100% agree with you, but I think for a lot of people who voted for Trump it might definitely have been an act of "tearing down" what was perceived as the corrupt establishment politics by these voters.
This is not strictly true... I think for a lot of people, this vote represented two main issues:
1. The establishment has long been sticking up for big commercial interests with lobbyists controlling Washington, lining the pockets of the 1% at the cost of those living at or below the poverty line, who struggle to find work and put food on the table every day of their lives. Ever since Wikileaks, sentiment has been growing against this form of corruption, and then Snowden added fuel to the fire, and now this.
2. For better or for worse, Trump represents hope of jobs they can do returning to the country and a way out of the hole.
When you have to put food on the table right now, or see your hard earned cash walking out of the door every day into the pockets of the 1% while you struggle - EVERY SINGLE DAY, racism, bigotry and sexism can take a back seat to feeding your kids and keeping a roof over your head - for right or wrong.
If I were American, if I lived in America, I couldn't in good conscience have voted for Hillary. I also couldn't in good conscience have voted for racism, bigotry and sexism. But then, as someone in the software industry, I guess I'm part of the 1% and I'll always find a way to be okay.
The only way I could have voted in good conscience would have been to vote for myself - an un-nominated candidate with no platform other than try and do what's right by people... and because the electoral college is fucked, it would have been an entirely wasted vote.
This was a giant fuck you to the establishment, and on that, I resoundingly agree. But I'm also unhappy that Trump won.
With this in mind, with the fact that many have the perception that Trump cannot be bought because Trump only gives a shit about one thing - what Trump wants; and the fact that Hillary's entire platform is held afloat by big commercial interests, I think this vote was already made a long time before the election.
Figure out what's good for Trump post presidency, buy stocks in that. You'll be fine.
Of course, there's always the 25th Amendment and the CIA standing between here and there... so who knows what the future holds. Either way, I'm gonna need more popcorn.
Still very much (1) a tactical mistake and (2) not everyone of the 60 million people who voted for trump fits your description. Working class people fucked over by the establishment voted for the "anti-establishment" candidate, surprise surprise.
I despise Trump and I despise the dishonest, manipulative way he ran his campaign, but some of the recent coverage smacks to me of people just coming up with more excuses to get around the fact that a lot of people voted for him.
We have a habit of being kind of condescending towards rural voters, and the trend towards, 'you didn't have any agency, you were just manipulated into this' is uncomfortable to me.
In some way's, I'd be willing to entertain the idea that all of the people who voted Trump, all still use AOL.com email addresses, browse the internet on Gateway 2000 tower desktop computers, and click every email attachment and read every chain letter forwarded to them.
I'd like to believe that, because if it's not true, something weirder is afoot.
My thinking is really that the organic Trump voter wasn't hacked, and that, to them, the upset is only such that Pepsi won the election, and not Coca-cola. That if they weren't supposed to vote Trump, he wouldn't have been an official party candidate. That having a TV show made him as qualified as being a movie star qualified Reagan. That being a TV star, and a billionaire qualified him in ways that simply being married to a former president would not qualify his opponent. That his opponent would be less historic for having been a first lady (a presidency in her husband's shadow), and that, shockingly, the perceived charisma of one opponent represented the mirror reflection of how the other was perceived by their rival.
If Trump won organically, it means so many people really are "like that" and that many at-large voters are simple-minded, easily lead astray, and thus all democratic votes are suspect, and that putting the levers of control, and vesting democracy in them is a complete mistake.
That it's okay to override their choice, because their choice is dumb.
If you accept that narrative, other consequences become rational.
But, if it was a cheat, a hack, a derailment, sabotage. If removal is legal and based on rational facts. That the people you meet, who openly admit to voting for Trump are discredited for other reasons, then an override of this outcome is just a speed bump, a pot hole, an ordinary defect, a SNAFU and a tire change.
I believe Trump was voted in by people who were fed up with the new sanctimonity, especially on topics like sexism and racism. Their defense was to vote for vulgarity and Trump seemed to be a master of that if nothing else.
I'd like you to elaborate more on the game theory aspect. My personal opinion along those lines is that people looked to Trump as a bull in a china shop. The "system" was so corrupt that the only solution was to send someone in who would wreck it from the inside. It would be disingenuous to be upset now that he's broken some plates. While I don't think this is the majority of Trump voters it anecdotally appears to be a significant portion of the avid/vocal supporters. I still think most of his votes came from the people who show up and vote R no matter what. But there was definitely a shade of, "FUCK YOU" from the voters to the government this election.
People voted for Trump for 2 reasons, they were tired of business-as-usual from the out of touch elites and they saw the other candidate(Clinton) as having no redeeming value.
It was clear to me why people voted for trump the first time round. (Although, many experts believe it was more about voting against Clinton than for trump.)
