Politics The 2016 US Presidential Election

Curious mentality from a society that heavily prioritizes individualism and has its own brand of justice. Honestly wouldn't have expected it.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

Is it a bad thing that I really do not want to vote at all? I cannot in good conscience support either Presidential candidate. Can you vote on the other stuff but not the president?

 

I mean, this election seems like one of those where you have the right to bitch & complain either way.

Both main options are legitimately horrible.

 

I have a problem with how all the campaigns have been run the past 18 months. I don't know if Trump would have won the primary if he had a pro-successful black and latino business message. Maybe he knew that his tax scheme would get out and his past statements would hurt him. I just wonder if he knew that he would have a chance if he could get all of the angry poor and middle class white people behind him, and that is why he picked that strategy. People wishing that they had his money and punish the other side that they have been brainwashed to hate by their non-factual media for the past 20 years. And he knew that he would get the anti-Hillary vote. Maybe that is why he doesn't have a detailed plan and explanations about why his ideas would work. Make it seem like you have some semblance of a campaign by hiring a team to draft up state by state ideas and issues as to why people should vote for Trump. The GOP needs more than the Guns For All, Anti-Abortion, and Dirty Energy groups to win. It didn't help that Trump said and possibly did sexually abuse women, cheated the tax system for many years, even after declaring bankruptcy, and tweeted crazy things. The scary thing is that Cruz may have won if he had won the primary. Hopefully the country can have a discussion about how the primaries are run in the next few years and change things. Maybe Iowa and New Hampshire should allow you to vote for as many candidates as you want, but the one with the most votes wins. Maybe a state like Oregon or Washington should be early as well to prevent the deep red states from giving a candidate a lot of momentum at the beginning.

Hillary and the left wing groups haven't done a great job either. I just found out that she has a book written about her ideas and policies when I was at the bookstore today. Why has she not brought this up? Why hasn't the flood of e-mails I get from Democratic groups had any ideas or policies in it. Why haven't they gone out to the people and asked them for their ideas for how they would fix some issues? Because I'm not sure if I agree with what Hillary will do on a lot of things. But, I also think Hillary is trying to walk a fine line between doing anything to support the far left and she doesn't want to alienate the moderate Republicans that might still exist, although I'm not sure that many will bring themselves to vote for her.

Stein would be getting a lot more support I feel if Clinton was running against Kasich and was losing by 20-30 points. I also think that Stein would be winning if it was just her against Trump. While she is only at 2%, I think the Green Party needs to show that a majority of the country supports their positions and give a detailed plan on how these ideas would get implemented. But they either need to run against Democrats in the primary and win, then run as Green Democrats, just like the Tea Party is running as Republicans instead as their own third party. They also should take a poll and see if it was a race between Trump, Johnson and Stein, who would be winning? They also need to learn how to use free technology and not beg for money. If they put out videos showing how life would be under a Green Party administration, I think it would work. But, the problem is that way too many people would be against any tax increase and call them socialist. They need to demonize those people and tell the people that they are the reason we can't have nice things like other first world countries. They also need to run on not wasting money by funding big media ads. They should also say that they will cut government waste and make it work more efficiently to help people.

Johnson and the libertarians could have run a better campaign. Talk about the big issues. The national debt and monetary policy is crazy. What would the government budget look like when it is cut in half and we let the private sector and corporations run things? What would people have to change in their lives? Guns across state lines, marijuana legal, fewer laws, abortions and gay marriage OK, less welfare from the government, and on and on. Be the people should be responsible party. Although I'm not sure if there is enough people out there who want to do the grown up things and pay off the debt if it causes people to lose some jobs when they close military bases overseas, stop a lot of farm aid, and cut government assistance.

 

Today is the big day.

Yes, I'm pointing out the obvious, but I view this election as one of the most important in US history.

If Clinton wins, several firsts will happen--first female POTUS, first former first lady as POTUS, etc.

If Trump wins, there is no telling what he is going to attempt to do (notice I didn't write accomplish).

 

I voted.

I don't know if this is good or bad, but I had no wait time at 11:50. I walked right up to: the table to sign in, then the table for my code slip, then the booth.

Per the workers there was a crowd at 7:00AM, and they expect a rush around 5:00PM.

I won't be watching the non-stop blah, blah, wah, wah, wah analysis tonight. But at around 9:00PM I'll start surfing the news channels, and hopefully see the final results at around 11:00PM.

 

What "next time"? With a 5-4 supreme court, and very possibly a 6-3 one, a gerrymandered Congress, and Republican control of almost 3/4ths of the states, governorships, suburban cities governments, and a whole bunch of other positions around the country. They have a propaganda machine and use peer pressure to keep people voting for the Republicans no matter what. The sad thing is I think there is a large anti-Democrat vote out there, no matter who they run. There are a lot of single issue voters, anti-gun control, anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-minority who will vote for whoever the Republican is, and they only need to get a few more voters with them to win.

The truth is that the third party votes didn't throw this election for the Democrats, but it was a distraction. Hillary didn't do enough to win over those single issue voters. And their media and messaging didn't work against the lies from the right.

 

That was unexpected news to wake up to. I guess the disdain from the Bernie supporters couldn't be surmounted after all.

 

I'm still in shock. When I went to bed around 1:15AM the coverage on PBS showed Trump having 268 electoral college votes, and reported that he was preparing to make his victory speech.

How the hell did the egotistical asshole Trump manage to pull this off? The majority of the blame falls on Hillary and her campaign organizers not being able to get out the votes she needed. I also blame the non-voters (NVs) who decided to sit this out, and the protest voters (PVs) who voted third party. The pre-election polls, which turned out to be incorrect, showed this as a very close race (they got that part correct), which meant Hillary needed every vote she could (and didn't) get.

I can understand protest voting. As age 20 I voted for John Anderson in 1980 as a protest vote against Jimmy Carter for being a total pussy (my opinion of JC has softened over the years, but his inaction still bothers me). The thing is there was no doubt that JC was going to lose the election; if every vote for JA had gone to JC, Reagan would've still been elected.

IMO the NVs & PVs played a large role in Trump getting elected.

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Now the only thing to hope for is Trump isn't the complete asshole he comes across as being, and actually does a good job.
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Rather than deal with the fight between my computer software and the TFP edit function.......

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Presidents and their parties come and go, as do the their policies and programs. Years ago I started looking at the institution whose members can outlast presidents for several decades, the Supreme Court. Trump will be in the position to load the SC with laissez faire/pro-business justices. IMO that is scariest aspect of his presidency (even if he only serves one term).

 

Yes, the DNC was definitely behind Hillary from the start. The early support--unfair, unethical, & possibly illegal--seemed like a good idea at the time, namely to avoid the type of splintering that plagued the Republicans in 2012.

IMO:
--Bernie is too socialist, even for many Democrats.
--The Republicans, even the ones who didn't want Trump and subsequently sat out the election, would've turned out in droves to make sure Bernie didn't get elected.
-- Many Democrats would've skipped voting.
--Meaning in all likelihood the election would've gone to Trump.