purplesparklies
Brilliant_Rock
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2010
- Messages
- 744
By Colin Moriarty.
I wanted to wait to write what I’m about to say until I felt like I had all of the information I needed to say it. As many of you know, I’m a political junky, and have been since a comically young age (my first “politically cognizant” moment was during Desert Storm; I was 7), so I’ve slept very little the last few days, reading, listening, and absorbing everything I could about what just happened. I must admit that, as a lover of politics and history, this entire cycle has been fascinating to bear witness to, even though it has profound real life implications, good or bad, active or indifferent.
I, like pretty much everyone else, thought that Clinton would win. But, I also cautioned over many Tweets, some episodes of one of the podcasts I’m on, and via other avenues that there is a massive, under-represented, silent, and forceful group of Donald Trump supporters who would make this one a nail-biter. And I was dead right. Clinton’s coup-de-grace never came. She lost, and when it comes to the electoral college, it wasn’t even very close.
I warned people of the “Shy Trump” voter, studying the 2015 UK election and this year's Brexit vote, not to mention the 2014 midterms. I discussed with people the Bradley Effect and the Spiral of Silence, notions of political science that happened to be very true this cycle. I told people not to take anything for granted, to not take their foot off of the gas, to understand that the polling was wrong and that this race was way tighter than it seemed. I tried to tell folks to empathize with the other side and understand exactly where they were coming from. This loss was, in a way, totally predictable, even if none of us actually thought it would materialize.
Now, here are some hard truths.
First of all, Hillary Clinton was a profoundly terrible candidate, and everyone -- and that means all of us -- knows it. Few people genuinely like Clinton and few people would authentically mark her down as their first choice. In a party brimming with some inspirational, likable figures -- Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden -- THIS is the person Democrats felt was “the one.” Someone with a lower voter trustworthiness than her blatantly lying opponent. A person who clearly broke the law with her e-mail server and distribution of e-mails and somehow got away with it. A person married to a notorious philanderer who nullified her single best string of attacks on her adversary. A person who carpetbagged to a state only to take advantage of it for her own political gain. A person with so much personal and political baggage that it boggles the mind, enriching herself on Wall Street and with her State Department-derived connections and remaining uniformly detached from those she claimed to be the champion of. A person who is clearly treated differently than the rest of us because of who she is.
Donald Trump won, but let it also be said that Hillary Clinton lost, and in about as dramatic a fashion as you could possibly imagine. Clinton started with 226 electoral votes right off the bat, no questions asked. All she needed to do was cobble together another 44 to win. That’s it. 44. Donald Trump started with 161 electoral votes right off the bat, and somehow cobbled together the requisite 270, and then some. From a political science standpoint, what happened was utterly seismic. There’s no other way to put it. And a lot of that stems not from Trump’s strength, but just a profound sense of weakness from Clinton. That’s a fact. Clinton was a weak Democratic candidate, and that really says something for a party that nominated Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, and Hubert Humphrey.
You simply cannot understate how insane it is that Clinton managed to lose to Trump. Donald Trump was, bar none, the most beatable candidate in modern American history. He did everything he possibly could to alienate people, embarrass his supporters, friends, and family, and outright offend. His own political party didn’t even like him, not to mention the Washington power brokers, many members of the House and Senate, and on and on and on. Trump shouldn’t have had a prayer. He didn’t have a prayer, it seems.
So, stop and think for a second, and ask yourself this: What the hell does that say about Hillary Clinton?
The fact is, Hillary Clinton, her campaign, her surrogates, and her donors should be embarrassed beyond belief. Clinton had every single possible advantage working for her. Every. Single. One. She had a significant demographic advantage. She had a ridiculous money and PAC advantage. She had virtually the entire media on her side. She had virtually the entire entertainment industry on her side. She had the establishment in her pocket. There is no way, on paper, she should have lost. She should have won by 10 points, and then some.
