Dream on. I am liberal/democratic and I think this election was lost because the dems had the wrong candidate and didn't offer any thing different. It was an election of "pick the least worse choice" for many people. Period.

Very early on the Republican (and later, Trump) strategy was to discredit and bring suspicion to Clinton - enough so that people who would normally vote for her wouldn't show up. Remember that when Clinton was Secretary of State her approval ratings were above 60% and peaked at 66%. When it was rumored that she was going to be the only candidate fielded by the Democrats, the long discredit campaign began. You can see it in the gradual decrease of her likability from 2013 onward.

Also: remember that Bill Clinton, when he left office, was one of the most liked presidents in history [1]. And, that was even after the impeachment hearings. The mid-late 90s were a very positive period. So, considering those two things together, the Republicans were extremely successful.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Bill_Clinton

> Very early on the Republican (and later, Trump) strategy was to discredit and bring suspicion to Clinton - enough so that people who would normally vote for her wouldn't show up. Remember that when Clinton was Secretary of State her approval ratings were above 60% and peaked at 66%. When it was rumored that she was going to be the only candidate fielded by the Democrats, the long discredit campaign began. You can see it in the gradual decrease of her likability from 2013 onward.

Which that is the standard strategy for running for office. Discredit your opponent. It goes both ways. Clinton tried many approaches (even some shady ones) to try to discredit Trump. She did a number on Bernie with the DNC's help.

Speaking of the discrediting, even Obama did a fantastic job discrediting Hillary. (Despite turning around and endorsing in this last election.)

True, but when you have hundreds of millions of dollars directed at one person over several years, approval can slide from 66% to less than 40%, even with the best defenses.

Take me, for example. I was a big supporter of Clinton in 2012. I even donated to her campaign. But, several times during the 2016 campaign I actually caught myself thinking that I didn't trust her. And, I had to remind myself why I liked her.

So, whatever they did, it was very, very effective. It really sapped a lot of supporters motivation, at the very least.

George Lakoff has written some interesting books on the topic of reframing. I recommend reading some of his work. I'm sure that the science has evolved considerably since 2004, when I first read him.

https://www.amazon.com/George-Lakoff/e/B000APCCII

> when you have hundreds of millions of dollars directed at one person over several years, approval can slide from 66% to less than 40%

Yes. This is SOP.

> But, several times during the 2016 campaign I actually caught myself thinking that I didn't trust her. And, I had to remind myself why I liked her.

Don't take this the wrong way, but to me that sounds like cognitive dissonance. If you believe that it was actually unfactual information, I would suggest researching what influenced you badly and try to identify that next time.

Most of this stuff has remained the same since Robert Caldini wrote about it in his book Influence. It's just the tactics and strategies on how to apply them.

I had to look up cognitive dissonance, but I suppose that fits. I had an emotional response and a logical response, and they were in conflict. I had to actually physically list out all of the things that I liked about Clinton vs. what I didn't like to make a rational decision. By far, my list was in favor of Clinton. So, that my emotions said otherwise was odd.

>Take me, for example. I was a big supporter of Clinton in 2012. I even donated to her campaign.

a little unusual since she didn't run for office in 2012

I meant 2008. Sorry. I'm sure you knew what I meant.

> the long discredit campaign began

You think too little of Hillary. She broke the glass ceiling on that one and did it nearly all be herself.

I'm not looking to fight. The election is over.

My point is that Hillary wasn't discredited because of some mass disinformation campaign like the new york times recently admitted to (http://nypost.com/2016/11/11/new-york-times-we-blew-it-on-tr...), it was done by whistleblowers. Who cares who called 911 to report the crime? The issue is the criminal.

I like liberals. I am a liberal. Even still, I voted Trump, because of how corrupt the Clintons are.

You may want to reevaluate your stance after you look more closely at the evidence. For example, the supposed "smoking gun" emails about her rigging the primary. Do you know what everyone failed to report on those? The date the emails were sent. They were all sent after Sanders had already lost. Clinton was already the nominee. Of course they would talk about how they are going to help her in the general -- because she was already the candidate.

It was important details like that that were intentionally left out of the reporting to make her look worse.

Edit: Not that it should matter, but I voted for and contributed to the Sanders campaign. I wanted him to win, but I also believe in facts.

