I watched CNN and it was so painful to watch them try to keep it exciting. They didn't want to call Florida for so long even after it became statically impossible for Clinton to make up the difference.

The sense I got is the sooner the conclusion is reached, the sooner people stop watching.

I think since 2000 the networks are super cautious about calling Florida in particular.

I remember Fox News doing something similar for one of the elections that Obama ended up winning, although I don't think it was Florida-specific.

I take this behavior as an example of motivated reasoning in action.

Tom Brokaw was especially insulting to the half of the country that voted for Trump. After several comments about uneducated rednecks causing the downfall of our nation, he summed it up this way:

"This election was much more about ‘Duck Dynasty’ than ‘Saturday Night Live’."

Hell hath no fury like an elite liberal scorned.

That Trump won in large part due to disproportionate support from voters without a college degree is a plain fact worth being reported. Reading insult into it is discretionary.

I think the issue is more with the false equivalency presented by some journalists. A college degree or lack there of, does not automatically denote greater or lesser intelligence.

It's not designated as a measure of intelligence, instead as a level of education, which comes along with correlations to profession, income level, religious identification (non-college educated folks are more likely to identify as evangelical), etc. etc.

Donald Trump - a serial philanderer that has been married three times - hardly had any appeal to evangelicals. The reality is that a huge chunk of votes for Trump were anti-Hillary votes, not pro-Trump votes. You don't have to be an uneducated redneck, as Brokaw and other liberals believe, to have serious problems with Hillary Clinton.

I live in Nevada - a "battleground state" - and I saw almost no pro-Hillary commercials or campaign flyers. Rather, she ran almost entirely on an anti-Trump platform. She didn't think anyone wanted to know her stances on the issues. Running that kind of campaign is dangerous when your own likability is a serious issue.

I agree with you, although the original point was that there were individuals in the media who appeared to suggest not having a college education == unintelligent.

I don't have a college degree, so I agree. But I have enough knowledge of history to know that giving power to a loud, xenophobic demagogue is worse than giving it to a career politician who's trying to preserve the status quo. And journalists are concerned to see how many people don't.

The problem with this is it's begging the question: it postulates that the status quo she would preserve is at least bearable for everyone. For a lot of people in the US that is simply not the case. Trump actually broke an American political taboo and correctly and vocally identified one factor that is causing these people's miseries: neoliberal globalisation. This is the key factor in his success, he made an issue of a thing that must not be questioned if the ruling class is to peacefully remain ruling (this, not his bigotry and whatnot, is the reason he was so unanimously opposed by the elite — where are all these people when minorities are being literally killed and savagely harassed by the state right now?). Democrats arrogantly refused to acknowledge this problem, and even made sure it was swept under the rug (the case with Sanders). The people recognized this, and now you have the result. Those who accepted that voting is the way to change things and who were persuaded that a third party vote was a waste (both points a cornerstone of mainstream American political ideology) had no other choice but to vote for Trump. The more realistic ones (in my opinion) simply refused to take part in the charade and didn't vote at all thereby refusing to give the corrupt system legitimacy. That Trump has the wrong answers to correct problems is somewhat beside the point when he's the only one left to even acknowledge the problems if you a) have the problem, b) believe one should vote, and c) vote for one of the two major tickets.

For a lot of innocent people outside the US, ironically for a lot of Muslims, HRC's status quo was literally lethal. As someone outside the US, who finds Trump's views unacceptable, and is in Europe, and in no direct danger of US induced violence, I can tell you this: he was not the candidate who enjoyed practically unanimous support of the US industry of death (the so called defense industry), and the whole state military and political neocon apparatus, all the while announcing to try real hard to get in an open confrontation with the other nuclear superpower. In that regard, I am somewhat relieved, and despite what the media might be telling you, a lot of other people are.

So you're saying that half the country are racist rednecks (as Brokaw did). Got it. What you and Tom Brokaw are effectively saying is that one had to have been an idiot to either withhold a vote from or vote against Hillary, despite literally hundreds of perfectly valid reasons to do so.

I don't have a college degree, and I don't consider myself a racist redneck. I don't know where you're getting this from.

You replied to a comment about how Tom Brokaw literally said on national TV that Trump voters were uneducated racist rednecks that watch Duck Dynasty. In that reply, you defended his position. That's where I'm getting it from.

Was there more to his quote than what you wrote above?

I've seen both shows, and it seems to me like he's saying this election was more about rural/middle America that it was about urban/coastal America, just based on the typical viewers of the shows.

To me, being from a rural area doesn't mean you're racist, or uneducated - even if you don't have a degree, there are plenty of other ways to learn, and also plenty of useful things to learn that aren't taught in any college.

But - I'm Canada, not the U.S., so although I get a ton of exposure to U.S. media up here, it's definitely possible I'm lacking some important bits of context that would help me understand better.

Well, as a liberal, educated white chick who lives in an urban area, if I said someone was more into Duck Dynasty than SNL, it would absolutely be an insult. It would imply they are hick rednecks, and in a bad way.

Did he actually call them rednecks? Do you have a link to that? That sounds like an unprofessional thing for a journalist to say. Level of education is a straightforward fact in the makeup of Trump's voters, and that his views are racist is demonstrable. But if Brokaw really used a slur, he shouldn't have.

I think you're misusing the term "literally".

Trump won because democrats didn't vote. Look at the voter turnout for 2008 and 2012 and tell me nominating Hillary wasn't a huge mistake.

The DNC has no one to blame but themselves.

>half of the country that voted for Trump

Nearly half of voters, not the country.

If you are allowed to vote and don't, your opinion is irrelevant.