Trump Is Making the Same Mistake that Clinton Did: He’s Already Ignoring Working-Class Rust Belt Whites. Progressives Need to Start Illustrating This by Highlighting His Planned Court and Cabinet Nominees. Now.
There are several excerpts from the news media since Tuesday night that help drive home the point I make in that title about Trump and the Democrats in the immediate future. But the excerpts are about Clinton, not Trump:
There are several excerpts from the news media since Tuesday night that help drive home the point I make in that title about Trump and the Democrats in the immediate future. But the excerpts are about Clinton, not Trump:
There are vast rural, small-town or post-industrial areas of the country where Barack Hussein Obama will have greatly outperformed Clinton
— twitter.com/AlecMacGillis of Pro Publica, Nov. 8, late evening
And:
The left-behind places are making themselves heard, bigly
— twitter.com/AlecMacGillis of Pro Publica, Nov. 8, late evening
And:
From Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, industrial towns once full of union voters who for decades offered their votes to Democratic presidential candidates, even in the party’s lean years, shifted to Mr. Trump’s Republican Party. One county in the Mahoning Valley of Ohio, Trumbull, went to Mr. Trump by a six-point margin. Four years ago, Mr. Obama won there by 22 points.
— Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment, Matt Flegenheimer and Michael Barbaro, New York Times, yesterday
And:
Clinton and her operatives went into the race predicting her biggest problems would be inevitability and her age, trying to succeed a two-term president of her own party. But the mood of the country surprised them. They recognized that Sanders and Trump had correctly defined the problem—addressing anger about a rigged economy and government—and that Clinton already never authentically could. Worse still, her continuing email saga and extended revelations about the Clinton Foundation connections made any anti-establishment strategy completely impossible.
So instead of answering the question of how Clinton represented change, they tried to change the question to temperament, what kind of change people wanted, what kind of America they wanted to live in. It wasn’t enough.
Using Trump as a foil and a focus, she hit on a voice and an argument for why she should actually be president that perhaps only she could have, and that she’d struggled for so long to find on her own. That wasn’t enough either.
Meanwhile, her staff harnessed all the money and support they could to out organize, first in the primaries and then in the general, grinding out victories while her opponents had movements.
None of it was enough, though all of it should have been, and likely would have been for another candidate. She couldn’t escape being the wrong candidate for the political moment.
Interviews over the closing weeks of the 2016 campaign with members of Clinton’s innermost circle, close advisers and other aides reveal a deep frustration with their failure to make a dent, a consuming sense that their candidate’s persecution paranoia might actually be right, and a devastating belief that they might never persuade Americans to vote for her.
“There was no way to generate momentum,” one top adviser said.
Any positive storyline from Clinton “was always fragile,” admitted that adviser, and issues related to the emails inevitably stripped away any uptick in Clinton’s favorable ratings.
— Inside the Loss Clinton Saw Coming: Publicly they seemed confident, but in private her team admitted her chances were ‘always fragile.’, Edward-Isaac Dovere, Politico, yesterday
And:
To several top aides, the best day of this whole campaign was a year ago, before the Sanders headache or the Trump threat really materialized, when the House of Representatives hauled Clinton and her emails in with the single aim of destroying her candidacy over Benghazi. …
She delivered tirelessly [that day], knocking back the Republicans one by one, complete with facial expressions that have launched GIFs that have been all over Democrats’ Facebook and Twitter feeds ever since. She renewed her shaken team’s faith that she was the leader they wanted to follow into what was already shaping up to be a dejecting primary battle.
“It reminded people of everything they like about her,” said one of her senior advisers. “It’s toughness, but also a calm, adult presence of someone you can actually see being president of the United States.”
— Inside the Loss Clinton Saw Coming: Publicly they seemed confident, but in private her team admitted her chances were ‘always fragile.’
