Donald Trump Defies Pollsters, Pundits, And The Odds To Become 45th U.S. President
Defying the odds and the polls, Donald Trump triumphed over Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States.
Putting the capstone on a campaign that began seventeen months ago with a trip down an elevator at Trump Tower in New York City, Donald Trump overcame the odds, the doubts, the pollsters, and the political establishment to pull off a historic surprise win last night to become the 45th President of the United States:
Donald John Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States on Tuesday in a stunning culmination of an explosive, populist and polarizing campaign that took relentless aim at the institutions and long-held ideals of American democracy.
The surprise outcome, defying late polls that showed Hillary Clinton with a modest but persistent edge, threatened convulsions throughout the country and the world, where skeptics had watched with alarm as Mr. Trump’s unvarnished overtures to disillusioned voters took hold.
The triumph for Mr. Trump, 70, a real estate developer-turned-reality television star with no government experience, was a powerful rejection of the establishment forces that had assembled against him, from the world of business to government, and the consensus they had forged on everything from trade to immigration.
The results amounted to a repudiation, not only of Mrs. Clinton, but of President Obama, whose legacy is suddenly imperiled. And it was a decisive demonstration of power by a largely overlooked coalition of mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters who felt that the promise of the United States had slipped their grasp amid decades of globalization and multiculturalism.
In Mr. Trump, a thrice-married Manhattanite who lives in a marble-wrapped three-story penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, they found an improbable champion.
“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” Mr. Trump told supporters around 3 a.m. on Wednesday at a rally in New York City, just after Mrs. Clinton called to concede.
In a departure from a blistering campaign in which he repeatedly stoked division, Mr. Trump sought to do something he had conspicuously avoided as a candidate: Appeal for unity.
“Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division,” he said. “It is time for us to come together as one united people. It’s time.”
That, he added, “is so important to me.”
He offered unusually warm words for Mrs. Clinton, who he has suggested should be in jail, saying she was owed “a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country.”
Bolstered by Mr. Trump’s strong showing, Republicans retained control of the Senate. Only one Republican-controlled seat, in Illinois, fell to Democrats early in the evening. And Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, a Republican, easily won re-election in a race that had been among the country’s most competitive. A handful of other Republican incumbents facing difficult races were running better than expected.
Mr. Trump’s win — stretching across the battleground states of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania — seemed likely to set off financial jitters and immediate unease among international allies, many of which were startled when Mr. Trump in his campaign cast doubt on the necessity of America’s military commitments abroad and its allegiance to international economic partnerships.
From the moment he entered the campaign, with a shocking set of claims that Mexican immigrants were rapists and criminals, Mr. Trump was widely underestimated as a candidate, first by his opponents for the Republican nomination and later by Mrs. Clinton, his Democratic rival. His rise was largely missed by polling organizations and data analysts. And an air of improbability trailed his campaign, to the detriment of those who dismissed his angry message, his improvisational style and his appeal to disillusioned voters.
He suggested remedies that raised questions of constitutionality, like a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
He threatened opponents, promising lawsuits against news organizations that covered him critically and women who accused him of sexual assault. At times, he simply lied.
But Mr. Trump’s unfiltered rallies and unshakable self-regard attracted a zealous following, fusing unsubtle identity politics with an economic populism that often defied party doctrine.
His rallies — furious, entertaining, heavy on name-calling and nationalist overtones — became the nexus of a political movement, with daily promises of sweeping victory, in the election and otherwise, and an insistence that the country’s political machinery was “rigged” against Mr. Trump and those who admired him.
He seemed to embody the success and grandeur that so many of his followers felt was missing from their own lives — and from the country itself. And he scoffed at the poll-driven word-parsing ways of modern politics, calling them a waste of time and money. Instead, he relied on his gut.
At his victory party at the New York Hilton Midtown, where a raucous crowd indulged in a cash bar and wore hats bearing his ubiquitous campaign slogan “Make America Great Again,” voters expressed gratification that their voices had, at last, been heard.
“He was talking to people who weren’t being spoken to,” said Joseph Gravagna, 37, a marketing company owner from Rockland County, N.Y. “That’s how I knew he was going to win.”
For Mrs. Clinton, the defeat signaled an astonishing end to a political dynasty that has colored Democratic politics for a generation. Eight years after losing to President Obama in the Democratic primary — and 16 years after leaving the White House for the United States Senate, as President Bill Clinton exited office — she had seemed positioned to carry on two legacies: her husband’s and the president’s.
Her shocking loss was a devastating turn for the sprawling world of Clinton aides and strategists who believed they had built an electoral machine that would swamp Mr. Trump’s ragtag band of loyal operatives and family members, many of whom had no experience running a national campaign.
On Tuesday night, stricken Clinton aides who believed that Mr. Trump had no mathematical path to victory, anxiously paced the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center as states in which they were confident of victory, like Florida and North Carolina, either fell to Mr. Trump or seemed in danger of tipping his way.
Mrs. Clinton watched the grim results roll in from a suite at the nearby Peninsula Hotel, surrounded by her family, friends and advisers who had the day before celebrated her candidacy with a champagne toast on her campaign plane.
But over and over, Mrs. Clinton’s weaknesses as a candidate were exposed. She failed to excite voters hungry for change. She struggled to build trust with Americans who were baffled by her decision to use a private email server as secretary of state. And she strained to make a persuasive case for herself as a champion of the economically downtrodden after delivering perfunctory paid speeches that earned her millions of dollars.
The returns Tuesday also amounted to a historic rebuke of the Democratic Party from the white blue-collar voters who had formed the party base from the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt to Mr. Clinton’s. Yet Mrs. Clinton and her advisers had taken for granted that states like Michigan and Wisconsin would stick with a Democratic nominee, and that she could repeat Mr. Obama’s strategy of mobilizing the party’s ascendant liberal coalition rather than pursuing a more moderate course like her husband did 24 years ago.
But not until these voters were offered a Republican who ran as an unapologetic populist, railing against foreign trade deals and illegal immigration, did they move so drastically away from their ancestral political home.
(…)
From Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, industrial towns once full of union voters who for decades offered their votes to Democratic presidential candidates, even in the party’s lean years, shifted to Mr. Trump’s Republican Party. One county in the Mahoning Valley of Ohio, Trumbull, went to Mr. Trump by a six-point margin. Four years ago, Mr. Obama won there by 22 points.
Mrs. Clinton’s loss was especially crushing to millions who had cheered her march toward history as, they hoped, the nation’s first female president. For supporters, the election often felt like a referendum on gender progress: an opportunity to elevate a woman to the nation’s top job and to repudiate a man whose remarkably boorish behavior toward women had assumed center stage during much of the campaign.
Mr. Trump boasted, in a 2005 video released last month, about using his public profile to commit sexual assault. He suggested that female political rivals lacked a presidential “look.” He ranked women on a scale of one to 10, even holding forth on the desirability of his own daughter — the kind of throwback male behavior that many in the country assumed would disqualify a candidate for high office.
On Tuesday, the public’s verdict was rendered.
Uncertainty abounds as Mr. Trump prepares to take office. His campaign featured a shape-shifting list of policy proposals, often seeming to change hour to hour. His staff was in constant turmoil, with Mr. Trump’s children serving critical campaign roles and a rotating cast of advisers alternately seeking access to Mr. Trump’s ear, losing it and, often, regaining it, depending on the day.
Even Mr. Trump’s full embrace of the Republican Party came exceedingly late in life, leaving members of both parties unsure about what he truly believes. He has donated heavily to both parties and has long described his politics as the transactional reality of a businessman.
More from The Washington Post:
Donald Trump was elected the nation’s 45th president in the stunning culmination of a campaign that defied expectations and conventions at every turn and galvanized legions of aggrieved Americans in a loud repudiation of the status quo.
Hillary Clinton’s quest to make history as the first female president was thwarted by the Republican nominee’s breathtaking performance at the polls. He was carried to victory by voters fed up with the political system and mistrustful of Clinton, a former first lady, senator and secretary of state.
Trump, a 70-year-old celebrity businessman who had never before run for office, is poised to become the oldest president ever elected to a first term.
After running a divisive campaign, Trump sounded a magnanimous note of reconciliation as he claimed victory shortly before 3 a.m. Wednesday.
“Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country,” Trump said, minutes after Clinton called him to concede. “I mean that very sincerely. Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division. We have to get together. To all Republicans, Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.”
He had portrayed his opponent as the embodiment of a rigged system that had failed the everyday American. Her credentials through a quarter-century on the national stage, which in another electoral climate would have been an asset, pegged her in his supporters’ view as the ultimate establishment insider.
Trump said that under his administration, “America will no longer settle for anything less than the best.” And he promised foreign countries that “while we will always put America’s interests first, we will deal fairly with everyone,” adding: “We will seek common ground, not hostility.”
The real estate developer thanked his wife, Melania, and his children for their patience, saying: “This was tough. This was tough. This political stuff is nasty and it’s tough.”
With Trump’s ascension to the White House, the nationalist wave that has swept capitals around the world — including in Britain, which voted to break from the European Union this year — came crashing onto U.S. shores.
The prospect of an impulsive authoritarian in the Oval Office rattled investors around the world. On Wall Street, all three major stock index futures sank more than 3 percent. Japan’s Nikkei index plunged 5.4 percent; Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell by more than 2 percent. The Mexican peso — which had fallen when the Republican nominee rose in the polls during his campaign — nosedived to an eight-year low, according to Bloomberg.
Across Europe, major markets all pointed downward.
The general election, which riveted the nation and produced a record television audience for a presidential debate, turned on the question of national identity. While Clinton assembled a diverse coalition that she said reflected the nation’s future, it was no match for the powerful and impassioned movement built by fanning resentments over gender, race and religion.
Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” inspired millions of Americans alienated by the forces of globalization and multiculturalism and deeply frustrated with the inability of Washington to address their needs.
Voters anxious about the economy, convinced that the system was stacked against them, fearful of terrorism and angry about the rising gap between rich and poor, gravitated toward Trump. In him, they saw a fearless champion who would re-create what they recalled as an America unchallenged in the world, unthreatened at home and unfettered by the elitist forces of “political correctness.”
“It’s a movement comprised of Americans from all races, religions, backgrounds and beliefs who want and expect our government to serve the people, and serve the people it will,” Trump said in his victory speech.
He vowed: “Every single American will have the opportunity to realize his or her fullest potential. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.”
The presumption held by both campaigns, right up to the hours when polls began closing, was that Trump had a far narrower path to victory than Clinton. But he capitalized on nearly every opportunity across the electoral map.
From the moment that the polls began closing last night, there were signs that the night was not going to go the way that most of America, and all of the polls, expected that it would. Sure, for the first couple hours the states that were supposed to go to each candidate dutifully fell into place as both Clinton and Trump won their ‘banked’ states, but something odd seemed to be going on in many of the battleground states. Virginia, which had closed at 7pm Eastern, took far longer to be called for Clinton than the polling would have made it seem would take once initial votes and exit polling was taken into account. Vote totals amount minority groups in states such as North Carolina and Florida didn’t seem to be coming out for Clinton as strongly as they had for President Obama in the previous two elections. There were few signs that Clinton was making inroads in any of Trump’s red states in the manner that polling had suggested that they would over the past three months. Down-ballot races such as Senate races in Indiana, Ohio ,Florida, and Wisconsin were going far better for Republicans than anyone had seemed to anticipate and, most importantly, the battlegrounds seem to shift as the night from places like Ohio and Florida to traditionally Democratic states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Iowa. When 11:00pm came and the West Coast’s Electoral Votes were added to Clinton’s totals it suddenly became apparent that the night was turning into an uphill battle, but it was an uphill battle for Hillary Clinton, whose supporters spent the night finding that victory even by a narrow margin was turning out to become an exercise in finding an increasingly large number of votes in increasingly small corners of states that Clinton should have won easily, When Trump started winning in states such as North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio, it became apparent that, at the very least, the election was going to be far closer than anyone had anticipated, and that the possibility of a Trump when at the end of the night was becoming more real as the night went on.
As things stand, Donald Trump has 279 Electoral Votes while Hillary Clinton has 229 Electoral Votes, with three states — Arizona, Michigan, and New Hampshire — considered too close to call. For the second time since 2000, a President has been elected without winning the popular vote, with the current tally showing Clinton presently grabbing 59.2 million votes to just over 59 million for Trump. Gary Johnson came in third with a historic four million votes (3%) for the Libertarian Party, followed by just over 1.19 million for Jill Stein and the Green Party and some seven hundred thousand for other candidates. As final votes roll in from across the country, especially from California and the West Coast, Clinton’s vote total will no doubt increase and this election will go down in history along with 2000 as another example of the loser of the popular vote becoming the new President. Over the course of the night, Trump flipped five states that President Obama had won in each of his election wins, and scored history-defying wins in states that had not gone for a Republican candidate for President since 1988 or early such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In the process, he managed to hold off challenges from Clinton in states such as North Carolina and Arizona, and staved off a third-party challenge in deep-red Utah, which hadn’t gone for anyone other than the Republican nominee since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide in 1964. It wasn’t a landslide, but if Trump was going to win this election it was never going to be by a landslide anyway.
As the days and months go by, there will be plenty of discussion about what happened last night and how Trump managed to defy the odds and pull off a victory that every poll, every projection, and history itself seemed to argue against. At the very least, the pollsters are going to find all their models and projections thrown into doubt by a result that was seemingly completely opposite from what their models were telling us. This wasn’t just a matter of Trump doing a little better than the polls said he would, it was a matter of the polls completely misjudging the electorate that would appear at the polls. Additionally, the pollsters seemed to completely misjudge the kind of electorate that would head to the polls during the early voting period and on Election Day itself. It comes as much of a surprise as the extent of the Tory victory in Great Britain in 2015 and the Brexit vote early this year, and it’s going to cause many people to seriously question the manner in which polling is conducted from now going forward.
The implications from yesterday will be far-reaching both domestically and internationally. It will have an impact on the economy, on foreign policy, and on the future of the rest of the world. The best we can hope for, I suppose, is that actually having power mellows Trump somehow and that Congress actually starts to act like a check on Presidential power in the manner that it did during the Obama Administration. If that fails to happen, then the battle for America’s future will have to shift from being purely about winning elections to becoming winning the war of ideas. On some level, that’s a battle I’m far more confident about than I am about putting my faith in Donald Trump surprising everyone and actually becoming the kind of President we could somehow actually come to find acceptable.
America’s Brexit is underway.
Republicans have clearly been rewarded for 6 years of unrelenting obstruction, and for two federal government shutdowns.
Four things come to mind:
(1) Hillary was too flawed to overcome 25 years of opposition investigation and attack.
(2) James Comey singlehandedly pulled the plug on Hillary’s momentum with that additional email investigation stunt
(3) One thing we’re again reminded of is that there is no shelf life expiration date on white anger and resentment.
(4) and this is bipartisan … people want the Clintons and Bushes to go away
I’ve already been the recipient of gloat-text-bombs from most of my 7 brothers and sisters.
The Wisconsin polling totally missed it. I suspect that this four-way polling played a role in it — it was in the ballpark for Clinton, but was otherwise off the mark.
Overcounting the third party votes seems to have been par for the course. The four-way polling routine and the focus on the spread between the two major candidates without regard for what might happen with those supposed third-party voters was probably a mistake.
Nate Silver’s 538 remains the gold standard in aggregating polls. Admittedly he gave Clintin a 2/3 chance of winning, but his model allows much better for a small systemic swing or bias within the actual polling firms models.
Good lord…
It just dawned on me that Melania Trump, former Slovenian model that posed nude, and in bikini with gun on trump’s plane… is now the first lady of these United States.
… wow.
Let’s be blunt, stupidity and anger won. Facebook memes are considered truth, facts and reason mean little. Shame is dead.
And yet, more Americans voted for Clinton than Trump and while the arc of history is long, hard, troubled and sometimes scary, it ultimately bends towards progress.
1. Enough with the polls. Even when they are accurate, they get in the way of dealing with actual issues.
2. White votes matter. They don’t matter as much as they did. They shouldn’t matter as much as they did. They will matter a bit less as the years go by. But the demographic delusion that Democrats don’t need white votes should be permanently shattered.
3. Standards get their power because you enforce them when it is not necessarily in your best interests to do so. When you abandon them in one moment, they won’t be there in the next.
4. This country belongs to all Americans, even the ones that disagree with you.
Mike
@SKI: Let’s be blunt, stupidity and anger won.
Yes, they did…in the Democratic primary.
Mike
Wait a minute, I thought it was “horrible” to not accept the outcome of the election. Of course, the person who said that, and dodge the question when asked of her, is still expected to appear as she leaves her Manhattan hide-away. Now they are saying she’s going to make some remarks, probably nasty ones if we go by her supporters.
@Liberal Capitalist:
When did you join the Moral Majority?
When you make the whole democracy about identity politics, you shouldn’t be surprised when the much maligned group come together by their identity. Some here a quick to cry racism about White Identity politics, but it is no different than Black Identity politics, Hispanic Identity politics, LBGT Identity politics. It is just disconcerting as so many have exploited the fact that Whites have not generally engaged in Identity politics. But the logical consequence of the much touted majority minority “future” is that the former majority will come together as a group.
And there may be a nasty element develop, just as there is the racist BLM and La Raza in the Black and Latino identity politics.
Although nativism is a big part of Trump’s support there are some other factors.
Republican party leaders years ago–among them DeLay and Rove–decided to end representative democracy and make the US into a one-party state in service of the oligarchy. Their means: gerrymander Congressional districts, voter suppression laws, pack the courts with rightwing extremist judges, get the Citizens United decision, and create an alternative “news” media that functions in the US the way Goebbels
functioned for Germans.
They have succeeded. They will get to make Supreme Court appointments and they will appoint judges in the Scalia model, so there will be no recourse for people who are blocked from voting through voter supporession or live in gerrymandered areas
We will continue ot have elections and they may even make a difference at the local level. Some states will continue to have decent responsible government uniil the koch brothers do to them what they did to Wisconsin. But basically our experiment in representative government is over.
That’s what we lost in this election. On Balloon Juice there ‘s a lot of talk about who is to blame, but to me that is obvious: the voters who voted for Trump. There’s also a lot of talk about how racist or nativist or misogynist those voters are and many of them are those things but I think the biggest common denominator is that they are poor citizens in terms of participation in self-government. They failed in the primary responsibility of citizenship. They failed to know what they were voting for.
This was, at core, a pocketbook campaign. Yes, there was Trumps boorishness and Clinton’s corruption. But it was pocketbook. Look, county by county, at the upper Midwest and on east through PA. Look at the timing of the ObamaCare repricing. Look at the false economic portrayal of recent years vs reality. Ignore it at your peril, and apply the salve of calling your political opponents Nazis and stupid if you must, people. But thats just foolishness.
@MBunge: Mike, I can’t remember what thread I posted it in, but I made a comment at you that I’m sorry for. I was grumpy and lashed out inappropriately. I apologize.
@JKB:
Moral Majority… that’s so cute. That’s deader than last month’s coffee grounds.
If you are making that comment on my observation of our new first lady-elect, My observation was only that some in the past eight years have been critical of a well educated FLOTUS showing her bare arms.
I will enjoy these next two years, as there will be no need to use hyperbole.
Reality will be sufficient.
@Laura Koerber:
They knew exactly what they were voting for. Democrats failed to realize why they were voting for it. They incorrectly thought a status quo candidate would suffice, and now they have next to no power in the federal government come the new year.
Poor crybabies
GOP Pres
GOP Senate
GOP House
Laughing so hard it hurts
@Tillman:I guess Americans are going to have to learn the hard way not to hand the reigns of power over to a bunch of nitwits. Think of it as letting the toddler finally burn his hand on the stove after you’ve been continually keeping him from doing so.
Heck, why am I surprised? This is the same population that re-elected George Dubya Bush.
@al-Alameda:
Yes, we are experiencing the same thing.
Yes, their vote was a big F-you. They are disappointed with how their lives turned out and are probably enjoying others getting their due.
But what they don’t realize is that while they were “bitterly clinging to their guns and religion”, at the end of the day, they are still bitter and always will be.
I also believe that Trump will betray them and they will be no better off. Probably even worse.
@Dumb Brit:
For the record, the HuffPost writer who accused Silver of intentionally manipulating the data to make the race seem more competitive so as to drive up traffic to his site has not apologized.
@Tillman: NO I will stand by what I wrote. The Trump supports I know voted for jobs which they think have been taken from them by….someone. The voted out of a obscure sense that they were loing in competition with other people, thos other people being immigrants, black Americans…
But they willl not get jobs from the Repubicans. They will getr attacks on the New Deal, a shift of taxes of the welathy and on to them, anti-union legislation, lower wages, economic stagnation, defunding of all routes to economic success. Did they vote for that? no. The voted to screw other peple, not themselves.
But screwing themselves is what they will get.
Sadly the rest of us will get screwed too
@Scott: This may have been a big “eff-you!” to the people in power, but I fail to see how electing someone like Trump will fix matters. The globalists aren’t going to care. They’ve already gamed this out seven ways and have figured out how to make money on all of them. There’s a present hiccup in the stock market, which meant anyone who shorted stocks has made money. Those in power know there’s no way Trump will be able to get rid of the regulations that they so carefully have taken advantage of. Not without getting yowls of complaints from all the corporations using them.
If this was a scream of rage against Things As They Are, it was a bloody inefficient storm of rage, akin to protesting by taking your gun down and shooting your own foot off. Maybe that’s why these people have accomplished so little in life?
But of course, it’s never their fault. It’s always “Those People” who are causing the problems, never their own inadequacies.
Very much like the mindset of Donald Trump, after all. No wonder they support him.
@Tillman: Honestly, this piece puts it best. It echoes a lot of what I’ve been harping on for the last year.
@grumpy realist: I believe that’s the same attitude elites had towards the election of Andrew Jackson. It didn’t work out for them. I’ve tried despising these people for what I see as their foolishness, but it turns out my spite doesn’t convince them to vote Democratic. If there’s any lesson we should take from last night, it’s that thinking they’re nothing more than idiots without any conception of the future is, right or wrong, a losing strategy politically.
I suppose I shouldn’t begrudge the few days after an election reserved for venting, but I feel like this kind of rhetoric was around before November 8th. It seems to have become the only rhetoric.
@bandit:
And 90% of what Obama has inflicted upon the country can we wiped out with the stroke of a pen and maybe a couple phone calls. The dangers of attempting to rule rather than govern.
Obamacare impositions on religious freedom – regulation edited
Kangaroo courts at universities – new dear colleague letter
etc., etc.
On the upside, Democrats and DC Republicans are now looking up the concept of the separation of powers and limits on the executive.
@JKB:
I don’t see anyone saying the system was rigged or that Trump didn’t win.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yeah, you just get called a Nazi (Reynolds) and stupid (multiple).
Here in Chicagoland Bill Cameron, sort of the dean of political reporters, diminished WLS radio by informing the audience that anyone who voted Trump was stupid. It’s one thing for blog snark to have such talk, another for WLS or senior reporters.
@Laura Koerber:
That, and “they” are proud of their ignorance.
@Tillman: I don’t have much sympathy for people who do idiotic things, especially when people warn them of the consequences of such idiocy.
It’s like feeling sorry for people who send money off to the senders of Nigerian spam letters. At some point you just throw up your hands and walk away. You’ve warned them; you’ve explained to them what is going on–at some point you can only come to the conclusion that these people want to be ripped off.
@Tillman:
Thinking is not the electorate’s long suit
@JKB:
Except it won’t. What are they going to campaign on if Roe is overturned, Obamacare gone? Republicans had the opportunity to do this for some time and haven’t. They had Congress and SCOTUS but still these banes stand. These are proven moneymakers that aren’t going nowhere but lip-service bills that will mysteriously not solve anything.
Face it: The wall’s not getting built. In four years, Trump’s gone lie and say it’s because of Dem opposition in complete defiance of the face Repubs rule the roost. NAFTA will still exist, abortions will still be legal, H-2Bs will still flow like water, manufacturing and coal will still be dying…. and it will all be the Dems fault. Somehow. Even though they aren’t in control. Sad! There will be much tweeting about it.
The rubes just got majorly fleeced and are damn glad about it. Give it a year and we’ll see how happy they are when no construction sites are started along the Rio Grande.
And why on earth would a Republican congress do that? Trump will sign whatever they put in front of him. So get ready for a repeal of the VRA, no minimum wage, 22 million people losing healthcare (because Republicans still haven’t figured out the “replace” part of the equation) and so on.
The Supreme Court will be filled with hardline conservatives that will be around for the next 20 years to block any progressive bill that gets through. There will be literally no checks on Trump for at least 2 years.
@Guarneri:
Does Cameron work for FoxNews?
I know it’s early, and people need some time to recover from last night. But if the response of the Democrats to this defeat is just “It’s the fault of the voters for being stupid”, then they are setting themselves up for a repeat performance. The party needs to figure out what was wrong with their candidate and that candidate’s message, and revisit their assumptions about the Democratic coalition, and what is needed to keep the support of current members of that coalition, and expand it to other groups.
@Scott:
As if Democrats needed to be reminded again but, angry resentful white male voters are the single most most victimized and entitled people in America. And they vote.
@grumpy realist:
Ditto. An acquaintance of mine was nastily rubbing Trump’s victory in and gloating about how all the liberal achievement of the last few years will be washed away with the tide. My temper got the better of me and I replied I hoped her funeral would be lovely for all no one would see it. After all, she needs a lung transplant desperately, she was only able to get Obamacare recently and no insurance would touch her for the last few years. She absolutely cannot afford this on her own and appeals to charities have fallen flat. She has no other resources. If Obamacare goes, so do she. After a dead silence, I was told I was out of line. I responded that perhaps I was but karma’s a bitch. Her vote will likely cost her life. The look in her eyes as I walked away was a troubled one – like maybe this wasn’t the victory she thought it was.
At least she’ll get to die happy knowing liberals got what’s coming to them. I hope its cold comfort to her grieving children that a socialist plot will be defeated. May she be satisfied in her last moments knowing that the extra years she could have had went to a better cause. There will be many more like her in the next 4 years and all of them did it to themselves…. and I don’t have it in me to give a sh^t anymore.
@KM:
TrumpCare will save her. It will be taught at the nationwide TrumpU reeducation centers.
@JKB:
Forget Obama…much of the progress of the last 50 years.
The EPA – gone. Clean air and water with it. Trump campaigned on it. White folks voted for it.
We’ve already seen the Roberts Court hollow out the CRA. That work can continue unfettered.
Education? Republicans don’t care for education. Hell Trump was elected by un-educated white folk.
Paul Ryan is now free to slash SS and Medicare, and any and all aid to the poor, in order to give tax cuts to the rich.
LGTB rights? Gone.
Profiling of anyone who isn’t lily-white? You betcha.
Hundreds of thousands of troops in the Middle-East? Damn-tootin’ (And of course we can look forward to the return of $4.00 gas that comes with that.)
Planned Parenthood? Defunded. After all…that serves poor women. No need for that. Let ’em die of breast cancer that goes un-diagnosed because they can’t afford health insurance.
Dark Fwcking Ages, here we come.
@C. Clavin:
Boo-hoo.
Is it true the Montreal Canadians and Toronto Mapleleafs are conducting supplemental drafts for all the Hollywood types moving north?
@Guarneri:
It’s the Montreal Canadiens, you stupid fwck.
@JKB: “White Identity politics, but it is no different than Black Identity politics, Hispanic Identity politics, LBGT Identity politics. ”
A small difference:
Black identity politics: How dare you shoot me just because I’m black?
White identity politics: How dare you tell me I can’t shoot that guy just because he’s black?
Aside from that, no difference.
@Guarneri: Gosh, Drew, for once I wish you really were the financial genius you like to pretend to be, because it would fun to watch you lose about 90% of your assets in the market. But I suspect the only market you have money in is the one where you buy your yoo-hoos.
@Tillman: “I suppose I shouldn’t begrudge the few days after an election reserved for venting, but I feel like this kind of rhetoric was around before November 8th. It seems to have become the only rhetoric.”
Pardon the f#ck out of me, but the real “political correctness” in this country is the obsessive need to treat this arrogant, entitled crybabies as Real Americans and accept their judgment that all of us who live in cities and vote for Democrats — you know, the majority of the population — are all vandals who want to destroy Real America.And the constant yapping at us to “respect their feelings” while they’re busy trying to set the house on fire.
They got the candidate they want and they deserve, and their lives are going to be much poorer for it — and they’re going to go ahead and blame all those terrible elites no matter what, because the one thing these Real Americans will never do is take the tiniest bit of responsiblity for the own lives and their own actions.
And the funny thing — I’ve never heard one right-winger ever say “you know, those people who live in cities, they’re Americans just like you.” Just that I’m hopelessly morally corrupt and out of touch with the true value of people whose main hobby consists of snorting Oxycontin.
@wr:
If that was a picture, I would frame it and hang it in the front room. Well done.
@C. Clavin: Time to Nut Up little bedwetter – I laugh at your tears
@bandit:
So what’s more hilarious – Early Grey or Breakfast Blend?
@KM: how all the liberal achievement of the last few years will be washed away with the tide
WTF are you referring to? So sorry little bedwetter but now you get the shit end of the stick
Laughing so hard I can barely stand it.
@bandit:
Not my plight, moron but I’ll be sure to tell the acquaintance you think her impending medical crisis is funny. How quickly Trumpkins turn against themselves….. LOL so hilarious ! Have some of that tear tea you think is so funny so you don’t choke on the schadenfreude.
@KM: WTF are you talking about little crybaby?
@Bob@Youngstown: Sorry little bedwetter – the people spoke and you lost. Time to Nut Up.
I guess Americans are fine with draft dodging con artists. At least some of them are.
@JKB:
I’m sure this will help the white working class:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/trumps-win-is-a-grand-slam-for-wall-street-banks-151229234.html
@bandit: Speaking of nutting up, it is time for Trump supporters to stop playing the victims and whining about how mean the world is to them. They own this now. Every job that is lost…everyone who loses health coverage, every American who is killed in some God forsaken part of the world will be their responsibility. After all, there is no point in complaining about the Man…when you are the Man. So nut up.
@bandit: click
@Terrye Cravens:
If I was CNN (or even Fox), I have a daily segment of What Promises Trump’s Failed to Deliver On. Start the clock at the Inauguration and ask daily where the Wall is. Make “Thanks Trump” a thing just like “Thanks Obama” is. Point out manufacturing is still not coming back. There’s still illegals everywhere. Weekly commercials in all markets pointing out the same for the next four years.
In other words: Ride. His. Thin-skinned. Ass.
Make it happen, Donald. We’re waiting.
It’s the least the media owes America. They got their horse race and have been a part of this dumpster fire from minute one. Go get your ratings, cable news. His reactions to the needling alone will get you hours of commentary.
@KM: He is thin skinned a lot of his supporters are racists and bigots and people who know next to nothing about the economy. Not all of them of course, but I live in a rural area and have for many years. I listen to the locals talk about these things and they are not shy about telling you what they really think about people who disagree with them. Now it it is their turn to defend issues and promises and a new President who just happens to be a liar.
@KM: I have a friend who has been frothing at the mouth about How Evil Hillary Is and was happier to take a chance on Trump. He’s in the insurance business. I haven’t said anything but have thought: “If Trump really goes off the rails, how many people will be able to afford insurance after we have a crash in the stock market and are in the middle of a depression?”
I expect to be hearing a lot of whining the next several years about How No One Can Afford Insurance Anymore.
@wr: You’re a shining example of everything wrong with liberalism. At no point did I say you had to accept a people’s judgment of you, I only noted stuff like your example of snarling, brutish language is the only rhetoric these people hear from liberals. You’re like a mirror image of a die-hard redneck ranting about city people destroying her way of life.
As for the oxycodone riff at the end? #&$% you, you heartless asshole.
@grumpy realist: Market is way up today little bedwetter
@Tillman:
*sigh* That’s because that’s all they are listening to. They are only hearing the offensive because they are actively listening for it and not the point behind it. WR has, in less then delicate terms, articulated a major sore point the likes of the Trumpkins’ hatred of elites.
Liberal have to put up with being told they aren’t Real Americans (TM) constantly. Why can’t liberal retaliate? Liberals have to put up with stereotypes of all kinds that pepper con-speak in increasingly unsubtle ways. Why can’t they say anything similar? What’s so special about living the middle of a continent that gives you the right to talk smack about people on the coast free of reciprocation? Why do liberals have to take extra care not to piss off Judy Housewife in Lubbock when Judy is free to snarl about Sarah Soccermom in Albany? Why do we have to take things slowly so Billy Budwieser doesn’t feel like he’s getting gypped by some foreigner somewhere?
