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U.S. Election Day, 2016


Callie

U.S. Presidential Election, 2016  

42 members have voted

  1. 1. Did you vote in the 2016 United States presidential election?

    • Yes
      24
    • No (not an American citizen)
      9
    • No (citizen, but not eligible)
      2
    • No (abstained)
      4
    • No (other)
      3
  2. 2. Whom did you vote for, or would have voted for, in the 2016 United States presidential election?

    • Hillary Clinton (Democratic)
      23
    • Donald Trump (Republican)
      8
    • Gary Johnson (Libertarian)
      1
    • Jill Stein (Green)
      2
    • Other
      3
    • Nobody
      2
    • Don't know
      3
  3. 3. What is your political affiliation in the U.S., or what would be your affiliation?

    • Democratic Party
      13
    • Republican Party
      6
    • Independent / Nonpartisan / Unaffiliated
      13
    • Libertarian Party
      1
    • Green Party
      1
    • Other
      3
    • Don't know
      5
  4. 4. Which of the following most closely matches your opinion of the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton?

    • Very Positive
      2
    • Somewhat Positive
      7
    • Neutral
      7
    • Somewhat Negative
      11
    • Very Negative
      15
    • Don't know
      0
  5. 5. Which of the following most closely matches your opinion of the Republican candidate Donald Trump?

    • Very Positive
      2
    • Somewhat Positive
      2
    • Neutral
      1
    • Somewhat Negative
      7
    • Very Negative
      30
    • Don't know
      0


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The discussion about whether to vote at all, coupled with ADoS's chess analogy made me wonder: is it possible for voting to be zugzwang? I'd say it certainly is in situations where you hold all candidates in equal enough esteem that it isn't worth the effort to vote. Personally, I don't vote for school board trustees in municipal elections: I've never been in the public school system(s), the children I don't intend on having won't be attending the public school system(s), and I'm simply not informed enough about the candidates. But in all other cases, I feel it would be in people's best interest to vote. Especially in the States, where aside from voting for presidential candidates (whom you might hold in equal (lack of) esteem), you're voting for other representatives and perhaps even some referendum items. Maybe I'm being too much the game theorist, but tough, terrible choices are still choices, and one will be the best one for you.

 

Of course, there are different viewpoints to take, and reasons you might have to abstain. This is democracy we're talking about, after all. But navigating (and changing) broken systems is a part of life. Is withdrawing from a broken system more likely to fix it than reform from within? I have my doubts in this case.

 

Ideas about adding ways to track disengaged voters (adding "none of the above" to ballots, etc.) are interesting, but I don't think they would be too effective. After all, most disengaged voters just stay home. In Alberta, you have the option to decline your ballot, but no one at my poll took that option. It's possible that people aren't aware of this option, but for the last provincial and the last federal election, I could count the number of rejected (or spoiled, or informal, or whatever) ballots my poll had on the fingers of one hand. (Though it would seem this number goes up in places with mandatory voting. A quick Google search tells me that the number of informal ballots in Australia goes anywhere between 5% and 25%.)

 

As for mandatory voting: in the end, I'm against it, because freedom of expression includes the freedom to not express yourself. Though I have to say the idea is tantalizing. Mandatory voting could succeed in decreasing the amount of negative advertising, which is less about convincing voters to change sides as it is about convincing voters to just not vote for their most desired candidate. I'm curious what people from places with mandatory voting think about it.

 

Finally, re: Sanders having a better chance: Really? A lot of people up here thought he was too far to the left. Yes, Sanders would have fared better against the rhetoric Trump used, but then, Trump's rhetoric was tailored to Clinton. Had he been running against Sanders, Trump would have conducted his campaign differently, just as Clinton would have conducted hers differently had she been running against Cruz, Rubio, Bush, etc.

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On paper, Sanders was better positioned than Clinton. The Democrat elites have problems with his economic policies, but few actual Democrat voters would skip voting because of them, just as the same is true for Clinton's policies and Sanders voters. However, his policies excited the base; Clinton's didn't. There's also no question that the base found his personality more engaging -- likely at least in part due to sexism against Clinton, but that doesn't change the impact. Finally, and most importantly, he did not have a 25 year history of nationally known scandals (I'm not judging the accuracy of claims nor the culpability of HRC here; what matters is that they colored voters' associations with HRC) nor any current prominent scandals that the Republicans had spent the previous year dragging back and forth through the media spotlight. HRC just had such high negatives in polls that rated them. "But people won't vote for a socialist", OTOH, is no longer true of most of the electorate, especially when the alternative is so stark; I doubt it would have described many HRC voters in this election.