But she DID lose, and the question is why. And this is when things are going to get hard to swallow for some. The reason she lost, my friends, is arrogance and elitism, a distrust of the power structure and a weariness of the status quo, and, above all else, I’d say, absolute economic desperation. It’s that simple. And it doesn’t start and stop with her. The arrogance of coastal, big city elites thumbing their noses at people in “fly-over country,” calling the hicks and rednecks, telling them they’re racists, bigots, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, telling them they didn’t know what was best for them, their families, their communities. If you don’t understand how that grates on people, on families, on friends, well, start understanding, because that’s why Hillary Clinton lost and Donald Trump won. Period.
And it’s not like that pre-election sentiment isn’t raging on post-election. People talk about Trump voters like they’re literal shit. The media “others” them, liberal echochambers castigate them, and Democrats -- instead of understanding the reality of their loss and taking a long, hard look at their epic shortcomings -- look to cast blame elsewhere. Anywhere and everywhere but with themselves, as is usually the case with sore losers.
I mean, let’s be truly honest with each other for a minute. You -- and you know who I’m talking about -- you think you’re better than these people. You think you’re superior to them. That you’re smarter than them. That you understand their reality better than they understand it. You look down on them and think they’re inferior. You think that because they come from a rural place, or work a blue collar job, or believe in God, or in the sanctity of life, that you’re simply better than them. You know better, you think better, you live better.
Well, they sure told you to go **** yourself, didn’t they?
In reality, they told many people to go **** themselves, because it’s here, in these enclaves, that folks have been struggling for decades with no one listening. As was so eloquently put by many before me, it’s mind-boggling that some folks really think that the bajillion districts that voted for Obama and then voted for Trump have somehow turned racist, which is why there are more than just a handful of people that really need to just stop and actually use their brains. Of course racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all of the rest exist, and of course there’s an element of that running through Trump-style populism. But to blame all, or even most, of Clinton’s loss on that is absurd, and anyone who is doing that should be embarrassed at how apparently low-functioning their ability to critically think about politics is.
I understand the fear, dislike, and distrust of Donald Trump. I put my money where my mouth is and left the Republican party over him. That wasn’t an easy (or even all that intuitive) step for me to take. I refused to be a party to what he did to the GOP, to the way he speaks about others, to his callous disregard for decency and decorum. I pulled the trigger for John Kasich, I left, and then I voted for Gary Johnson, who I felt was the only actually honest person running for the office. But never for a second did I lose sight of what’s so appealing about Trump, how his charisma, his brashness, and his antics would win him lots and lots of votes, even as I turned my back on him, and my party in the process. I have no regrets. I did the right thing. I don’t like Donald Trump as a person, even as I agree with some of his policies, and I don’t think he’s fit to be president. That’s why I didn’t vote for him, and that’s why I never even remotely suggested anyone should.
But Donald Trump won. He and his apparatus, his tens of millions of diehard supporters, they proved everyone wrong. They held traditionally GOP states, they won almost every swing state, and they even turned three or four deep blue states red. He won all over the country, not just in the south or in states with small populations. You can call his supporters stupid, but he won a significant share of college educated voters, as Republican always do, although liberal elitism has conveniently pushed that factoid to the side. You can call his supporters racist, but he won a bigger portion of the Latino vote than Mitt Romney (which, for me, was the most stunning surprise of all) and carried a massive shit ton of districts that voted loud and proud for Barack Obama, many of them twice. You can call his supporters sexist, but women voted for him in droves; fewer women voted for Clinton than even Obama, even with the possibility of the first woman president on the other side. Hell, you could even call his supporters backwater redneck hicks, as he carried massive shares of the vote in affluent, northern, in-the-shadow-of-major-city locales like Long Island, the Philly suburbs, and Orange County, people far more focused on their singular hatred of established politics than dire economic straits.
I have no doubt whatsoever that in the midst of Donald Trump’s supporters are the very people many of you thought were there all along, the threatened white man or woman with racist tendencies, the old-schoolers who look down on women, the socially stagnant who think gay marriage and abortion are crimes worthy of ridicule. But that’s a small, small minority of the people who voted for Donald Trump. Some folks voted for him because of economic desperation; others because he dared to talk about American borders; still others yet because they wanted to break up the power broker monopoly in a distant capital city that doesn’t give two ****s about them. Again, just facts.
