Comments

1
"The impulse to meet Republicans in the middle is what makes progressives better people on a fundamental level. It’s also a double-edged sword that they consistently use against us. The thing is that Republicans do not care about consensus. They do not care about governance. Based on their non-reaction to the Russians hacking the election they don’t even care about the sovereignty of the United States. Winning takes precedence over everything else. "

This is just silly. The only meeting in the middle progressives will do is being happy to support the neo-con/Wall Street candidate (the bizarre Wall Street/Occupy Wall Street coalition Zizek noted). Black Lives Matter, Gay marriage, transexual bathroom use, abortion rights – the whole cavalcade of social justice/identity politics issues – utterly dominate progressive concerns. And they have made it clear again and again that they won't budge on any of them.

And come on, "better people on a fundamental level"? You really can't get outside yourselves enough to see that people voted for Trump (and Brexit) because they believe globalists are an outsized threat to them, their families, their way of life? It's this naive and childish need to be the Good Ones that undergirds the tantrums and riots that progressives have indulged in all year. Did you all really care about TPP? Because it's dead, and it's dead because Trump won. For some reason though, this fact hasn't been able to penetrate the haze of prog narcissism.
2
Wow fake news is bad, we really need to end fake news! I'm sure glad we have the stranger which makes broad statements based on the anecdotal evidence of one guy interacting with his parents!

Trumps going to be horrible, really fucking horrible. But trying to write off why the rust belt went for Trump based on the anecdotal evidence of one guy is fucking stupid. We need to win 2018 and 2020, which means we need to win back the rust belt.

You fucking idiots. Racism, misogyny, white supremacy are all real and all had an effect on this election. But so did economic inequality, the effects of free trade and automation. We've had nothing but a culture war for the last 30, where the REP and DEMs offered us basically the same economic policy, which is funnel all the fucking money to the 1% and fuck the rest. It's amazing the progress we've made social (we still have a long long way to go), but you can't build lasting social progress on top of economic regression, at some point it collapses and that's what we're fucking seeing here.

We need to look at both of the social reasons and the economic reasons together, and anyone who tries to look at one without looking at another and claim it as the reason for Trump wining is not helping.

3
The points in this article on what to do now is on point though.
4
@2: Fake news IS a problem and a serious one.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/most-student…
5
This is a worthy posting with one rather inexplicable wtf:
Instead of trying to figure out why so many of their countrymen voted for this deranged lunatic, progressives need to focus their energy on stopping his agenda at all costs.
What can be done?
Essentially: don't seek to answer "why" just concentrate on the fix. That is, don't attempt discover the cause, just stop the effect. We need to think more clearly than this if we can have any hope to "fix it". Step one in any treatment is to characterize the cause of the problem. Just running off to fix something without knowing why it's broken is to fail to fix anything.

Here's a simple statement of one that must be solved: The economically disadvantaged consistently vote for the party who have consistently promoted their economic disadvantage. Why do they think that's not the case? How is this misconception promoted in their minds?
6
What a dreadful article. Trashing one's parents publicly is really low.
7
Let's talk to people who voted for Obama twice and then switched to Trump. It's not racism that made them do it, it's the economic argument and the feeling that Democrats were ignoring them. We're not going to win back the bigots, but we can win back people who vote on basic lunch bucket issues. "It's the economy stupid," As true now as in 1992.
8
@7, I have family members who fit this description but their concerns were not at all rooted in economic problems. they are rich. they bought the fear mongering and wouldn't consider themselves racist, but there you have it.
9
Hopefully your parents will both be dead by the next election - Dan Savage
10
@4 but what do you call it when you mix news and opinion pieces on the same blog/fb page with no clear distinction between the two? Heck slog writers often don't fact check or even google what they say. Often the morning news has links to articles with write ups that clearly contradict what the actual article says.

Journalists being upset about the facebook fake news is more about journalists being upset about being replaced by machines then actual misleading news. Which is angering because its the same "journalists" that declared that humans being replaced by machines had nothing to do with this election.