And:
Bill Clinton had his own problems, but never that one [his gender], and neither did Trump, who openly disparaged women throughout his campaign and still prevailed. The result was at once unfathomably difficult for the Clintons and yet not entirely surprising to Bill. He saw the signs all along the way of this campaign. He knew the people who were voting for Trump, and also the people who during the primaries were voting not for his wife but for Bernie Sanders. He saw the anger and the feelings of disconnection, but he did not know how he, or his wife’s campaign, could connect to it effectively without resorting to demagoguery or false populism, something Hillary was not good at even if she was disposed to try.
— The Clintons were undone by the middle-American voters they once knew so well, David Maraniss, Washington Post, today
And:
Last year, a prominent group of supporters asked Hillary Clinton to address a prestigious St. Patrick’s Day gathering at the University of Notre Dame, an invitation that previous presidential candidates had jumped on. Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. had each addressed the group, and former President Bill Clinton was eager for his wife to attend. But Mrs. Clinton’s campaign refused, explaining to the organizers that white Catholics were not the audience she needed to spend time reaching out to.
As it became clear on Tuesday night that Mrs. Clinton would lose to Donald J. Trump, supporters cast blame on everything from the news media to the F.B.I. director’s dogged pursuit of Mrs. Clinton over her personal emails, and to a deep discomfort with electing a woman as president.
But as the dust settled, Democrats recognized two central problems of Mrs. Clinton’s flawed candidacy: Her decades in Washington and the paid speeches she delivered to financial institutions left her unable to tap into the antiestablishment and anti-Wall Street rage. And she ceded the white working-class voters who backed Mr. Clinton in 1992.
Though she would never have won this demographic, her husband insisted that her campaign aides do more to try to cut into Mr. Trump’s support with these voters. They declined, reasoning that she was better off targeting college-educated suburban voters by hitting Mr. Trump on his temperament.
Instead, they targeted the emerging electorate of young, Latino and African-American voters who catapulted Mr. Obama to victory twice, expecting, mistakenly, that this coalition would support her in nearly the same numbers. They did not.
— Hillary Clinton’s Expectations, and Her Ultimate Campaign Missteps, Amy Chozick, New York Times, yesterday
And then there is this:
Clinton picked Mook, instead of promoting a campaign manager out of loyalty from her own inner circle. She persuaded Podesta, who had kept his distance in 2008 because he didn’t get along with polarizing top strategist Mark Penn, to join as the guiding hand and the buffer for all the “friends of” who streamed in with advice and second-guessing.
But that didn’t mean there weren’t serious problems. Bill Clinton complained throughout that Mook was too focused on the ground game and not enough on driving a message-based campaign. Without a chief strategist in the mold of Penn or David Axelrod, the campaign was run by a committee of strong-willed aides struggling to assert themselves in the same space. Longtime consultant Mandy Grunwald and Palmieri grappled at points over message control as Palmieri worked her way into the inner circle. Mook and strategist Joel Benenson barely spoke to each other for the month of April, battling over their roles.
— Inside the Loss Clinton Saw Coming: Publicly they seemed confident, but in private her team admitted her chances were ‘always fragile.’
And here it is, in summation of all of the above:
Whoever takes over what’s left of the Democratic Party is going to have to find a way to appeal to a broader cross section of the country. It may still be true that in the long term, Republicans can’t win with their demographics, but we found out Tuesday that the long term is still pretty far away. Democrats have to win more white voters. They have to do so in a way that doesn’t erode the anti-racist or anti-sexist planks of the modern party, which are non-negotiable. If only there were a model for this. [Link in original. Do click it.]
The few Democratic leaders who remain are going to say that it was just a bad note struck here or there, or the lazy Bernie voters who didn’t show up, or Jim Comey, or unfair media coverage of Clinton’s emails, to blame for this loss. I am already seeing Democrats blaming the Electoral College, which until a few hours ago was hailed as the great protector of Democratic virtue for decades to come, and Republicans were silly for not understanding how to crack the blue “wall.” They will say, just wait for Republicans to overreach. Then we’ll be fine.
Don’t listen to any of this. Everything is not OK. This is not OK.
