37 Responses

1. Trying to guess information with first past the post is stupid and useless.

   All elections up to this point are stupid (the ones with first past the post), irrelevent, nonsensical.

   Caring about first past the post, means you dont give a shit about the game rules, AND YOU FUCKING SHOULD CARE ABOUT THIS GAME BECAUSE ITS A FUCKING ELECTION and not some casual game you are playing with your friends.

2. The real problem is that hillary voters are illiterate. They obviously cant read. If they could read they would have figured out the wikileaks DNC rigging against the strongest candidate they ever had. Retards.

3. Hillary cost hillary the election. Bernie sanders brought in millions of voters. Hillary did not. She brought in the same old weak voters who want the same old crap we have always had. The DNC screwed bernie (i know, i know everytime i say that hillary supporters say, “what? Screwed at the DNC…. what are you talking about?”) who would have won in a landslide. The problem was that the moron hillary supporters thought the socialists in this country would lay down and just vote for her anyway (this was hillary supporters thinking that we are like them and will just accept any crappy choice we are presented). Jill stein didnt even recieve 1% of the vote so keep trying to blame everyone else because you lack brain cells.

4. These facts are indisputable, except perhaps to Stein voters:
   1- Stein voters wanted an environmental-friendly candidate. In ranking of the major candidates, perhaps Stein was the most environmental-friendly. But really, no difference between Clinton (anti-fracking, believer in global warming, anti-pipeline) vs. Trump (pro-fracking, global warming denier, pro-pipeline and anything to do with fossil fuels)? Any Stein supporter who equates Clinton and Trump on environmental issues isn’t living in the real world.

   2- The next President — also in the real world — was going to be either Trump or Clinton. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like that choice, but either one of them (and no one else, especially not Stein) was going to become President.

   3- If you didn’t vote for Clinton, but instead voted for Stein, you helped Trump win. That simple. If the Stein voters had voted for Clinton in the 3 states, Clinton would be President.

   4- Stein voters actually voted — they received a ballot and checked a box — the Stein box, not the Clinton or Trump box. So they can’t be compared to voters who were simply turned-off and stayed home without voting. They cared enough about the environment to vote, but apparently they were living in a fantasy world to think that by not voting for Clinton, their votes for Stein were actually going to help the environment.

   5- So, Stein voters, you reap what you sowed. Not only Trump, but his new EPA head who will gut the EPA, more pipelines, more fracking. And wait until the Trump Supreme Court starts taking apart the environmental laws, the voting rights laws, women’s right to choose and more! Good job, Stein voters. Accept the blame that you fully deserve.

   6- Yes, the anti-Humphrey idealists led to Nixon’s election. The Nader voters led to Bush’s election (and the Iraq War). The Stein voters wanted a place in history, and now they have it.

5. HSG: I voted for Clinton in the primary because she was a better candidate than Sanders. The possibility that he was more “popular” or “well-liked” did not inform my decision. If he had won the nomination, I would have voted from him. The Bernie supporters who voted for Stein bought themselves four and probably eight years of regressive political action. Progressives made the same mistake in 1968, 1980, and 2000. All the policies that Progressives lament (expanded war in Southeast Asia, income inequality, mass incarceration due to the War on Drugs, Iraq War) began in the administrations of the Presidents that many Progressives elected by not voting for the Democratic candidate. Good luck with the next 25 years!

6. If those who backed Clinton in the primaries over the much more popular and well-liked Bernie Sanders, Trump might not have won. Great job Hillary supporters

7. Egads, you are all wrong, lol. There is no single reason why Clinton lost and Trump won. The margin was very small and any of several factors could have made the difference – third party candidates, Comey, WikiLeaks, constant media coverage of emails and health “scares,” false equivalency between the supposed corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the real illegality of the Trump Foundation, decades of anti-Clinton propaganda, polling errors leading to campaign mistakes, not choosing Bernie as VP, and Hillary’s shortcomings as a candidate. ANY one or two of them might have made the difference. But that does NOT absolve a Progressive who chose not to support Hillary. Your vote or non-vote helped elect Trump and that’s a choice you made with full knowledge of the possible consequences if you lived in one of these swing states. You decided you would rather have Trump than cast a vote for Clinton, so own that and don’t try to pretend now you are not part of the reason he is going to be the next president.

