Yeah, I think he pretty much nailed it.

If you are dismayed by what has happened, please consider:

* Perhaps some of your anger should be directed at the Democrat party brass. They pulled hard for Hillary from day one. They have superdelegates because they don't trust Democrat voters to choose "correctly". All of them swung for Hillary, without even seriously considering any alternative. The brass dismissed Sanders as unelectable and nutty. Oops.

If there were no superdelegates, and the party hadn't consistently propped up Hillary as their highly favored candidate, the primaries would likely have been very different. And my contention is that Trump vs Sanders would have ended in a landslide victory for Sanders. Because Sanders would have appealed to these "blow up the system" people too, AND been much more palatable to people on the fence than Trump.


I think Trump is an idiot blowhard. I think he will make a terrible president (not apocalyptically terrible, but terrible). BUT, I am willing to give him a chance to prove me wrong. I would have been willing to give Hillary a chance if she had won, too.

Outside of the immediate setback that this represents to the Democrat party, I think the future of the party is actually extremely bright -- IF they learn the lesson that they need to from this election. Choose candidates that people like. People that are actually worth voting FOR, rather than propping up someone that you hope will be seen as the "lesser of two evils".

Anyone have a link to the full video?

@MilkmanDan

I don't like the notion of free super delegates but they didn't swing the primary. If they were taken out of the equation, Hilary still had a majority. Party favouritism and a media sense of inevitability probably did though.

The main conclusion I drew from the result is that in dire economic times, people will hold their nose and vote their perceived economic interests above anything else. I mean Clinton got 65% of Latinos vs. Obama's 71% in 2012 - Trump got a larger share than Romney. In most of the battleground states Clinton only won 50-55% of women.

Tack onto this the insider vs. outsider narrative, and the desire for a 'change' from government policy associated with Obama / Democrats, and you have a the holy trifecta. In hindsight it's easy to see going after Trump's character was a distraction.

That if is a mighty big if.

And the lessons you think they "need to learn" from this election are probably different from the lessons that the professional class (credit to Thomas Frank) thinks the Democrats need to learn. To them, it's not about getting a candidate that has a higher favorability rating than a meteor strike, but to find a candidate that maintains their status in society. They are the winners of "free trade" (see Rigged by Dean Baker) and globalisation, while a vast number of people have been thrown into debt peonage, wage slavery or worse.

Unless the Democratic Party emancipates itself from the donors and the professional class, I don't see them becoming a home to champions of the people. Look at how the DNC conspired with the Clinton campaign to crush the Sanders candidacy -- lots of juicy bits about that in the Podesta emails. Look at Corbyn, who is basically caught up in a civil war within Labour, despite overwhelming support by the party base.

The Third Way (Social-)Democrats have bought into neoliberalism at such a fundamental level that I just cannot see anyone turning them into a vessel for social equality without getting utterly corrupted or even crushed along the way.

The lesson they learn might be to not nominate a member of a dynasty with so much baggage attached to them. Yet even that depends on them actually recognising the baggage in the first place, which they seemed unwilling to during this election cycle. Everything was brushed off.

And then you're still stuck with a representative of a system that doesn't work for a lot of people. The situation of the rust belt is not a result of anything particular to the current or previous candidates, but of the Washington Consensus and the widespread acceptance of neoliberalism as gospel.

Without major outside pressure, I don't see the party changing its ways sufficiently enough to become a representative of the people again. Maybe a Trump presidency is enough to create such movements, maybe not. Occupy was promising, yet crushed by the establishment in bipartisan consensus.

@radx

I don't see money being taken out of politics. Especially not with a Republican legislative / executive before the next election. In fact I've honestly become cynical about campaign finance reform having any serious effect no matter how well designed.

You can limit campaigns and their committees all you want, but if the money's there it will find it's way in through sponsored media and astro turfed 'grass roots' organisations that will claim some kind of legal disassociation with the candidate. Or the law will just be ignored like the supposed separation between campaigns and super PACs now.

Not that I like this, but I feel the lesson here as far as winning elections is concerned is, for a successful party the campaign never ends. Obama was blamed for every economic and foreign policy event over the past 8 years with little meaningful rebuke despite GOP obstructionism being a huge factor. He came very close to losing to Romney.

After Republicans claimed the legislative branch and so many state level positions that message should have been easy to refute citing an unwillingness to compromise for results (Simpson-Bowles debt plan should have been exhibit A). I would not at all be surprised if even now with almost complete government dominance, they are able to blame the Democrats for years to come by claiming to be fixing existing policy mistakes.

If Democrats don't deliver an effective message, they'll be looking at a second Trump term, with every failing over the previous 4 years blamed on them.