This is complete nonsense. Sanders' campaign slowed down and came to a halt throughout June and July 2016. E-mails related to backstabbing Sanders were sent as much as a year before that. Sanders was clearly used as a means to haul in the far left vote and transfer it over to Hillary.

jedberg, I've looked quite closely at a lot of evidence surrounding the Clintons. Picking one aspect of one scandal and discrediting it is not going to change my mind. We'd have to have monstrous discussion of events going back to the 80s. Even if we did, it's far from certainty that it would change my mind. In any case, I don't think Hacker News is an appropriate venue for such a conversation.

I wanted to limit the scope of my comment to contradicting guelo's specific assertion that "A lot of Trump voters did it just to spite liberals". It's important to me that you (the public) understand why your liberal candidate lost. And it's not to spite liberals; it's because the DNC chose to prop up a very seriously compromised candidate. My hope is that next time they can offer a better alternative, rather than blaming their loss on a how terrible American voters are.

The DNC screwed this up, and I have not heard one word from the Democratic party establishment admitting it. Alternatively, if they refuse to accept responsibility, I'd also be happy with the death of the Democratic party, and maybe something less corrupt could be born in its place.

Why then were some of them about targeting Bernie Sanders re: his Jewishness, for example?

I downvoted you for a very good reason.

Because he had already lost and they were trying to get him out of the race because at that point he was just dragging the party down. Using his Jewishness was wrong, but not corrupt.

What about the one discussing getting the New York primary moved up if Clinton were to get a big challenger so that she could get an early victory and kill that momentum? What about the ones discussing moving the Illinois primary back so that moderate republicans could not get early victories (and further the narrative that the right is extremist)? And what about the ones where Donna Brazile fed debate questions? And what about the ones showing clear collusion across the board with the media to appease Clinton and push the preferred narrative against her competition?

Were any of those indicative of corruption?

As someone who works in IT, I know how easy it is to forge emails. So far all those emails have been denied by their senders.

Using DKIM to "prove" they are real only works if you assume the attacker doesn't have access to the private key. If someone hacked the mail server, then they probably have the private key.

I'm saying it didn't happen, but I'm saying that everyone needs to be a little more critical in their analysis of the "evidence" presented.

You're right that the emails could have been forged. I take this as a serious possibility.

You say that "all those emails have been denied by their senders". I'm not sure what you're referring to. Would you mind linking it? I've been following the news rather closely, and I've never heard any sender of a leaked email say something to the effect of "I did not send this". The only thing they say is that they won't comment on veracity.

Also, the Wikileaks organization has never leaked forged documents before and have never lied. The Clintons and their cronies are caught in lies repeatedly. While it's not proof, you have to take things like credibility into account when evaluating who's lying this time.

However, for me, my mind was already made up before any emails were leaked based on the Clintons' previous scandals. If it were proven that the email leaks were entirely fabricated, I would definitely update my opinion of Wikileaks, but my opinion of the Clintons would remain unchanged.

Honest question: assuming that the Clintons are corrupt, do you believe that Trump and his cabinet would do a better job of being the President? Or is it more of a vote against Clinton than for Trump?

As I see it, didn't vote for either, when the devil you know is bad you gotta give hope a chance. That was the mantra back at the start of the Great Recession, hope it takes hold this time or we're just pouring gas on the fire.

I voted O in '08 and fully recognize he picked up a big bag of burning shit. Too bad he turned out to be the same as the old bosses and kept their cronies in key positions to wage war on the economy & invigorate armed conflicts around the world.

edit: i predict Trump will have an ineffectual four years and the next group selected to be elected may pander to the common folk a bit better.

Honest answer: I don't know. Moreover, I'm quite skeptical with others who seem to have such certainty on this issue.

I disliked and dislkike Trump. But my mind recoils at the thought that the Clintons' shenanigans will reap them the White House as a reward. The thought of that injustice makes my blood boil. My vote was a blocking move against Clinton.

Way to put the corrupt racists in power. Steve Bannon is now on track to be one of the most powerful people in the country. Good job, liberal.

Do you have any evidence you can provide of concrete behavior showing Bannon as racist?