Tillman, kindness isn’t going to win these people over. They don’t want reconciliation. They think tolerance is a dirty word. What they want is to be held in high regard socially while acting out their worse impulses. The rhetoric stopped being rhetoric and started being demonstrable fact yesterday. They really have embraced a shining example of the worst America had to offer and did it gladly. WR is frustrated as hell because this one group is demanding social respect they are not returning but scolds others for not bowing down.
I’d love to have a real conversation with a conservative that understands we are ALL Real Americans. I’d love to debate ideology instead of insults. But modern conservatism has internalized the Real American vs Coasts mentality to such a degree its incredibly hard to not run across it. Even the worse redneck stereotypes still never doubted them as Americans, a favor most assuredly not returned. It’s something that’s going to change over the next 4 years either.
wr, If I were you, I would just shut the phuck up and take the medicine. You’re the imbecile who last week said “white voters don’t matter’ and told me to f myself, so how’s going to bat for 8 year old trans gendered bathroom seekers working out for you neolibs in NC? Thanks for handing the election to an idiot over an issue that affects maybe one in a hundred thousand in that state? I got flamed plenty for having the temerity of echoing New Deal emphasis on working class issues and throttling finance capital and downplaying the insanity of neolib policies on contraceptives and dreamers and TG bathrooms. Those things couldn’t wait till 2017?
Thanks Hillary slurpers. Quit blaming stupid white people or Bernie supporters. Look directly in the mirror and curse yourselves. Especially you ignorant elitists who care more about giving free financial aid to illegal dreamers who go to UCLA than stopping the flow of illegal labor which directly caused these voters to go Trump.
Maybe under that wacko Trump the bottom third of workers who suffered a 14% decrease in wages under Obama will get some respite from the unrelenting expansion of the labor pool due to Dem indifference to the cascade of illegals flocking in from China, India, Central America.
Maybe Obama coming out so strongly for the “family friendly” TPP cost many voters to flee. Why the hard on by neolibs to endorse a trade pact negotiated by one Michael Froman? The right hand man at Citi to Robert Rubin. Froman was the point man in the 90s in getting rid of Glass Steagall. Learn your history kids or you’re doomed to repeat it.
Thanks boomers on here who shcitt constantly on white blue collar high school grads as if they were Muslims to the wingnuts. You guys could care less as long as lesbians were free to kiss in Disneyland. Just remember, being a boomer means never having to say you were wrong.
As you despise the white blue collar voters, just remember these are the same voters who put Dems in charge from 1932 -1992. They are the ones who destroyed Wall St and voted for the New Deal and Truman and JFK and LBJ. They even elected an African American twice and you still think they are racist inbreds.
Yet you treat the New Deal and those working class voters as punchlines..as a joke. Well suck on it now idiots. I can go back to some of my posts which got more thumbs down than the wingnut Jenos, and I am probably more liberal than any of you on here. Its just my liberalism matters, not the latte liberalism of so many posters.
How’s Bernie looking now fools? We tried to tell you….(thumbs down)…”Bernie will lose to Trump”
was the response.
The voters wanted change and we Dems nominate the most anti change establishment candidate in decades. Whose fault is that. Again, mirror time for most of you.
I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to watch the once great Dem Party under the boomer DLC get destroyed yet again. And the GOP appeal is to the working class?
The Dems should be the only hope for the middle and lower classes. Wingnuts offer nothing. Yet what were we offering? A defense of Obamacare as successful? Denying the very real problems it has? Gainsaying the lopsided wealth inequality under Obama? Did Hillary ever say the border policy was crazy and we need to fix it?
Again, the boomer Dems are all about feel good social issues to salve their wounded consciouses over the destruction of the lower class wrought by neolib trade policy and pro Wall St. deregulation.
The Dems just got waxed and lost even more Governors and state houses.
We need do what the GOP did in 1978. Kick out all you foolish DLC elitist moderates and start the Bernie socialist agenda. Get the phuck out of the way. You lost this election, not the hillbilly white folks you so disdain.
@bandit: Check back in after Trump says a) we’re going to default on US debt b) we’re getting out of WTO c) we’re unilaterally imposing a 30% entry tax on all imported goods.
All of which The Donald has made noises about in the past, I point out….
(I am trusting that enough establishment Republicans will have survived the bloodbath that they can explain to Trump–carefully–that as POTUS his words will have much more of an effect on stock markets around the world and there is no such thing as negotiating with a stock market crash. But Trump has the instincts of a sleep-derived toddler, so I would not be surprised that although warned, Trump will ignore reality and court disaster.)
@bandit: Bedwetter? What are you?? 12?? I mean really. Stop being a child. It is time to man up..It is all yours now sweetie.
@the Q: Considering the fact that Trump can not even be bothered to pay his help, what makes you think he will help American workers? Keep in mind that now he has to run more than his mouth. This is not about rallies, it is about policy. And while it is true that white voters came through for Trump, it is also true that he is not even keeping up with Hillary on the popular vote. A lot of people still hate the guy. He will have to prove himself and just yelling at people won’t make that happen.
@the Q :
Tl;dr : Old person yelling at cloud. Why did you make me vote for Trump? My fantasy
footballpolitical lineup would have totally won! Get off my lawn!Voters didn’t want change, they wanted the way it was back in the 50’s – and it was never socialist. Didn’t you get the whole “Make America Great AGAIN” part? They want an economic powerhouse without the unions that sustained it, free markets but protection from globalism. They want America to be the only game in town. Too bad, so sad – it’s not happening no matter what Donald or any of your neo-New Deal whining promises. Like it or not, world markets are here to stay and China will kick our financial asses if we don’t get our act together.
