In a year in which Democrats show up, like they did in 2012, Trump would have been trounced in Minnesota. Instead, he barely lost. It was a very very close call, just a couple of percentage points.
This graph says it all:
One thing this means is that the Democrats, in putting up candidates in Minnesota, are not trying to win back Republicans or Trump voters. They are simply trying to win back their own.
Many months ago I coined the term “snowflake” to refer to liberals, progressives, or Democrats, who felt that since their own personal point of view is not perfectly represented in the mind of each and every other liberal or progressive or Democrat, that they should therefore complain incessantly, stay home from the polls, and sit there in a funk hoping someone like Trump wins the election in order to show the rest of them how bad they are being.
Unfortunately, the snowflake moniker has been co-opted, without my permission, by others! But, here, I revise it for the special purpose of talking about this graph.
Roughly six percent of Minnesotans are snowflakes.
This year, dammit, show up.
Also, in the coming convention, if you are a DFL delegate, vote for Otto because you don’t need a medium size male with a lumberjack shirt and a booming voice to win in this state.
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Have you read what Jim Wright has written about this issue over on Stonekettle Station recently? :
http://www.stonekettle.com/2018/05/hunting-unicorn-to-extinction.html
Long but well worth reading in full I think.
Yes, it is worth the read.
They didn’t all stay home. Some moved out of state. Some died.
193,000 voted for three candidates other than Trump and Clinton.
Others moved in or became 18 to replace the ones who left.
Thirty years of ungrounded lies about HRC (the type mikeN, rickA, billyR, and the rest of the tea-baggers on the right spread) undoubtedly troubled people too lazy to look at facts. Valid concerns about her (over-willingness to apply military force, ties far too close to Wall Street, etc.) bothered a few more, and (as here in Michigan) the fact that she was willing to work with a black man who had the audacity to use the front door of the White House really pissed off others (again, as seen in the 3 mentioned earlier).
Add to that the free run given to Trump by network “reporters” and the asinine idea that he had any qualifications for a real job, and we have the nationwide disaster we have now.
“They didn’t all stay home. Some moved out of state. Some died.
193,000 voted for three candidates other than Trump and Clinton.
Others moved in or became 18 to replace the ones who left.”
Wow. Yeah, I’m sure that the number of deaths and movement in MN accounts for that. /snark
There were more votes for those three candidates than the dropoff that Greg Laden notes.
So yeah, I’m going to guess new voters played a part.
HRC was a terrible candidate. The drop in democrat voters Greg points out shows this clearly. Taken nationally, that is why she lost. She didn’t get enough electoral votes because not enough democrats voted for her.
Now if I was like you, I would blame that on democrats being racist (punishing Obama) or sexist (won’t vote for a women) – but I don’t actually believe either to be true – so I won’t. The truth is HRC was not a good candidate and enough democrats made that truth known by not voting or voting for someone else and she lost.
“Now if I was like you, I would blame that on democrats being racist (punishing Obama) or sexist (won’t vote for a women)”
No, another lie, because I haven’t said that and wouldn’t, because it isn’t the cause.
But thanks again for showing what a monumental idiot you really are.
Yes dean. You never make groundless charges of racism or sexism or any other ism or ever engage in name calling.
/sarc off
Right ricka, because the current president didn’t woo racists in his campaign, and your concerns about “low birth rates” for whites and high rates for others has nothing to do with racism. Same for your past comments about how women in tech and business really don’t face any resistance simply because they are women.
Again, thanks for demonstrating how clueless and dishonest you are.
dean:
Please post a link to any of the comments you are referring to.
If you cannot (I don’t recall posting on either topic) than admit you make groundless charges.
Hmm. Just some general thoughts…
First off, yes do vote. No matter what.
Now I hope this time around there’s some extra thought given to how campaigns are managed. It’s hard to rally enthusiasm, if the voters think they’re hearing in the background, “Stop whining, the beatings will stop when morale improves.”
IMO: I think it would be nice if we heard instead, “We have a new and improved Democratic party with great candidates and exciting, new [and clearly expressed] ideas. Please join us one-and-all [really meaning it] in building a better, brighter future. Tell us what you think.” Clean. With less hackneyed prose, of course.
It’s not just about running against Trump and/or for the future. It’s also about running against the 2016 debacle. I mean beaten by Trump. How weak do you have to be as a party for that to happen? Now we’re all concussed.
Hey, is there a Doctor in the house?
I think you just explained why Hillary is so angry and full of excuses now. What does it say about her if the country said they’d rather have Trump?
