Hacker News Reader

Comment by s73ver_ | Hacker News Reader

I cannot imagine that many who were in favor of Bernie would switch to Trump. The positions of the two were so far apart, that you'd have to not actually believe in any of Bernie's positions in order to vote for Trump.

View on HN

I think it's easy to look past positions and want to punish someone, or anyone, who you believe has used corrupt practices to unrightfully squash your candidate's chances. Especially after some of the perceived chicanery at some of the caucuses, some of the emails, etc. There's a very real tendency to say "oh, so you think you can not play fair and square, try to manipulate me, and take it for granted like I'm some pawn? Well then, I'm going to let it all burn. Serve you right."

That said, I don't think I know any people who were in favor of Bernie who did vote for Trump.

Whereas I do know decent numbers of "conservative-ish" type people who were disgusted with Trump, but never in 10 million years would vote for a Clinton, but would maybe have been willing to vote for Sanders over Trump, mostly because he wasn't Trump or Hillary and sort of overlapped a bit with Joe Biden type blue-collarism while being an outsider. But given the choice between Hillary or Trump, they'd all feel sick and go Trump.

Tangentially, I think there's a large chunk of Democratic party die-hards who still just do not understand how much the Clintons are hated, or who focus on such dislike being unfair rather than just seeing it as reality to contend with.

I've always been sympathetic to the concerns of Hillary fans around me (misogyny, partisan smearing, etc.), but for me one good reason I wouldn't have voted for her, and one that I'm kind of surprised I don't hear more often, is that it just strikes me as fundamentally wrong for the partner of a former president to become president. We're talking about the USA, not some small village with ten inhabitants, or North Korea.

Am I wrong about having so much difficulty with this?

I think there's room for nuance; particularly because the partners are both of the same political organization and each has governing experience under their belts: one as an executive and the other as a legislator and high-level appointee.

Now if we had a situation like in Alabama where George Wallace used his dying wife to get around term limits then I would call it grade A fuckery; but the Clintons were both qualified to hold the office on their own merits, marriage not withstanding.

It is absolutely bizarre, and I had a hard time believing it too, but it does seem to be true that many would-be Sanders voters voted for Trump.

I think what it comes down to is that most people of any political persuasion are basically politically illiterate and vote their feelings. Sanders and Trump are both:

* not Hillary Clinton;

* male;

* very different from the other options.

For some people, that's apparently enough.

Perhaps those factors resonated with people, however, that glosses over the unique populist appeal of both candidates. Many people were dissatisfied with the status quo and Clinton was the embodiment of it. Do you think her message "America is already great" resonated with the working class?

I don't think swing voters are very common. Elections are decided on turnout. Voting is terribly inconvenient.

A lot of the targeted online advertising focused on turnout. Discouraging some voters and riling others up.

Both talked about not doing another regime change in the Middle East, so the opposite of Clinton. That was a pretty big deal in quite a few people's minds.

Now obviously that's just campaign talk, but I would go with the smallest glimmer of hope of not killing and displacing another million people in the process.

Except Trump was known for saying, "Bomb the crap out of em." Not to mention, there's the current situation he's in with N. Korea.

Yes, Trump was shifting and incoherent on a lot of policy issues; this led lots of people to decide to believe the position they liked while discounting the others on the same issue.

This probably wouldn't work with a candidate that wasn't both a political unknown and running against an opponent with very high negatives where people were (perhaps subconsciously) looking for an excuse to vote elsewhere, but it did work in the situation that actually existed in 2016.

Yes, about ISIS. I do agree the US has no place bombing people but that wasn't about regime change.

And what can I say, there's not much to expect from campaign talk, but when there are millions of lives at stake you may not want to go with mrs. "We came, we saw, he died".

Trump and Sanders both campaigned against neoliberal “free trade”, and both justified that opposition in terms of jobs for the American working class. The Trump camp repeatedly highlighted this fact.

There an interesting thing there. Bernie, believe or not, was very much against globalization, TPP and open borders in general:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0

Listen to how he says it, it's a thing he really hates. This is not fluke or anything, Chomsky another leftist thinker also has been anti-NAFTA well, since it was signed pretty much:

https://chomsky.info/secrets03/

Notice how he correctly predicted an influx of poor South American farmers who are pretty much forced to abandon their family to come and wash toilets and pick crops here.

Pretty much all leftists figures (and even most Democrats) were against NAFTA when it was signed; it was an sign of the serious rift in the Democratic Party at the time that Clinton had to rely on unanimous (or nearly so) Republican support and weak support from his own party to secure NAFTA passage.

> Notice how he correctly predicted an influx of poor South American farmers who are pretty much forced to abandon their family to come and wash toilets and pick crops here.

Mexico is not South America, and the basically linear increase in Mexicans coming to the US started before NAFTA.

> Mexico is not South America

You're right of course, the N in NAFTA, what was I thinking. I mean to say South of the border I think.

> basically linear increase in Mexicans coming to the US started before NAFTA.

One of the goals of NAFTA was to decrease it. With the idea that skilled jobs would be provided locally. But that didn't happen. I found this study http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1870355016... looking at 20 years after NAFTA. 10 years ago in 2007 there was this article which I had saved in my bookmarks: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/weekinreview/18uchitelle.h... it also talks about the effects on jobs in Mexico and how many of the promises didn't materialize.

So I think Chomsky was pretty good at predicting what would happen.

Trump also campaigned on a lot of highly regressive points, ones which just about any Bernie supporter would reject. Things like the border wall, repealing the ACA, and reducing regulation on business.

Unfortunately people don't think through their choices so carefully. They either go with a whim or vote based on a particular issue they are passionate about.

I cannot imagine that many who were in favor of Bernie would switch to Trump.

Believe it. People did not like the idea of voting for Hillary, and voting third party has its own issues.

Also, there was the X factor. People didn't really know what they were going to get with Trump.

You don't think he was predictable?

I bet this continues to hold up:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12920911

(posted Nov 10 2016)

The thing about social media is that if after election Trump would turn out to be the best president in our history. Instead of you, someone else would now cited the post that they said that in November.

The truth is, no one knew at the time. People had their theories, some were proved right, some were proven wrong.

The people who you were responding to are example that your opinion was just one of many. There was hope that perhaps Trump's ego would motivate him to be better than previous presidents. Sadly that didn't happen.

That's a fair criticism. And I guess it still applies even though I was more specific than good vs bad. Because you just need a few dozen predictions for one to be right.

Again, I need more than "not Clinton" to believe that. I find it quite difficult to believe that someone who was supporting Sanders would be able to vote for a border wall, repealing the ACA, a Muslim ban, someone who bragged about sexual assault on tape, and general deregulation of business.

Many people who were pro Bernie were against status quo. Hilary was basically continuation of old policies.

You're also forgetting that one doesn't have to vote for Trump to have an effect, many democrats also stayed home or voted 3rd party (especially since media guaranteed that Hilary will win)

I can totally buy them staying home. But I just cannot believe that someone who believed in Bernie's ideals would vote for someone who represented essentially the antithesis of those ideals. The only thing the two of them had in common was that they were against the status quo. That's it. After that, Sanders and Clinton have far more in common than Sanders and Trump.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com