8. There were only two viable options in this race. Frankly, there were plenty of Johnson voters who would’ve voted for Clinton before Trump too. If you voted third party, you voted for the viable candidate who was closest to your own beliefs. It’s the First-Past-the-Post system we live in. Don’t like it? Petition Congress to amend the Constitution.

9. Gary J English, if you didn’t vote for Clinton, you voted for Trump. That’s the reality. Using your real name doesn’t magically keep you from being a buffoon, buffoon.

10. Jules, I didn’t say HRC might have won, I said HRC WOULD have won if Stein voters had voted for Clinton. That is a fact.

    Yes, there were many issues with HRC. That doesn’t change the fact that if Stein voters hadn’t taken their ball and gone home, Trump will be picking our Supreme Court Justices instead of selling cheap ties and steaks.

    Great job Stein supporters!

11. To Donald Trump’s hair – you said if Jill Stein voters had voted for HRC, she might have won. I’d like to add if Trump voters had voted for HRC, she would have won unanimously in the Electoral College. I would also add that if the Democrats had offered a candidate people could trust (Sanders or Biden or Warren) which was possible since no candidate had a majority of binded delegates, then Trump would have been slaughtered. So who’s more responsible – the party that offered a self-admitted liar as its nominee, or the people who did not want to trust their country with her.

12. Donald Trump’s Hair wrote: “Gary J. English along with many of you are buffoons with guilty consciences. You got the revolution you were seeking!”

    You really don’t wear your ignorance well.

    First, you make baseless assumptions as to who I’ve voted for. Answer, neither major party candidate.

    Reason: Hillary Clinton has a plethora of scandals that follow in her wake. Those that argue she has not been convicted of anything would be correct, but it doesn’t take rocket science to see some culpability. Case in point, DNC Chairwoman Debra Wasserman-Schultz’s email scandal that interfered with the Democratic process of candidate selection/nomination. Donna Brazile, CNN Moderator that leaked the Primary Debate questions to her friend, Hillary Clinton. And Hillary’s husband, Bill Clinton, compromising the U.S. Attorney General investigation of his wife, meeting on the plane with the Attorney General.

    As for Donald Trump, he made claims to Hillary Clinton’s health. While her health was a fleeting moment, it has been long known that Donald Trump suffers from “Foot In Mouth Disease”.

    I can see your true colors, using an anonymous and derogatory posting ID while illustrating you know little to nothing about me.

    Gary J. English
    avigilantone at yahoo dot com

13. John Flood said: “The Democrats lost because they didn’t have a message that would resonate with the average Americans.”

    That’s very true, but it still doesn’t change the fact that if Jill Stein voters has voted for Clinton, Trump would have lost and we wouldn’t be looking at the undoing of 8 years of controll plus another 8 to push their own agenda. Supreme Court gone for the next 30 years.

    Great job Stein voters! I hope you’re pleased with yourselves!

14. June, thanks for your completely irrelevant thoughts.

15. Gary J. English along with many of you are buffoons with guilty consciences. You got the revolution you were seeking!

16. These stupid exercises in finger pointing would all go away if we replaced our first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all Electoral System with one that uses Ranked Choice Voting (sometimes called Instant Runoff Voting). With RCV there are no spoilers or wasted votes because if your candidate does not have enough support to achieve majority support, he or she will be eliminated in one of the runoff rounds and your vote will transfer to your next choice.

    Because the results are reported round by round we would know exactly who the next choice of each candidate’s supporters were. Voters would feel free to cast their first choice for someone they really liked even if they didn’t believe that person could ultimately win. As a result we would get a much better idea of the true support level of alternative parties and candidates.

