money to spend. Companies will have more money to spend and pay the middle class better and bring more jobs back home (hopefully lowering the tax for corporations from 35% to 15% does this.) Middle class spends more increases tax revenue from purchases, for starters. All the other tax brackets (only 3 under Trump) go way down too.

But we are between a rock and a hard place, Trump or Clinton getting in office next year was going to be going to be difficult, the big banks have basically destroyed this country with QE. America is a little piece of what it once was, at least as far as its workforce is concerned. We have our work cut out for us.

I don't understand how you guys bring up 1 point to either stand for your argument or to attack with. All of this is complicated. It is like micro managing a complex business. It doesn'T make sense.

Bring up one point? I responded to your post. All you did was make one point. You want to discuss the economy and the impact of tax cuts? Go for it. How about you present some evidence of how tax cuts for the wealthy have helped the middle class, or any other tax cuts. Don't respond with talking points, show me some data.

My point is that this is complicated. The idea behind cuts is solid, instead of trickle down economics, instead of banks giving money to more at the top, we give money to those who need it. These tax cuts are across the board.

Things the way we have been doing them ain't working and hasn't been working, is that data?

How many middle class people have large capital gains taxes? Or large inheritance taxes? His plan gives pennies to the middle class and a fortunate to the wealthy, and requires future generations to pay for it.

I would imagine a lot of middle class people have stocks. Inheritances - I guess everyone dies and middle class or not they leave money. And I don't care if they are poor, middle class or rich, it is not the governments job to tax leaving money to family.

So, a 10% tax to those making 50k to 25k is pennies, really?

meloshouldgo wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It

NEW YORK CITY - APRIL 9 2016: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton campaigned in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, appearing with Congressional representative Nydia Velazquez.
Photo Credit: a katz / Shutterstock.com
Hillary was always going to be a weak candidate and the evidence was there for anyone willing to see it. The only surprise was how hard many people worked not to see the obvious. For one, she was exactly the wrong candidate for 2016. Indeed, in May 2014---two and a half years ago---I wrote on these pages:
By every metric, voters are in a surly mood and they are not going to be happy campers in 2016, either. Why should they be? The economy is still in the toilet, not enough jobs are being created even to keep up with population growth, personal debt and student debt are rising, college graduates can’t find jobs, retirement benefits are shrinking, infrastructure is deteriorating, banksters never were held accountable for melting down the economy, inequality is exploding — and neither party is addressing the depth of the problems America faces. As a result, voters in 2016 will be seeking change and there is no way Clinton can run as a “change” candidate — indeed, having been in power in Washington for 20-plus years as First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, she is the poster child for the Washington political establishment, an establishment that will not be popular in 2016. http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-hillary-you-probably-havent-thought-about

This, of course, is exactly what happened, which is why the Washington Post's chief political writer Chris Cilliza could write today:

This was a change election. And Trump was the change candidate. To me, this is the single most important number in the exit poll in understanding what voters were thinking when they chose Trump. Provided with four candidate qualities and asked which mattered most to their vote, almost 4 in 10 (39 percent) said a candidate who "can bring needed change." (A candidate who "has the right experience" was the second most important character trait.) Among those change voters, Trump took 83 percent of the vote to just 14 percent for Clinton. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3

On top of this problem---which to be fair to Clinton was not a problem of her making---she was extremely unpopular and had a long history dating back to 2007 of polling badly against Republicans. In December 2007, while leading national polls among Democrats by 26 points, in head-to-head polls against Republicans, she polled weaker against Republican presidential candidates than John Edwards and a relatively unknown new black Senator from Illinois. In fact, when matched up against Republicans---who had a very weak field themselves in 2008---she even polled behind an unnamed generic Democratic candidate. We saw this inherent weakness repeated in 2016, when she was challenged by a 74-year old Senator from a small state who wasn't even a Democrat, who had virtually no financial base, but went from 3% in national polls to winning 22 contested primaries and 47% of the votes in those primaries, in the process regularly pulling 20,000+ enthusiastic people to his rallies, while Hillary spoke in small gatherings to large donors and never attracted more than 800 people to an event.

What this obvious lack of enthusiasm for Hillary translated to in this election is the single most appalling---and definitive---statistic of this campaign: Hillary got almost TEN MILLION fewer votes than Obama got in 2008, despite the fact there are millions more registered voters now and six million less votes than Obama got in 2012. Trump did not win this election. Hillary lost it. In fact, Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney in 2012! We are not surrounded by more Republicans. We are surrounded by Democrats who were not inspired by the Wall Street-friendly candidate their party pushed on them.

