Jonathan Pie explains it

[Undertoad]

Fucking Donald Trump. The left is responsible for this result.

Because the left have now decided that any other opinion, any other way of looking at the world is unacceptable. We don't debate any more, because the left won the cultural war. So if you're on the right, you're a freak. You're evil, you're racist, you're stupid, you are a basket of deplorables. How do you THINK people are going to vote if you talk to them like that? When has anyone ever been PERSUADED by being insulted or labelled?

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's amazing how many chose to be deplorable.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

It's amazing how many chose to be deplorable.

Dude, you should have listened to yourself. Are or were you really going to accept the dictum of Washington's Least Convincing Blonde about who's deplorable and who has ethics? Particularly in view of her personally casting aside ethics and embracing criminality for lucre? She's in it only for the money and the power that comes with it.

People more ethical than yourself -- less left-wing too -- oppose you, argue against you. Is that the handbasket you want to get in?

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Dude, you should have listened to yourself. Are or were you really going to accept the dictum of Washington's Least Convincing Blonde about who's deplorable and who has ethics? Particularly in view of her personally casting aside ethics and embracing criminality for lucre? She's in it only for the money and the power that comes with it.

People more ethical than yourself -- less left-wing too -- oppose you, argue against you. Is that the handbasket you want to get in?

Hey UG, your reflexive use of ad hominem attacks is deplorable.

I have know you to be able to communicate without such language. I have also know you to make sensible, interesting and informative posts. But the hatin' poisons every post it touches. As a Democrat, as a patriot, as a citizen and a voter striving to be better informed, I find information from you and others whose opinions and knowledge is different from mine valuable. If you share what you have to offer, I will share my open mind. But I won't drink poison just because I thirst.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by BigV

Hey UG, your reflexive use of ad hominem attacks is deplorable.

I have know you to be able to communicate without such language. I have also know you to make sensible, interesting and informative posts. But the hatin' poisons every post it touches. As a Democrat, as a patriot, as a citizen and a voter striving to be better informed, I find information from you and others whose opinions and knowledge is different from mine valuable. If you share what you have to offer, I will share my open mind. But I won't drink poison just because I thirst.

This guy gets it.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Particularly in view of her personally casting aside ethics and embracing criminality for lucre? She's in it only for the money and the power that comes with it.

And Trump isn't? Congress critters aren't? Explain to me her criminal behavior.

People more ethical than yourself -- less left-wing too -- oppose you, argue against you.

That's your opinion but do you really think I give a flying fuck what chorus the MAGA muppets are singing this week? I mean really? Nah, you can't be serious.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

And Trump isn't? Congress critters aren't? Explain to me her criminal behavior.

That's your opinion but do you really think I give a flying fuck what chorus the MAGA muppets are singing this week? I mean really? Nah, you can't be serious.

HRC -- never someone to vote for -- has not been indicted for her felonious handling of classified information, the usual penalty for which is ten years and ten thousand dollars. You know what a full ten years in Leavenworth would mean for someone in her demographic. Indicted or no, investigation or no, the suspicion at the least will ever be hanging over her, of a pattern with the gray cloud of scandal ever hanging over the Clinton White House. Of course, there is also that career-opening, er, success in cattle futures. Paid off something like a thousand to one, purportedly? On the *very first try at it,* without continued or previous investment success of the same sort and field? People oddly and conveniently dead? Victim intimidation that is on record as performed by this monster of a woman? Greed and radicalism explains some few of these things, no?

Trump has lost over a billion in net worth while President, as I said -- and you falsely want to forget. That's a sign of prejudice, which I do not share and cannot be made to. Prejudiced thought I regard as lower than mole scrotums, than which there is little less respectable or elevated, not so?

As for the rest of your brainless defiance-bellow, well... all else being equal, would you not want to participate in making America greater, a successful and benevolent enterprise? Seriously, I would -- and you want to be critical of it to the point of denying it utterly Allow me to remark that this argument is not comprehensible, and I suspect it is abysmally unenlightened as well. Certainly it's a poor career being a public chew toy owing to being unable to appreciate improvements, and insisting on decrying improvements as offenses. But on their own testimony, so many Democratic partisans are just that dumb now. Dunning-Kruger effect.

That may be a nutshell explanation for public personalities Paul Krugman, the famous economist whose predictions have never been borne out, and Senator Charles Schumer, the genocide-friendly (he's gun-hostile) Jewish guy.

Team Donkey from its own words is knowable as Team Stupid; too stupid to trust with helming the republic or enhancing the economy. Their institutional suspicion of the making of wealth has been growing since the 1960's and is now rank, in both overgrowth and stink. Not satisfactory.