 

However, I put "on paper" in bold because there's plenty of room for things to play out differently. Who knows what avenues of attack might have been launched against Sanders (or any other candidate) and how effective they might have been? Hillary Clinton's Emails are perhaps the most comical scandal to derail a candidacy, but they aren't the only one.

 

So it's not that I'm saying Sanders would have done better. He might have done better and might have done worse, but I think that in theory the analysis favors him.

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Hmm, on paper Bernie Sanders would definitely do better(if maybe not win) because his votes wouldn't have been split. When Hilary was nominated for the DNC and Sanders lost the voter base split into people that chose "the least of the worst" and people who simply would not settle for "less". I think leaked e-mails are such a non matter here. Trump had rape and assault cases against him, discrimination in the open, also im yet to see an e-mail saying something as crass as grabbing women by their parts, i am sure a person as rich as him would have tax evasion too. Yet all of that didn't even shake the campaign, so how the e-mails mattered in any way is beyond me. I would go as far as to blame DNCs percieved elitism for the loss though. Maybe, as Flower of Susquehanna has said, they'll learn not to make that mistake next time and actually listen to their voter base.

 

On the other side, now that all the ugly and rot has surfaced people know and can openly see the scale of it in America(i mean many can choose to ignore or downplay KKK in the dark corners of 4chan or redit, but you have to be a next level of(im lacking the proper adjective) to do the same with them walking the streets) so, *MAYBE* next election, real plans can be made to adress those social issues. Not to sound bitter, but *most* dnc policies on minorities seemed to be there as a favour not out of realisation that there is a significant problem that needs to be addressed. But im confident that a good person will be in power in 2020.

 

As to why im interested in American politics to the point on participating in something that is none of my business. In short i have friends there, also most of the world future is tied to yours(i.e. rn i believe other countries will take it as a free voucher to crack down on human rights because the moral high ground usa had is kinda lost) and finally i sorta like speculating how i'd act had i a choice in politics, both my countries have a pervasive lack of choice in politics.

 

Which reminds me, i thought of making a poll on Russian or Mozambican elections for the lolz. So i was wondering if anyone would participate. If anything it gives a better notion of the affairs of the world. I'd find it very educational myself. OTOH, it might quickly derail onto a fight on "commies" so i'm leaving it up to the mods and users to decide. I'd add links with the parties, candidates and policies for convenience. Oh, since im in Kenya right now, i could do for the 2017 elections here. But... Making a poll on Kenyan politics would be kinda pointless because the voting is *mostly* based on tribalism not on merit unfortunately. So notion of left right or green disappear.

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Regarding the "I have no confidence in any of the above candidates" option and whether it will actually be used, it would be part of the overall reform I suggested involving mandated voting and abolishing the electoral college, and much more. I don't believe in simple solutions where you change one thing and see how it goes, and change it back if it doesn't work, because that would be like filling a pothole with tar instead of fixing it (as we do here in Massachusetts) and would only color the perception among the public. Much like the Affordable Care Act. It didn't fix EVERYTHING because it was a compromise, so therefore progressive medical systems are inherently bad and we should repeal it and never try it again, according to far too many. So yes, with mandated voting AND that option, among other reforms, I expect that an election like this would be thrown out

 

As for Kenya, my visiting nurse is Maasai. She voted Sanders and then she voted Clinton. Coming from a third world country where people like Trump are always trying to take power (and then killing people indiscriminately, enabling poachers who try to destroy any chance of a brighter economic future for the country, and generally ruining things), she said America should be horrified, and that not said as hyperbole. She's considering fleeing back to Kenya if things go too far south around here, and that's saying something because she once was chased out of her house by marauders and forced to live in a refugee camp. People outside America can see just what went on here this election, and seem, from those I've talked to about it, to be baffled and frightened that Trump took hold at all and that voters were so apathetic. I want to emphasize again: Clinton is a career politician with interventionist, war-hawk tendencies. That's bad. Trump threatened to NUKE EUROPE and as of January will have the keys. I still don't understand at all how it could be "not much of a choice" with the candidates being "equally bad". NUKES. They're not child's play. They're not just regular bombs. They will sicken the entire planet if used, not just wipe out where they're dropped.

