Trump is president; Who is to blame?

[wiploc]

I give part of the blame to the media.  They loved the Trump candidacy as entertainment, as eyeballs, as revenue, so they gave it all their attention.  The other Republicans never had a chance to make their case.

[Jesster]

I don't see the point in playing the blame game at this point. The more important question to me is "what now?"

[abaris]

The more important question to me is "what now?"

Short of an impeachment, you have to sit it out. And even that, given that Pence would take the Donald's place doesn't seem all that thrilling. The whole world has to sit it out. Duck and Cover everyone, I would say.

[brewer]

I doubt Trump will be able to follow through with all of his change rhetoric. The people were willing to roll the dice.

He can still do a lot of damage since quite a lot of his populous promises are in line with establishment republicans. Such as rolling back on any kind of anti climate change policies. The immigration policy also was a ticket most republicans tried to run on and his desire for banning all muslims will at least sit well with the religious right.

Far as I understand it, he will also be able to nominate and probably establish the replacement for Scalia at the Supreme Court. Since these judges are there for life, he can do even more damage by choosing a staunch rightwinger. Which probably, even more so given his running mate, will happen. On that note, he probably will also roll back on many civil rights and social issues, such as gay marriage, transgender rights and maybe even abortion.

I think cooler heads will prevail.

[Shell B]

Um, people who voted for Trump.

[Kingpin]

I would largely blame the DNC for pushing so ardently for Hillary. They felt Trump stood no chance and it was their best opportunity to break that ultimate glass ceiling. If Bernie was the candidate I honestly think it would have been a landslide victory for him. I generally vote Republican but if this was Trump vs Bernie, I may have voted Bernie. As it was I voted off primary party because both candidates were deplorable options in my mind.

A clear message emerged from this result though. The majority of Americans are fed up with the establishment and this was a way to send a message.

[Edwardo Piet]

This does not seem to be only a political event. Trump never should have gotten close. That so many Americans who are struggling with money picked Trump must mean that our version of capitalism could use some further adjustments. That so many Americans in places where the economy is on the rise also chose Trump raises the possibility that our leaders promise too much, that we expect that more is possible than really is. That such a proudly amoral and publicly hateful man could become the choice of large majorities of observant Christians suggests some weakness in our religious life and our expressions of morality. That he did not lose more support after his racism and misogyny became well-known suggests how commonplace these resentments must be, between husbands and wives and between neighbors. There was not enough individual decency to make plain Trump’s indecency. We are not so good a people as we thought.

(My bold text).

Exactly my point when I said this in the other thread (I edited the second quote somewhat to make it fit into this context better):

All this demonstrates is that the American public have a lot of bigots voting. Just like here in the UK with the Leave Campaign winning when many people's reasons for voting for Leave was "To stop them Muslim Paki bastards from comin' over 'ere takin' our jobs innit."

[...]A lot of them are racists.[...] [We] can't ignore the fact many racists bigots voted for Brexit and Trump for racist reasons.

[...][Now]I'm not saying half of the country are bigots and racists. I'm saying a great many of that half are.[...]It's about calling a spade a spade.[...]Calling things as they are is important. [...]What we need is less people ignoring reality and more people calling a spade a spade. [...][many] people [are] burying their heads in the sand[...] [and I think it's about time] people [...] [got] their spades out.

[dyresand]

I liked this bit in the NY times:  

This does not seem to be only a political event. Trump never should have gotten close. That so many Americans who are struggling with money picked Trump must mean that our version of capitalism could use some further adjustments. That so many Americans in places where the economy is on the rise also chose Trump raises the possibility that our leaders promise too much, that we expect that more is possible than really is. That such a proudly amoral and publicly hateful man could become the choice of large majorities of observant Christians suggests some weakness in our religious life and our expressions of morality. That he did not lose more support after his racism and misogyny became well-known suggests how commonplace these resentments must be, between husbands and wives and between neighbors. There was not enough individual decency to make plain Trump’s indecency. We are not so good a people as we thought.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-w...s-to-blame

So who do you blame?  The DNC?  Hillary?

My first inclination is to blame the education system.  How could people not see the false promise of a strong man saying "only I can do it, trust me and don't worry about the details?"  Even more than that, there are a lot of people not doing well economically and rolling the dice on change probably beats betting on slow, incremental improvement to them.  

Or maybe human nature is simply tragic?  Why do we look for a savior anyway?  The trouble with looking for someone better than yourself to rescue you is it still depends on you to recognize the right one.

Democratic establishment, DNC, DCCC all  in all it's their own fault they had a perfectly electable candidate that would have won the election in  landslide.
If Hillary didn't get the votes like they thought they would Bernie would have won the election instead but no... and this is why Trump won.

[abaris]

They felt Trump stood no chance and it was their best opportunity to break that ultimate glass ceiling.

I don't think that was the rationale. It was rather on the lines of keeping it amongst Country Club friends. That, and the fact than Trump managed to position himself as the opposite of the establishment, paved his way.

Some 18 months back I posted this thread.

http://atheistforums.org/thread-34039.html

During these last months I came to the conclusion that a Trump victory isn't as outlandish as it seemed. Because he's perfectly in line with every rightwing messiahfigure winning elections these days. People don't ask the tough questions anymore. The media doesn't ask them for them either. Many people only inform themselves on already biased internet networks of their personal flavor. Hence the polarization we can observe in many of our societies. There's no real political debate going on anymore. Only us vs them.

Bernie, in my opinion, could have mobilized more millenials and more of the liberals than Clinton could ever dream to rally. If that would have been sufficient to score a victory is pure speculation at this point.

[Tiberius]

Thing about that is, the evangelical voting block in America has stridently crowed about family values and the importance of that sort of personal 'integrity' for decades and decades.  They skewered candidates on their personal 'immoralities' before, but suddenly with Trump everything is totally fine.  It was something that politicians had to care about for the last half century because it was always something that could get used against them.

The evangelical voting block generally speaking votes for the candidate they see as more "pro-life" when it comes to abortion. For them, that issue is the most important, because they see abortion as government sanctioned murder. If you believe that the government supported the murder of your fellow citizens, you'd vote for the candidate saying loud and clearly "I oppose that" too.