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You won't hear much about it in the mainstream media, which wants you to believe in the "whitelash," but the real story is the Demexit. Obama received 69.5 million votes in 2008 and 65.9 million in 2012. Hillary will probably end up with only 60 million. The voter exit from the Democratic Party is plain and clear. We can debate the reason for the exit, but we can't debate the fact of the exit.

Where have these millions of Democrat-voting people gone? I don't think they turned Republican, because the red vote has been remarkably consistent the last three elections. In 2008, McCain got 59.9 million, in 2012 Romney got 60.9 million, and Trump will probably end up with about 60 million.

The numbers are very clear. There was no more of a "whitelash" than in prior elections where an actual black man was voted president twice! Of course, there are vocal racists on the right. But I don't think the anti-black voices have much influence. What has had a real influence is the anti-Establishment voices, and those forces have decimated the will of many people who previously supported the Democratic Establishment. Trump, not being an established politician, was able to retain the anti-Establishment votes on the Right, whereas Clinton lost them on the Left.

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Americans are divided into three roughly equal groups, politically: Republicans, Democrats, and independents. The biggest of the three is actually independents, with 35-40%.

Independents don't vote for the same party every time. So it's a misnomer to say they "exited", just because they voted Dem once or twice, and now decided to stay at home, or vote for someone else (some for Trump, but most  for Gary Johnson).

If anything, the anomaly was 2008, when the vast majority of independents voted for Obama, and this is just things getting back to normal.

It's not even a record drop in support, by the way. In 1992, Republicans lost over 10 million votes in just one cycle. They gained them back of course, in 2000...because American politics is cyclical.

Edited by Nicky
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5 hours ago, Nicky said:

Independents don't vote for the same party every time. So it's a misnomer to say they "exited", just because they voted Dem once or twice, and now decided to stay at home, or vote for someone else (some for Trump, but most  for Gary Johnson).

I'm not concerned at all with Party affiliation. I'm talking about the hard facts of how people actually voted, no matter with which Party they were registered. You can't deny the numbers. Since 2008, there has been a massive Demexit on election days.

Edited by MisterSwig
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4 hours ago, Nicky said:

If anything, the anomaly was 2008, when the vast majority of independents voted for Obama, and this is just things getting back to normal.

But you should try to explain the anomaly. Why did so many Independents support the Democratic ticket in 2008 but not in 2016?

Obama, being a black Democrat, represented a raw assault on the white, Republican Establishment. But then, as President, he became part of the hated Establishment and thus lost some support from Independents in 2012.

And now we have Hillary in 2016, whose bland femininity could not blind people to her rank as Queen of the Democratic Establishment. Thus, anti-Establishment Independents who normally would have helped out the Democrats instead stayed home on election day.

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10 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

I'm not concerned at all with Party affiliation. I'm talking about the hard facts of how people actually voted, no matter with which Party they were registered. You can't deny the numbers. Since 2008, there has been a massive Demexit on election days.

My point is, if someone voted for Bush, a Dem representative, and a Republican senator, then Obama, an independent rep and a Repub. Senator, and now Gary Johnson, a Dem senator and a Republican representative, it makes no sense to say that this person committed "Demexit".

 

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10 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

But you should try to explain the anomaly. Why did so many Independents support the Democratic ticket in 2008 but not in 2016?

Because in 2008, the country was in the middle of a financial crisis and recession. Whenever that happens, independents tend to vote for the opposition. In fact, even without a recession, some independents vote for the opposition just for the sake of "change".

You're familiar with Lichtman's 13 keys to the presidency, right? That's a system that favors the opposition candidate...and it has accurately predicted every election since the 70s.

So that's all this is: independents voting for the opposition. Has very little to do with the specifics. If the last President was Republican, they would've voted Dem instead, this year.

And this is a cycle that can only be broken one way: if someone ends up delivering what people want. And that's not going to happen until people change what they want...because, what they want now is not realistic. So, as long as what they want stays the same (they want the government to deliver prosperity and economic security), the two parties are going to take turns in promising, and then failing, to fulfill that demand.

This is off topic, but the worry (as expressed by Leonard Peikoff, for instance, back in 2008), is that the current unrealistic demands change in the wrong direction, and, instead of wanting freedom and individual rights once people are disillusioned with the increasingly spectacular failure of socialism, people end up wanting the fulfillment of nationalistic ambitions (which is a lot of what Trump initially promised his base, before switching to the usual, unrealistic economic promises that target a wider audience, after he won the nomination). Those nationalistic ambitions, if they become the desire of a majority, someone can actually deliver on, through fascism and war. (the way Putin has so expertly done in Russia, and the way Chinese Communists are attempting to do).

Another problem with that promise of nationalistic ambition is that it can so easily be disguised as patriotism. Even people on this forum routinely confuse Trump's battle cry "Make America Great Again" with a call to a return to what made America great to begin with: individual rights and limited government. But what Trump sees as "great" is the exact opposite of what Ayn Rand saw as "great". Ayn Rand saw individual achievement, and a country that protects individuals, as great, Trump sees power, and a government that is able to project great power, as great. He sees Vladimir Putin as great, not Thomas Jefferson or Henry Ford.