Hillary's utter tone-deafness about her connections to Wall Street was another huge liability. In November 2014, I wrote:

On nearly every important issue, except women’s issues, Clinton stands to the right of her Democratic base. Overwhelmingly, Democrats believe that Wall Street played a substantial role in gaming the system for their benefit while melting down the economy, but Clinton continues to give speeches to Goldman Sachs at $200,000 a pop, assuring them that, “We all got into this mess together and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it.” In her world — a world full of friends and donors from Wall Street — the financial industry does not bear any special culpability in the financial meltdown of 2007-'08. The mood of the Democratic base is populist and angry, but Clinton is preaching lack of accountability.

She got hammered by Sanders, and later Trump, for her reliance on Wall Street money, and then added to her problems by not releasing transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street banks to the public, which exacerbated the perception that she was not transparent and was rigging the system with the financial industry in ways that did not serve the public. So when her email problems arose, it all seemed part of the same pattern of duplicity. Polls with voters rating her 65% "untrustworthy" soon followed.

She also never explained why she had supported the deregulation of Wall Street, never explained why she had promoted NAFTA, why she had called the NAFTA-like Trans Pacific Partnership the "gold standard" of trade deals, despite the damage NAFTA had caused to America's manufacturing base and the millions of jobs that had been exported to lower-paying countries. And the DNC Democrats who fixed the primaries to nominate her have never explained how they expected to win the industrial mid-west with a candidate who had contributed to their economic demise or why they favored Clinton over a candidate who ran ten points stronger against every Republican presidential candidate, including Trump, in match-up polls.

This election was always going to be a plebiscite on the status quo and the status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton. For awhile many thought Hillary could pass it because she was matched against the weakest candidate imaginable. In the end, she could not overcome her many liabilities, the fact that her party had forgotten they needed to deliver results to the working class, nor the surly mood of voters who had figured out what a rigged system looked like and were willing to try a long-shot who might just bust up the system.

Guy T. Saperstein is a past president of the Sierra Club Foundation; previously, he was one of the National Law Journal’s "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America."

I disagree. Her approval ratings from 2008 to 2015 were in the 50s and 60s. Trump won the election by tearing Hillary down. He said things (lock her up, crooked Hillary, etc.) in a way that no other Republican would have. It wasn't enough to win the popular vote but apparently it was enough to sway the electorate in many critical swing states.

Keep telling yourself that. It wasnt Clinton's tacit approval for legislation and policies that has caused great suffering to Americans for years now. Legislation and policies she watched her husband enact, that she also supported and promoted as a Senator. It wasnt any of that.

Clinton lost not because she supported policies that has caused misery on a biblical scale in this country. Hillary lost because Trump said mean things about her.

Huh? Are you saying that negative attack messages don't work? The things you mentioned likely had very little to do with the outcome. Her favorability ratings were in the 50s and 60s even after all the events you cited happened.

Those same pollsters claimed Clinton would coast to an easy victory. Clinton's attack ads were much more frequent, and much better.

Get your head out of the numbers for a minute and consider the role the Clintons policies have had on the outcome. You don't seem to appreciate the suffering they have caused. You have to add a BC next to the date the last time inequality was this bad. You cant just brush that fact aside, ignore the Clintons role in us getting to this place. It shouldnt have even been close.

Amen. This is the part annoy how hard Hillary supporters worked to ignore the obvious.

The pollsters were off by about 2 points in the national election and swing states. So her average approval rating was closer to 54 than 56 during that interval? OK I could grant something like that.

You can't take the fact that the polls were off by 2 points and conclude you'll never look at another poll again. If you wanted to look at them and give a 2 point larger margin of error, that would make more sense.

See? Case in point, I wasn't talking about the numbers or about polls. I was talking about how democrats have ignored the middle class forever, and how the middle class has figured it out. You can take comfort from the polls and ignore the real message the people just sent, or you can take the blinders off and see what really has happened to the democratic party. One way or another it won't change the movement that has started and I can only hope it keeps gaining momentum.

Well he mentioned a lot of things and you didn't add anything specific. So I had no way of knowing what you were referring to. If you're talking about ignoring the middle class, then BOTH parties have done that, and Trump's policy proposals will put that problem on steroids.