— The Democratic Party Establishment Is Finished, Jim Newell, Slate, yesterday
Among all the email exchanges leaked from Podesta’s hacked email account—the ones I read; I read a couple of articles quoting from each group of releases—the most revealing, in my opinion, were two sets of exchanges released about a week before the Comey outrage. Both were from early 2015, a few weeks before Clinton was scheduled, finally, to announce her candidacy in mid-April.
One shows newly hired campaign manager Robby Mook asking for John Podesta’s and Huma Abedin’s help in persuading Clinton to ask her husband to cancel a $225,000 speech to Morgan Stanley scheduled for a few days after her announcement and while she was scheduled to be in Iowa on her inaugural campaign trip.
The difficulty wasn’t resistance from Bill; it was resistance from Hillary, at whose instance the speech had been arranged. The email exchanges indicate that Hillary could not be persuaded to all the cancellation, because it had been arranged personally by her and Tom Nides, a top aide to Clinton at the State Dept. and by then a top executive at Morgan Stanley.
Finally it was decided that Abedin would get Bill to agree to cancel the speech, and she would tell Hillary that Bill (who apparently did have qualms about the speech) was the one who decided to cancel it. Abedin reported back to Podesta and Mook that Clinton was angry about it for a couple of days but then moved on.
The other one is from about the same time and is somewhat similar. This series of exchanges was among Mook, Abedin, Podesta and Neera Tanden, and concerned Hillary’s appearance in early May, shortly after her campaign announcement, at a massive Clinton Global Initiative gala in Morocco paid for by the king of Morocco, a friend of Clinton’s, who all told would donate $12 million to the foundation. This, too, had been arranged by Hillary, and was not strongly supported by Bill or anyone else at the foundation.
Abedin’s emails suggest (without saying outright) that she and perhaps others had tried to dissuade Clinton from arranging this, and then, once Clinton had set the date of mid-April for her campaign announcement, tried to persuade Clinton to cancel it. But by the time of this email exchange with Mook and Podesta, Abedin said it was so late and Clinton had had earlier opportunities to cancel but instead had assured her presence there, that it will break a lot of glass” (or some such phrase) for Clinton to cancel. Mook did manage to get Clinton’s agreement to have Bill attend instead of her.
These instances illustrate what was a constant throughout: Mook and two or three others, including Podesta, having to put on a full court press to stop Clinton from acting as though she weren’t a candidate for president. Or a candidate for anything. Both Podesta and Tanden complained about Clinton’s “instincts,” a euphemism for “I’m completely unaware of the overarching mood of the public in this election cycle. Or, I don’t give a damn about the overarching mood of the public in this election cycle. And I certainly don’t give a damn about down-ballot Dems. Or about Dems. Or about anything other than what I want to do.”
Clinton arranged to clear the Democratic field of anyone thought in early 2015 to have chance against her in the primaries. She just wasn’t willing to swear off anything else she wanted, besides the presidency, in order to reduce the chance that she would lose the general election.
This wasn’t Lent, after all. And anyway, Clinton isn’t Catholic.
Had Mook not killed that $225,000 speech to Morgan Stanley by Bill Clinton in April 2015, Bernie Sanders—whom Clinton could not clear the field of until June 6, 2016—would have won the nomination and would be president-elect now, accompanied by a newly elected Senate, and maybe House, Democratic majority. That fee would have been identified in the Clintons’ tax returns, filed presumably in last April and (presumably) released shortly afterward.
In early 2015, when Hillary was arranging for Bill to give that speech—undoubtedly arrangements made shortly after Elizabeth Warren removed any doubt that she would run—Clinton looked to be free of any challenge from the left. So it didn’t bother her one whit that this would be revealed during the primary season.
Nor, since she expected her general election opponent to be Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, did it concern her that this would be known during the general election campaign. It wasn’t as if Bush wasn’t a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street. Or Rubio owned by other highly unpretty financial interests.
And even if it did, well, it was worth the risk. After all, after the general election, the gravy train for both her and her husband would stop. And it wasn’t blue collar workers in the Rust Belt who were her target votes, so it wasn’t all that big a risk anyway.