    In places where RCV is already in use such as the San Francisco Bay Area RCV has also been shown to yield much more civil elections. Since candidates know that they may need to garner the second choice votes of their opponents’ supporters they are less likely to wage a campaign that focuses on mud-slinging rather than the issues voters care about.

    Maine has just voted to use RCV in all statewide election starting in 2018. It will be the first test of RCV above the municipal level. It will be interesting to see the results.

17. The article’s premise is fallacy.

    The election was lost on a candidate’s platform, trustworthiness (or lack thereof) and other factors, not by a single candidate that the article crunches numbers on.

    Mr. Field mentions Stein and Johnson, but there were five candidates on the PA Ballot, omitting Darrel Castle. Then there were voters such as myself that chose to write in a candidate.

    There’s also an unseen candidate not on the ballot others can blame for the outcome. His name is James Comey, FBI Director.

    The two major parties also use the same old ploy of a vote not going to their candidate, would only elect their rival.

    Sorry, but this article is only speculative and irrelevant. Hillary Clinton is responsible for her defeat.

    I would close by saying; with over 320 million citizens in the United States, was Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the best the two major parties could offer?

    Gary J. English
    avigilantone at yahoo dot com

18. A final thought: If Clinton had had brains enough to have chosen Sanders as her veep nominee, she would have won the White House. She lost because she was a hated candidate who ran a stupid campaign and deserved to lose, even to a madman.

19. Oh, Lord! May we have some cheese with this whine? HILLARY CLINTON and the DEMOCRATIC INSIDERS who nominated her cost the Democrats the White House. She was a terrible, awful candidate, with negatives even higher than Trump’s. Sanders would have won in a walkaway. Ditto Biden or O’Malley. You folks went along with the “superdelegates” that made the primaries a charade, and pissed off enough Democrats who stayed home to cost you the election. If your candidate is a loser, so is your party.

20. This is absurd. The Democrats lost because they didn’t have a message that would resonate with the average Americans. Clinton’s message was to continue the great work that Obama had started but the majority of people had been left behind by economic growth especially the middle class who didn’t see any benefits from Obamacare, economic trade deals, and the like. Clinton tried to be a “Republican Lite” with less racism but same “great economics.” The people chose the real one rather than the fake one.

21. This whinefest…errr, analysis…correctly identifies Clinton’s (not Stein’s) problem:

    “Stein positioned herself as the true progressive champion during the campaign, reaching out to Bernie Sanders supporters.” While Stein was busy doing this, I – along with many hundreds of thousands of liberals and socialists – were begging Team Clinton to both position herself as a true progressive champion, AND to reach out to Bernie Sanders supporters. For months. Team Clinton did neither. Blaming Stein for doing what a candidate is supposed to do is silly.

    The article closes with “it appears the left fringe of American politics cost the Democratic Party the White House for the second time in sixteen years.” That statement appears to be accurate. If so, it is time for anyone who wants a different result to start appealing to the left fringe of American politics, since whining about us not supporting a candidates and parties which do not isn’t working out so well.

22. One can criticize this theory, but the numbers do not lie. Of course, not every Stein vote would have gone to Clinton and Johnson took from Trump. But the progressives and millenials only have themselves to blame for whatever is to come.

23. This is LOL funny!

    Great job Stein voters, you really showed us!

    Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! We literally couldn’t have done it without you!

24. Here’s why Crooked Hillary Lost!
    https://goodbyeamericainaphoto.wordpress.com/

25. Observer: “Oh, this article is so full of SHIT! That whole Nader thing was DISPROVEN many times over! But don’t let facts get in the way.”

    Sorry, but no. Since you claim to care about facts, let’s actually look at them. On the one hand, you have a couple of endlessly cited third-party blogs who claimed to “debunk” the “Nader myth.” On the other hand you have a consensus of political scientists from an array of prestigious universities who published their analyses in peer-reviewed journals, who agree that Nader cost Gore the election.

