What was so horrific about life in America circa 2016 that people were willing to elect a career conman with no political experience as president? : samharris

Screeching hysterical women.

Next question.

/u/AnomicAge

-Occupy Wall Street

-War in middle easg

-Recession

-Increasing use of automation

-Wikileaks

>Bernie Would have totally OWNED trump dude!

Sam Harris is an idiot and his fans are boot lickers but that is a good question: why Trump?

Yeah, Hillary was terrible. That was a large part of it: the presumption by the Democrats that they could just put any candidate up and not even have to bother winning over the electorate. "You will vote for her because we've told you all the Republicans are fascists and theocrats and horrible and evil, so what choice do you have?"

And on the Republican side, being the nice, civilised, above it all politician got them exactly nowhere. Look at Mitt Romney - oh sure, now the Democrats can't praise him highly enough, but back when he was running in 2012 (for the second time)? He was a sexist classist theocrat who was cruel to dogs and hated the poor.

On the Republican side, the candidates were seen as either weak flip-floppers (like Romney) or as part of the same establishment that talked a big game but, once in power, did nothing to change things.

And then along came Trump, who everybody saw as a joke candidate. And he was, have no doubt about that. But who was the joke on, in the end? Every time the media sneered at him for being low-class, vulgar, not one of us, that just made his appeal stronger to the white working class voters who also were used to being sneered at. Trump might not have been one of them, but he sure seemed like the only one out of both parties willing to stand up for them.

Turns out that if you make a career out of calling a good chunk of the nation fools and rubes, they won't vote for you. No matter how good "the economy" is (at least, the people not losing their jobs to outsourcing oversea were saying how great their stock portfolios were doing, but what does that mean if you don't have a stock portfolio and the major employer in your town just shut down?)

I used to work with a guy who was so bigoted against rightwing thought that he actually couldn't believe the reasons people said repeatedly were their personal reasons for supporting donl blumf were their actual reasons. Sad case.

If you tell people your vote it won't come true

Snapshots:

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