People making 25,000 to 50,000 paying 10% tax and 0% Capital Gains is hardly ignoring the middle class, so no, no steroids, quite natural and nice.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis-donald-trump-s-tax-plan

So taking less in taxes will just bring the middle class out of the recession they have begun in since 2008?

I think you understand that the economy and the middle class are more complicated than one variable in a huge equation? So why mention 1 thing?
The middle class will have more money to spend. Companies will have more money to spend and pay the middle class better and bring more jobs back home (hopefully lowering the tax for corporations from 35% to 15% does this.) Middle class spends more increases tax revenue from purchases, for starters. All the other tax brackets (only 3 under Trump) go way down too.

But we are between a rock and a hard place, Trump or Clinton getting in office next year was going to be going to be difficult, the big banks have basically destroyed this country with QE. America is a little piece of what it once was, at least as far as its workforce is concerned. We have our work cut out for us.

I don't understand how you guys bring up 1 point to either stand for your argument or to attack with. All of this is complicated. It is like micro managing a complex business. It doesn'T make sense.

Bring up one point? I responded to your post. All you did was make one point. You want to discuss the economy and the impact of tax cuts? Go for it. How about you present some evidence of how tax cuts for the wealthy have helped the middle class, or any other tax cuts. Don't respond with talking points, show me some data.

My point is that this is complicated. The idea behind cuts is solid, instead of trickle down economics, instead of banks giving money to more at the top, we give money to those who need it. These tax cuts are across the board.

Things the way we have been doing them ain't working and hasn't been working, is that data?

No its not data. It's just empty unsubstantiated rhetoric. Unless you can actually come up with data that shows tax cuts do anything at all to help, you will be just another person who is throwing out right wing talking points with no basis in reality.

You want statistics to show that giving people more money will help the economy?
Well, we got statistics that giving it to rich bankers and those at the top doesn't trickle down, so how bout we try something that actually gives to people directly?

Nice rhetoric on your part, the way you can use words like "unsubstantiated", but please, people in general are not that stupid.
Give them more money and they generally spend it. The government can operate on less, God knows we have for years. We all know how inefficient they (govt) can be.

My bet is, there is a reason why MSM and politicians hated Trump and that reason will benefit us all. Give it some time. System is already broken, you got a good bandaid plan?

earthmansurfer wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It

NEW YORK CITY - APRIL 9 2016: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton campaigned in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, appearing with Congressional representative Nydia Velazquez.
Photo Credit: a katz / Shutterstock.com
Hillary was always going to be a weak candidate and the evidence was there for anyone willing to see it. The only surprise was how hard many people worked not to see the obvious. For one, she was exactly the wrong candidate for 2016. Indeed, in May 2014---two and a half years ago---I wrote on these pages:
By every metric, voters are in a surly mood and they are not going to be happy campers in 2016, either. Why should they be? The economy is still in the toilet, not enough jobs are being created even to keep up with population growth, personal debt and student debt are rising, college graduates can’t find jobs, retirement benefits are shrinking, infrastructure is deteriorating, banksters never were held accountable for melting down the economy, inequality is exploding — and neither party is addressing the depth of the problems America faces. As a result, voters in 2016 will be seeking change and there is no way Clinton can run as a “change” candidate — indeed, having been in power in Washington for 20-plus years as First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, she is the poster child for the Washington political establishment, an establishment that will not be popular in 2016. http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-hillary-you-probably-havent-thought-about

This, of course, is exactly what happened, which is why the Washington Post's chief political writer Chris Cilliza could write today:

This was a change election. And Trump was the change candidate. To me, this is the single most important number in the exit poll in understanding what voters were thinking when they chose Trump. Provided with four candidate qualities and asked which mattered most to their vote, almost 4 in 10 (39 percent) said a candidate who "can bring needed change." (A candidate who "has the right experience" was the second most important character trait.) Among those change voters, Trump took 83 percent of the vote to just 14 percent for Clinton. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3

On top of this problem---which to be fair to Clinton was not a problem of her making---she was extremely unpopular and had a long history dating back to 2007 of polling badly against Republicans. In December 2007, while leading national polls among Democrats by 26 points, in head-to-head polls against Republicans, she polled weaker against Republican presidential candidates than John Edwards and a relatively unknown new black Senator from Illinois. In fact, when matched up against Republicans---who had a very weak field themselves in 2008---she even polled behind an unnamed generic Democratic candidate. We saw this inherent weakness repeated in 2016, when she was challenged by a 74-year old Senator from a small state who wasn't even a Democrat, who had virtually no financial base, but went from 3% in national polls to winning 22 contested primaries and 47% of the votes in those primaries, in the process regularly pulling 20,000+ enthusiastic people to his rallies, while Hillary spoke in small gatherings to large donors and never attracted more than 800 people to an event.

