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[Rolan7]

And she supposedly had a legion of staff parsing and analyzing every word that she could say and somehow 'basket of deplorables' missed the filter.

Because the speech was about how some of Trump's supporters were awful, but at least as many weren't.

The second half of the speech admits that many of her opponents have very real concerns with the status quo, and the government.  She humanizes and acknowledges these people, more than Sanders ever tried to humanize the Republican half of the country.

It was a single obscure word taken out of context, completely misrepresented as an insult toward all Trump supporters.

And she apologized anyway, like a normal politician does. 

Yet Trump was lauded for his unrepentance even as she was constantly called out on that one supposed gaff.

[misko27]

Trump has proven: apologizing means conceding. If you insist you are right, even in the face of all logic, some people will think "well hey, how could anyone insist that if he doesn't have some kind of point." Hence we are now at the stage where the national conversation is aping the conversation patterns of actual sociopaths.

To be honest I'm still wondering what a post trump america will look like. Whether any subsequent politicians will be able to pull off trump's rejection of reality, whether it'll be mainstream, or what. Maybe it'll just be a bad memory.

[EnigmaticHat]

Okay but are we all forgetting the part where every intelligence agency says that the Russians interfered to make Trump win and yet Hillary still won the popular vote by 3 million votes?  Empirical data says that everyone didn't hate Hillary.  It just seems like it on the internet because there was a fricken paid troll factory and a hacking campaign and an American SEO specialist all trying to create that impression.

[SaberToothTiger]

EH, what we're saying is not that Hillary lost because she was hated. She lost because 45% of the country didn't give a fuck about her uninspired policy. The victory wasn't stolen from her, but she simply wasn't a good enough candidate to get enough of a majority to win. She won the popular vote, that's true. The popular vote didn't matter because of the electoral college, which is another can of worms entirely. I don't know just how much Russian interference did, but I am convinced that the main fault lies with Clinton's campaign.

[Karnewarrior]

The fact is that Hillary did at least bad enough to let Russian "hacking" and Russian hacking tip the scales in Trump's favor. She was bland, vaguely unlikable, and nothing any different from the old policies and logic chains that were and are slowly rotting America from the inside out. She was a incredibly poor counterpoint against Trump, who, while equally unlikable and thrice as retarded, had flavor and pizzaz, and controlled the media cycle, and had new and innovative ideas, even if they were utter trash and pretty much as cartoon supervillainish as real life people tend to get. Clinton wasn't hated, she was forgotten, because she faded into the background noise of the political systems as a faint blue light, while Donald Trump was a big flashing button labeled DANGER, and people, particularly in large groups, are quite dumb, so being a big flashing danger button is a virtue in the political world.

Clinton may have been an okay President, but she was a godawful leader and couldn't inspire anyone to motion. Couple that with her faith in the polls proving unfounded and she was as responsible for her own loss as Putin was.

What the dems need in the next presidential election is a willingness to throw out what used to work and try new things. Actually counterpoint Trump, not shy away from scandal or calling out their opponent in no minced words. Drop the politics entirely and meet Trump blow for blow. I think at this point publicly (and tactically) dropping a curse ala "It's a big fuckin' deal Mr. President!" would benefit the Dems more than hurt them - and if they really just want Trump ousted they need to get the focus off of abortion. That's the single, sole issue for a lot of religious voters and Hillary's pro-choice stance, while morally admirable to Dems, utterly alienated her from a large section of what would become Trump's base today.

Put the focus on reforming welfare to both work better and cost less. Especially with a Dem congress I could see that going over well. Put the focus on Trust-breaking and Corporation crushing - People fucking hate modern corporations because they're becoming cyberpunk monsters. Put the focus on equal rights for everyone, while simultaneously rejecting the SJW Extra Plus Plus on the end of LGBTQ+ to show people that you're taking this shit seriously and not just blindly wandering left or right. People like gay people but they've started to become interlinked with other, weirder Tumblr genders and Other-kin weirdness. That's what I can tell from browsing right-wing sites nowadays anyway.