    This means we have what is known as a “fact.” You Stein voters yelling and cursing and citing your silly blogs as proof can NOT change that.

    “I voted for Jill Stein in the general election… ultimately it is the fault of Trump voters that she lost. That’s not difficult to understand.”

    You refused to vote for Trump’s only possible opponent, just like any Trump voter. Thus you’re precisely as responsible for Trump’s win as any Trump voter.

    That shouldn’t be this difficult to understand.
    The denial is strong in Stein voters.

26. Orange you glad you said banana.

27. If my cousin, Stevie Junior would have been nominated, then all of us eye ties would have stayed loyal. YouDems screwed us so we screwed you back. We Was for Trump anyway.

28. 73angelD –

    That’s not really a fair example. Let’s say I have 50 people in a room. We’re taking a vote on what we’re all going to get for lunch. Whoever gets the most votes wins, and everyone has to get the same thing.

    24 people absolutely want to get oranges. The other 26 people can’t agree on what they want, but they can agree they don’t want the oranges. 23 people want to get pears, but the remaining three people don’t like pears. They don’t want oranges or pears; they want apples. If push came to shove, they probably dislike oranges more than they dislike pears, but they just don’t like either of them and can’t be persuaded to vote pears. But at the same time, the 23 people who want pears really dislike apples.

    So the final vote comes down – 24 people vote oranges, 23 people vote pears, and 3 people vote apples. So winner takes all. All 50 people are getting oranges. So if you don’t like either oranges or pears, but you disliked oranges more and you *knew* you apples weren’t going to win…

    See my point?

29. What makes you think that someone who voted Green would ever vote for Clinton? There is no such thing as a spoiler. If I had a room full of people and had them vote between four choices of fruit to snack on – banana, apple, orange or grapes, no one would be saying “A vote for grapes is really a vote for apples”. Clinton lost because many voters did not trust her. They did not feel that she represented them, including lifelong Democrats like myself.

30. this assumes that Stein didn;t pull any votes from Trump. Which is inaccurate.

31. Or we could say Trump cost Clinton the election. That’s the most obvious fact. We could say Clinton or Trump cost Stein (or Johnston) the election. This is all nonsense. This is my opinion on the matter. I wanted Bernie Sanders to be president. Enough fools (in my opinion) voted for Clinton, and they had to be living with blinders on to not know how disliked Clinton was and that she’d not fare well against Trump. A vast number of people voted for Trump for the simple fact that they hated Clinton. It’s crazy how how much some hate Hillary Clinton. She knew it herself, and she’s a smart woman. If she really cared enough that Trump not win, she would have pulled out and given the nomination to Sanders. I voted for Jill Stein in the general election, and I’ll be damned if I take blame for Trump winning. That is on Trump voters, period. I think it was asinine to the highest degree for people to vote for that man simply because they hated Clinton. So we could just as easily say Clinton and/or Trump cost Jill Stein the election. All those nuts who voted for Trump for idiotic reasons when they didn’t really like him, could have just as easily voted for Stein or Johnston. Trump beat Clinton, so ultimately it is the fault of Trump voters that she lost. That’s not difficult to understand.

32. hillary and her supporters casued the election of Trump as President. hillary lost on her own because she was a weak candidate flawed from the start.

33. Oh, give this argument a rest, already, would ya?
    Hillary Clinton lost because of –> Hillary Clinton. You need to read a dose of reality:
    https://www.facebook.com/jzellis/posts/10153895236332027

34. 9% of Dems voted Trump – so yeah, blame the GP. Good plan.

35. Oh, this article is so full of SHIT! That whole Nader thing was DISPROVEN many times over! But don’t let facts get in the way. Please show me how many votes Johnson took from Trump? Three times more? The only person who lost this for Hillary Clinton was Hillary out-of-touch Clinton. She did not campaign ONCE in Wisconsin after the primary! What an incompetent politician!

36. The additional irony is that Johnson initially was expected to hurt the GOP.

37. Maybe the Dems should have run a better candidate with a better message. Vote for the status quo!