Jonathan Pie explains it

[sexobon]

Here's a sound bite for you:

Clinton blames FBI director James Comey for her defeat.

[DanaC]

Not the reason but almost certainly one of them.
The timing of his announcement clearly had the potential to impact early voting. It was a hugely damaging blow. The hardline hilary haters already considered her criminally corrupt - with that announcement those prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt were offered apparent evidence that there really is no smoke without fire - right before they were expected to cast their vote.
By the time the fire was revealed to be merely a smoke machine the damage was done.

[tw]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Not the reason but almost certainly one of them.

That would make sense if what was on the ground (literally) was ignored. Visit the hinderlands of FL or PA. Those Trump signs were everywhere. Trump signs outnumbered all other candidates combined. Those signs were there long before Comey made his comments.

Clinton's comments would be based in data that was clearly flawed. She can only blame what her data would explain.

For example, many did not see 'the wall' as necessary to keep out immigants - legal or illegal. Many families in the hinderland are suffering from major heroine problems mostly traceable to opiate addiction. A problem created by big Pharma that is now more interested in profits than the product. 'The wall' is viewed as a solution to their major problem.

Did Clinton's grass root operation and data structure identify these problems?

A major change in America is productive jobs moving to big cities - mostly coastal cities. Farming and other rural communities no longer create new jobs. People who graduate with higher educations leave for the big cities.

Auto jobs are gone from a mid west industrial belt - directly traceable to a motor industry that stopped innovating ten and thirty years ago. Jobs created today could only exist if innovations were being created ten and more years ago. Neither coal nor steel does necessary innovation in the past 40 years. So jobs losses become major today.

Even a white appliance business is not being downsized since MBAs have now taken over and merged those companies in the name of cost controls. Samsung and LG are now preferred products.

Where did Democrat data reflect a severe cultural depression in these hinderland? It doesn't. Hilary can only blame what her data sees. It apparently does not see what exists, why it exists, a stagnant living standard, and propaganda routinely repeated daily in the hinderland to enhance anger.

Her data should have seen a tidal wave combined with cheapshot anger that was growing in the hinderland. Her data apparently did not explain all those Trump signs months ago combined with an anger behind them. Comey did not create that discontent.

[Undertoad]

I need all your help here. I am a little bit under-informed.

I can remember several Trump policy proposals, because they were popularly repeated and heavily debated.

What would you say was Hillary's most memorable, popularly repeated and heavily debated policy proposal?

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Democrats are big on diversity. But Tyler Cowen claims their view is too narrow. I agree with him, I hear a lot more bitching about those bastards on the other side of town, the next town/county, or in the state capitol, than racial/ethnic groups, although sometimes they coincide.

The Democratic Party today is more likely to stress the relevance of ethnic and racial diversity, if the talk is about diversity. (Gender diversity too, but that requires its own post, maybe later to come.) Non-Democrats are more likely to count other forms of diversity for more than the Democrats do. I see Democrats as somewhat concentrated in particular cities and also in particular occupations, more than Republicans are. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is another way in which Democrats are less diverse.

When it comes to views about the relevant forms of diversity, the views of non-Democrats are more diverse than the views of Democrats, I would hazard to guess. A non-Democrat is more likely to focus on something other than racial and ethnic diversity, compared to a Democrat.

Correctly or not, many Americans do not think racial and ethnic diversity is the diversity that should command so much attention. That is one place to start for understanding why so many 2012 Obama voters switched to Trump this time around, or maybe just stayed home.

More here

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by DanaC

... The hardline hilary haters already considered her criminally corrupt - with that announcement those prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt were offered apparent evidence that there really is no smoke without fire - right before they were expected to cast their vote.
By the time the fire was revealed to be merely a smoke machine the damage was done.

That's not quite the way it works here. Only the Clinton supporters want to draw the line at whether or not a crime was committed.

Americans do not have a right to a security clearance. As an American, if your country is in conflict with another country (or subset group) and you marry a member of that group, it's not a crime; but, you can lose your security clearance. If you have substantial gambling debts, it's not a crime; but, you can lose your security clearance. Just about anything you do that makes you susceptible to detrimental influence (e.g. extortion), that's not a crime, can cause you to lose your security clearance. If your job requires a security clearance, you lose your job. If your job doesn't require a security clearance, like the Presidency, you still lose your ability to function.

The mere fact that additional copies of Clinton emails turned up somewhere not yet accounted for did her in with many. Who knows if and where they'll turn up in the future. Who knows if they'll be redundancies; or, if there'll be something new. Who knows if more turn up, that someone won't want something from a president Clinton in return for not making waves; or, worse.

Even when government employees are authorized to use personal assets for government work, there are conditions. The personal assets have to meet or exceed government requirements and come at no cost to the government. Any problems associated with the choice to use personal assets become the sole responsibility of the person who chose to do so. How much has the government, funded by the taxpayers, had to pay for the aftermath of Clinton's decision?

These conditions apply to all levels of government service. As an SF O&I NCO I was issued a photographic equipment set AND I was authorized to use my personal equipment. If my performance suffered because my personal equipment wasn't serviceable to military standards, I could be disciplined. If my personal equipment was lost or damaged in the line of duty, the government had no liability. Even though I was taking photographs with my personal equipment, they had to be handled in accordance with government regulations. Everything was FOUO (For Official Use Only) with tentative higher classifications (e.g. confidential, secret, top secret) required as appropriate until they could be reviewed by a classifying authority.

