Understanding American society: a few important bookmarks for a post-election Sunday
by New Deal democrat
Understanding American society: a few important bookmarks for a post-election Sunday
I wanted to bookmark a few facts that seem very important to understand American society in November 2016.
I. Econometric election models accurately forecast a very close election:
2. The working class blames Washington over Wall Street for their woes by a 2:1 margin:
3. In 2016 apathy won. Voters will not turn out for candidates they don’t like:
4.. Democrats won the popular vote for President and for the Senate, but lost it as to the House:
In results that are still preliminary, 45.2 million Americans cast a vote for a Democratic Senate candidate, while 39.3 million Americans voted for a Republican. (In the White House race, as of Thursday afternoon, Clinton had 60.1 million votes and Trump had 59.8 million.)
…. Republicans captured the majority of the “popular vote” for the House on Election Day, collecting about 56.3 million votes while Democrats got about 53.2 million, according to USA TODAY calculations.
5. The Herrenvolk GOP coalition is a virtual replica of the pre-Civil War Jacksonian democrat coalition, as described in the biography “American Lion”:
6. The actual leadership in power in the Democratic Party is cluelessly pro-Wall Street:
Ari Shapiro spoke with Rep. Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat, and with Tamara Draut from Demos, the progressive advocacy group. Shapiro asked whether the Democratic Party was too close to Wall Street. He had to push Becerra to answer the question as Becerra hedged. The chairman of the House Democratic Caucus spent his opportunity on air not talking about helping the little guys, but bent over backwards to defend the financial sector and address its concerns:
TAMARA DRAUT: We need to shed any remnant of a more Wall-Street-friendly approach to the economy. ….
XAVIER BECERRA: If you can name me a society and a particular civilization that hasn’t had someone who’s helped finance the building and construction of that civilization, then I’m willing to look at it.
[The proper response to that was, “The New Deal, asshole. Look it up!”]
cross posted with Bonddadblog
I would say that the GOP and Trump will do all they can to destroy as much of the rest of “The New Deal” as they can in the time allotted them.
On your comparison
“The Herrenvolk GOP coalition is a virtual replica of the pre-Civil War Jacksonian democrat coalition, as described in the biography “American Lion”: No surprise there. It also explains why so many Trump supporters are out in force with posts of “Liberals leave America now or face the ovens” Threats of numerous type. The problem is there are numerous Liberals that feel the need to exercise their own 2nd Amendment rights now for protection. Add this all up and unless the GOP and Trump get out and start controlling their supporters this very well could lead to a second Civil War. Seems that these Trump supporters are unable to recognize that or maybe this is what the GOP actual wants? Sure makes one wonder.
“The working class blames Washington over Wall Street for their woes by a 2:1 margin”
Here’s why:
“The actual leadership in power in the Democratic Party is cluelessly pro-Wall Street”
Allow me to expand on that (cut-and-paste):
As my old Bronx doctor, Seymour Tenzer, put it: “All these histories are bullshit — I got punched in the chest; that’s why I’ve got a lump.”
Trump;s victory is down to the disappearance of the $800 job for the $400 job. That subtracted from the vote in the black ghettos – and added to the vote in the white ghettos — both ghettos being far off the radar screen of academic liberals like Hill and O.
I notice the white ghettos because that is me. My old taxi job (much too old now at 72 3/4) was “in-sourced” all over the world to drivers who would work for remarkably less (than the not so great incomes we native born eked out). Today’s low skilled jobs go to native and foreign born who willing to show up for $400 (e.g., since Walmart gutted supermarket contracts). Fast food strictly to foreign born who will show up for $290 a week (min wage $400, 1968 — when per cap income half today’s).
Don’t expect the 100,000 out of maybe 200,000 Chicago gang age males to show up for a life time of $400/wk servitude. Did I mention, manufacturing was down to 6% of employment 15 years ago — now 4% (disappearing like farm labor, mostly robo; look to health care for the future?)??
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gang-wars-at-the-root-of-chicagos-high-murder-rate/
6% union density at private employers = 20/10 BP which starves every healthy process in the social body = disappearance of collective bargaining and its institutional concomitants which supply political funding and lobbying equal to oligarchs plus most all the votes …
… votes: notice? 45% take 10% of overall income — 45% earn $15/hr or less — a lot of votes.
Ray , you run out of your meds on the long weekend? You seem a little insane.
Liberals leave now or face the ovens!!!!!!!! How about a link to where this is happening ? All I’ve seen is butthurt millenials tearing up their own cities so far.
The ovens comment is not a rare one on blogs and in news article comments, sadly.
I can’t tell if it’s 13 year olds, or if it’s brain damaged adults (too much lead?), but the sentiment is out there, and not just on Stormfront.
Ray claims: ” Add this all up and unless the GOP and Trump get out and start controlling their supporters this very well could lead to a second Civil War.” To highlight the key point: ” get out and start controlling their supporters “, and yet those violent Trump supporters continue to tear up their own neighborhoods.
All this is projection without any evidence. To repeat Bronco: “All I’ve seen is butthurt millenials tearing up their own cities so far.” Most is performance theater.
And I do put 13 year olds in a different category, even though they’re in the same place (discovering the power of language but not understanding the true power thereof) as a lot of the others who espouse these opinions (shockingly popular among the white yuppie banker class of New York and out on the west coast, these are reactionary views to the urban concensus).
But 13 year olds can change. I think most of us probably held views at 13 that we would regard as badly rationalized at least and abhorrent in other cases.
If you watch Russian news, you’d think the United States was burning down. They’re mashing up all kinds of old footage of every protest you can imagine, mostly WTO stuff, and overlaying it with their usual crap.
Historically, I think the level of protest here is still way below what it was in the 1960s when you could perhaps have legitimately believed that the country was on fire.
Meanwhile,
The rural rubes just voted in a President whose leadership team is incredibly pro wall street (on the shadow banking side at that) while also including people who have spent their lives in DC.
Populist, my ass. Wait until Ryan turns these rural areas into large swathes of Kansas.
Absolutely Goodwin. There is no comparison to the 60’s because what has Trump done so far only making appointments to his staff. The protest back then about the Vietnam war and civil rights issues were real issues. The 56,000 killed in Vietnam and Martin Luther King were real as life issues with great turmoil. The DNC convention back in 68 in Chicago had far greater intensity than HRC’s convention in Philly. So far to me this latest round of protesting is useless, pointless and should be called the cry baby protest. If you ask some of the protesters what they are protesting about, most just say no Trump but this is a democratic-republic that must uphold the constitution and the rule of law. I would say that Trump has 2 years to get the things done that are most important to him and his legacy. After that things will get much more difficult to do in Washington.
The Brownback comparison and LePage in Maine are probably useful ones that should have been brought up in the campaign but weren’t.
Mainers are so universally annoyed with their repeated bad choices that they reformed their balloting system this election. Hard to say if it will make any difference. Maine is a good comparison to the country as whole. Heck, most states are that have a sizeable urban center and then a lot of rural voters.