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Slartibus, I don't think that sexism against Secretary Clinton was much of an issue in the judging of her personality. The reality is that she has never been very engaging which is among the reasons why she lost in the primaries to President Obama (a "community organizer") and in the election to President-Elect Trump (a salesman). Both men she lost to made their entire careers on selling ideas/things to people. Secretary Clinton was more focused on the technical side of the law during most of her career.

 

The E-Mail scandal was major mis-handled by the FBI and DOJ in multiple ways, both big ways in favor of Secretary Clinton and big ways against Secretary Clinton. What makes it interesting is that most of the mis-handling seems to have come from political appointees of President Obama and not from the career employees. This provides at least a little bit of hope that the FBI/DOJ's objectivity were not destroyed by President Obama's administration. It is likely that I know a lot more about the rules for treating classified material in the US than the majority of people on these forums. While only a small percentage of people have been prosecuted for what Secretary Clinton did, most have been fired or seen their hopes for any further advancement terminated. Ultimately, Secretary Clinton was given a pass on the basis of incompetence since her actions did not seem to be a deliberate attempt to harm anything.

 

I think that had Senator Sanders been the nominee he would have fared even worse. While a portion of the Democratic party has no issues with a socialist president, the middle of America still does. Campaign commercials linking Senator Sanders visions of America to Venazuela's downward spiral would have been so incredibly easy to make (accuracy is not important to either party).

 

President Elect Trump's scandals would have hurt him more against anyone who wasn't Secretary Clinton. Rightly (she is at least an enabler) or wrongly (they are two different people), Secretary Clinton ends up being associated with President Clinton's scandals in addition to her own. So you end up with the bad behavior seeming remarkably similar. Trump has potentially sexually assaulted women, well so has Clinton (Bill not Hillary), Trump has built his wealth in a less than ethical manner well so has Clinton (both), etc, etc. There was essentially scandal fatigue.

 

Personally, I did not want Senator Sanders, Secretary Clinton, Mr. Trump or Senator Cruz to win. Both political parties need to have a serious look at themselves. I think that one of the major turning points was when Secretary Clinton stopped pushing her ideas and changed her messaging to "at least I'm not Trump". You don't win anything by saying that at least I am not the other person, but that is the strategy that she went for in the final push up to the election.

 

Finally (and i know this is too long for most to read), the cynicism and corruption of the Democratic party was well exposed this election, but it seems like it is being ignored. The Republican party is not much better, but at least it does not have the holier than though attitude. Expanding on Owenmoz, the history of the Democratic party is one of tossing token items to a minority without any actual interest in the minority. That is not new behavior, it goes back at least to the wave of Irish immigration. The Democratic party does want everybody to forget that the majority of the opposition to the foundational 1964 Civil Rights act came from them.

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The Democratic party does want everybody to forget that the majority of the opposition to the foundational 1964 Civil Rights act came from them.

I agree with much of what you wrote; other parts I disagree with but still think there is value in what you observe; here, though, you have gone completely off the rails, making this statement outside the context of the Southern Realignment. Surely you know that the two parties underwent a huge shift in that time period, with the Democratic politicians and voters who were staunchly opposed to civil rights legislation ultimately leaving the party and becoming Republicans?

 

I agree with your overall assessment of the Democratic party waiting opportunistically until after the 50% tipping point to get on board supporting the rights of suspect classes. The Gores and Feinsteins of the world are no friend to the disenfranchised. But painting them with the same brush as Thurmond and company is just strange.

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Edgwyn, I think it's not realistic to deny the role of sexism, considering the rhetoric both from Republicans *and* from anti-Clinton guys on the left. Even if it ultimately played second fiddle to racism.

 

I agree about the foibles of the Democratic party, but also think that's mostly irrelevant now. Once Trump is in office, with his buddies ruling Congress and a friendly judicial branch, the bigots will have carte blanche to oppress whoever and however they like. Now is not a good time for retrospective analysis paralysis.

