Hey, Midwestern and Rust Belt Blue-Collar Voters: How’s THIS Workin’ Out for Ya So Far?

UPDATE: LOL.

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President-­elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists.

Jeffrey Eisenach, a consultant who has worked for years on behalf of Verizon and other telecommunications clients, is the head of the team that is helping to pick staff members at the Federal Communications Commission.

Michael Catanzaro, a lobbyist whose clients include Devon Energy and Encana Oil and Gas, holds the “energy independence” portfolio.

Michael Torrey, a lobbyist who runs a firm that has earned millions of dollars helping food industry players such as the American Beverage Association and the dairy giant Dean Foods, is helping set up the new team at the Department of Agriculture.

Trump Campaigned Against Lobbyists, but Now They’re on His Transition Team, Eric Lipton, New York Times, today

What?  No steelworker?  No auto-plant worker?  Not even a family farmer?  Might y’all have been had?

Who’d a thunk?

Bernie and Elizabeth to the rescue.  Now, pleaseNow.

But, hey, white blue collar folks: You get what you vote for.  The problem for me is that I get what you vote for.  I said roughly 540 times here at AB in the last year: Trump isn’t conquering the Republican Party; he’s the Republican Party’s Trojan Horse.  What was that y’all were saying about wanting change so badly?  Here it is.

Welcome  to the concept of industry regulatory capture. Perfected to a science, and jaw-droppingly brazen.  LOL. Funny, but Bernie talked about this.  Some of you listened.  Then.  Elizabeth Warren has talked about it, a lot. Some of you listened.  Back then.  But she wasn’t running for president.  Hillary Clinton was, instead.  And she couldn’t talk about it because she had needed all those speaking fees, all the way up to about a minute before she announced her candidacy.

Aaaaand, here come the judges.  And of course the justices.  Industry regulatory capture of the judicial-branch variety.

I called this one right, in the title of this post yesterday.  I mean, why even wait until the body is buried?  No reason at all.

So he thinks.  But what if he’s wrong?

Anyway … can’t wait for the political cartoons showing Trump on Ryan’s lap, with Ryan’s arm showing reaching up under Trump’s suit jacket.

Edgar Ryan and Charlie Trump.

Oh, and I do want to add this: If one more liberal pundit or feminism writer publishes something claiming that Clinton lost because of all those sexist men out there who couldn’t handle the idea of a woman president, or claims she ran a remarkable campaign cuz of all that tenacity and stamina she showed in the face of what was thrown at her from wherever, see, or makes both claims (if not necessarily in the same columns or blog posts or tweeter comments), and I read so much as the title of it, I’m gonna … something.

It’s effing asinine.  Everyone’s entitled to their little personal delusions, but why the obsessiveness about this patent silliness?  What exactly is the emotional hold that Hillary Clinton holds on these people? It’s climate-change-denial-like.

Elizabeth Warren would have beaten Donald Trump in a landslide.  So would have Bernie Sanders.  And brought in a Democratic-controlled Senate and House.  Because either of them would have run a remarkable campaign, under normal standards, not standards with a special low bar.

That’s the efffing truth.

 

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UPDATE:  From a new blog post by Paul Waldman titled “If you voted for Trump because he’s ‘anti-establishment,’ guess what: You got conned“:

An organizational chart of Trump’s transition team shows it to be crawling with corporate lobbyists, representing such clients as Altria, Visa, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Verizon, HSBC, Pfizer, Dow Chemical, and Duke Energy. And K Street is positively salivating over all the new opportunities they’ll have to deliver goodies to their clients in the Trump era. Who could possibly have predicted such a thing?

The answer is, anyone who was paying attention. Look at the people Trump is considering for his cabinet, and you won’t find any outside-the-box thinkers burning to work for the little guy. It’s a collection of Republican politicians and corporate plutocrats — not much different from who you’d find in any Republican administration.

And from reader EMichael in the Comments thread to this post about 35 minutes ago:

OH, it will be worse than that, much worse.

Bank regulation will go back to the “glory days” of the housing bubble, and Warren’s CFPB will be toast.

Buddy of mine works HR for a large bank. He has been flooded with resumes from current employees of the CFPB the last couple of days.

Yup.  HSBC ain’t in that list for nothing.  But, not to worry.  Trump’s kids will pick up lots of real estate on the (real) cheap, after the crash.  Their dad will give them all the tips, from experience.

And the breaking news this afternoon is that Pence–uh-ha; this Mike Pence–has replaced Christie as transition team head.  Wanna bet that Comey told Trump today that Christie is likely to be indicted in Bridgegate?

Next up, although down the road a few months: rumors that a grand jury has been convened to try to learn how, exactly, Giuliani got all that info from inside the FBI two weeks ago.  Once the FBI inspector general completes his investigation.  Or once New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, begins looking into violations of NY state criminal law.

How downright sick.  And how pathetic.

Update added 11/11 at 3:19 p.m.