Given that California and New York are the 1st and 3rd most populous states, this number is supposed to mean what exactly. You do realize that all those giant red states in the middle have nobody living there and have like one house district each right? And Texas accounts for a large portion of the republican house seats.

Interesting point (though I don't agree about Obama's executive action making any difference here). It does seem like pointing out racism more explicitly this cycle backfired. More swing voters seemed to respond defensively with "i'm not racist!" further entrenching any inclination to Trump support. Not too many were like "oh yeah, you're right!".

Sklansky could very well be correct about this, which sucks, because it's not easy to point out racism in a nice way that doesn't cause people to be defensive.

A bit of irony that someone can win the popular vote and be considered a horrific turn out.

Yeah he wasn't so much talking about the deplorables and alt-right stuff as he was the Dems' implicit message of "We are the party of demographic destiny, get used to it white folks" that was the basis of the TDOTRP thread. Turns out that rust belt voters could vote for a black president without much issue but an explicitly brown party was a bridge too far.

Shuffle is crushing these last few posts. Where is Dids? Can he not find a salon article to pass off as his own viewpoints the last few days or what.

She crushed in what about 7-8 states while losing most of the rest bigly and narrowly winning a few. Trump won almost twice as many states as her. It matters.

lol'd

You realise that nothing he says here is in anyway contrary or exclusive to your picture of the economy?

You are looking at massively broad generalisations of the economy such as GDP, employment etc.

You are not looking at the specifics of what is happening in the working conditions of employment.

One of the key reasons why employment and GDP remained relatively stable and has relatively recovered (though there has been no typical post recession boom) is because workers are doing more for less. This is very well documented.

Less does does not always mean less money, though it often does, for example it can mean, smaller overtime rate, less periods considered overtime in general , less money for mileage, less money for cover work, less holiday entitlement, less pension contribution and so on.

Its this kind of cost cutting at the workers expense that has allowed many firms to maintain their bottom line employment numbers.

Indeed instead of being contrarian to your perspective on the economy, much of what he describes is exactly what makes your perspective of the economy possible.

the way i see it democrats are going to be in for some hard times over these next four years as they're going to need to find someone to step up and lead the party, while then determining if the party shifts progressive or continues further right. i also think they're going to have to accomplish something big during trump's presidency if they want to be competitive in 2018 or 2020.

some of the very ideas that got trump elected exist within the democratic party and should be key issues for democrats going forward. in fact, one such issue (that will never be addressed by trump), and one that democrats could begin working on literally tomorrow- would be campaign finance. however like republicans, democrats are so addicted to the cash that scaling back the greed would admittedly be perhaps an insurmountable challenge.

5 states have currently passed bipartisan legislation to call a constitutional convention to amend the us constitution to get money out of politics. trump loosely ran against the donor class, so state republican resistance on this issue would be countering the new will of the voters, so they would likely cooperate, especially knowing trump would have to publicly support. the only requirement to then call the convention would be 2/3 of remaining states passing legislation, so democrats could accomplish this before the 2020 elections.

an achievement of this magnitude would not only restore and solidify party confidence amongst progressives and independents, it may also serve to weaken republicans in future elections, especially in state and local races, and especially if trump does not deliver on his promises. and even though republicans seem unstoppable right now, if the democratic party can shed the elites and become a grass roots party, they will make a powerful comeback.

Trump addressed campaign finance, saying how he was able to do his campaign with much less money than Hilary and that most of the donations were small donations. Remember, guys like the Koch brothers didn't back Trump.

That was another weak point for Hilary.

Adelson gave Trump and related PACs somewhere around $30 million.

probably smarter for the koch brothers to distance trump publicly and then support him anonymously via super pac in case he lost. an ironic contrast to a healthy political system, and an example of why it needs reform.

I am by no means saying that trump is not taking superpac money. When has scam artist trump ever turned down free money?

I am saying that he addressed campaign finance more than Hilary did (albeit as a form of attack on Hilary rather than a call for reform).

As much as I dislike the Kochs, I believe them when they say they don't back Trump.

I wish people would stop seeing Trump as just a more racist right wing guy. He is far far more dangerous.

This is a really important fight for Democrats to wage over the next four years. Like all of the other critical fights, the numbers will be against us, but we need to find a way to win. This can only be one from the grassroots up and the local levels. It's state legislature races, it's changing minds by making calls, holding events, knocking on doors, etc, etc.

He lost 49-46%. It may be worth the DCCC encouraging him to try to get away with carpet-bagging, he's such a good candidate but he has virtually no political future in statewide elections in Missouri. Jason Kander is his name, by the way.

There are some good horses in the stable, though:

Elizabeth Warren (67)
Tulsi Gabbard (35)
Cory Booker (47)
Julian Castro (42)
Joaquin Castro (42)
Deval Patrick (60)
Kirsten Gillibrand (49)
Kamala Harris (52)
Jason Kander (35)

I think Warren, Booker and Julian Castro probably throw their hat in the ring for 2020. Maybe one or two of the others, but a few of them will eye 2028. You could argue the pros/cons on a lot of them, but there are good candidates in that group.

Sweet, so we got Orange Hitler because a bunch of foolishly proud white people wanted busywork so they didn't feel like The Lazy Blacks.

This keeps getting better and better.

Did I see correctly that the Democrats gained seats in both houses of Congress? It's hard to know what to make of the death of the Democratic party if that's true and Hillary wins the popular vote, yet Republicans won the presidency and control both houses.

Hillary killed Trump with big donors. Not quite 2 to 1 but close.

Republican turnout was bad too for more understandable reasons.

So you're saying trump voters said "**** poor people, I want more stuff."

No **** huh?

True, white folks dodged a bullet as HRC was gonna ban and deport them post-election.

Obviously, yes.

So how do you explain to trump voters they went wildly in the wrong direction?

This is a good piece on the state of the Democratic party. https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...mepage%2Fstory

I think you're not an American, so maybe some local color will help you interpret this. Donald Trump recently won our elections for president. (FYI in our country, president is not a largely ceremonial position but actually wields an enormous amount of power.) What's more, Trump won the elections despite making a number of openly racist statements, endorsing various extremist policies and having exposed a number of shocking lapses of personal character. Many people view Trump as one of the worst and most dangerous major party candidates for president in many decades.

What strikes some American observers as astonishing about Bernie's statement is that, in the wake of this stunning and devastating victory for Trump, Bernie (who is notionally a political ally of Hillary Clinton, the losing candidate in this week's election) would essentially endorse Trump's voters on their analysis of the main issues in language that parrots key lines of attack that Trump used against Clinton during the campaign.

I thought we could discuss this civilly. My mistake.