Edited by Nicky
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8 hours ago, Nicky said:

My point is, if someone voted for Bush, a Dem representative, and a Republican senator, then Obama, an independent rep and a Repub. Senator, and now Gary Johnson, a Dem senator and a Republican representative, it makes no sense to say that this person committed "Demexit".

This is an extremely concrete-bound analysis of the situation. I'm not applying Demexit to individual voters. I'm looking at the abstract, big picture. You still aren't dealing with the numbers I have provided.

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8 hours ago, Nicky said:

So that's all this is: independents voting for the opposition. Has very little to do with the specifics. If the last President was Republican, they would've voted Dem instead, this year.

Nicky, I think you are a passionate thinker, but I urge you to take a step back and look at the big picture. Independents DID NOT come out overwhelmingly for the opposition this year. Hillary is winning the popular vote! And Trump is getting the same number of votes as McCain did in 2008.

It's counter to the raw data to say that opposition-voting Independents caused Trump's electoral college victory. It was Demexiting Independents that lost it for Hillary, particularly in the Rust Belt.

Edited by MisterSwig
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Read this. It looks like some magazines and blogs are starting to get it about the Rust Belt. Though I think they are missing the greater story about the Demexit and anti-Establishment movement in general.

Edited by MisterSwig
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45 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

This is an extremely concrete-bound analysis of the situation. I'm not applying Demexit to individual voters. I'm looking at the abstract, big picture. You still aren't dealing with the numbers I have provided.

The numbers you "provided" are on Wikipedia. Except that, on wikipedia, they're not cherry picked to prove your assumptions.

Instead, wikipedia also shows that in 2004, Kerry only had 59 mill. votes. Then, in 2008, Obama got 69, then 65, and now Clinton was back down to back to Kerry's numbers. And that's without considering the fact that Republicans have held Congress through most of Obama's term, so even in the 2008-2012 period, those extra 10 million Obama voters weren't faithful Dem voters. They just voted for Obama that one time.

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37 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

Nicky, I think you are a passionate thinker

You're severely overestimating how passionate I am about a word you just made up. I just figured I'd take five minutes to state the obvious and move on. Then somehow I got bogged down in a frustrating conversation that I'm gonna go ahead and end now.

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24 minutes ago, Nicky said:

those extra 10 million Obama voters weren't faithful Dem voters. They just voted for Obama that one time.

Why do you say I "cherry-picked" the numbers when you now basically agree with me? Only you don't like calling it a Demexit.

How about an Unfaithful Demexit? 

Edited by MisterSwig
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On 11/10/2016 at 5:44 PM, MisterSwig said:

Democratic Establishment. Thus, anti-Establishment Independents who normally would have helped out the Democrats instead stayed home on election day.

Well, you forgot to analyze Hillary. To many, she still stands against any principles of the Democratic party. No one left the party - the people that made a difference were never part of it. I bet you the drop in votes for Democrats is only because Hillary is that bad, and is even bad at being the establishment. I think I voted for Obama on grounds of him being better than Romney. I voted for McMullin this time. I would've voted for Bernie if he were up against Trump.

The "anomaly" is that the party failed to pick their best candidate.

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14 hours ago, Nicky said:

You're familiar with Lichtman's 13 keys to the presidency, right? That's a system that favors the opposition candidate

Actually, it doesn't. Lichtman heavily qualified his prediction. He said that if Johnson didn't get 5℅ then Hillary should win. And you know what? He was absolutely right. But the 13 Keys only predicts the popular vote, not the electoral. So people are running around now saying that the 13 Keys accurately predicted Trump, when they don't know what they're talking about. We have another situation like Gore, where the Keys predicted he would win, but Bush actually got the electoral college victory.

Edited by MisterSwig
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Aside from making a convenient hashtag, I don't see where a rise or decline in the number of votes for a particular political party across three election cycles satisfies the criteria for generating a "new concept". It reminds me of "chartists" who look for patterns within the normal oscillations of stock prices.

Or, in other words: Don't confuse a grove of trees for a forest.

Edited by dream_weaver
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15 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

Aside from making a convenient hashtag, I don't see where a rise or decline in the number of votes for a particular political party across three election cycles satisfies the criteria for generating a "new concept". It reminds me of "chartists" who look for patterns within the normal oscillations of stock prices.

Stock prices and voter turnout, like everything else associated with human institutions, are affected by human behavior, which is not random, but volitionally directed. The only way to explain large-scale historical trends or patterns is to understand the widespread human behavior that caused them. To dismiss these historical trends as "normal oscillations" and to disregard those who attempt to explain them as "chartists", is to evade the undeniable connection between volition and social change.

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The same undeniable connection to volition lies at the root of both. The choice to focus is the precondition of conceptualization. Oscillations occur along long term trends between capitalism and statism just as they do between long term profits and losses.

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20 hours ago, softwareNerd said:

According to this article, millions of votes are still to be counted, and Hillary may even surpass Obama (not which election).

I guess we'll see. She'd have to get to 65.9 million to beat Obama's lowest total. She's only at 61 million now. It mostly depends on how many CA and NY mail-ins are outstanding.

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