What this obvious lack of enthusiasm for Hillary translated to in this election is the single most appalling---and definitive---statistic of this campaign: Hillary got almost TEN MILLION fewer votes than Obama got in 2008, despite the fact there are millions more registered voters now and six million less votes than Obama got in 2012. Trump did not win this election. Hillary lost it. In fact, Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney in 2012! We are not surrounded by more Republicans. We are surrounded by Democrats who were not inspired by the Wall Street-friendly candidate their party pushed on them.

Hillary's utter tone-deafness about her connections to Wall Street was another huge liability. In November 2014, I wrote:

On nearly every important issue, except women’s issues, Clinton stands to the right of her Democratic base. Overwhelmingly, Democrats believe that Wall Street played a substantial role in gaming the system for their benefit while melting down the economy, but Clinton continues to give speeches to Goldman Sachs at $200,000 a pop, assuring them that, “We all got into this mess together and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it.” In her world — a world full of friends and donors from Wall Street — the financial industry does not bear any special culpability in the financial meltdown of 2007-'08. The mood of the Democratic base is populist and angry, but Clinton is preaching lack of accountability.

She got hammered by Sanders, and later Trump, for her reliance on Wall Street money, and then added to her problems by not releasing transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street banks to the public, which exacerbated the perception that she was not transparent and was rigging the system with the financial industry in ways that did not serve the public. So when her email problems arose, it all seemed part of the same pattern of duplicity. Polls with voters rating her 65% "untrustworthy" soon followed.

She also never explained why she had supported the deregulation of Wall Street, never explained why she had promoted NAFTA, why she had called the NAFTA-like Trans Pacific Partnership the "gold standard" of trade deals, despite the damage NAFTA had caused to America's manufacturing base and the millions of jobs that had been exported to lower-paying countries. And the DNC Democrats who fixed the primaries to nominate her have never explained how they expected to win the industrial mid-west with a candidate who had contributed to their economic demise or why they favored Clinton over a candidate who ran ten points stronger against every Republican presidential candidate, including Trump, in match-up polls.

This election was always going to be a plebiscite on the status quo and the status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton. For awhile many thought Hillary could pass it because she was matched against the weakest candidate imaginable. In the end, she could not overcome her many liabilities, the fact that her party had forgotten they needed to deliver results to the working class, nor the surly mood of voters who had figured out what a rigged system looked like and were willing to try a long-shot who might just bust up the system.

Guy T. Saperstein is a past president of the Sierra Club Foundation; previously, he was one of the National Law Journal’s "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America."

I disagree. Her approval ratings from 2008 to 2015 were in the 50s and 60s. Trump won the election by tearing Hillary down. He said things (lock her up, crooked Hillary, etc.) in a way that no other Republican would have. It wasn't enough to win the popular vote but apparently it was enough to sway the electorate in many critical swing states.

Keep telling yourself that. It wasnt Clinton's tacit approval for legislation and policies that has caused great suffering to Americans for years now. Legislation and policies she watched her husband enact, that she also supported and promoted as a Senator. It wasnt any of that.

Clinton lost not because she supported policies that has caused misery on a biblical scale in this country. Hillary lost because Trump said mean things about her.

Huh? Are you saying that negative attack messages don't work? The things you mentioned likely had very little to do with the outcome. Her favorability ratings were in the 50s and 60s even after all the events you cited happened.

Those same pollsters claimed Clinton would coast to an easy victory. Clinton's attack ads were much more frequent, and much better.

Get your head out of the numbers for a minute and consider the role the Clintons policies have had on the outcome. You don't seem to appreciate the suffering they have caused. You have to add a BC next to the date the last time inequality was this bad. You cant just brush that fact aside, ignore the Clintons role in us getting to this place. It shouldnt have even been close.