I don't mean responses like "duh, CNN, Maher, Oliver, etc. say he is so duh", or "duh, he was the editor for Breitbart". I mean actual behavior that you can point to.

These accusations come off as "He plays for the other team, and calling him racist will marginalize and demonize him, so that's what I'll do". Willing to be proven wrong though.

Edit: curious, why downvote this instead of actually providing evidence?

Bannon's ex-wife swore in court that he “didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews...He said he doesn’t like Jews..."

Also, he turned Breitbart into a white ethno-nationalism website.

The quote from his ex-wife is a fair point and does support your case. In the interest of full disclosure, would that statement be equally bad if you replaced the word "Jews" with "rednecks", or "catholics"? Sometimes seems like some groups can be stereotyped and some can't. (OT but related, plenty of first-hand accounts of the Clintons regularly using racially derogatory terms in their Arkansas days, but that doesn't seem to bother people.)

As for Breitbart, I think the "white ethno-" prefix may be unjustified, at least from what I have seen. It is, however, absolutely nationalist, as in anti-globalist, and pushes an agenda targeted at people who feel their standard of living has been reduced due to trade and immigration policies. The Guardian provided a fairly benign review at [1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/aug/19/reading-breitb...

Just came across some more evidence in a wapo article today. Bannon opposing immigration for highly educated students says: “When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think . . . ” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bannon-flattered...

Wanting to limit immigration doesn't make you racist, though. I take it as saying, essentially, if such a significant percentage of jobs in a top industry in this country are held by immigrants, are we maybe not doing enough to help our own residents in need of good paying jobs to be able to acquire these positions?

A CEO of a large software company is more than just a "good paying job" for Joe Sixpack over here. It requires experience, education, intuition - it's an incredibly unique position. It's not the kind of thing that you can just go to school for or train in some government New Deal program an then come out with six offers. What Bannon is speaking to isn't about helping the little guy get jobs, it's about getting 'Americans' (see: white) to be in these positions of powers.

Let me preface by stating that these are vague, short statements that we are trying to use to extrapolate to some fairly large assertions, and we all come into them with a bias and interpret them based on those biases.

That said, the way I interpreted the CEO statement was that it is symbolic of the depth of penetration of immigrants in the tech labor pool. If that large a percentage of CEOs are immigrants, imagine the numbers from the top to the bottom of the org charts. None of these CEO jobs are going to people straight out of college, they are working their way through the industry.

I've been in this industry for 20 years, at all levels. I haven't seen too many entry level positions that Americans can't be easily trained for, yet there is a nonstop push to massively increase annual H1B limits. At some point, someone has to ask why we can't fill that need with the people we have.

No doubt immigrants would still likely be over-represented at the higher echelons because a person willing to move across the world likely has more drive to get there, but it still seems like we should feel a civic duty to use what we can from home before increasing the numbers coming in.

His behavior as the editor of Breitbart doesn't count? Why not? Former editors and writers for the outlet have commented at length at how he essentially turned it into an alt-right clearinghouse. Bannon himself has said that it is the platform for the alt-right. Are you going to now argue that the alt-right movement is not racist or motivated by racial concerns? How about all the stormfronters and ethno-nationalists who are cheering his appointment?

Sure, his Breitbart days count, I was just saying that what you typically hear is "Breitbart is racist" without any actual justification, so I was looking for actual examples that show the clear racism as opposed to just saying "Breitbart".

As for bad people supporting someone, bad people support everyone, so that's not really an argument. People, good or bad (or like most of us, good and bad) want to feel that their concerns are heard. I think most of the people championing Bannon are concerned about their standard of living being reduced over the last 30 years, and feeling that trade and immigration policies have been the largest contributors to that decline. They feel Bannon gives them a voice. I have no doubt that plenty of bad people may also feel that Bannon speaks for them, but that doesn't mean he actually is.

> I think most of the people championing Bannon are concerned about their standard of living being reduced over the last 30 years, and feeling that trade and immigration policies have been the largest contributors to that decline.

Sure and those are valid concerns. However they are oftentimes framed through a racial lens which Breitbart plays to all the time. To wit, Breitbart continously pushes the "black on black" violence talking point whenever police shootings, police reform, or hell anything related to black people. Like, just look at this article: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/28/5-devasta... - does it ever go into the context of these shootings or try to assess them critically? No, it just parrots statistics and then labels Black Lives Matter protesters as "blood-lusting junkies"

Breitbart also continuously uses "racial statistics" and relies on the work of cranks http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/17/alt-right-r...