[Starver]

The stats show that enough people went "well, I don't particularly like Hillary, and I definitely don't like Trump, so I'll [not vote/vote third party], because that'll mean that neither wins".  (Well, certainly the first part of the logic comes from the stats and direct from people here and elsewhere. The "because" part is perhaps only true for an unknowable fraction, but is true for some, as I've seen it all but said. Before the voting took place and even after the result became known.)

[Andux]

Spoiler: Relevant image. (click to show/hide)

[JoshuaFH]

Spoiler: Relevant image. (click to show/hide)

I wonder if all the apathy isn't a result of something characteristically unique to American culture or politics, but simply because of America's massive size. Your ordinary person is so wildly disconnected with the goings on and results of the political process that caring about it can be assumed to be a waste of energy. That disconnect though is unavoidable given the layers upon layers of governmental processes that have to separate the local from the state from the national levels.

If history had been altered in a way that America was still divided into several different countries instead of united into one supergiant one, the citizens of each one would probably be much more involved in their respective governments, as there'd be much more incentive and tangible feedback for doing so. Though that's just speculation on my part.

I just wonder if the things that make America 'great' aren't actually the things that ensure its undoing in the long run.

[McTraveller]

If history had been altered in a way that America was still divided into several different countries instead of united into one supergiant one, the citizens of each one would probably be much more involved in their respective governments, as there'd be much more incentive and tangible feedback for doing so. Though that's just speculation on my part.

You're not alone there - I have long commented that I think that there is a maximum population which can be effectively governed in a single entity.  Something like the square-cube law that makes cells divide, there is probably something similar that should make political entities divide.  So once a region reaches a certain population, it has to divide into two political entities.

I'd speculate the number is somewhere between 10 and 100 million people; otherwise you just get too many people checking out from the whole thing because they never get effective representation.

[Kagus]

India still has pretty hep voter turnout, and they've got more than four times the population.

Now, of course, there are plenty of things to be said about Indian politics... But the general populace are definitely invested in the government.

[hector13]

The biggest issue with the US for voter turnout is probably the electoral college. If they assigned electoral votes proportionally as opposed to the 50%+1 gets all the votes, I imagine more people would be inclined to vote, though that would require me to look at data ‘cause I know some states do it proportionally and I can’t be bothered looking that up right now.

[Folly]

One step that I imagine would create a massive boost in voter turnout is modernizing the voting system. Allow people to vote from an app on their phone and all of those people who are too lazy to find out where the voting booths are and actually go out there and wait in line to mess with confusing ballots that will probably be miscounted anyway, they would suddenly be participating voters.

[Frumple]

App's probably not on the table, yet, but easing mail-in and whatnot demonstrably helps, iirc. Same day registration is good, too, along with more voting sites. Then either make voting day a weekend day or extend the period over like a goddamn week because seriously bugger that weekday bullshite with a rusty fork.

'Bout all that's left after that is dumping the vote suppressing fucks that is the GOP down a hole and bury them, ah ha ha.

[Kagus]

App's probably not on the table, yet, but easing mail-in and whatnot demonstrably helps, iirc. Same day registration is good, too, along with more voting sites. Then either make voting day a weekend day or extend the period over like a goddamn week because seriously bugger that weekday bullshite with a rusty fork.

'Bout all that's left after that is dumping the vote suppressing fucks that is the GOP down a hole and bury them, ah ha ha.

But how will we ever achieve our dreams of a third party if we remove one of the two parties?

[smjjames]

Considering Russias attempts, using an iphone app may not be the best idea, however, the general idea of making it a heck of a lot easier to vote, along with doing away with the voting suppression would go a hell of a long way towards fixing the voter apathy.

I've read something about that in the late 19th century/early 20th or something, voter participation was actually pretty high, estimated 80% maybe, so, we've been there before.