Yet, people’s reaction to losing is to continue to blame these people, to label them as "other," to ridicule them, to label them as the worst possible people imaginable, not understanding that this is why Donald Trump won and Hillary Clinton lost to begin with. You’re calling all of these people racists, you’re calling all of these people sexists, afraid of immigrants, of change, of progress, of whatever other ideas cooked up in comfortable Washington D.C. bars where the median household income is five times higher than it is in the rural midwest. Hell, I have family and friends that voted for Donald Trump. I straight-up know they’re not racists, or bigots, or sexists. And I think you calling them those things is deplorable, and makes me want to side with them far more than it makes me want to side with you. And trust me, that’s going to be a common theme moving forward, all over the country, as we enjoy our post-election sobering.
Did you ever consider that many of these people are good, hard-working, industrious, kind people desperate for a job and security, with a desire to provide for their families and better their situations? That many of them likely couldn’t give two ****s less who you married or put into your bodies? Who have been totally left behind by globalist economies that have enriched everyone but them? That would probably wave to you with a smile as you drove by them mowing their lawn with a mower they purchased the last time they had a secure job two decades ago?
“No!” you exclaim. “They’re all terrible people, and I’m unfriending them from Facebook!”
That’s certainly your prerogative. Just understand that your elitist, nose-snubbing, arrogant attitude is what banded many of these people together, as you assailed them with unjust monikers instead of listening to what they were actually trying to say. Just understand that people like you are the reason that Donald Trump won. And if you want to continue to split the country in two, then these people will continue to act in desperation, no matter how the biased mainstream media, big city know-better-than-yous, and corrupt bureaucrats resist. Future electoral losses will also be your fault, just like this one sits squarely and entirely on your shoulders. Not Bernie fans. Not Johnson voters. Not the people on the sidelines. And certainly not Trump supporters. Just you, and your seething contempt for people who don’t agree with you, and your singular instinct to put them down and leave them out.
Look in the mirror, take the L, and make tomorrow better than today. Or don't, and instead look forward to future losses in 2018, when the map gets a whole lot worse for coastal elite liberalism than it is today. You better start learning, and quick.
With Love, -Colin
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I wanted to wait to write what I’m about to say until I felt like I had all of the information I needed to say it. As many of you know, I’m a political junky, and have been since a comically young age (my first “politically cognizant” moment was during Desert Storm; I was 7), so I’ve slept very little the last few days, reading, listening, and absorbing everything I could about what just happened. I must admit that, as a lover of politics and history, this entire cycle has been fascinating to bear witness to, even though it has profound real life implications, good or bad, active or indifferent.
I, like pretty much everyone else, thought that Clinton would win. But, I also cautioned over many Tweets, some episodes of one of the podcasts I’m on, and via other avenues that there is a massive, under-represented, silent, and forceful group of Donald Trump supporters who would make this one a nail-biter. And I was dead right. Clinton’s coup-de-grace never came. She lost, and when it comes to the electoral college, it wasn’t even very close.
I warned people of the “Shy Trump” voter, studying the 2015 UK election and this year's Brexit vote, not to mention the 2014 midterms. I discussed with people the Bradley Effect and the Spiral of Silence, notions of political science that happened to be very true this cycle. I told people not to take anything for granted, to not take their foot off of the gas, to understand that the polling was wrong and that this race was way tighter than it seemed. I tried to tell folks to empathize with the other side and understand exactly where they were coming from. This loss was, in a way, totally predictable, even if none of us actually thought it would materialize.
Now, here are some hard truths.
First of all, Hillary Clinton was a profoundly terrible candidate, and everyone -- and that means all of us -- knows it. Few people genuinely like Clinton and few people would authentically mark her down as their first choice. In a party brimming with some inspirational, likable figures -- Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden -- THIS is the person Democrats felt was “the one.” Someone with a lower voter trustworthiness than her blatantly lying opponent. A person who clearly broke the law with her e-mail server and distribution of e-mails and somehow got away with it. A person married to a notorious philanderer who nullified her single best string of attacks on her adversary. A person who carpetbagged to a state only to take advantage of it for her own political gain. A person with so much personal and political baggage that it boggles the mind, enriching herself on Wall Street and with her State Department-derived connections and remaining uniformly detached from those she claimed to be the champion of. A person who is clearly treated differently than the rest of us because of who she is.
