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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

> Put Hillary in a balance with Trump and by far she is the better candidate

Then why am I dealing with "President-elect" Donald Trump?

> The Democrats' fault (and mine too) was in believing that people of the United States were better than this.

Nooooooo, your fault was not understanding what millions of Americans are going through that would force them to vote for the opponent. The blame lies solely with that mindset.

You expected people to put social issues ahead of their anxiety over economic survival. How ignorant is that idea? If you do not reflect, if you do not get comfortable with the idea of compromise and understanding those who did not vote the way you wanted, you will be doomed to fail.

With age comes wisdom.

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> Then why am I dealing with "President-elect" Donald Trump?

Because the candidate who LOST the popular vote won the electoral college, so his fewer votes were better allocated, as it turned out. He won fair and square, but it's beyond idiotic to pretend that nominating Hillary was somehow a gift of the presidency to Trump. According to insiders, even Trump thought he was losing going into election night.

>>Then why am I dealing with "President-elect" Donald Trump?

Because half the people of the United States are hypocrites with no strong moral compass. It is not politically correct to say it but it is true. I didn't think so before this but I know so now.

>>Nooooooo, your fault was not understanding what millions of Americans are going through that would force them to vote for the opponent. The blame lies solely with that mindset.

That is a lie. A good chunk of the trump supporters are actually well off. [1]

[1] http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...

> Because half the people of the United States are hypocrites with no strong moral compass. It is not politically correct to say it but it is true. I didn't think so before this but I know so now.

Prepare to lose a lot of battles in your life with this mindset.

EDIT (because HN throttling and I can't reply):

Don't waste the opportunity to grow as a person from this if it so strongly effects you. You don't say "fuck half of America, I'm right and they're wrong." You say, "Half of America voted for this person, this person who I strongly disagree with. Why? What motivated this? What can we do in the future to work together to ensure a better outcome?"

You ask questions. You collaborate. You compromise. In that order.

I do not understand your logic. Why? The more you know the better. And this is something that I did not know before. As I already mentioned before, I was stupid and idealistic. This experience has made me a lot more cynical.

It has probably made me a bit worse of a person, unfortunately.

Trump has proven that you can say anything and as long as you have power or you tell people what they want to hear it does not matter so what are you talking about?

Your replies echo everything that is wrong within the DNC.

Get off your high horse and give some respect to the electorate, and accept that you backed a loser.

Here's an olive branch, it's a linear combination. Look at the numbers, yes a large portion supported Trump out of desperation, but Clinton got 6M votes less than Obama. That says it all, people couldn't be motivated to vote.

Please, for our sake that we can rebuild in 2020 from what little we have left of our country, do look around and realize that the DNC had alot to do with why Trump won.

This is so important.

One of the reasons Trump won is that a lot of people in this country feel like they're being smugly dismissed every time they open their mouths. That the "elites" have no interest in getting to know them, understanding their problems, or building a society that is inclusive of them. They're used to being lectured by people who don't even know them, who think their entire community is insignificant and irrelevant and backwards and stupid. They're used to being called "white trash" and worse, just for existing.

I'm #NeverTrump. He's a horrible human being. I wish he had never sniffed the presidency. I fear for the safety of my transgender friends. But Trump won't be stopped if we lie to ourselves about why people support him, if we tell comforting but false stories about how everyone who supports him is just stupid, racist, sexist, or self-hating. The only way to stop him is to understand why we weren't able to stop him this time, which means understanding what the people who voted for him want that the "establishment" is failing to take seriously.

So, just to be clear, I agree with you completely, one hundred percent. But in the last couple of days, reflecting on the phenomenon you're observing, and trying to figure out why I become so frustrated, I've realized you could flip that around completely, with very negligible edits:

"... a lot of people in this country feel like they're being smugly dismissed every time they open their mouths. That the 'white trash' have no interest in getting to know them, understanding their problems, or building a society that is inclusive of them. They're used to being lectured by people who don't even know them, who think their entire community is insignificant and irrelevant and backwards and stupid. They're used to being called 'elites' and worse, just for existing."

The smugness of the liberal establishment bothers me, and is one reason I didn't vote for Clinton. But I find myself a recipient on the opposite end of that bigotry line all the time also. Not sure what to do with that observation, but it's very salient to me. Explaining it doesn't make it ok, I suppose, or something along those lines.

Great comment.

A partial answer comes from something I've sometimes heard said about racism (which I don't fully agree with, but I recognize as having some value): that when those with less power disdain those with more power, it's not as bad as when those with more power disdain those with less power.

Concretely: Tuesday is the first time in a long time that many "elites" have had their lives affected by "white trash". But "white trash" pretty much constantly live with the results of tax, trade, and health care policies enacted by "elites". IMO "and they don't like you very much either" hurts more in the second case -- it almost always hurts more for those on the losing end of the power dynamic.

Wait, aren't these the ones dems derided as uneducated non-college degreed voters? So, now that the election is over, we call them middle class? It's little wonder they felt disenfranchised and ridiculed and voted for the victor, including a number of democrats [1]

[1]http://iowapublicradio.org/post/app-saw-trump-winning-swing-...

> Because half the people of the United States are hypocrites with no strong moral compass.

Listen to Donald Trump's acceptance speech: https://youtu.be/-smetnW-k28?t=275

I prefer to believe that half of the people of the United States want to come together to build a better nation.

Edit: Hello downvoters. At almost the very top of his speech Trump specifically said he was reaching out to people who didn't support him, for guidance and help in unifying and improving the country.

Trump's prepared to work with you on unity, are you prepared to work with him? For better or worse dismissing him will not get your views heard, neither will calling him and his supporters names.

Sanders issued a statement saying “To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him.”

Obama and Hillary said, let's give him a chance and wait and see.

That does not seem unreasonable.

I'm sure there are at least a handful of Trump policies that you can support and agree with (see for example his ethics in government reform policy).

I know it's pedantic, but barely half the eligible electorate bothered to vote. And half of them elected Trump. We have no idea what the other half were doing or thinking, and can only guess they did not feel compelled to participate.

Okay, let's stipulate that anyone with an opinion that differs from yours has no moral compass. What next? Do we disenfranchise them? Kill them? Sterilize them and their children and wait it out?

Your attitude is disgusting on a number of levels, but my favorite one is how it leads to nothing useful at all.

Barely half the country bothered to vote. Half of that number voted Trump. So, 25% of the country determined the next 4 years.

About 100,000 votes in the right states could have changed the entire outcome, right? But that doesn't really mean just 100,000 people who didn't vote for Hillary determined that Trump would win.

We vote for who we want, if we choose to vote at all. The next 4 years will be determined by a lot more than just this one vote. Political activism is a constant finger on the scales.

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