Amen. This is the part annoy how hard Hillary supporters worked to ignore the obvious.

The pollsters were off by about 2 points in the national election and swing states. So her average approval rating was closer to 54 than 56 during that interval? OK I could grant something like that.

You can't take the fact that the polls were off by 2 points and conclude you'll never look at another poll again. If you wanted to look at them and give a 2 point larger margin of error, that would make more sense.

See? Case in point, I wasn't talking about the numbers or about polls. I was talking about how democrats have ignored the middle class forever, and how the middle class has figured it out. You can take comfort from the polls and ignore the real message the people just sent, or you can take the blinders off and see what really has happened to the democratic party. One way or another it won't change the movement that has started and I can only hope it keeps gaining momentum.

Well he mentioned a lot of things and you didn't add anything specific. So I had no way of knowing what you were referring to. If you're talking about ignoring the middle class, then BOTH parties have done that, and Trump's policy proposals will put that problem on steroids.

People making 25,000 to 50,000 paying 10% tax and 0% Capital Gains is hardly ignoring the middle class, so no, no steroids, quite natural and nice.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis-donald-trump-s-tax-plan

So taking less in taxes will just bring the middle class out of the recession they have begun in since 2008?

I think you understand that the economy and the middle class are more complicated than one variable in a huge equation? So why mention 1 thing?
The middle class will have more money to spend. Companies will have more money to spend and pay the middle class better and bring more jobs back home (hopefully lowering the tax for corporations from 35% to 15% does this.) Middle class spends more increases tax revenue from purchases, for starters. All the other tax brackets (only 3 under Trump) go way down too.

But we are between a rock and a hard place, Trump or Clinton getting in office next year was going to be going to be difficult, the big banks have basically destroyed this country with QE. America is a little piece of what it once was, at least as far as its workforce is concerned. We have our work cut out for us.

I don't understand how you guys bring up 1 point to either stand for your argument or to attack with. All of this is complicated. It is like micro managing a complex business. It doesn'T make sense.

Bring up one point? I responded to your post. All you did was make one point. You want to discuss the economy and the impact of tax cuts? Go for it. How about you present some evidence of how tax cuts for the wealthy have helped the middle class, or any other tax cuts. Don't respond with talking points, show me some data.

My point is that this is complicated. The idea behind cuts is solid, instead of trickle down economics, instead of banks giving money to more at the top, we give money to those who need it. These tax cuts are across the board.

Things the way we have been doing them ain't working and hasn't been working, is that data?

How many middle class people have large capital gains taxes? Or large inheritance taxes? His plan gives pennies to the middle class and a fortunate to the wealthy, and requires future generations to pay for it.

I would imagine a lot of middle class people have stocks. Inheritances - I guess everyone dies and middle class or not they leave money. And I don't care if they are poor, middle class or rich, it is not the governments job to tax leaving money to family.

So, a 10% tax to those making 50k to 25k is pennies, really?

earthmansurfer wrote:Seriously, look at the bright side and give this a chance.

voting for someone running on a platform of racism and sexism makes one complicit with it. at the very core...people that voted for trump said loud and clear..."racism and sexism does not matter b/c it does not effect me". both sides can talk policy all they want but it does not change that.

i don't mean to personally insult anybody here but that's how i feel. people of color and women have been suppressed for so long and to right the wrongs of history, there needs to be change and evolution and that includes making sure people of color and women are lifted to a higher status. that's not entitlement - that's paying for your sins. there is systematic racism and sexism still highly prevalent and this election set back the slight progress that's been made.

i debated whether to post this opinion of mine but i'm still trying to make sense of things and this forum has provided me a place to release thoughts and feelings - even if they are incoherent.

earthmansurfer wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

meloshouldgo wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

GustavBahler wrote:

Trump Didn't Win the Election, Hillary Lost It

NEW YORK CITY - APRIL 9 2016: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton campaigned in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, appearing with Congressional representative Nydia Velazquez.
Photo Credit: a katz / Shutterstock.com
Hillary was always going to be a weak candidate and the evidence was there for anyone willing to see it. The only surprise was how hard many people worked not to see the obvious. For one, she was exactly the wrong candidate for 2016. Indeed, in May 2014---two and a half years ago---I wrote on these pages:
By every metric, voters are in a surly mood and they are not going to be happy campers in 2016, either. Why should they be? The economy is still in the toilet, not enough jobs are being created even to keep up with population growth, personal debt and student debt are rising, college graduates can’t find jobs, retirement benefits are shrinking, infrastructure is deteriorating, banksters never were held accountable for melting down the economy, inequality is exploding — and neither party is addressing the depth of the problems America faces. As a result, voters in 2016 will be seeking change and there is no way Clinton can run as a “change” candidate — indeed, having been in power in Washington for 20-plus years as First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, she is the poster child for the Washington political establishment, an establishment that will not be popular in 2016. http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/seven-things-about-inevitability-hillary-you-probably-havent-thought-about