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Yes, it is true that the Dixiecrats became Republicans and ended up joining the party that had supported the Civil Rights act. It is one of the stranger acts of political alignment in our history. While the usually given explanation is racism, that doesn't make a great deal of sense at the time (Why did Strom leave a party that at the time had a bunch of open racists to join a party that at the time had fewer open racists?). While race was certainly a factor, big government versus small government/states rights certainly played a factor with the FDR and LBJ administrations having both pushed an increase in federal power while the Dixiecrats want to tell you that the civil war was about States Rights.

 

If the democratic party and its supporters continue to believe that racism and sexism is why they lost the election to a candidate that most of country views negatively, then they are setting themselves up for failure. There are plenty of female politicians who are seen more positively than Secretary Clinton (pretty much everyone of them who is currently in office with the possible exception of Nancy Pelosi). Secretary Clinton attracted a smaller percentage of the Hispanic and African American vote than President Obama did. The increase in the portion of white voters voting for Trump was almost negligible over the number of white voters who voted for Romney. The Republican party presented a more racially diverse set of primary candidates than the Democratic party did. While certainly some percentage of the white people who voted for Trump are racists, some percentage of the African Americans who voted for Clinton are racists also. The facts is that the vast majority of Trump supporters (of which I am not one) are not "deplorables" and that speech hurt Secretary Clinton.

 

Finally, changes to civil rights are extremely unlikely in both directions. With a Trump presidency an expansion of rights in unlikely to happen, but a contraction of rights is equally unlikely. Trump can say what he wants about deporting Muslims, but that is simply not going to happen, it does not pass constitutional muster in any modern version of the Supreme Court. The closest parallel that I can think of is the internment of US citizens of Japanese decent during WWII, which was a temporary measure, made it through a Supreme Court with 8 Democratic Appointees (FDR a Northern Democrat) for and 1 Republican Appointee against, and has since been seen as a complete injustice with a formal apology made. The Supreme Court deliberately avoids quick reversals, so I do not foresee losses in the recent gains for the LGB community. On the other hand, I do not see a lot of hope of gains for the T community, which of course does impact several regulars on these boards.

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Sexism played a role even if not the only role. People more readily turn blind eyes to other candidates' character or professional flaws than to hers.

Honestly it's easier to explain it with statistics. Most men voted for trump, and about half women voted for him. You can't exactly call a woman misogynistic(even though some exist). Statistically if we are to see men and women as equals in social views the votes would be Split equally. So since only about half women voted for trump, only half the men would have voted for trump based on merit(however misguided) alone. The rest, could be easily attributed to mysoginy. That is of course only if a certain amount of assumptions hold true.

Slartibus could probably do a better more consise and clear analysis. I suck at math.

 

 

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Yes, it is true that the Dixiecrats became Republicans and ended up joining the party that had supported the Civil Rights act. It is one of the stranger acts of political alignment in our history. While the usually given explanation is racism, that doesn't make a great deal of sense at the time (Why did Strom leave a party that at the time had a bunch of open racists to join a party that at the time had fewer open racists?).

 

Uh. Hm. Strom Thurmond split to form the Dixiecrat party in 1948, 16 years before the Civil Rights Act. After the 48 election, he returned to the Democratic party until leaving in 64 to join the Republicans, a few months after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Both parties had a significant number of racist members at the time, but the Democratic Party had a firm hold on the extra-racist "Solid South" ever since the Civil War. Thurmond left the party because, as the Civil Rights Act (and then the Voting Rights Act) were championed by LBJ (the de facto party leader), and much of the party leadership favored more civil rights legislation. This wasn't a sudden thing, but part of an ongoing realignment in the parties going back to the 50s, with the previously-solid South drifting away from the New Deal coalition over racial issues. They didn't go Republican because the Republicans were especially more racist, but because they were no longer able to prevent the Democrats from moving towards civil rights. The end of the New Deal coalition was cemented by Nixon's "Southern Strategy" in 1968. Contrarily, Blacks, who had supported the Republican party, generally, since the time of Lincoln, were drifting towards the Democratic party.

