**** Elections thread *****

[The Bean Counter]

It's logical for sure. People are looking for something different to the norm, plus they falsely think it will solve the problems in their own lives. I was only saying last night that, assuming Clinton wins, Trump's near miss and Brexit should make politicians sit up and take note of the sheer volume of people disaffected with politics. The fact that they are willing to vote for somebody as idiotic as Trump just screams desperation.

What's really baffling though is the logic behind your typical Trump voter voting for Trump. There is no way that such an arrogant, ruthless and inappropriate man will improve their standard of living. It's hardly like he's one of the billionaires that turned philanthropist. It would be great if one day soon, we could have a "break from the norm" candidate that isn't a buffoon.

It's definitely laughable too. Just as long as you don't think about the prospect of that guy being in one of the world's most powerful positions. Hopefully the US legal and political process will prevent him from doing anything too stupid.

[surviva316]

There is no way that such an arrogant, ruthless and inappropriate man will improve their standard of living. It's hardly like he's one of the billionaires that turned philanthropist.

This is it in a nutshell. Everything Joe the Steelworker was worried about might be the case for Clinton was even more worrisome for Trump. People are worried about cronyism and corruption in a Clinton presidency; Trump has a plethora of conflicting business and political interests and was the first candidate in over 40 years to not release his tax returns so we could see what those might be. Clinton's accused of being funded with dirty money; Trump's own foundation isn't even a licensed and audited entity and investigative reporting reveals he'd been using it for his own personal and corporate use. Clinton is a grandma who mishandled classified information by checking emails on a personal device; Trump has so little self control his campaign manager has to change his Twitter password in 48 hours before the election. Clinton is a ruthless, two-faced political machine; Trump is a solipsistic billionaire who prides himself on his shrewd business tactics of pumping and dumping, scamming small business owners, and exploiting blue-collar employees (again, all verified fact).

And this is the narrative Hillary failed to convey in either the debates or the ads. Assuming she had the lead, she just tried to run out the clock. For fear of even *risking* a pyrrhic she passed the opportunity to go tit-for-tat on scandals and ad hominems, she pretended to take the high ground, while literally laughing him off and using fancy code words like "temperament" to take her pot-shots.

But anyone who gives a shit about making menstruation jokes or making insensitive comments about handicapped people wasn't going to vote Trump to begin with! When Trump could only counter "You've committed sexual assault," with "Yeah, but you *enable* sexual assault," Trump lost favor; she could have gone down the line and vitiated every one of his Trump cards, and that would have been an actually effective way to run out the clock on the things could actually have affected her chances.

Instead, she sat back and actually *helped* Trump write the narrative that, "I've got a dozen charges against her being corrupt, and the only thing she's got on me is that I'm not PC enough for her precious sensibilities."