This, of course, is exactly what happened, which is why the Washington Post's chief political writer Chris Cilliza could write today:

This was a change election. And Trump was the change candidate. To me, this is the single most important number in the exit poll in understanding what voters were thinking when they chose Trump. Provided with four candidate qualities and asked which mattered most to their vote, almost 4 in 10 (39 percent) said a candidate who "can bring needed change." (A candidate who "has the right experience" was the second most important character trait.) Among those change voters, Trump took 83 percent of the vote to just 14 percent for Clinton. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1116/cillizza111116.php3

On top of this problem---which to be fair to Clinton was not a problem of her making---she was extremely unpopular and had a long history dating back to 2007 of polling badly against Republicans. In December 2007, while leading national polls among Democrats by 26 points, in head-to-head polls against Republicans, she polled weaker against Republican presidential candidates than John Edwards and a relatively unknown new black Senator from Illinois. In fact, when matched up against Republicans---who had a very weak field themselves in 2008---she even polled behind an unnamed generic Democratic candidate. We saw this inherent weakness repeated in 2016, when she was challenged by a 74-year old Senator from a small state who wasn't even a Democrat, who had virtually no financial base, but went from 3% in national polls to winning 22 contested primaries and 47% of the votes in those primaries, in the process regularly pulling 20,000+ enthusiastic people to his rallies, while Hillary spoke in small gatherings to large donors and never attracted more than 800 people to an event.

What this obvious lack of enthusiasm for Hillary translated to in this election is the single most appalling---and definitive---statistic of this campaign: Hillary got almost TEN MILLION fewer votes than Obama got in 2008, despite the fact there are millions more registered voters now and six million less votes than Obama got in 2012. Trump did not win this election. Hillary lost it. In fact, Trump got fewer votes than Mitt Romney in 2012! We are not surrounded by more Republicans. We are surrounded by Democrats who were not inspired by the Wall Street-friendly candidate their party pushed on them.

Hillary's utter tone-deafness about her connections to Wall Street was another huge liability. In November 2014, I wrote:

On nearly every important issue, except women’s issues, Clinton stands to the right of her Democratic base. Overwhelmingly, Democrats believe that Wall Street played a substantial role in gaming the system for their benefit while melting down the economy, but Clinton continues to give speeches to Goldman Sachs at $200,000 a pop, assuring them that, “We all got into this mess together and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it.” In her world — a world full of friends and donors from Wall Street — the financial industry does not bear any special culpability in the financial meltdown of 2007-'08. The mood of the Democratic base is populist and angry, but Clinton is preaching lack of accountability.

She got hammered by Sanders, and later Trump, for her reliance on Wall Street money, and then added to her problems by not releasing transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street banks to the public, which exacerbated the perception that she was not transparent and was rigging the system with the financial industry in ways that did not serve the public. So when her email problems arose, it all seemed part of the same pattern of duplicity. Polls with voters rating her 65% "untrustworthy" soon followed.

She also never explained why she had supported the deregulation of Wall Street, never explained why she had promoted NAFTA, why she had called the NAFTA-like Trans Pacific Partnership the "gold standard" of trade deals, despite the damage NAFTA had caused to America's manufacturing base and the millions of jobs that had been exported to lower-paying countries. And the DNC Democrats who fixed the primaries to nominate her have never explained how they expected to win the industrial mid-west with a candidate who had contributed to their economic demise or why they favored Clinton over a candidate who ran ten points stronger against every Republican presidential candidate, including Trump, in match-up polls.

This election was always going to be a plebiscite on the status quo and the status quo candidate, Hillary Clinton. For awhile many thought Hillary could pass it because she was matched against the weakest candidate imaginable. In the end, she could not overcome her many liabilities, the fact that her party had forgotten they needed to deliver results to the working class, nor the surly mood of voters who had figured out what a rigged system looked like and were willing to try a long-shot who might just bust up the system.