Clinton felt she was above all that just because she was in the top strata of government. She was right in that she could get away with it with her peers and superiors. She was wrong in that she could not get away with it with the public. Clinton's actions put the onus on FBI Director Comey to deal with the adverse ramifications of her poor judgement as they developed. She bears full responsibility for the consequences and their timing. He just did his job. Clinton blaming Comey just makes her a scoundrel.

[Undertoad]

You would think that a former General would really understand all that in tremendous detail.

[sexobon]

There's a very old saying in the military that once they pin on that second star, they stop being a soldier and become a politician. Some align themselves with other politicians who think they're above it all. That's how we get the Powells and Patraeuses.

I seem to remember it was Colin Powell who did the presentations to convince the world Saddam Hussein had WMD. He was Dubya's toady. Didn't expect much more from him at that stage of his career.

[Undertoad]

It's going to be a two-term Presidency because of this.

Trump Racism: You Are Still Crying Wolf

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16...l-crying-wolf/

Trump made big gains among blacks. He made big gains among Latinos. He made big gains among Asians. The only major racial group where he didn’t get a gain of greater than 5% was white people. I want to repeat that: the group where Trump’s message resonated least over what we would predict from a generic Republican was the white population.

Nor was there some surge in white turnout. I don’t think we have official numbers yet, but by eyeballing what data we have it looks very much like whites turned out in equal or lesser numbers this year than in 2012, 2008, and so on.

The media responded to all of this freely available data with articles like White Flight From Reality: Inside The Racist Panic That Fueled Donald Trump’s Victory and Make No Mistake: Donald Trump’s Win Represents A Racist “Whitelash”.

I stick to my thesis from October 2015. There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he’s “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up. It’s a catastrophic distraction from the dozens of other undeniable problems with Trump that could have convinced voters to abandon him. That it came to dominate the election cycle should be considered a horrifying indictment of our political discourse, in the same way that it would be a horrifying indictment of our political discourse if the entire Republican campaign had been based around the theory that Hillary Clinton was a secret Satanist. Yes, calling Romney a racist was crying wolf. But you are still crying wolf.

[glatt]

I dunno about that.

He's comparing the percentage of voters in this election to the percentage of voters in 2012, but I feel like that's comparing apples to oranges.

I read in numerous places that Trump won because many Obama voters stayed home when confronted with Hillary on the ticket. Those Obama voters are not being counted in his analysis, but they are out there and will show up again if a future candidate motivates them.

I can't find the statistics, but let's crunch numbers based on figures that are available.

We know there were 124,326.830 total voters this year and according to NYT, 12 percent of them were black. That works out to 14,919,220. And of those, 8 percent voted for Trump. That works out to 1,193,538 black Trump voters in 2016.

In 2012, there were 126,849,299 total voters and 13 percent of them were black. That's 16,490,409 black voters. Of those, 6% voted for Romney, or 989,425 black voters for Romney.

Huh. More actual blacks voted Republican this year, not just percentages of voters.

OK.

Let's go back to Obama's first election.
In 2008, there were 129,446,839 total voters. Of those, 13% were black, or 16,828,089 black voters. Of those, 4% voted for McCain, or 673,123 black votes for McCain.

673,123 to 989,425 to 1,193,538.

The number of black Republicans steadily increases each election. So let's look at the trend for Democrats to see if population growth is skewing things.

In 2008, there were 15,986,684 blacks voting for Obama
In 2012, there were 15,336,080 blacks voting for Obama
In 2016, there were 13,128,914 blacks voting for Clinton

And now I'm not even sure what this post means. I'm contradicting myself. I think my calculations are somewhat flawed where percentages of voters are used to calculate number of voters. The percentages are given by NYT as nice whole numbers, but they have to have been rounded off, and the margins are so small, I think the rounding could be leading to misleading numbers. One thing is clear though, black Democrats who came out for Obama's first election have been staying home more and more with each election, and at the same time, the number of black Republican voters has been steadily increasing.

WTF

[xoxoxoBruce]

I'm always suspicious of exit polls. How many lie? What kind of people would stand there and answer 33 question giving personal information? How many go to the poll thinking about Trade or immigrants?

I wonder what the 40% of eligible voters were thinking that didn't bother?

[glatt]

And if this year proves anything, it's that polls are bullshit.

[Happy Monkey]

The thing about the "boy who cried wolf" story is that the wolf did come in the end.

It's a good cautionary tale for those who raise alarms, but not a good one to invoke to justify ignoring them.

There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter).

Insomuch as there's no evidence he believes anything in particular, perhaps. But his personal beliefs don't matter, especially if he never reveals them. We do know he's willing to say pretty racist stuff to rile a crowd, though.

All this stuff about how he’s “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up.

This isn't true, though. Whatever his motives, the crowd was riled. At the time, he may have just thought of them as votes, but white supremacist groups are touting his election as their victory, and his appointment of Bannon isn't going to disabuse them of that notion.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Insomuch as there's no evidence he believes anything in particular, perhaps. But his personal beliefs don't matter, especially if he never reveals them.

He really was not saying what he thinks. He just kept throwing shit on the wall. Every so often, something would stick. So he kept saying that thing and stopped saying anything that did not get a good response.

Honesty was rarely in his tool kit. He simply said what an emotional group of people wanted to hear. Therefore anything that displeased them was not repeated. And they forgot he said it.

[BigV]

Well said tw.