We have some laws to limit money in politics. Both parties violated those laws this election and have yet to face any consequences. New laws are worthless if we don't enforce them.

I agree that the feeling that Trump is a political hand grenade likely had a lot to do with his winning, but so did the (well founded) feeling that Clinton is underhanded and deceitful.

Given a decent candidate, in any party, I think we would have seen the biggest landslide victory in American election history, but both major parties, and the 3 largest 'minor' parties all put up candidates that only appealed to their base (and often not even them). We had one, Sanders, and the Democrats shot themselves in the foot by smearing and cheating him out of a nomination....and now they reap the rewards for those actions, and we all suffer for it. Anyone involved in the Clinton campaign should retire from politics today, they are now forever tainted and will hurt any future candidate if they are involved. Chelsie should stay out too. That may not be fair, but it's reality. This campaign has made their name unelectable, due in large part to how they ran it, not what her opponent said about her.

I wonder if Moore would have said the same things in Germany in the 1930s.

And so it begins.... the Trump apologists are already out in force, talking about how "this was a victory for the disenfranchised" and how "no-one was listening to these people".

Of course, we weren't listening to them, those people are fucking idiots. "We want our country back" -> "I want to go back to the 50s when white men had a job for life, and those damn women, gays, coloureds weren't so uppity".

Newsflash morons, your jobs aren't coming back. They're gone, and they're not even gone to Mexico or "Jy-na", they no longer exist. Robots do them. This is a real problem, it's coming for all of us (me included) and it's not going to be solved by protectionism or tariffs or walls or whatever other nonsense Trump has dreamed up.

And then there are the people talking about a call for "unity".

Fuck.
That.
Shit.

You do not have "unity" with racists, bigots and misogynists. We are not going to roll back centuries of progress because some uneducated fools feel threatened.

Women's rights, minority rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change... these things are not up for discussion or compromise. They are done, settled and off the fucking table. If you have a problem with that, you're wrong.

And while I'm no fan of religion, I'm even less of a fan of the idea of discriminating against people based solely on their religion. (Religion is not an excuse either; if someone does something stupid and/or evil in the name of your religion, it doesn't get you a free pass, but that's another story).

Bottom line: this isn't some "we're all the same deep down scenario".

If this year has shown anything, it's that we need protection from idiots being allowed to vote.

If only I agreed with you....but sadly these things are NOT off the table, clearly. In fact, it's the minority rights being infringed upon that may have determined this election, so to say they are settled is simply wrong.
They SHOULD be settled, and among educated people they are, but the state of education in this country is pretty sad, as you can see from the results of this election. Trump won among the uneducated, and they are the majority.

What should terrify people is a statement he made last week, that" won't it be great when we are one nation, under ONE god", implying he plans on somehow making us monotheistic as a nation.

The electoral college is set up for EXACTLY this eventuality....that a smarmy snake oil salesman might dupe the uneducated masses into electing someone dangerous, so we are supposed to have a firewall of educated thinkers that, no matter what the vote, can elect any candidate they wish. Unfortunately, they have never done that, and now seem to have forgotten that elections like this are the sole reason we have an electoral college, not a direct democracy.

I wonder what happens when Trump gives his deposition about raping the 13 year old girl in the early 90's in December....if he admits to raping her, or is found to be guilty of it, does he still get sworn in, or do we have President Pierce? Can someone please accuse him of multiple felonies and get him convicted quickly? That seems to be our only hope, and President Pierce doesn't sound much better...only slightly more sane.

They are (or soon will be) in the rest of the civilized world.

Most countries are moving forward in this area. For an example see Ireland (aka Catholicistan) legalising SSM.

If America wants to be left behind, so be it. I'm truly sorry because I have a lot of love for your country. It's a beautiful place that's given us some amazing science, culture, and social advances.

But if you insist on being dragged down by your version of the taliban....

I'm off to start learning Mandarin.

Ayoo, you aint seen no disillusionment yet.

Mebbe this will be better long term? Like, America had to get this little tantrum out of its system and cooler heads will prevail eventually?

or maybe it'll be real molotovs being thrown about

or maybe, perhaps most worrying of all, there will forever be a large proportion of America that will be unable to admit, even to themselves - nay, _especially_ to themselves, that they got played. hard. They'll keep believing the BS because the alternative is just... too nauseating to consider.

*dupe

http://videosift.com/video/Michael-Moore-take-on-the-election
Odd - a liberal Redsky post this and gets 27 up votes in 11 hours.

I post this 2 weeks ago and only 3 upvotes. Where is the love.

*controversy

Adding video to channels (Controversy) - requested by MrFisk.