Guy T. Saperstein is a past president of the Sierra Club Foundation; previously, he was one of the National Law Journal’s "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America."

I disagree. Her approval ratings from 2008 to 2015 were in the 50s and 60s. Trump won the election by tearing Hillary down. He said things (lock her up, crooked Hillary, etc.) in a way that no other Republican would have. It wasn't enough to win the popular vote but apparently it was enough to sway the electorate in many critical swing states.

Keep telling yourself that. It wasnt Clinton's tacit approval for legislation and policies that has caused great suffering to Americans for years now. Legislation and policies she watched her husband enact, that she also supported and promoted as a Senator. It wasnt any of that.

Clinton lost not because she supported policies that has caused misery on a biblical scale in this country. Hillary lost because Trump said mean things about her.

Huh? Are you saying that negative attack messages don't work? The things you mentioned likely had very little to do with the outcome. Her favorability ratings were in the 50s and 60s even after all the events you cited happened.

Those same pollsters claimed Clinton would coast to an easy victory. Clinton's attack ads were much more frequent, and much better.

Get your head out of the numbers for a minute and consider the role the Clintons policies have had on the outcome. You don't seem to appreciate the suffering they have caused. You have to add a BC next to the date the last time inequality was this bad. You cant just brush that fact aside, ignore the Clintons role in us getting to this place. It shouldnt have even been close.

Amen. This is the part annoy how hard Hillary supporters worked to ignore the obvious.

The pollsters were off by about 2 points in the national election and swing states. So her average approval rating was closer to 54 than 56 during that interval? OK I could grant something like that.

You can't take the fact that the polls were off by 2 points and conclude you'll never look at another poll again. If you wanted to look at them and give a 2 point larger margin of error, that would make more sense.

See? Case in point, I wasn't talking about the numbers or about polls. I was talking about how democrats have ignored the middle class forever, and how the middle class has figured it out. You can take comfort from the polls and ignore the real message the people just sent, or you can take the blinders off and see what really has happened to the democratic party. One way or another it won't change the movement that has started and I can only hope it keeps gaining momentum.

Well he mentioned a lot of things and you didn't add anything specific. So I had no way of knowing what you were referring to. If you're talking about ignoring the middle class, then BOTH parties have done that, and Trump's policy proposals will put that problem on steroids.

People making 25,000 to 50,000 paying 10% tax and 0% Capital Gains is hardly ignoring the middle class, so no, no steroids, quite natural and nice.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis-donald-trump-s-tax-plan

So taking less in taxes will just bring the middle class out of the recession they have begun in since 2008?

I think you understand that the economy and the middle class are more complicated than one variable in a huge equation? So why mention 1 thing?
The middle class will have more money to spend. Companies will have more money to spend and pay the middle class better and bring more jobs back home (hopefully lowering the tax for corporations from 35% to 15% does this.) Middle class spends more increases tax revenue from purchases, for starters. All the other tax brackets (only 3 under Trump) go way down too.

But we are between a rock and a hard place, Trump or Clinton getting in office next year was going to be going to be difficult, the big banks have basically destroyed this country with QE. America is a little piece of what it once was, at least as far as its workforce is concerned. We have our work cut out for us.

I don't understand how you guys bring up 1 point to either stand for your argument or to attack with. All of this is complicated. It is like micro managing a complex business. It doesn'T make sense.

Bring up one point? I responded to your post. All you did was make one point. You want to discuss the economy and the impact of tax cuts? Go for it. How about you present some evidence of how tax cuts for the wealthy have helped the middle class, or any other tax cuts. Don't respond with talking points, show me some data.

My point is that this is complicated. The idea behind cuts is solid, instead of trickle down economics, instead of banks giving money to more at the top, we give money to those who need it. These tax cuts are across the board.

Things the way we have been doing them ain't working and hasn't been working, is that data?

No its not data. It's just empty unsubstantiated rhetoric. Unless you can actually come up with data that shows tax cuts do anything at all to help, you will be just another person who is throwing out right wing talking points with no basis in reality.

You want statistics to show that giving people more money will help the economy?
Well, we got statistics that giving it to rich bankers and those at the top doesn't trickle down, so how bout we try something that actually gives to people directly?