If the stranger cares about fake news then make a stand here that anything with unverified "facts" will clearly be labeled as opinion and anything labeled news will be fact check.
11
@8 yep, i'm 100% sure that racist well off people exist, and they voted for Trump. But your anecdotal evidence doesn't prove that all people voted for Trump due to racism, not economics. IT'S BOTH!!!! Why is that so hard. People saying "All Trump supporters did it because of racism" are just as bad as people saying "All Trump suppoters did it because of the economy"

People supported Trump for a lot of reasons, the economy, racism, misogyny.

But you guys are reporting the "news", so go out there and report it! Why not send a reporter to the rust belt to see what the state of life is there?

Heck, if you don't have the money, send a reporter to Concrete WA, or to Aberdeen and see what life is for people in cities that are built around logging, steal, mining, etc.

Look I get it, I spent part of my childhood in small town and was shit kicked for being different. I understand it's easy to write off all small town people as racist or idiots, and a bunch of them are. But there is real economic issues here being caused by free trade and humans loosing jobs to machines. Ignoring it doesn't help people.

So yeah, I'm sure your parents are well off and racist, and i'm sure there's many other well off people who are racist. These people are horrible people. I'm also sure there's systems of white supremacy that are part of this country. I'm sure that women have it hard then men due to sexism. I'm sure that Minorities and Women are going to be hurt the most by Trump's time in office and we can see that him being elected was a signal to racists in this country.

But i'm also sure that income inequality is a real thing and that we've had 30years of neoliberal/neocon policies that hurt small towns, as well as inner cities. I'm fucking scared and worried that if it continues we're going to see more of Trump, not less. And I'm worried what happens after Trump if income inequality keeps getting worse and worse.

We need to keep pushing on the social gains we got, but we need to realize the economic damage that happened in the last 30 years and need to find a way to stop it.

Also just in case you think I'm just some crazy person, I supported Clinton because I realized she's 1000000000000% better then Trump. But I also see what our economic policies have been and the effect it has and it scares the shit out of me and it should scare the shit out of all of us.
12
Ah sorry Tricia, I read "Family members" as parents, my mistake.
13
Fake news is a serious threat to society and the body politic!

*one month earlier*

Here's Nate Silver with how Hillary has a 99% chance to win the election!
14
Get a grip. You can over-analyze the election all you want. It's really fairly simple. What is MOST important to you?
There are clearly plenty of voters who feel as I do:
1) our safety & security
2) our economy, i.e. jobs
Despite Trump's shortcomings, I trust he will help protect us and spur the economy far more successfully than would Clinton.
15
@11- FTW
16
You really don't know what you are talking about sir. Trumps policies are great. We don't need illegal immagrants in here takkng are jobs, not paying taxes. Not to mention if they are from a country known for terrorism they should't be allowed in hear or they could kill a lot of us. We can't allow them in here unless they are properly vetted. Donald Trump is not a racist bigot like you may think. He has hired all different races of people. Without borders we don't have a county. His transition team is doing great. He is putting things together much faster then a lot of other president elects have. So just leave the man alone and let him be a great president which he will be. Except that you lost the election and stop being such wusses snd babies. I didn't like shdn Obama was elected twice but I didn't go around crying and protestung destroying property and not being able to go to class at a university because I couldn't handle loosing and needed to have cry rooms and counselor. If they can't handle loosing weight til they get out in the real world. They will come across a lot bigger problems and they won't know how to cope with that. You are S bynch of babies. Grow up.
17
Tim Weaver, apparently, does not do his fucking research. The FACTS are that that swastika was painted on by the leftists to make Trump supporters look bad. He should know that because these instances happened all over the US and ALL of them were proven to be faked by leftists and assaults made up. Meanwhile leftist fascists are physically assaulting men, women, and children who supported Trump. The left hit a new low but people see through their bullshit. This is just another example of The Stanger's hate mongering, fear mongering propaganda. Fake news. Not surprised coming from such a shit rag.
18
@16, Perfect.

@17, 3 or 4 citations needed there. Thanks

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