So we were saddled with a Democratic presidential nominee whose decades in Washington and the paid speeches she delivered to financial institutions left her unable to tap into the antiestablishment and anti-Wall Street rage. Someone who had to cede the white working-class voters who backed Barack Obama in 2008 and again in 2012, because the only way someone who’d taken so very much money from Wall Street as personal income for doing so very little—someone who was selling her anticipated presidency to Wall Street—had no avenue with which to connect effectively with working class Rust Belters without resorting to demagoguery or false populism, something she was not good at even if she was disposed to try.
The answer then was to highlight her high status and the importance she placed on connections with celebrities and the pillars of the establishment in various venues, by campaigning hardly at all, by spending August secluded in the Hamptons, by parading with entertainment celebrities at the few rallies she had.
And by incessantly rolling out ever more names of the most elite establishment people to endorse her or at least make clear that they, too, recognized that her opponent is unfit to hold the office of the presidency. Because even though the targeted audience has access to the same information on that the elite establishment did, and were reminded by Clinton and her ad campaign of these lowlights so often that they lost their resonance, there might be a few people whose decision would turn on the opinion of these elites.
They just weren’t the people the blue collar Rust Belters who, it seemed clear all along would play an outsize role in the outcome of the election. As they had in 2008 and 2012.
Nor, apparently, did she have any avenue to point out whom Trump’s financial campaign backers actually were, who was writing his budget and regulatory proposals, who was selecting his court and agency-head nominees, his SEC, FTC and NLRB member nominees, and why. They’re not people with labor union backing, nor do they have the interests of blue collar folks at heart. Their interests are diametrically opposite those of blue collar workers. And Trump wasted not so much as a day in handing over to them the entire panoply of powers of the federal government.
But having sold her avenue for informing people of this, to Wall Street and any other huge-money interest waiving a mega-check around in exchange for a 45-minute-long speech by or question-and-answer session with, the likely president she was limited to reminding voters of what they themselves saw, and assuring them that elites viewed him just as they did. Which may be why her campaign manager, Mook, wasn’t as focused on messaging as Bill Clinton wished. Normally, a candidate has one. This candidate had foreclosed to herself the message she needed to have, and had nothing much filling in for it. That wasn’t Mook’s fault.
Trump wasn’t going to co-opt Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were going to co-opt Trump. All the indications were that that is what would happen. And that, Trump has made unabashedly clear now, is what will happen. Our nominee couldn’t—or at least wouldn’t campaign on this anything resembling consistency.
The way to contain this is for high-profile Democrats to make clear to the public what is happening. And to threaten massive campaigns on this in none other than the Rust Belt, in the 2018 election cycle. And to start very, very soon. People who supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 aren’t Donald Trump’s base. Most of them would have flocked to Sanders or to Elizabeth Warren in this election.
The latter should be shoved in anyone’s face who starts blathering about sexism hurting Clinton among the hoi polloi. The former should answer the question about whether racism was part of the appeal to the voters who put Trump over the top, by one per cent, in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and came within barely more than a point of doing son in New Hampshire and, of all states, Minnesota. All states went comfortably for Obama, and all except Pennsylvania went for Sanders in the primary, as did Indiana. And had Warren instead of Sanders been Clinton’s primary challenger, she like Sanders would have voted for her.
People who claim otherwise on either point don’t know the region. It is not the South and it is not the Southwest. Trump’s racism and xenophobia did not win those states for Trump. Nor did Clinton’s gender.
The first step is to appoint a strong Sanders backer in charge of the DNC. Jeff Weaver, maybe. Or Jim Dean. No war for the soul of the party. That ship sailed on Tuesday.
Recognize that.
And join me in wishing Hillary and Bill Clinton a happy jaunt in their retirement as they luxuriate in the massive wealth that, while possibly still not quite enough to sate them, we are about to pay very dearly for.
____
Links to be added later today.
On a completely unrelated note. Ballot Question 3 passed here in Mass. Once it goes into effect that tenant farm in Westport that you posted about a few months back with the 100’s of abused animals can be shut down .
Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you for letting me know that.
All of this may be correct. Maybe not. It is certainly true that the Clinton campaign was inept. For a lot of reasons which I will not belabor I disagree that Bernie would have won.
What seems to be quite clear is that our educational system has failed in teaching people critical thinking. Over and over again enthusiasm installs political winners with totally unrealistic expectations of the prospect for immediate change which, when it does not occur, results in apathy, boredom, and loss of enthusiasm in the next election phase, typically the off year or midterm election. Americans are notorious for their appetite for instant gratification in all aspects of their lives.
Bernie’s not wrong about the need for long term dedication to transformation of our culture but his enthusiastic supporters were as seduced by his goals (promises?) being immediately attainable as were Trump’s supporters by his claims of what he “will do”. As you suggest, Trump’s supporters are likely to be thoroughly disappointed and resentful at the lack of results as were Obama’s in 2010 and 2014. We’ll see if they fall away in 2018 (though the Democrats face structural disadvantages then particularly with regard to the Senate).
It is certainly apparent that Democratic turnout, particularly in swing states, especially in the midwest, doomed Clinton. Placing blame on the Clinton campaign for that, in part, is warranted, but only in part. Impatience of the electorate with the political process yields this sort of result over and over again. Critical thinkers don’t make that mistake. Unfortunately this country is in short supply of such thinkers. Our voters are, indeed, lazy and self indulgent. They deserve their share of the blame as does our educational system which produces them generation after generation.
I plead guilty to being a grumpy, increasing elderly person with these observations. That doesn’t make them less true. At the moment it’s hard to see where the Democratic political leader who can help get us out of this dynamic may come from.
Thank God for the Cubs. They may have helped restore some appreciation for the virtue of patience.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/2/12/836388/-
Wow. Mostly spot-on. Thanks for that link.
There are two differences, though. Clinton really wanted the job. And Clinton and her husband received oooodles of money from Wall Street, a for-profit (apparently) less-than-upright university, a uranium company or some such, and the like.
But you’re exactly right that Clinton, like Coakley, just tried to ride the break-the-glass-ceiling-on-behalf-of-women thing. Y’know, so seven-year-old girls will know that they can be anything they want. Even president! At least if they already were First Lady.
Bernie would not have won. He would have been branded a “communist.” The Soviet Union stuff in his history would have looked like support for that. His proposals would have looked like pie-in-the-sky. Black and Hispanic turnout would have been very low — no support in the primaries — and the entire center would have been lost.
The platform was great with his contributions, and it had many popular things that would have gathered big support across all lines, including whites without a college education. The Republican platform had many things that could have doomed the Republicans up and down the ticket. But inexplicable, the only message promoted was how bad a man Trump is. Over and over and over and over. I saw no other commercials. Virtually nothing was done to promote the party, and to promote her as part of that party.
The lack of strategy was appalling. They are not professionals. The 2010 disaster, putrid 2012 gain-back (four seats in a Presidential election year!), 2014 and now this prove that. The thoroughly unimportant email story should have been and could have been dismantled and defused at the beginning with a strong defense and counter-attack, instead of the defensiveness that led to an apology. The “change” should have been getting Republicans out of the way from blocking every good thing the Democrats have been trying to do. The idea of Republicans as the agent of change is a sick joke. Americans could have been made to see that.
urban:
Bernie would have been more aggressive. I think Warren would have been kicking more butt. We got The Great White Hope in The Big White House replacing The Black Man in the Big White House. We are safe again . . .
Urban, no one under age 45 even knows what Communism is. Much less would think Sanders is one, if hey did. Remember when Clinton tried that at the first debate, claiming Denmark is a poor communist country? For the next week or more, you couldn’t turn on the internet without seeing a slew of articles explaining that Denmark is Social Democratic country, which means i is a capitalist country with a strong social safety net, and that it has a robust entrepreneurial and innovation economy, a very high standard of living, and far, far lower gaps in income and wealth than we do.