>Bannon didn’t just make Breitbart a safe space for white supremacists; he’s also welcomed a scholar blacklisted from the mainstream conservative movement for arguing there’s a connection between race and IQ. Breitbart frequently highlights the work of Jason Richwine, who resigned from the conservative Heritage Foundation when news broke that his Harvard dissertation argued in part that Hispanics have lower IQs than non-Hispanic whites.

>As for bad people supporting someone, bad people support everyone, so that's not really an argument

When high profile American nazis say that this is a good decision and will push Trump in the right direction, I tend to get worried. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/305912-kkk-ameri...

I agree, those articles are all one sided. To me, that material comes off as the same way that groups like the Black Panthers or Nation of Islam / Farrakhan target their audiences but at the opposite end of the spectrum. Both are using one-sided rhetoric to advance their case and incite their audience. I think that there is a nuance there, and while Farrakhan and the Black Panthers and their supporters may at times have a lot of animosity, anger, distrust, etc., labelling those groups as racist and something to be ignored is not really fair. I think you have to treat the same feelings on the other side of the spectrum the same way, though, as it is really the same emotions being drawn out.

I see your point, though, in that it would be sort of like having Farrakhan's press secretary or speech writer being appointed as chief strategist for Obama. The right would go apeshit.

> Edit: curious, why downvote this instead of actually providing evidence?

Because this is not the place for this discussion.

I downvoted the comment you replied to as well, for the same reason.

That is fair..though it might be more beneficial to add a comment stating this at the first point in the tree where things go off topic. Once it gets down this far, everyone's mindset is already off topic.

This comment does not deserve downvotes. When you punish people for asking polite honest questions, you bring down the level of discourse and turn this place into an echo chamber.

Trump is far more corrupt than Clinton, so that makes no sense. Heck, Trump bragged about his involvement in political corruption during the primary.

> Trump is far more corrupt than Clinton

We disagree on this point. I believe that Clinton is the most corrupt politician the US has ever seen.

I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to when you talk about Trump's corruption, but if you're referring to his buying and bribing of politicians, I don't consider that corruption. It's wrong and illegal, sure, but the private citizen bribing politicians is not betraying the trust of the electorate in the same way that the politician is.

(Seemingly similarly, I go against the societal grain in that I don't think that people who sleep with married people are doing anything wrong; they're not the one who made the commitment.)

If you're any kind of liberal or leftist, you could have voted for the Green Party, written in Bernie Sanders, or left your Presidential ballot line blank. You didn't have to support fascism.

I'm very sympathetic to that viewpoint. I mulled over the idea of voting for a third party long and hard. I would have preferred Sanders, Stein, or Johnson over Trump. In the end, I decided it was worth more to me to block Clinton. But don't pretend that it's an easy clear-cut decision to make.

I think that not voting for a fascist who staffs his administration with neo-Nazis is an easy, clear-cut decision for a leftist to take, even if you live in a swing state.

I appreciate and respect your opinion on this matter, though I don't happen to agree with it. I hope that this can be a lesson for leftists to take - that if you put up a poor enough candidate, you'll lose the votes of people like me. There should be consequences for the anti-democratic tactics the DNC used against Bernie.

P.S. The state I voted in was close.

> I appreciate and respect your opinion on this matter, though I don't happen to agree with it. I hope that this can be a lesson for leftists to take - that if you put up a poor enough candidate, you'll lose the votes of people like me. There should be consequences for the anti-democratic tactics the DNC used against Bernie.

Again: I'm not saying you should have voted for Clinton. I agree that the anti-democratic strategies of the "Democratic" Party deserve punishment. I'm saying you could have voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, who would have been, at least, not a fascist.

Don't blame me. Blame the incentives created by first-past-the-post voting.

Edit: Just to avoid confusion, by this I mean that though I would have been happier with Johnson or Stein in the White House, realistically either Clinton or Trump would win. Not voting for Clinton would have been good, but voting for Trump is a better way to ensure Clinton doesn't win, which was my primary drive.

Whatever makes you feel better.