I disagree with Greg very much on the “lesser evil” idea that people should have voted for HRC to prevent a disaster in Trump. I believe this despite the damage it is causing. First, because I don’t think anyone should vote for a candidate they don’t fully support. It is up to parties to field candidates that reflect what voters want, not voters to accomodate the party’s choice, otherwise lets not pretend that democracy is about voters choices. Second, it shifts the spectrum right, and allows a further decline rather than forcing democrats to deal with the fact that they still need to actually have to work to get votes, rather than just being not as bad as the other guy.
Bernard, that’s been repeated for forty years, with just names changing, and it will be said again forty years from now.
122 years ago:
”There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if
you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on
those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses
prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”
Hence ranked voting.
—–
“…despite the damage…”
That assumes that the damage can just be undone. Elections have real impacts on real people — and the environment. This isn’t a board game.
I don’t assume this damage can be undone, but I am convinced that the nakedness of the greed and corruption will have a chance of motivating people to change for the future more so than a slow rot.
Doris Kearns Goodwin a few hours ago on MSNBC’s 11th Hour:
Just quietly, as an outsider to the US, it is clear that democracy in the States is failing, dying. You have corporate media interests dominating public discourse with lies, misrepresentations and distortion, you have rich and powerful people skirting around norms and exploiting deficiencies in the constitution to the point that the country is being run as an authoritarian feudal dictatorship, and the very institutions that would usually protect the country being deliberately and systematically dismantled so that real democracy can never come back from the sucker punches being delivered.
And then there’s Russia…
Also on MSNBC a few hours ago was a commentator (I can’t recall who – if someone knows I’d be happy to find out) noted that the GOP is no longer the Republican Party, it is the Trump Party. This is the naked truth, and it bears thinking about, because a future where such a party becomes cemented in is one where the last vestiges of democracy will be forever lost in the US.
Foreign interests such as Russia and China want to see the USA become a shadow of its former self, a shell that no longer has the ability to shape world events,. Domestic interests such as the old rich and the corporate vampires simply want to enhance the economic (and political) feudalism that benefits a small minority, whatever the cost to the rest of the country. And all of these interests are achieving their goals with the simple expedient of selling an Orwellian Doublethink fantasy to the proles, and the proles are happy to swallow it all if it means that they can be sated by the dross projected through their telescreens.
Smart people need to be smarter in combating this scourge, and established institutions need to be firm in their resolve to stand rather than capitulate. If more ground is given you could possibly even end up with a president who uses his power to pardon himself for everything he’s done and will do in the future, and who will remove any challenge that might be mounted on the basis that a person cannot judge themselves.
See that realised and then it’s a small step to real and permanent dictatorship…
‘Punish the Dems and teach them a lesson by not voting.’
Hmm. Yeah, it’s an idea. IOW: Get out and suppress the vote. Wait, hang on a minute. Now, who would have an interest in floating an admittedly attractive nuisance like that?
Much as I’d like to smack me some DNC upside the head, let’s try and come up with something a little more constructive, shall we?
Thank you for the auspicious writeup.
Thank you for the auspicious writeup. Much as I’d like to smack me some DNC upside the head, let’s try and come up with something a little more constructive, shall we?
Much as I’d like to smack me some DNC upside the head, let’s try and come up with something a little more constructive, shall we?
Sure the race was close but that was
the result of votes for Jillian Stein, about
4% of which 90% would have voted for
Rotham.
Throw in the Dems who could not vote
for a badly damaged candidate, Trump
would have lost the North Star State by
10% or more.
I don’t think it’s the case that 90% of Jill Stein voters would have voted for Clinton. I think it’s the other way around, that of those who do vote rather than staying home, it is the Gary Johnson and Evan McMullin voters who would have gone for Hillary, and Stein voters would have gone for Trump. It was a decision that they did not want to vote for their party’s candidate. Trump for incompetence, immorality, recklessness. Hillary for corruption and warmongering(maybe Bill’s rape too).
Trump could win MN because the Democraticparty is full of intolerable pricks like this guy:
https://twitter.com/BartHubbuch/status/1009571866128846849
Yeah, tell the people of Duluth that they’re a bunch of toothless rednecks. That’ll convince them to vote for your terrible candidate next time around.
Bernard J
Hitting nails on the head again, and this particular one is applicable in a number of countries:
Indeed and the world has been there before:
that paragraph is to be found in:
‘Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War’ Gerry Docherty and James Macgregor page 144
but has resonance with today, with other forms of media being now adjoined to newspapers, and what we are seeing in Britain and Europe today.
Docherty and Macgregor draw much on the writings of Professor Carroll Quigley especially ‘Tragedy and Hope’ and ‘The Anglo-American Establishment’ PDFs of each, and other titles, can be downloaded from:
book by Carroll Quigley
Either Putin has played his cards well to destabilise Britain the EU, the US, NATO and even the UN or he has been extraordinarily lucky. When one understands the financial ties between key members of the British establishment and government, in the form of the Tory party, it is easy to believe the former was in play.