Please read my response to EMichael. And my new post, posted about an hour ago. Including the update to it.
Bernie would have won. And everyone knows it–even, now, Chuck Schumer.
Urban Legend
They cashed all their paychecks in a professional manner. They don’t have to deliver results and they still get paid so why would they change?
Thats not a bug its a feature .
You will never get the working class back. Trump merely finished what the Southern Democrats started: by lifting the ban on the republican party, the natural progression in a heterogeneous polity with vastly different interests and abilities, would be to create a majority white and a minority color party.
It’s done. The left’s last gasp. Why? Because you can’t play class warfare in-group when the group is threatened by outgroup members.
Democrats and people of color will be joined by the ‘defectors’ meaning single, urban, white women, and minorities.
That’s the future.
Globalism is dying worldwide.
There is a limit tot he tolerance for sacrifice when good families feel that they are supporting bad families that work against their interests, and show no promise of maturing into responsibility.
Mr. Libertarian Curt:
What factory have you been in or worked in? Can you tell this leftist how to make a 4 layer PCB or perhaps you have a process to manufacture a 3 pound mallet head for construction workers. Can you tell me how to make a bolt? Or maybe you can lay a brick wall. I will even lend you my father’s tools he left me and the other set I inherited from aman who did not know how to use them.
You are good on philosophy; but, I would like to know the process you are advocating in manual labor. I have worked in plants all of my life in different industries. I have seen those in China make 4 layer PCB using similar or the same equipment as they use here in the US. The same with hammer or mallet heads and bolts or nuts. The manual part does not come in making the part. It is mostly all machined without Labor or with little Labor. The Labor comes in the assembly and even then lines surface mount or through hole mount those board going into your phone. Guess there is little Labor there either.
The problem is gains have gone to capital and not labor for the gains made.
You are wrong on the future also. The future lies with the minorities already in this country. By around 2040 they will be the majority and we, you and I the white boys, will be in the minority (I will probably be gone by then). Globalism is not going to die. It will always be here and some countries will be better than others.
If we continue to invest in war and defense over domestic productivity, we are doomed to become a tier two or three nation for sure. You want to beat China, you have to invest in the infrastructure of the US the same as China has invested in TonTec and C&U and acres of empty shopping malls to keep people employed when the economy is week. You know what? China will tear them down and do it again to keep them employed.
Oh I forgot something, the great white hope “Trump” is not the answer either.
Hmmm. I’m sorta wondering: Are all those rural and small-town folks on opioids from good families, or bad ones? What about their kids? Are they from good families? Or bad ones?
How about the Walmart workers and the fast-food workers, who themselves receive food stamps to survive, and whose kids have healthcare insurance through the CHIPS program? Are they, too, supporting bad families that work against their interests, and show no promise of maturing into responsibility? Just askin’.
Also askin’ why so many white working class families in the Midwest voted for Sanders in the primaries and caucuses last winter and spring, rather than voting for Trump or some other Republican? In Michigan, every single county EXCEPT the two that are predominantly black–Wayne and Genesee–went for Sanders over Clinton. and Sanders received more votes than Trump did.
It’s just been reported that Keith Ellison, a MN rep. who supported Sanders in the primaries, and whom Sanders announced his support for yesterday as head of the DNC, will likely be appointed to that post, after Chuck Schumer, the soon-to-be Senate minority leader and the ultimate Clinton supporter, said today that he too supports Ellison. Suffice it to say that he was not Schmumer’s first choice. Until Schumer saw the handwriting on the wall.
Doing a bit of reading on Andrew Jackson, and there are a lot of similarities between Trump and Jackson. Today of course Jackson could never be elected because he killed a man in a duel. (over his wife to boot). The elites of the time favored his opponents and his was a populist administration. (KIlling the Bank of the US being a way to reduce the coastal elites power)
So beyond being a world wide trend (watch France next) rejection of the elites has occurred in the US before, and was also attempted but failed in 1896.
Jackson didn’t think much of minorities either.