Nice rhetoric on your part, the way you can use words like "unsubstantiated", but please, people in general are not that stupid.
Give them more money and they generally spend it. The government can operate on less, God knows we have for years. We all know how inefficient they (govt) can be.

My bet is, there is a reason why MSM and politicians hated Trump and that reason will benefit us all. Give it some time. System is already broken, you got a good bandaid plan?

I call things as I see them. Your claims are unsubstantiated so that's what I called them.
The real tax is still being given to the rich, like democratic voters who can't see Hillarys weaknesses you can't see the obvious either. Just take the median wage and multiply it with the percentage of the tax cut, how much money is that in a year? 50% of the population will get less than that. On the other side the rich will continue to enjoy their super entitled handouts from the government.

For every dollar created in the economy the rich will get $1.2 and the rest will pay $0.2
This is an example being used to illustrate the point, not exact numbers.

You cant think beyond giving people more money. When in realitypeople are not being given more money the government will hold back a little less than before. Private companies will then run up prices if goodso and the middle classee will get even less for their money. This is how free markets work. Open your eyes a little bit.

holfresh wrote:

djsunyc wrote:

earthmansurfer wrote:Seriously, look at the bright side and give this a chance.

voting for someone running on a platform of racism and sexism makes one complicit with it. at the very core...people that voted for trump said loud and clear..."racism and sexism does not matter b/c it does not effect me". both sides can talk policy all they want but it does not change that.

i don't mean to personally insult anybody here but that's how i feel. people of color and women have been suppressed for so long and to right the wrongs of history, there needs to be change and evolution and that includes making sure people of color and women are lifted to a higher status. that's not entitlement - that's paying for your sins. there is systematic racism and sexism still highly prevalent and this election set back the slight progress that's been made.

i debated whether to post this opinion of mine but i'm still trying to make sense of things and this forum has provided me a place to release thoughts and feelings - even if they are incoherent.

Keep posing this stuff..Many of us agree with you..I'm still trying to process it myself..I'm just too frustrated to put down any thought out response...

My kids were shocked at the results and hurt to be honest...I had to have a talk with them about the outcome the following morning before they went to school..I had to explain that nothing has changed outside our doors..That the things I have told them over the years about honesty and having respect for others still hold true and is still a virtue..We have to work hard and take care of our own...

So keep it coming, it reinforces that fact that there are still sane people out there...

holfresh wrote:Keep posting this stuff..Many of us agree with you..I'm still trying to process it myself..I'm just too frustrated to put down any thought out response...

My kids were shocked at the results and hurt to be honest...I had to have a talk with them about the outcome the following morning before they went to school..I had to explain that nothing has changed outside our doors..That the things I have told them over the years about honesty and having respect for others still hold true and is still a virtue..We have to work hard and take care of our own...

So keep it coming, it reinforces that fact that there are still sane people out there...

thanks. i appreciate the support and thanks to martin for allowing us a place to share these thoughts.

i wanted to share something - it's a discussion i'm having with raptors fans. a different perspective b/c they are all canadian:

America and Trump's white nationalism compared to anti-immigrant sentiments in other countries is significantly different.

Like Canada, those other countries don't have a history of enslaving black people. Nor did they actively support racial segregation where black and brown people sat at the back of the bus and couldn't use bathrooms or water fountains that were reserved for whites. That was in my lifetime, which is freaking insane. That was only in the USA.

When Jackie Robinson came to Montreal in the late 1940s he was shocked that he could freely rent an apartment and live as an equal to whites. The point being that many middle America whites have been raised with this underlying racist mindset, which subconsciously affects their worldview.

A demogogue like Trump siezed on those fears. He convinced middle America that their economic problems were caused by Mexicans, Chinese and Muslims. They bought it hook line and sinker.

Now with Steve Bannon in President Trump's inner White House circle you can bet the racial dog whistle will be sending out signals loud and clear to Trump's white base.

reub wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

reub wrote:And I told you that almost all of the polls were rigged too. Many of you are so easily manipulated by leftists and the media. Think for yourselves.

The polls were closer this year than in 2012. I posted an article on this earlier today. When all the votes are counted, the polls will have been off by about 2 points.

This is the trick of the leftist propaganda machine. They tell you all along that Hillary is up by double digits to cause voter suppression and then at the very last second they narrow the polls to something more realistic so that they can claim credibility. They do this every election to help their political party. Don't be fooled!