User talk:PackMecEng

Welcome

A belated welcome to Wikipedia! Now that you're an official Registered User, here's a coupe of items for your user page if you like. You can find other User Boxes to chose from here. Once again, welcome. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 02:41, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This editor is a **Signator** and is entitled to display this **Scroll of Signatures**.

Thanks! Still doing my best reading though all the best practices and formatting. So many articles but looks like good info! PackMecEng (talk) 03:16, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Glad I can help. I took the liberty of putting these items on your User page, (this is your Talk page) along with a userbox that says you're interested in history, assuming you are of course -- naturally you can add and remove whatever you like.
Also, you might want to familiarize yourself with Wikipedia:Manual of Style if you haven't already. This is where you'll find all of Wikipedias policcies and guidelines. Don't be overwhelmed. Virtually no one knows all the rules by heart, but at least you know where to look if and when issues come up. See you around! -- Gwillhickers (talk) 18:43, 21 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

pied piper

I had never run across that alleged strategy. Thanks much for posting the politico link,[1] it is a goldmine of factoids. Most of them belong over in USPE, 2016 rather than in Donald Trump of course (or in the campaign-specific spinoff articles), but it does have a lot of explanatory power. Not only was the polling bad -- politico's conclusion-paragraph on November 7th about the ups and downs of the Clinton'16 campaign which ended on a clear confident victory-note sounds ironic in the present timeframe with the benefit of hindsight -- but the switcheroo from the various estab-backed candidates to an unexpected anti-estab candidate redrew the swingstate-map, and at a time when Clinton'16 was tied up fighting off Sanders'16 on their left... making them unable to properly reposition their stances aka run to the middle, because not only were they fighting a rear-guard action against the liberal wing of the party they were no longer running to the same middle they had always planned on! I would be interested in seeing if the messaging and spending patterns of the DNC, and also of the Clinton'16 campaign and affiliated PACs, with respect to the various potential repub nom contenders, justifies the idea of the alleged Pied Piper strategy. It would be WP:OR just digging for the raw numbers as wikipedians, but if we can find an analysis-piece that was performed by a third-party journalist or political scientist or somesuch, that would count as WP:RS. In any case, appreciate you finding that URL, made my day :-) 47.222.203.135 (talk) 00:33, 14 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I was looking a bit while at work and didn't see anything jump out at me. I had planned on looking a bit more. If I find anything worthwhile I will certainly let you know though. Feels rather ironic considering how things eventually turned out though. PackMecEng (talk) 03:05, 14 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, whether ironic is the word for it or not, there was definitely a long confluence of things that led up to the final outcome. Estab-repubs did not fight Trump because they did not take him seriously, estab-dems (allegedly) did not fight Trump because they wanted him to take out the estab-repubs, the media (allegedly) wanted Clinton to win and gave Trump double the free coverage that they gave to all other candidates combined, yet once Trump became the nominee the media *still* could not tear their eyes away thus continued to give him more airtime than Clinton, the media and the pollsters and the pundits all predicted he would lose, PrioritiesUSA believed the estab-media-pollsters who said Trump would lose PA by five points and pulled their millions (diverting from the potus-race to the usSen-races), Clinton too believed the estab-media-pollsters and wasted time and money campaigning in AZ/GA/TX/OH and neglecting MN/MI/WI... meanwhile, back at the ranch, the anti-establishment repub has mended fences with Priebus and the RNC establishment, and combines his unruly mass rallies with their disciplined groundgame, then by capitalizing on free media (no news is bad news) just eeks out one of the most astounding general election upsets in decades, maybe ever. This was a wild election cycle, with irony piled on surprise piled on seeming-self-satire by both major parties... what a crazy year. And I fully expect that history is just getting started on showing us how topsy-turvy the world can become, once the moorings break lose it is hard to halt the shift... see also realignment election, which is predicted every cycle, but this may *actually* have been one, if the EU is any indicator. 47.222.203.135 (talk) 17:18, 16 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What I find kind of interesting these days is the populism wave in Europe. Does not get a lot of coverage here in the USA, but seems to be spreading all over the world. You mentioned EU and to me that really seemed to be the start with Brexit. Now the governments in Germany, France, Austria, the Netherlands, UK, and Italy are all fielding fairly strong populist candidates. Even parts of Asia, mainly with China, but also with the Philippines Duterte are peeking into the game. Not sure what will happen in South Korea, but that's going to be a sight with the turmoil over Park. They seem to be fed up in general with "government elites" which is a large drive again with China and South Korea. What kind of surprised me was Japan with all that, Abe being fairly popular but his main base being content about the present but pessimistic about the future. The next few years will be a heck of a ride, with no one really sure how it will end up. PackMecEng (talk) 04:24, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]