[classicman]

In addition to that, the left severely underestimated how many HATE/D Hillary and also how many didn't want another Bush nor Clinton presidency. History be damned.

[Clodfobble]

On the other hand, how many were ever PERSUADED by debate, either? Very few people on either side have any ability to be persuaded at all. This most definitely is the left's fault, but only in that the party leaders ignored the obvious trends in the electorate and chose Hillary over Bernie. I live in red country and I'm here to tell you, no one has a monopoly on calling the other side names.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

On the other hand, how many were ever PERSUADED by debate, either? Very few people on either side have any ability to be persuaded at all. This most definitely is the left's fault, but only in that the party leaders ignored the obvious trends in the electorate and chose Hillary over Bernie. I live in red country and I'm here to tell you, no one has a monopoly on calling the other side names.

This.

I don't think Clinton is anywhere near the nightmare she has been portrayed as - the idea that she is the epitome of corruption and deception just doesn't hold water, there are and have been far worse politicians in the US system than Hilary. But what she absolutely is, is establishment. And within the democratic party, the Clinton wing does not offer enough of a different analysis from mainstream republicanism to win over those disillusioned with global capitalism and neo-conservatism.

For years, the right of the democratic party has stomped all over the left on the basis that they are more electable. Socialism maybe a dirty word in America, but in truth it has been applied wholesale to a branch of the party that is far from socialist. The dominant wing of the democrats simple don't offer an alternative and have conspired with the rest of the mainstream political class to demonise anything less than neo-con attitudes as a way of distancing themselves from their 'unelectable' left wing.

Bernie Sanders offered a genuine political alternative, with a genuinely alternative analysis.

I am not saying he would have won - there's truly no way to know - but it would have been a true contest between differing ideologies and political solutions, and there's a whole bunch of people disillusioned enough with the status quo that they might have been willing to listen to that alternative.

This election was not a battle between left and right. It was a battle between a representative of an entrenched political elite and an outsider.

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by DanaC

... But what she absolutely is, is establishment. ...

She said "is, is" (*snicker*).

[sexobon]

Even people who are fairly thick skinned with regard to name calling can get fed up when it becomes automatic demonizing. People previously called sexist automatically became rapists, people previously called anti-immigration automatically became racists, people previously called pro-gun automatically became killers. That propaganda technique works domestically when it's applied internationally and a rival country automatically becomes the evil empire; but, it backfires when applied domestically to disenfranchise segments of the population.

[tw]

Originally Posted by sexobon

Even people who are fairly thick skinned with regard to name calling can get fed up when it becomes automatic demonizing.

Examples.

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by tw

Examples.

Examples are in the quote UT provided in post #7.

I'm referring to the wealth of Independents who typically voted Democrat; but, didn't toe the party line in all regards. In those areas where they differed, Independents became collateral damage in the demonizing of Republicans via the Independents' few overlapping views; whereas, they would have been OK with constructive criticism.

Clinton and her hardcore followers took the position of My way; or, the highway. Independents who became collateral damage turned the tables on them. They showed Clinton the highway.

Instead, she and her supporters refused to grant the validity of any part of Trump's pitch. Even that wasn't enough. Trump was a racist and a fascist, they said. Support him, and you're no better: Either that, or you're an idiot for failing to see it.

Whether you call everyone who disagrees with you racist, fascist, idiots or children, you put up a wall of disrespect that cuts off your influence with them. When they turn the tables on you, you've gotten what you bargained for. Using that propaganda technique domestically was a losing strategy in the first place.

But Clinton has always been that way. She's just too full of herself to change her approach. Gosh, I sure hope no one here in The Cellar ends up like her.

[Undertoad]

Another Brit has a similar take, Clive Crook: Revenge of the Deplorables

The crucial extra ingredient, I think, was the way the case against Trump was framed. Clinton's goal should have been to detach a slice of his support. The best way for her to do that, issue by issue, would have been to acknowledge the particle of truth in his claims, if any, and say why her approach to the problem was better. Instead, she and her supporters refused to grant the validity of any part of Trump's pitch. Even that wasn't enough. Trump was a racist and a fascist, they said. Support him, and you're no better: Either that, or you're an idiot for failing to see it.

Apparently it takes more than four years of college to understand this: You don't get people to see things your way by calling them idiots and racists, or sorting them into baskets of deplorables and pitiables (deserving of sympathy for their moral and intellectual failings). If you can't manage genuine respect for the people whose votes you want, at least try to fake it.