 

I don't think it's quite fair to blame either party (as opposed to individuals) for opposing the Civil Rights Act at the time, but the people who opposed it who weren't already in the GOP generally joined the GOP after it had passed, and the GOP proved itself perfectly willing to accommodate racists if it helped them and hurt the Democrats.

 

In general too, the American political parties are both so old that I think it's unfair to criticize either party as a body for its positions outside the current party system: they're both so entrenched that political realignments tend to happen inside the two-party system, rather than via the formation of new parties.

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Edgwyn - I'm just going to link this.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/magazine/a-time-for-refusal.html?_r=0

 

If you think the country will come through okay when left to its own devices, you are rationalizing. Please try not to let the normalization get to you.

 

... I think I'm gonna stop posting in this thread for a while. Need to actually be functional, which has suddenly become a lot harder than it sounds.

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The facts is that the vast majority of Trump supporters (of which I am not one) are not "deplorables" and that speech hurt Secretary Clinton.

Clinton, of course, identified two baskets of Trump supporters. The fact that people only remember the deplorable basket and entirely forget about the second one is hardly Clinton's fault.

 

(Link to Clinton's full speech here, for anyone who hasn't seen it before.)

 

Dikiyoba.

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I dunno. Communication is definitely a two-way activity: the speaker has to make a good faith effort to communicate their intended meaning, and the audience has to make a good faith effort to interpret it correctly. But in politics (and advertising, and some other areas) everyone who communicates is very aware of how their words may or may not be interpreted. (And very, very aware of the potential for sound bites to be taken out of context.) Saying things that hit the right notes and don't hit the wrong ones is clearly part of the job. If Clinton's point got lost and a lot of people interpreted it as her dumping on a large part of the country, I wouldn't hold it against her as a person, but I absolutely would blame her (and her team) as a professional politician.

 

I might look at it differently if it were something she said in the course of actually doing something -- at an office meeting, or trying to get legislation passed, or just in a conversation at the supermarket. But these were prepared remarks that were part of an election campaign, i.e., their primary purpose was to hit the right notes and not hit the wrong ones.

 

tl;dr -- you can't blame crowds for behaving in predictable ways. (You can encourage the individual to get out of the herd, but we are no longer talking about politics at that point...)

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If there is any good to come from this election cycle, hopefully it will be the multiple case studies on how NOT to run an election.

 

Coming out of the primaries it completely befuddled me as how, in a nation of 320ish million people we wound up with pretty much the two most disagreeable candidates possible (of those available) to select from. When each candidate is polling at +/- 60% very unfavorable feelings towards them within their own party, there is a serious problem going into the election. Essentially we were being offered two slightly different feces flavored sandwiches & told that we MUST eat one. Do you vote for Mrs. Clinton & perpetuate the absolute corruption that seems to follow her around like a lonely puppy wanting a belly rub? Or do you vote for the narcissistic blowhard of a reality tv 'star' who seems bent on trying to say the most outrageous things possible just because? That's it, those are the choices, you are going to have one of those vile sandwiches as President of the US. We knew for months that we'd have one of those, dare I say, deplorable people as President. It really shouldn't come as a surprise that lots of people are unhappy when, in both parties, the majority of people thought that the candidate that they were putting forth was a lousy choice. Combine that with a campaign season where each candidate is trying to hide themselves in ketchup, mustard, relish & most anything else to disguise their own flavor of sandwich all the while trying to convince you that the other 'sides' sandwich was oh so much worse. If either of the parties had stepped back, realized that they were offering voters a vile [censored] sandwich, scraped off the [censored] & replaced it with a piece of reasonably acceptable lunch meat, they could have had the election in a landslide. However at the end of the day, the fact remains that all we were offered & forced to eat was a [censored] sandwich.

 

Third parties? Here's where I start to really cry. In an election cycle that was tailor made for a 3rd party to come along, not to win, that would be impossible at this point in time, but to take a big bite out of the traditional two parties. This was THE time for them to make major gains, never again will both major parties put up such abhorrent candidates at the same time. So what do the Libertarians (& to a lesser extent the Green, Constitution, etc parties) do? They trot out the same worn out politicians & worn out party platforms to run off of. It makes me beat my head against my desk, it really does.