Trump is to appear in court soon in the Trump U. case. The folks who voted for him Tuesday are going to find out, as inevitably as the sunrise, that he has defrauded them as surely as he defrauded those who put their trust in him to teach them all he knows about real estate. Those folks are simply the canary in the coal mine — they learned the truth about Trump the hard way — he is a fraud. Now we all are going to find out the same as the GOP reactionaries — the GOP is no longer a conservative party at all — tear down the social and political progress of the last 80 years.
And thus Bev returns to her natural state.
And clearly shows how liberals are too fen stupid to do the math.
Post is another clear example why liberals are the worst team mates in the world, and the clear reason why we now have a racist, misogynist sociopath with control of Congress and the nuclear codes.
Whoa. You didn’t read Chis Cillizza’s article yesterday titled “The 13 most amazing things in the 2016 exit poll,” or other articles like it, did you? Cillizza’s is at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/10/the-13-most-amazing-things-in-the-2016-exit-poll/?tid=a_inl
Apparently, Schumer did, though. Read the update I just posted to the post I posted about an hour ago.
Baby boomers like you can’t grasp the fact of generational political and ideological change. Or even the concept of it.
Which is why we’re in this predicament, and have been since the rise of the Tea Party in 2009.
I’d say, grow up. But I guess the problem is that you already have, a long time ago. So instead I’ll say, open your eyes. Or try to, at least.
All of these revisionist Wednesday morning anonymous “pundits” claiming that they know with full certainty that Sanders would not have won are full of bovine excrement. It is impossible to know. But is sure is hard to imagine an electoral map looking any worse under Sanders.
Run
don’t expect the future minority majority to be any smarter, or kinder, than the present majority.
what you are describing is exactly what the people you call racists are afraid of. even I, who have been an anti-racist since long, long before you were born, would be uncomfortable if five percent of my neighborhood changed “color” overnight, and if that change was accompanied by a palpable increase in crime, or a loss of good jobs, i would probably start acting as racist as the next guy.
the “white majority” or at least the “elites”, can maintain their power for a long long time after they are no longer in the majority, and probably most of the non-elites who think they are at least the same color as the elites will think they are better off that way. it worked in Mississippi and South Africa, and when the change finally comes it will be violent and when the “colored” races rule, you will have perfect democracy like in Africa and South America… right?
now, i am (still) not a racist, but we have to get beyond simple minded (anti-) racist thinking and come up with ways to unite all races consciously into “working class” and find ways to limit the damage the “elites” (of any color) do to us.
but (hint) any demagogue who can convince the people that he is going to clean out the elites who have been harming them is going to be followed by the people, mindlessly, even if he is a groper and a racist. groping and racism will become their religion of choice.
If the DNC had not cleared the deck for Hillary on the centrist side, Sanders probably wouldn’t have done as well in the primaries as he did.
It’s nice in retrospect to think of it as a bellweather, but you have to remember that this is all happening in a certain very political context. Sanders was the guy who was supposed to make Clinton look sane and safe.
No, actually the poll were showing that Biden would help Sanders, not Clinton. Which is why Obama helped clear Biden from the deck.
Yeah Bev, Keith X. Ellison Muhammad is a great choice. Maybe he can get Farrakhan on board too. Hell maybe he can be the 2020 nominee!
He ain’t no Farrakhan. He supported Sanders, who is Jewish.
Sorry. Think of some other angle, Little John. Quick.
Instead of all the jibber jabber about the election and Trump being a racist which he is Not. Go take a look at todays PaulCraigRoberts.org story about George Soros’s purple revolution and the Clinton’s – Huma Aberdine “deep state” shadow government. You might actually learn something of some significance…
Oh, I will! I will! And then shake my head at the gullibility and the ease with which so many people are manipulated.
Bridge. Brooklyn. I own the deed to it. Are you interested in buying it?
Trump is not a racist, eh?
In the 1970’s, black people who unwittingly applied to rent an apartment in a complex belonging to Trump and his father had a discreet “C” for colored marked on their application. No Black or Dogs Allowed.
