[d3ckard]

Nice post, though there are some caveats. As a Pole (as some of you know, we do have some issues here too, though many would disagree) I feel at least a bit competent to give you a bit of advice, so you can get out of it better than we did.

1. Donald Trump is not your enemy, nor a problem. He is a manifestation of the problem, which is current state of your society and problems you have. Do not believe that you can just impeach a guy and call it a day.

2. Don't even try to just get back to status quo. That's basically what happened in Poland in 2007 and problems came back after 8 years, worse than ever. The status quo you had created the Donald Trump and would continue to promote similar politicians.

3. Do not hate Trump supporters, do not be mean to them, do not laugh them off. They are people who live in different US than you do. As far as I can tell, most people on HN could retire in their 40s if they wanted to. This is not the reality of average American, as are your salaries and life opportunities. You live in a bubble and you need to accept it and reach out to learn what the world looks like for an average Joe.

4. You have a lot of power now, do not lend it to random politicians, as they will try to capitalize on your emotions. Hillary Clinton was not some heavenly figure, she had her bunch of issues too. Those issues were just of lesser importance to you. It is quite likely, that if Democrats nominated Sanders, he would win with Trump. They did not nominate him for the reason - he also wanted to change quite a lot, just in different direction than Trump. No matter what your political views are, his popularity showed that what your people expect is change and they will fight for it, because they have much less to loose than you. Acknowledge that and find a way to deal with it.

5. Do not expect the situation to just calm down. It won't. It is not some kind of mistake that can be solved by moving to popular vote. Life ain't that simple. You have people working full-time who cannot afford the living. You have one of the most expensive and unreachable for many healthcare systems. You do have degressive taxing systems. You have much smaller middle class that you are used too. Those problems need attention, you cannot just swipe it under the rag and pretend it's just some kind of national outrage. It isn't.

What you're seeing is your society stopping to work as it used too. It won't bounce back until you decide to do something with it and it might not be pleasant to you. It may mean higher taxes for example. Or some other change you will not be happy about. Trust me, the alternative is much worse.

Good luck!

[zimpenfish]

> It is quite likely, that if Democrats nominated Sanders, he would win with Trump.

I haven't seen a single political analysis which shows a path for him to do that. Do you have any examples?

[rtpg]

Massive Clintonite, but here's the way I see it:

Would Sanders have lost any state that Clinton won? Probably not.

Would Sanders have worked better in WI, Pennsylvania, Virginia? Probably.

Clinton was 77k votes from being President. Sanders might not have had as much institutional backing in the primaries, but considering that this seemed to have been decided on turnout, and Sanders had a strong grassroots following...

Basically no Clinton voter would not have voted Sanders in Sanders v Trump.

[DougN7]

Agreed. And Clinton was so unpopular on the right you would have had some Trump voters going for Sanders. I've said before that Clinton was the only politician unpopular enough to lose to Trump.

[d3ckard]

During his campaign he has paid for numerous polls to check the scenario. As far as I know, he won every one of those, which was not the case for Clinton.

I believe that it is actually highly plausible, as in my opinion the whole election was spinned to one question - "change or no change". It was damn hard for Clinton to prove she's for change, which would not be the case with Sanders.

[zimpenfish]

Given that (I think) every poll up to November had Clinton handily winning the presidency, I think we can probably take those polls with a grain of salt when it comes to "proof".

[d3ckard]

Bernie did use those polls throughout his campaign to paint himself as better oponent to Trump, so I do not believe those were without merit. His main argument then was that he wins with Trump every time while Clinton does not. We can of course discuss merit of those polls, but as I have written earlier, it fits with my view of that election and the reasons Donald Trump became POTUS. You are free to disagree of course, this is my opinion, not a fact.

[dankohn1]

The GOP had a ton of dirt on Sanders that they never used. If they had, he likely would have done much worse than Clinton. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/the-2016-electi...

[nicolas_t]

That was a very informative article. Thanks. I'm still not sure how bad it would have looked like compared to Hillary's email server but that article makes a good argument that Sanders wouldn't have been a guaranteed win.

[oelang]

How could that dirt be worse than what we have/had on Trump? Does it even matter?

[dankohn1]

The question (and it's obviously an Earth-2 counterfactual), is how the dirt on Sanders would have compared to the email server calumny on Clinton.

Anyway, my whole theory of the election is that since they turned on the Large Hadron Collider we've been living in one of the "bad" multiverses.

[jondubois]

I've heard similar arguments from Russians about the state of politics in Russia - That the government is ultimately just a manifestation of the character of the population.

[dgregd]

> problems came back after 8 years, worse than ever

Please give some real examples what problems came back after that 8 years. In live in Poland and haven't noticed any particular change to worse in last year.

[eli_gottlieb]

>You have people working full-time who cannot afford the living. You have one of the most expensive and unreachable for many healthcare systems. You do have degressive taxing systems. You have much smaller middle class that you are used too.

These are all very, very real problems. The problem is, they're not solved by voting Republican, but a lot of people simply think of themselves as Republicans. So there are a lot of people who voted to wreck everything rather than to fix their own problems.

[d3ckard]

There is a fallacy there - you believe, that if voting Republican does not improve situation, but can likely be detrimental, its better to stick with alternative. The caveat is that this is the reasoning of people functioning reasonably well in current society. If you put yourself in shoes of those who are definitely not happy now, for them the choice is quite different - status quo, which is unacceptable, or change, which may be good or bad. They will choose change most of the time, because they don't perceive how it can come out worse for them. Or, at the very least, change will make those higher in the ladder in trouble too, which can be actually attractive as "bringing justice", even if it does not improve situation for anybody.

People tend to prefer being miserable with everybody else than on their own.

[eli_gottlieb]

>There is a fallacy there - you believe, that if voting Republican does not improve situation, but can likely be detrimental, its better to stick with alternative.

No, I don't believe in the two-party system. If someone voted Green, Libertarian, or otherwise because they believed a third-party vote (especially down-ballot) would actually help address their problems, more power to them.

[dustinmr]

Here's the thing, they're not solved by voting Democrat either.

[eli_gottlieb]

Quite right. I much prefer when people vote third-party on principle.

[dgregd]

> Trust me, the alternative is much worse

The alternative is French Revolution. Hopefully for leftist elite democracy is still working.