POTUS Election thread

[Xiahou]

Any talk by the Dems or GOP on re-training coal miners or assembly line workers into the next generation of green technology technicians is a joke.

I know this is only a small point from your post, but I felt the need to point out Obama almost single-handedly killed the coal industry in the US by regulating coal powered electric plants out of existence. I lived in coal country for a couple years and it was sad to see all the workers incrementally getting laid off, knowing that their livelihoods weren't coming back.

I think this probably fed somewhat into Hillary's defeat too. Dems long took union support for granted. These were life-long union workers that were losing their jobs because of Democrat policies. Their anger and frustration is understandable.

[Gilrandir]

The working "class" (a much less sweeping term here than in Europe) was frustrated and angered with an anemic GDP growth rate and regulations etc.

I don't think the working class think in the terms of GDP growth and marginalizing regulations. It is rather

they want to work and get paid

[edyzmedieval]

It makes it a very difficult question to answer with regards to workers in industries who will eventually shut down completely.

What do you do with them? You need to get them jobs so they can work, survive and then thrive as individuals, families and societies. But what do you do when you're going to have to close for example all of those coal factories - climate change is real, it's a disaster and coal factories heavily contribute to this. We need to save both our planet (our home) and the workers who are displaced by the sudden shift in policy and essentially... life.

Retraining them is one thing, and it's not a joke. You need to ensure they are retrained so you can give them a fair, solid chance in this new environment.

But what else can you do, that's the important question, apart from just retraining them.

[Strike For The South]

I'm going to use the term "Hispanic". I'm not particularly fond of the term, but it's the one I'm going to use.

So Trump captured more of the Hispanic vote than Mittens did. This is after the DNC and Spanish media tried to shove the "he's going to deport you all" narrative down the groups collective throat. I remember when Trump got into it with Ramos, the DNC hooted and hollered because the insulted a Hispanic mans pride. The DNC is hiliraously racist and thought this would bring out the vote.

The Hispanic ground swell the DNC predicted never coalesced around Clinton. The obvious answer as to why is because most Hispanics who vote tend to be ones who have been here for multiple generations. There is also a large minority of hispanics who do not have a high opinion of illegal immigration. Black Americans didn't come out in the numbers they were "supposed" to either. I'm not sure why the DNC thought they would, other than the fact they screamed "racist" at Trump a few times.

The DNC thinks they have a stranglehold on the "POC" vote. The facts are that the DNC strategy for getting out the "POC" vote is dated and slightly racist. It's not enough to say "they are racist, we are your party". The socially liberal wing of the party also turns off a lot of potential voters. No one ever addresses that. The most socially regressive attitudes towards gays are faraway found in the minority community. En vogue things like "safe spaces" are alien to these people other than those who attend university (who in turn are used as Proof of some broad coalition).

The malaise that surronded this election was not exclusive only to white voters. I can garuntee most of the people protesting right now didn't vote.

[a completely inoffensive name]

It makes it a very difficult question to answer with regards to workers in industries who will eventually shut down completely.

What do you do with them? You need to get them jobs so they can work, survive and then thrive as individuals, families and societies. But what do you do when you're going to have to close for example all of those coal factories - climate change is real, it's a disaster and coal factories heavily contribute to this. We need to save both our planet (our home) and the workers who are displaced by the sudden shift in policy and essentially... life.

Retraining them is one thing, and it's not a joke. You need to ensure they are retrained so you can give them a fair, solid chance in this new environment.

But what else can you do, that's the important question, apart from just retraining them.

There is no way you can sufficiently train millions of people in a short period of time for labor markets that do not have the demand for such an expansion.

The only way to maintain the illusion is for a massive government employment program. Kill two birds with the lacking infrastructure, but this is not 1933 and we do not have FDR but the followers of Rand in Congress.

[Pannonian]

I know this is only a small point from your post, but I felt the need to point out Obama almost single-handedly killed the coal industry in the US by regulating coal powered electric plants out of existence. I lived in coal country for a couple years and it was sad to see all the workers incrementally getting laid off, knowing that their livelihoods weren't coming back.

I think this probably fed somewhat into Hillary's defeat too. Dems long took union support for granted. These were life-long union workers that were losing their jobs because of Democrat policies. Their anger and frustration is understandable.

Over here in the UK, Thatcher killed the British coal mining industry because its workers voted Labour and were inclined to strike. Industries like that were closed and replaced by service industries whose workers tend to vote Conservative.

[Greyblades]

Good to see the deomcrat voters are taking the defeat well.

https://streamable.com/6nwo

[Husar]

Good to see the deomcrat voters are taking the defeat well.

https://streamable.com/6nwo

Just like the GOP voters:




As for the coal industry, noone seems to think outside the box, i.e. basic income guaranteed for everyone. Decouple work and income and don't hang on to the old tripe of "noone will work anymore" that was proven false already.
Could go a step further and limit wealth somehow. The idea that only billionaires can be job creators was proven false by crowdfunding, where a lot of people pool their money to employ others. For our resident market capitalists the appeal could be that in the case of crowdfunding, the market literally decides, whereas with billionaire investors, "the market" for investments is often literally one guy who has all the money and all the decision in his hands.

[Beskar]

[InsaneApache]

I was just going to post that video.

[Husar]

The one thing that is weird about the video, although I agree in general, is that the right is not always better at debating things than the left is IMO. Whether you talk to a libraul vegan or a die-hard Trump supporter seems to make little difference in terms of the wall you are often about to hit in terms of ability to convince them of anything. Or maybe it's just that I'm a terrible debater.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Actually, it is a good point that Clinton's selection more closely cleaves to the old manner of selection, except the local party machines are just replaced by a direct Clinton campaign machine. Still poorly executed; untold millions wasted on what? Might as well spend no money and tell people to read her extended platform on her web zone or off.

The popular vote difference is not much to speak of on its own terms. Original projections were a 3-4% over Trump, then when she was well enough defeated and all that was left was to count votes, it was to be ~1%. It has settled around 0.2%. No one should take away that this was a narrow defeat or blame it on the electoral college (anyway the behavior of voters would change without EC considerations). You can't shift the numbers around in a flattering way.

But you may see a change coming regardless with the expansion of the National Interstate Popular Vote Compact. Perhaps this isn't what reformists typically advocate, a total shift to raw popular vote count.

The math simply does not work out for ever getting that compact passed by enough states. Big blue states will only carry it so far, the bottom half of states will never give away their power in the EC. The key states to win over are the swing states that enjoy the election money flooding in to ever think of changing the current system.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I know this is only a small point from your post, but I felt the need to point out Obama almost single-handedly killed the coal industry in the US by regulating coal powered electric plants out of existence. I lived in coal country for a couple years and it was sad to see all the workers incrementally getting laid off, knowing that their livelihoods weren't coming back.

I think this probably fed somewhat into Hillary's defeat too. Dems long took union support for granted. These were life-long union workers that were losing their jobs because of Democrat policies. Their anger and frustration is understandable.

You are 100% correct. But Obama only sped up what was inevitable for these people. Natural gas is just as plentiful, just as cheap, burns cleaner, allows for greater efficiency turbines and is not as carbon intensive. It is a losing battle that Obama should have left alone, he pounced because it was an easy target.