(edit)
@bobknight33 - yours was an Audio post and not the video.
Not technically a dupe - but very much the same thing.
I guess you didn't get the votes because you posted an audio, on a primarily Video-post voting site.
(just my view)

@bobknight33 --

I agree with @Sagemind that it was not technically a dupe, but pretty close. I was one of the upvotes on your other one.

I think there are 3 reasons why this submission got more votes. In order of importance:

1) This one was timely. The fact that yours was posted 2 weeks ago makes Moore's impressively accurate prediction all the more evident, but the polling, media, and "experts" were telling people it was going to be a landslide for Hillary. Right up until later on election night when it started looking like Florida could flip. Anyway, people didn't want to hear it then, but they are rightly impressed now that his "crackpot" prediction panned out so perfectly.

2) Being video helps it capture the context of what Moore was actually saying a little bit better than yours did. As audio only in yours, I was struggling to reconcile what I was hearing with Moore's political views. This makes it more clear that he is speaking from the perspective of those disenchanted voters, not his own personal opinion. Not as important as #1 up there, but I think this is a legitimate item that at least in part explains the vote disparity in the two submissions.

3) The Sift as a site/community trends more to the left than the US in general, and there's a lot of ire directed at you, personally, for being one of the few vocal people on the other side here. I think it is fantastic that you're here, keeping the conversation from being largely/completely one-sided.

...But, being that voice means that you're going to get some downvotes and have some of your worthy submissions not get as much attention as if they were sifted by anyone else. I'm sure that accounts for a non-negligible portion of the current 5:43 upvote ratio between the two sifts, which may be unfortunate but perhaps isn't surprising?

And I thought I was sufficient to the right of people here economically to not get that label

Sorry man, if I had noticed yours first I would have promoted it rather than sifting this.

Kinda agree with the rest that mine is a bit different, plus wouldn't want to kill the discussion.

Someone should link in the audio directly following this, where he does a 180 on just how good it will be.

Michael continues...

[Voting for Trump will feel good] for a day. Maybe a week. Possibly a month. And then. Like the Brits, who wanted to send a message, so they voted to leave Europe only to find out that if you vote to leave Europe you, actually have to leave Europe.

And now they regret it. All the Ohioans, Pennsylvanians, Michiganders and Wisconsinites of Middle England, right, they all voted to leave and now they regret it.

And over 4 million of them signed a petition to have a do-over, they want another election, but It's not going to happen. Because you used the ballot as an anger management tool. And now you're fucked. And the rest of Europe. They're like, Bye Felicia.

So when the rightfully angry people of Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin find out after a few months in office that President Trump wasn't going to do a damn thing for them, it will be too late to do anything about it.

But I get it. You wanted to send a message. You had righteous anger. And justifiable anger. Well, message sent.

Goodnight America. You've just elected the last president of the United States.

It's a beautiful place that's given us some amazing science, culture, and social advances.

All those things happened because we're the beautiful, figurative melting pot. Unfortunately, Trump is in the process of turning the US into a pot of homogenized white shit.

Sports is a perfect microcosm. We're good at so many sports because we choose people from the countries that excel at that particular sport. Kenyans for running. Eastern European or Canadian hockey players. Dominican baseball players.

I really dislike making sweeping generalizations, but I think the simple folks that voted for Trump never have and never will contribute anything culturally, scientifically, or socially.

Unless that culture is backwards and hate-filled.

Being an American in Canada I'm a bit removed from the whole thing. It didn't really hit until I called my mom who just cried the entire time.

My grandmother was in the Holocaust and my older brother had called my mom and asked her, "When did the Jews know it was time to leave?"

That hit home. It's easy to see that we have not learned anything from history. We're not better than we were 70 years ago. This can happen again so easily.

I'm honestly scared.

@eoe

As ironic as it may be to say this, I think that the Republican Congress will be a strong bulwark against Trump's more nationalistic impulses if it turns out he actually wants to act on them and they weren't just part of demagogic campaigning.

If for no other reason that they know demographics are against them in the longer term. They may have won the election on the electoral college but lost the popular vote - even with all the attempts at voter suppression. In the longer term, winning with their party base becomes harder and harder.

They know if Trump enacts genuine deportation measures against Latinos then the frankly astounding 1/3 of voting Latinos that supported Trump will turn sharply against the Republican party. That group represents the fastest growing demographic in America and they can't afford to lose them for a generation.

In contrast, they will be also act a constraint against any of his ideas on infrastructure spending, congressional term limits or curbing trade. Since it's already clear he's filling his cabinet with establishment Republicans and he has little knowledge of policy, he will likely acquiesce to their suggestions for lack of any other policy advice.

Michael Moore Explains How He Predicted Trump's Election has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals on that post.