Donald Trump won, but let it also be said that Hillary Clinton lost, and in about as dramatic a fashion as you could possibly imagine. Clinton started with 226 electoral votes right off the bat, no questions asked. All she needed to do was cobble together another 44 to win. That’s it. 44. Donald Trump started with 161 electoral votes right off the bat, and somehow cobbled together the requisite 270, and then some. From a political science standpoint, what happened was utterly seismic. There’s no other way to put it. And a lot of that stems not from Trump’s strength, but just a profound sense of weakness from Clinton. That’s a fact. Clinton was a weak Democratic candidate, and that really says something for a party that nominated Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, and Hubert Humphrey.
You simply cannot understate how insane it is that Clinton managed to lose to Trump. Donald Trump was, bar none, the most beatable candidate in modern American history. He did everything he possibly could to alienate people, embarrass his supporters, friends, and family, and outright offend. His own political party didn’t even like him, not to mention the Washington power brokers, many members of the House and Senate, and on and on and on. Trump shouldn’t have had a prayer. He didn’t have a prayer, it seems.
So, stop and think for a second, and ask yourself this: What the hell does that say about Hillary Clinton?
The fact is, Hillary Clinton, her campaign, her surrogates, and her donors should be embarrassed beyond belief. Clinton had every single possible advantage working for her. Every. Single. One. She had a significant demographic advantage. She had a ridiculous money and PAC advantage. She had virtually the entire media on her side. She had virtually the entire entertainment industry on her side. She had the establishment in her pocket. There is no way, on paper, she should have lost. She should have won by 10 points, and then some.
But she DID lose, and the question is why. And this is when things are going to get hard to swallow for some. The reason she lost, my friends, is arrogance and elitism, a distrust of the power structure and a weariness of the status quo, and, above all else, I’d say, absolute economic desperation. It’s that simple. And it doesn’t start and stop with her. The arrogance of coastal, big city elites thumbing their noses at people in “fly-over country,” calling the hicks and rednecks, telling them they’re racists, bigots, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, telling them they didn’t know what was best for them, their families, their communities. If you don’t understand how that grates on people, on families, on friends, well, start understanding, because that’s why Hillary Clinton lost and Donald Trump won. Period.
And it’s not like that pre-election sentiment isn’t raging on post-election. People talk about Trump voters like they’re literal shit. The media “others” them, liberal echochambers castigate them, and Democrats -- instead of understanding the reality of their loss and taking a long, hard look at their epic shortcomings -- look to cast blame elsewhere. Anywhere and everywhere but with themselves, as is usually the case with sore losers.
I mean, let’s be truly honest with each other for a minute. You -- and you know who I’m talking about -- you think you’re better than these people. You think you’re superior to them. That you’re smarter than them. That you understand their reality better than they understand it. You look down on them and think they’re inferior. You think that because they come from a rural place, or work a blue collar job, or believe in God, or in the sanctity of life, that you’re simply better than them. You know better, you think better, you live better.
Well, they sure told you to go **** yourself, didn’t they?
In reality, they told many people to go **** themselves, because it’s here, in these enclaves, that folks have been struggling for decades with no one listening. As was so eloquently put by many before me, it’s mind-boggling that some folks really think that the bajillion districts that voted for Obama and then voted for Trump have somehow turned racist, which is why there are more than just a handful of people that really need to just stop and actually use their brains. Of course racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all of the rest exist, and of course there’s an element of that running through Trump-style populism. But to blame all, or even most, of Clinton’s loss on that is absurd, and anyone who is doing that should be embarrassed at how apparently low-functioning their ability to critically think about politics is.