 

So, here we are, roughly one week after choking down the preferred flavor of crap sandwich that suits you only to find that the narcissistic blowhard flavored one turned out to be the winner in the end. So be it, the Constitution is strong & there are plenty of checks & balances built into the system to either gum up the works or provide enough time for cooler heads to prevail. We as a country have survived much worse than this. It may not/probably won't be a fun four years but we'll get through it all. What's going to be really interesting though is to see if either party learns something from this & in four years we actually get something edible to work with....

 

****

 

(the only thing scarier than the two miserable choices that were put in front of us is the idea that voting should be something mandatory for all. I consider myself a reasonably informed voter but last Tuesday I had NO idea who many of the people on the ballot were (local judges, state rep, city council, etc). Do you really want someone who doesn't want to be there to begin with randomly choosing names because 'that one sounds cute' or against someone because 'there's too many vowels in his name'? Voter turnout may be abysmal most of the time but that just means that your vote is all the more important)

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Their supporters sure as heck aren't learning that.

 

(Also, that would be a very strange conclusion to come to this year, Randomizer, given that by far the most third party votes went to Gary Johnson, who pulls more Republicans than Democrats.)

But you have Republican voters that dislike Trump. There were a huge number of people, that at least claimed to pollsters, that they were disliking the candidates. It may be that they didn't vote or voted against their party's nominee.

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Clinton, of course, identified two baskets of Trump supporters.

 

That Trump supporters instantly identified themselves as the deplorables they were rubbing shoulders with, lent support to my theory at the time that the election was fundamentally between "an entertaining guy" and "your mom". If a well-known missus in your neighborhood was running for high office, no matter how long she had been in politics, people would still scoff, "Be serious! Her? I *know* her!". I wouldn't dare project how the neighborhood would vote in the end, but I do not think Americans took the run-up to the election seriously, they just put on a melodrama for each other.

 

Have there been any polls of how many people don't believe the election was for real?

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But in politics (and advertising' date=' and some other areas) everyone who communicates is very aware of how their words may or may not be interpreted. (And very, very aware of the potential for sound bites to be taken out of context.) Saying things that hit the right notes and don't hit the wrong ones is clearly part of the job. If Clinton's point got lost and a lot of people interpreted it as her dumping on a large part of the country, I wouldn't hold it against her as a person, but I absolutely would blame her (and her team) as a professional politician.

 

I might look at it differently if it were something she said in the course of actually doing something -- at an office meeting, or trying to get legislation passed, or just in a conversation at the supermarket. But these were prepared remarks that were part of an election campaign, i.e., their primary purpose was to hit the right notes and not hit the wrong ones.

 

tl;dr -- you can't blame crowds for behaving in predictable ways. (You can encourage the individual to get out of the herd, but we are no longer talking about politics at that point...)[/quote']

But then you're essentially demanding that Clinton needed to 1) run a perfect campaign (which is impossible) and 2) never take risks ever for fear of giving the media soundbite material. Plus most of the people taking umbrage at the out-of-context deplorables soundbite also had no issue with any of the many, many terrible things Trump said. Talk about double standards!

 

Dikiyoba.

 

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I'm not "demanding" anything. And I'm certainly not holding HRC to a different standard from Trump. Trump clearly was not concerned with hitting the wrong notes. Those notes still impacted him, for better or for worse: and probably worse, given that turnout was on the low side amongst Republican voters, too. What I'm asserting is basically two things:

 

1) Politicians and their teams get to choose what they say

2) The reaction of the public to what they say is what it is. It might not always be 100% predictable, but it doesn't come out of nowhere, and we can make guesses about it: that's what politics is. It's not like rolling a die, where you can't make any useful predictions about what the impact will be.

 

I'm not saying that no politican should take risks when speaking. But if those risks fail, well, that was their call, which risks to take. On the flip side, if they succeed, that was their call to take those risks.

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Poor Gary. No love for the libertarian.

 

He was literally incompetent. Had no grasp of foreign issues, generally a poor communicator and was essentially a single issue person trying to masquerade as multi-issue (issues which he didn't demonstrate any understanding beyond a surface level).

 

So yeah, pretty [censored] candidate. Still better than Jill 'Screw-dem-vaccines' Stein I suppose.

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Alright. Never knew she was an anti vaxxer. Im sorta honour bound to publicly shame her if she is. Source?

 

As a MD she at least acknowledges the usefulness of vaccines, so not an anti-vaxxer per se. However apparently one of her pet theories is one that most anti-vaxxers believe too so that's probably where the accusation came from.

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She's not an anti-vaxxer. She is militantly anti-pharmaceutical companies, which has led her to say some things that were not as clear on the issue as would have been politically astute.

 

I have almost never seen people flock to the tarring and repudiation of a candidate as quickly and gleefully as I saw mainstream Democrats flock to the attacks on Jill Stein this year, and it was pretty much out of nowhere. Don't get me wrong, she has her flaws, but I find that sort of dynamic inherently suspicious.

 

At least amongst my acquaintances, I noticed that it was the same people who insisted on the following three things at different points in the election cycle:

 

1. "Bernie Bros" are representative of Bernie supporters in general

2. Jill Stein is an anti-vaxxer

3. Nate Silver is saying he's less confident of a HRC win than other analysts only because he wants to create drama and drive website traffic

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Alright, so... On the news article she says they should be approved by people we can trust.

While i understand her anti-pharmaceutical company stance, and understanding of the evils of lobbyism. She should know that.

1 vaccines are approved internationally. The world health organisation oversees that, and there are some other quality monitors. Like the article says, creation of vaccines is a long process. Relatively few new ones were made since 90s. Not because there are no experiments on that, but because they fail. Even so; lobbyism is NOT legal throughout the world.

2 even if the pharmaceutical companies were corrupt and self serving(which they are, i mean seriously every time i read the price of medicine over there i fume inside) whats the alternative to that? Unfortunately those companies have a name and reputation. Would you trust a world renowned doctor who is also an alcoholic gambler, or a recent graduate with next to no field experience to do the work. But he's also nice and honourable. Before she starts going on that line of thought and publicly fueling people's paranoia. She should present a viable and trustworthy alternative. If you overthrow a government without a reliable alternative all you give rise to is anarchy.

 

I mean. Sure she's not an antivaxxer. But she just gave those people more ammo for their militant ignorance. Sorta why i'd rather have a politician who does not "say it like it is" and thinks carefully on the effects of their words before uttering them. Unfortunately the masses can't really be trusted.

 

Anyway on GMO's i study genetics. Honestly, so far as i can see they are safe(unless the responsible company is grossly incompetent). Actually safer than "organic" food thats bathed in fertilisers and pesticides. So on it being healthy i dismiss concerns. So far i haven't seen a truly valid one. But they *can* be ecologically harmful, and due to gmo monopoly, considerably expensive(again, its a *can*). Its a complicated number of factors that add to it. I can explain further if im asked to. But while I'm iffy about banning since the ecological damage is significantly reduced due to sterile plants so grounds are there but they are short and remove room for research advancement. I don't get why there is such a strong anti labeling sentiment. I mean whatever your reasons you should be able to choose what you eat. Plus being sketchy on that does add to general lack of trust in gmo's.

 

In any case i refrain from doing the. "Shame. Shame. Shame." Routine but she really should research on what she says before saying it. So should everyone.

 

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Presumably, though, we can all agree that maybe regulatory agencies should not be stacked with people closely associated with the very industry giants they are supposed to be regulating.

 

That we can agree with. Still not applicable to vaccines doe. In any case its a bit complicated to have regulatory agencies whose people were not at one point affiliated with the industry giants. They sort of do have monopoly or close enough on science. A good alternative would be having the government absorb/nationalise anything related to health. Because health care is sort of the government's responsibility. Plus implementation of a drug or treatment wouldn't depend much on financial success as there would be a budget fed by tax money. But that too idealistic.

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But that too idealistic.

 

Sadly yes. We're too far down the road with such companies being in private industry (making/skimming billions of dollars) for it ever to be nationalized. When there are billions involved, it's FAR cheaper to spend several million on lobbyists who in turn will drop thousands in reelection money on as many Congressmen (or senior aides under the table) as it takes to throw up enough roadblocks to kill the idea.

 

The really disgusting part about that isn't that Congressmen are willing to sell out the nation's health, but that they're willing to do so so cheaply....

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Fun fact: There was an anti-vaccination movement in Britain for the entire 1800s after the development of the smallpox vaccine in 1796. You know, the disease that had a thirty percent mortality rate, if you were lucky. There were at least two smallpox epidemics in Britain during this time. The arguments even sounded similar: vaccinations weren't safe (technically true, since the process wasn't totally sterile and vaccination could and did cause infections of different diseases, but risk was low compared to, you know, smallpox), against God, keep the government out of my business (smallpox vaccination was mandatory), vaccinations would give you syphilis...

 

Dikiyoba.

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Sadly yes. We're too far down the road with such companies being in private industry (making/skimming billions of dollars) for it ever to be nationalized. When there are billions involved, it's FAR cheaper to spend several million on lobbyists who in turn will drop thousands in reelection money on as many Congressmen (or senior aides under the table) as it takes to throw up enough roadblocks to kill the idea.

 

The really disgusting part about that isn't that Congressmen are willing to sell out the nation's health, but that they're willing to do so so cheaply....

 

A communist revolution could solve that. Sadly no one is really willing to evenly distribute wealth.

 

dikyoba explains on anti vaxxers in Britain in the 18th century

 

Its actually a trip to see how humans learn nothing and insist on making the same mistakes.

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Fun fact: There was an anti-vaccination movement in Britain for the entire 1800s after the development of the smallpox vaccine in 1796. You know, the disease that had a thirty percent mortality rate, if you were lucky. There were at least two smallpox epidemics in Britain during this time. The arguments even sounded similar: vaccinations weren't safe (technically true, since the process wasn't totally sterile and vaccination could and did cause infections of different diseases, but risk was low compared to, you know, smallpox), against God, keep the government out of my business (smallpox vaccination was mandatory), vaccinations would give you syphilis...

 

Dikiyoba.

 

Didn't the first vaccine involve rubbing the crushed up flakes from other people's smallpox sores on your skin? (or maybe it was cow pox?)

 

Either way, I can imagine some pretty stiff opposition to that now even with all the public knowledge of how good vaccines are and how they work. Back then, ugh. I'm surprised they got anyone to try it.

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Both, kind of. Variolation, taking material from smallpox sores and injecting it to produce a milder form of smallpox and immunity, was the first immunization method, and quite possibly ancient. Vaccination, using cowpox instead of smallpox, was the innovation of the late 18th century, and dropped the risk of getting sick and dying considerably. But yes, it's still rather disgusting if you think too hard about it.

 

—Alorael, who thinks the getting people to do it was much easier when lots of people died of smallpox. Like measles now, or polio; if you've never seen them, they're a lot less scary and the idea of skipping immunization feels more reasonable.

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if you've never seen them, they're a lot less scary and the idea of skipping immunization feels more reasonable.

 

I look at it the same way as stealing rocks from a national park or bits of the Colosseum when on holiday - essentially harmless provided you are the only one doing that.

 

Once lots of people stop vaccinating then the proverbial [censored] hits the proverbial fan.

 

EDIT: Just to be clear, I do not condone stealing bits of the Colosseum. You are NOT the only one doing it so you are participating in its destruction while simultaneously lowering the value of my stolen chunks.

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Herd immunity helps, but it's still cold comfort if you or your child is the unlucky one who gets sick.

 

Get your shots.

 

—Alorael, who spent a while a couple of nights ago being ranted at about, among other things, kickbacks he was getting for vaccines. He would very much like these kickbacks. Also not to be yelled at at 2 am about how cushy his job is.

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It would have been less bad. Look, I'm literally being paid to be yelled at. I can take some yelling. But when I have to give up sleep for that privilege, well, the scales are a bit rebalanced.

 

—Alorael, who rarely gets that kind of quality interaction in daylight hours. It's significant, p < 0.01.

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I do have minions. My minion was driven back by ire and I was sent in.

 

—Alorael, who isn't allowed to yell back. He is allowed to calmly tell people to behave like adults. It's sometimes surprisingly satisfying.

 

Any job that doesn't allow you to yell at people incoherently and chase after them with a teaspoon isn't cushy.

 

In retrospect maybe it was a good idea to have given up my pursuit in psychology.

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