In 1989, five black teens were arrested and convicted of a murder in NYC. Trump alone chose to pay for $85,000 worth of full-page newspaper ads trumpeting, in capital letters, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” In the text Trump objected to then-Mayor Ed Koch’s plea for peace: Mayor Koch stated that “hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so.” After years in prison, they were exonerated by DNA evidence. A book and a documentary film on the case showed how fear and race played substantial roles in the wrongful convictions but Trump, who fanned the flames, remained steadfast in his views. When the men received compensation for their imprisonment, Trump denounced the payments and smeared the men by saying, “These young men do not exactly have the past of angels.”
In 1989, he told Bryant Gumbel in an interview, “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market…if I was starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I really do believe they have the actual advantage today.“ In fact, all the serious studies refuted that.
In 1991, John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, wrote a book: “ Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys wearing yarmulkes… Those are the only kind of people I want counting my money. Nobody else…Besides that, I tell you something else. I think that’s guy’s lazy. And it’s probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks.”
In 1993, before a Congressional committee hearing on gambling casino operated by Indian tribes. Trump, who considered the tribes competitors, offered a flourish of insensitivity during his testimony when he said, “They don’t look like Indians to me and they don’t look like Indians to Indians.” “In the 19 years I have been on this committee, I have never seen such irresponsible remarks,” Rep. George Miller (D., Calif.) shouted back to Trump.
All “Mexicans” are _______. All Muslims should be banned. A judge cannot be impartial because he is of ___________ descent. A black President cannot be one of us – must have been born in ___________.
Trump is the very definition of a racist. Anyone who denies it needs to re-learn to think for themselves.
My God, such revolting stupidity it is to deny it.
From today:
“Ku Klux Klan to hold victory march celebrating Trump’s election —
The Pelham, NC-based The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan announced on its website that the parade will be held on December 3… The extremist group included an image of Trump with an emblem around him that reads: President of the United States.”
From today’s Jerusalem Post:
“White Nationalist leaders across the globe have been congratulating Donald Trump since his victory in Tuesday’s presidential elections.
In the US, former KKK leader David Duke claimed at least partial credit for Trump’s election, tweeting “This is one of the most exciting nights of my life…make no mistake about it, our people have played a HUGE role in electing Trump.”
Calling Bernie Jewish is like calling Trump Christian.
No doubt. Then again, Adolph Hitler didn’t care all that much about the actual religious beliefs of the Jews he rounded up and exterminated. And here’s betting that Farakhan doesn’t, either.
You know precious little about the nature of antisemitism if you think commitment to the religion has anything at all to do with it.
What an ignorant protestation.
Hey, Little John,
Do you get to define who and who is not a Jew? Is that your new role in life? Are you drawing up lists?
“Bernard Sanders was born on September 8, 1941, in Brooklyn, New York City. His father, Elias Sanders, was born on September 14, 1904 in Słopnice, Poland to a Jewish family; in 1921, Elias immigrated to the United States at age 17. His mother, Dorothy Sanders (née Glassberg), was born in New York City on October 2, 1912, to Jewish immigrant parents from Poland and Russia. Many of Elias’s relatives back in Poland were killed in the Holocaust.” (Is that the kind of stuff that thrills you these days. Little John?)
“Sanders became interested in politics at an early age: “A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932. He won an election, and 50 million people died as a result of that election in World War II, including 6 million Jews. So what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important.”
I’m familiar with Bernie’s bio. As a matter of fact I am familiar with that article you quote. I guess the question is are you familiar with the tenants of socialism? Ah, maybe Bernie subscribes to the doctrine of Zionist socialism. Maybe he admires the socialism of Denmark with its state supported church?
But for the life of me I can’t find any writings or quotes from Bernie describing his belief in God or relating lessons from his Talmudic studies.
And one last thing: to suggest that I get any enjoyment out of the Holocaust is a shameful act on your part. It really shows what kind of person you are. You should be ashamed of yourself.
You don’t get any enjoyment out of the Holocaust? Good to know.
WTF?