I understand the fear, dislike, and distrust of Donald Trump. I put my money where my mouth is and left the Republican party over him. That wasn’t an easy (or even all that intuitive) step for me to take. I refused to be a party to what he did to the GOP, to the way he speaks about others, to his callous disregard for decency and decorum. I pulled the trigger for John Kasich, I left, and then I voted for Gary Johnson, who I felt was the only actually honest person running for the office. But never for a second did I lose sight of what’s so appealing about Trump, how his charisma, his brashness, and his antics would win him lots and lots of votes, even as I turned my back on him, and my party in the process. I have no regrets. I did the right thing. I don’t like Donald Trump as a person, even as I agree with some of his policies, and I don’t think he’s fit to be president. That’s why I didn’t vote for him, and that’s why I never even remotely suggested anyone should.
But Donald Trump won. He and his apparatus, his tens of millions of diehard supporters, they proved everyone wrong. They held traditionally GOP states, they won almost every swing state, and they even turned three or four deep blue states red. He won all over the country, not just in the south or in states with small populations. You can call his supporters stupid, but he won a significant share of college educated voters, as Republican always do, although liberal elitism has conveniently pushed that factoid to the side. You can call his supporters racist, but he won a bigger portion of the Latino vote than Mitt Romney (which, for me, was the most stunning surprise of all) and carried a massive shit ton of districts that voted loud and proud for Barack Obama, many of them twice. You can call his supporters sexist, but women voted for him in droves; fewer women voted for Clinton than even Obama, even with the possibility of the first woman president on the other side. Hell, you could even call his supporters backwater redneck hicks, as he carried massive shares of the vote in affluent, northern, in-the-shadow-of-major-city locales like Long Island, the Philly suburbs, and Orange County, people far more focused on their singular hatred of established politics than dire economic straits.
I have no doubt whatsoever that in the midst of Donald Trump’s supporters are the very people many of you thought were there all along, the threatened white man or woman with racist tendencies, the old-schoolers who look down on women, the socially stagnant who think gay marriage and abortion are crimes worthy of ridicule. But that’s a small, small minority of the people who voted for Donald Trump. Some folks voted for him because of economic desperation; others because he dared to talk about American borders; still others yet because they wanted to break up the power broker monopoly in a distant capital city that doesn’t give two ****s about them. Again, just facts.
Yet, people’s reaction to losing is to continue to blame these people, to label them as "other," to ridicule them, to label them as the worst possible people imaginable, not understanding that this is why Donald Trump won and Hillary Clinton lost to begin with. You’re calling all of these people racists, you’re calling all of these people sexists, afraid of immigrants, of change, of progress, of whatever other ideas cooked up in comfortable Washington D.C. bars where the median household income is five times higher than it is in the rural midwest. Hell, I have family and friends that voted for Donald Trump. I straight-up know they’re not racists, or bigots, or sexists. And I think you calling them those things is deplorable, and makes me want to side with them far more than it makes me want to side with you. And trust me, that’s going to be a common theme moving forward, all over the country, as we enjoy our post-election sobering.
Did you ever consider that many of these people are good, hard-working, industrious, kind people desperate for a job and security, with a desire to provide for their families and better their situations? That many of them likely couldn’t give two ****s less who you married or put into your bodies? Who have been totally left behind by globalist economies that have enriched everyone but them? That would probably wave to you with a smile as you drove by them mowing their lawn with a mower they purchased the last time they had a secure job two decades ago?
“No!” you exclaim. “They’re all terrible people, and I’m unfriending them from Facebook!”
That’s certainly your prerogative. Just understand that your elitist, nose-snubbing, arrogant attitude is what banded many of these people together, as you assailed them with unjust monikers instead of listening to what they were actually trying to say. Just understand that people like you are the reason that Donald Trump won. And if you want to continue to split the country in two, then these people will continue to act in desperation, no matter how the biased mainstream media, big city know-better-than-yous, and corrupt bureaucrats resist. Future electoral losses will also be your fault, just like this one sits squarely and entirely on your shoulders. Not Bernie fans. Not Johnson voters. Not the people on the sidelines. And certainly not Trump supporters. Just you, and your seething contempt for people who don’t agree with you, and your singular instinct to put them down and leave them out.
Look in the mirror, take the L, and make tomorrow better than today. Or don't, and instead look forward to future losses in 2018, when the map gets a whole lot worse for coastal elite liberalism than it is today. You better start learning, and quick.
With Love, -Colin
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk