The 2016 United States Presidential Election

Yep, the DNC managed to pull defeat out of the jaws of victory.This is something I posted in July before the primary:

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There are a lot of democrats who will stay home or vote for Jill rather than vote for Hillary. Certainly she won't inspire independents to vote for progressive down-ticket candidates.

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If we would be voting for "the lesser of two evils" in November, between #SHiliary and #ScaryHairy, shouldn't we be talking about picking a candidate that is not a "lesser evil" in the first place?

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Let me put this out here once again: the super-delegates will pick the candidate in the July 25-28 convention, ... but INDEPENDENT voters will pick the PRESIDENT in the November election.

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If the DNC (super-delegates) picks Hillary and she loses to Trump it will NOT be because of Bernie, or Bernie supporters, ... it will be because they - the DNC and democrat establishment and the corporate media - picked a WEAKER candidate, one with less mass appeal and one who is seen by many - especially by independent voters - as part of the corrupt system\establishment problem instead of as part of a solution.

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Many (over 50% in some polls) of Bernie supporters are #BernieOrBust or #NeverHillary, and have vowed that they will not vote for her. That means a loss of 25% to 30% of the democrat votes in November -- enough to lose the election.

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My feeling is that Hillary as candidate will *NOT* inspire people outside the DINO establishment core of the party to vote for her, that she *WILL* inspire MANY disillusioned republicans to come out and rally just to vote AGAINST her, that as a result she will *NOT* help retake the senate or other down-ticket positions ...

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and I take no joy in being right.In politics perception is 9/10ths of reality, and Hillary was damaged goods from the get-go.

I remember how I felt when Schrubbia was "re-elected" ... and now we will see a bunch of "miss me yet" signs.Perhaps the one good thing out of this mess is that we don't have to hear about Hillary anymore.The DNC took the wrong lesson from the Gore race and blamed Nader instead of looking into why Gore failed to inspire the progressive side of the democrats, and then threw salt on the wound by picking neo-lib Lieberman instead of a progressive VP -- So Hillary copied what Gore did and **SURPRISE* got the same result: low turnouts in dem districts.

As I expected, Rhode Island went Hillary, but all our electoral college votes were not enough. Bad logic there, if you are talking about this election. If you are talking about 2000 and 2004, I voted dem, and I also did not believe the rush to war propaganda. I had small company, but Bernie was one, and he was right on that and a number of other issues.Enjoy

Are you honestly saying that if I think Hillary's first choices on a number of issues has been wrong, that her instinct is not good, and that I don't trust her to make the right decisions in the future ...... that somehow I think Trump would be a good leader???Really?I think he could start a nuclear war with Mexico.

She came to the race bloodied and bleeding from years of GOP propaganda, and it would have taken a Gandhi to overcome the pre-installed hatred in the GOP base ...... but she also damaged her own campaign by spitting on the progressive half of the party. The time to have that debate is in honest primaries running up to the convention, instead of one finagled to crown Hillary and shove Bernie supporters into the shadows. When you push people away, you can't expect them to vote for you. Surprise, they didn't:

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What's happening now: Nation gripped by nail-biter race
All the latest news, results and key moments as the 2016 election

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Our number crunchers found that among more than 2,000 counties where at least 90% of the vote is reported, Clinton is performing worse than any Democratic nominee since at least Al Gore in 2000.

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Two-thirds of U.S. counties have reported nearly complete results.
Clinton is doing very badly. pic.twitter.com/C5vmVLkodv

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That is not because of Bernie or third party supporters, it is because, like Gore, she failed to draw voters to the polls: more people did not vote than voted for third parties, AGAIN. Lesson not learned.When you tell the people that are hurting that you will keep the status quo and only make incremental changes of no significance, that isn't going to inspire them to vote for you.

It gets worse ...
President GOP
Senate GOP
House GOP
Supreme Court nominations GOP
over 100 outstanding federal judge appointments GOP
Obamacare repeal
Social Security privatized
etcPage not found | USUNCUT - US News | Breaking News | Latest News Today

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According to CNBC, Dow Jones futures are down by approximately 500 points as the chances of a Trump victory become more likely as the night wears on.

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It will take decades to undo this fiasco, and we're not done undoing Schrubbia's legacy.Edited by RAZD, : stocks

I keep hitting the
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Do Nothing Button

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Edited by RAZD, : .Edited by Admin, : Fix do nothing button.

Until the Bundys ride in and claim it for the Kochs.

Exactly. She didn't really acknowledge it was a mistake until she was debating Bernie.Enjoy

I don't think global climate change gives a hoot about US politics.

And you would be wrong. Bernie told his followers to beat Trump by voting for Hillary, particularly in swing states.The results show that the reason Hillary lost was that she did not get voters to the polls. Many people who voted left the presidential choice blank (see Michigan). She offered maintaining the status quo and the party elite corporatist programs, and people wanted something that would help them cope with lower real wages and declining middle class jobs.Instead of moving to the left, as you think, she moved hard right and courted republican donors and endorsements. She chose another neo-liberal for VP instead of a progressive and she distanced herself from #blacklivesmatter and #NoDAPL. She refused to stand against fracking.In the end her "program" amounted to "Vote for me because Trump" ... not realizing that most people saw this as the pot calling the kettle black.SHE lost. Helped by the DINOs in the DNC that were also blind to the issues people wanted answers to. Real answers.But this could be good for the democrat party, because now we can dismiss the neo-liberal agenda as a loser program and get back to the roots of working people, unions, minimum wages and middleclass jobs.Enjoy

Nope.Al Gore lost because turnout was off markedly for democrats, much more than the number of people (independents, green party members and some democrats) that voted for Nader. He just didn't inspire people to go to the polls. The Bernie Sanders who was campaigning for Clinton and not on the presidential ballots??? That Bernie Sanders???Like Al Gore, Clinton lost because turnout was off markedly for democrats, worse than for Gore, and much more than the number of people (independents, green party members and some democrats) that voted for Jill Stein. She, like Gore, did not inspire voters to go to the polls. Period.In fact you can say that Hillary repeated the mistake that Gore made, because she didn't learn the lesson of low turnout, because she blamed the wrong reason for his loss. Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it (while we who have learned are doomed to watch it all over again).EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

Indeed indeed, and instead of fixing the problem the DNC etc learned how to do it, and they've added it to their bag of tricks, because heaven forfend we should have fair elections.To my mind there are two outcomes from this election that could be beneficial:(1) voter reforms so that voter and election fraud are minimized. This would include paper ballots that can be recounted, and some kind of coding system to allow voters to check their votes were properly recorded. It could also include ranked voting so that we reach a consensus on who is elected rather than polarized war-camps. (2) reform of the democrat party to discard the neo-liberal platforms that cater to corporations and return to progressive platforms that represent the people. Without that there is no hope for respite in the coming years. The people have rejected status quo politics, both left and right, do the first party to wake up to this will gain more.If we can implement Instant Runoff Voting then the parties will be de-facto revised because voters will have more options within and outside the parties.Make all states proportional electoral college votes and run the instant runoff evaluations at the electoral college.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : img

Hope you and yours had a happy thanksgiving.Now that things have settled down a bit, we see two things:(1) Trump is making horrid choices for his cabinet, and(2) There WAS election fraud, some more blatant than others:

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Three Wisconsin Counties Just Admitted They Padded Trump’s Win With Fake Votes

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Three Wisconsin Counties Just Admitted They Padded Trump’s Win With Fake Votes ...

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Election fraud perpetuated by the election officials, not the voters. They were just stupid enough to get caught, forgetting to pad the number of voters to match. How many more did this and did cover their tampering?The only way to know for sure is with a complete vote audit and recount for the State of Wisconsin.Two groups have filed to have the ballots recounted, one is the Green Party:

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Wisconsin Agrees To Presidential Vote Recount At Third-Party Candidates' Requests

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Stein's fundraiser website explicitly says the campaign is not an effort to help Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, but to "ensure the integrity of our elections." Clinton has not commented on the efforts.

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"State law allows any candidate on the ballot to request a recount, but if the margin is more than 0.25 percent, the candidate must pay for its cost.

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Stein initially set a fundraising goal of $2.5 million. As donations started pouring in, that goal jumped to $4.5 million, as New York Magazine's Yashar Ali pointed out on Twitter.

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As NPR's Camila Domonoske told the Newscast unit, "Some security and election experts have publicly called for paper ballots to be checked in Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan, to make sure that the computers that counted those ballots weren't hacked."

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Then there is Michigan and Pennsylvania where there are campaigns underway to raise money and volunteers to be monitors, again by the Green Party:

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Michigan preparing for potential hand recount of 4.8M presidential votes

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Just in case, the State of Michigan is preparing for a recount of nearly 4.8 million votes cast in the 2016 presidential race.

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Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, has raised more than $5 million to pay for recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. She filed a formal recount request Friday afternoon with the Wisconsin Elections Commission and faces a Monday deadline in Pennsylvania and Wednesday in Michigan.

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What we’re doing is standing up for an election system that we can trust. We deserve to have votes that we can believe in, she said in a video on her Facebook page. This is a commitment that Greens have expressed that we stand for election integrity, that we support voting systems that respect our vote. We demand voting systems that are accurate, that are publicly controlled, that are not privatized.

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Her campaign manager, David Cobb, said the recount request in all three states is a given because of: Michigan's close election results; the fact that the vast majority of pre-election and exit polls in the state showed a lead for Clinton; and that there was a significant under-vote on Nov. 8, when an estimated 85,000 people cast ballots but did not make a selection in the presidential race.

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"It is great that there are paper ballots in Michigan, but the only way to confirm the results is to do an audit or a recount," Cobb said.

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Jill Stein Pushes For Election Recount In Key States

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Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein is pushing for vote recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three traditionally Democratic states where Donald Trump did much better than expected on Nov. 8. And donors pitched in to fund them, surpassing a $2 million goal in just hours.

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The money keeps pouring in, showing a vast dissatisfaction with the election results.This seems a more proper way to deal with the results than protesting #notmypresident.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

Actually there is a time limit for the recounts to be finished, which are all before the electoral college meets. For what? to recount the recounts?At least Jill Stein is attempting to return integrity to our elections.Enjoy