He was an outsider/wildcard/Maverick and perceived smart businessman so his promises to clean up the corruption seemed more plausible than the entrenched status quo.
Now that his lack of business acumen, lack of general intelligence, non-existent diplomacy, zero empathy, and pure personal greed mixed with nepotism and corruption has been laid bare, I understand those who plan to vote for him next time round very little except through the lens of identity politics and hate/racism/xenophobia/epistemonophobia.
True, but that establishment was seen as catering to spite. Celebs and college grads making fun about how privileged flyover rednecks are and the establishment was seen catering to these people. They blamed the wrong people for their own predicaments, people that have no influence on the political situation at all.
If you want to craft sensible policies, pointing the finger on people that cannot change course doesn't help. So who should people have voted for instead? People knew that Trump was a fraud perhaps, but it still seemed like the more sensible choice to many.
It was my theory why Trump won. Sure some of his people are racists but I knew a ton of independents who voted for him because they thought he might shake it up a bit in Washington in a populist way. I tried to convince them otherwise, but he certainly did shake things up, as in the foundations of democracy.
The FBI isn't what is bringing Trump down, the FBI has always seemed to be mostly conservative to moderate Republican leaning law and order types.
It's the rule of law and the ability to have an independent investigation of the president. I never thought that the political parties on both sides would be so swayed by the president that they wouldn't be able to adequately control or counter illegal or crazy actions. I've at least lost that naivety. Maybe Trump is our Nero, but it was such a thin slice of crazy that got him elected.
Some people voted for him because they liked the traditional ideas of the republican party, of his rhetoric about 'others' keeping us down, racism, people cheating the us. But I think there was also a sizable group of people that saw their future in trouble, the local town's factory shrinking or closing, young people moving away from their farm country, their local town with shuttered shops - those people wanted someone to give them hope. HRC wasn't doing a good job of engaging with them, even though I think she did have programs and intentions to help people. Bernie Sanders did have more outreach. I don't think most people wanted us to burn like Nero, they just wanted a change that might help them.
If there was an open vote, and Trump was able to both bribe and intimidate voters, yes I absolutely believe he both would have done it, and it would have had the desired impact. All of the evidence in the world supports that assertion.
I don't think it was about that, it was about him being someone from outside the establishment that they perceive as being out of touch.
I've still not met anyone that's pro trump and believes most of what he was promoting. Sadly the most common response I get is "I wasn't voting for Hillary, so I voted Trump".
I truly believe these Americans feel they are are in desperate circumstances and someone from the outside that even acknowledged them, let alone claimed solutions, was bound to grab their attention.
Trump was a fairly average right-wing politician. Another Bush, or McCain, or Romney would have nominated the same Supreme Court Justices and had more or less identical policy.
The few times Trump went against the grain he was overruled in the House and Senate, and ultimately he peacefully transferred power to the next president despite the rioting after he lost the election. So the implicit argument that he was some kind of danger to democracy or radical force that tore up the fabric of society seems like nothing more than partisanship. At the least his actions didn't seem like a huge departure from any other politician. I remember in 2016 the exact opposite people were claiming the election was rigged and the results needed to be overturned.
I think the vast majority of folks who voted for Trump felt that they received what they were expecting to receive. I think most who voted that way the first go around will likely vote for him again should they return to the polls.
I think a lot of people voted for Trump only because they thought Clinton was even worse. AFAICT most of the GOP didn't want Trump either, they just couldn't unify behind one of the alternatives. It's safe to say most of the country is unhappy about this crap.
People who voted for Trump saw right through them and through all the "we're just neutral and just trying to get people to vote" attempts.
I mean, obviously people should go to vote and should be encouraged to vote. It's just that it was pretty much an open secret that the reason all of these tech companies and Silicon Valley people were suddenly "so involved" in getting people to vote, is because they thought most of the people they'd reach would vote for Clinton. And it's another open secret that most of Silicon Valley companies wanted Clinton to win.
I, for one, would've welcomed attempts to fix the real democracy issues in the U.S. (which are far bigger than just low voter turnouts), and attempts to fix the real problems that got half of the country to vote for Trump.
Hint: it's not just because of racism, but also because people are sick and tired of polished-up, corrupt politicians. Trump may be a very poor, or one of the worst possible alternatives to that, but at least he was an alternative.
These people really don't get it why Trump and Sanders saw such a rise in popularity. Tuesday's Reuters poll shows black and white why. I'll just copy the results here:
- 75 percent agree that "America needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful."
- 72 percent agree "the American economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful."
- 68 percent agree that "traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like me."
- 76 percent believe "the mainstream media is more interested in making money than telling the truth."
- 57 percent feel that "more and more, I don't identify with what America has become."
- 54 percent feel "it is increasingly hard for someone like me to get ahead in America."
reply