Also, I highly recommend going to see a shrink about your tongue fixation. It can’t be healthy that you focus on slurping things so much, especially in someone of your stated age. See a doctor before its too late.
@Tillman: Hey, there are drug problems in the heartland and according to my friend the Trump supporter, they are victims of a plan by our government to turn our own children into drug addicts. It is not as if they are in any way responsible for their situation. The Mexicans are. Or the government working with the Mexicans..whichever.
@Facebones:
Part of me doubts this (maybe the optimistic part). Trump is enough of a showman to understand that his support comes from people angry at the status quo – If he and Paul Ryan get together and check off all the boxes on the Republican wish list by the end of January, they become the targets of the Entertainment wing of the party. After all the rubes have to be kept angry to insure the flow of money never stops.
@wr @Tillman @Terrye:
There are drug problems everywhere. What’s interesting is that it’s becoming a more visible social problem then before due to demographics. Before the War on Drugs was seen mainly as an “urban” problem and as we-don’t-talk-about-it in “polite society”. Now that it’s hitting the suburbs hard and the face of the addict is increasingly while and not-poor, the rhetoric is softening but the stereotypes are not.
Can we agree to disagree there’s a nasty stereotype to fit any prejudice and leave it at that? I want the Chicago crackhead stereotype to die out as much as the Southern meth-head.
@Tillman: Oh, I am chastened.
You know why people hate liberals? Because when some savage, evil scumbag of an enemy rises up to destroy everything we believe in, some of us insist on saying “oh, but wait, we can all get along. Let’s be nice to each other.”
You want to roll over and give up everything this country stands for to a bunch of racist, anti-semitic, pseudo-Christians, knock yourself out. I’m sure they’re dying to listen to you right now.
Hey, just ask bandit and Guarneri. See how eager they are to adopt your way of thinking simply because you’re nice to them?
@the Q: Shorter Q: “If only the Democratic party was only for white people again, we would win!!!”
Sorry, pops, we have one racist party in this country already. We don’t need another.
@KM: The difference is that the urban crack addict is an evil that must be destroyed with the full power of the state while the backwoods oxy snorter is a victim who needs to be healed.
Wonder why that is?
KM, you colossal doosh, Open that closed mind of yours. Your tripe just got slaughtered at the polls. And your ridiculous description of what people want is insipid and is the reason the Hill got waxed.
And your dripping elitism is so out of touch with the reality.
BTW, America was more socialist in the 50s than now you brain dead boomer. We actually throttled wall st capital and actually enforced anti trust laws and 30% of the workers were unionized. And the top tax rate was 91%. Crawl back into your cave and take pics of your food.
Again, being a boomer means never having to apologize for being a fool.
@the Q:
Wow, that was a load of pathetic, stale pop-sociology bulls***.
I’m from a conservative working family, I had to put myself through college, and I am sure as hell not going to apologize for working hard to get my college education, and for constantly acquiring new skills and knowledge in order to remain well-employed in a very competitive economy in a very expensive region.
Just maybe a few people are tired of hearing white blue collar high school grads complain that they’re somehow left out, while women are succeeding in colleges and getting good career opportunities in our new economy. When did working white men become a permanent source of whining and self pity?
All right already enough it is time we reach out to make our country whole again. We will never get what we want all of the time. Not all city people are geniuses, and not all country people are low life hillbillies. We may have different lifestyles, but we all want America to be great again. Too many of our country men and women have fought and died. from all over this great nation. They deserve the respect of a country united. Please stop the hating.
@al-Alameda:
Amen. I’m from Trump country and totally get the frustration of watching your town dying with the only major employer around gone. We’re in the national rankings of illiteracy and poverty – $10 per hour is considered making it big. People with Masters degrees start at $30K regularly. As a Millennial, I saw nothing there and went to college to try and get the hell out out. I get a lot of flak from the girls I went to high school with who decided to do nothing with their lives and now crying the blues that hubby lost his job/got downsized/left them. Even the fact that I drink Starbucks rather then the local swill at 7-11 will lead to a round of “elitist” bitching….. but they won’t say no if it’s my turn to host and I’m footing the bill. Truth is it’s blatant jealousy. There’s nothing stopping them from starting again and trying for something better other then they’d have to leave their comfortable little niche. They’re smart, capable, and good workers but there’s no jobs here. Pulling up roots is hard but it’s what you have to do to survive sometimes. Capitalism means following the money, not forcing the money to stay with you.
I just can’t take whiners like Q seriously. Can’t even be bothered to insult someone properly (it’s douche, BTW. Another feminine insult in your repertoire. How limited.). So quick to run over here and insult us when telling us how out of touch we are, how arrogant. The irony is overwhelming and over their head.
Douche sometimes gets caught mby the language bot you fucking clueless prick.
Hopefully those got through. Again, its the height of irony to read the defense of your out of touch elitism even though you may have grown up with those town folk you now shit on as whiny white people. you assholes take the cake in your obtuse clownish rationalizations.
As for my being out of touch, it sure is funny when I can scroll the comments since they are saved.
You bunch of neolib loons got your ass kicked by a lunatic and the reasons as a simple as reading your whiny ass ode to hating white people who dared to vote for someone articulating disgust with the ruling class.
It turns out that I understood the American electorate better than you. Have a great day Doug!