Okay….post election discussion
Via Bill Black at Naked Capitalism and Thomas Frank at the Guardian.
What we need to focus on now is the obvious question: what the hell went wrong? What species of cluelessness guided our Democratic leaders as they went about losing what they told us was the most important election of our lifetimes?
I respectfully disagree. It’s pretty obvious what went wrong. What’s not obvious is where to go from here in protecting the gains, minimal as they were, made under Obama. There may be no way.
ISTM that the really surprising thing about this election is that a rich member of the jet-set from NYC convinced large numbers of working class people from “flyover” country that he was their man. I understand why people would respond to his talking about how, for MANY people the economy just hasn’t worked for the last ~20 years. He recognizes the problem in the way that the “elites” minimize or ignore it. But I don’t get why anybody would think that he is the person to solve it.
The Democrats question is “What went wrong?”
1. Over the last 20 years we have been conducting an experiment in real time to determine whether the supposed benefits of free trade would live up to the economists models. The verdict is in, free trade has damaged the domestic economy and particularly damaged working class Americans.
2. Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin sent a clear message to anyone who will listen. If Hillary Clinton could have brought herself to vocally denounce the free trade treaties of the last 20 years she would have held those states.
3. Illegal immigration exacerbated the problems brought on by free trade. No theoretical argument could overcome the voters concerns on that issue.
4. The polls were dramatically wrong. The voters did not want to defend Donald Trump’s off the cuff hostile remarks, so they kept their voting preference to themselves. Until they voted. This is what happens when shaming is used as a weapon.
I agree, clear what went wrong. Bad policies, a lot of which became implemented under a Clinton presidency, that lead to a near permanent underclass of poor underemployed whites in the midwest.
The next steps are:
1. Find three Republican senators willing to become independents who will caucus with Democrats and allow them to select a majority leader.
2. Find a way to reverse the now long-standing Democratic inability to perform at the midterm elections, including running credible candidates in all congressional districts.
3. Lay down, cry a lot.
JimH hits on one major issue: ” This is what happens when shaming is used as a weapon.” The PC acrimony has finally bitten the accusers. The unending separation into groups and attacking each on PC terms has back fired.
Moreover, the elitism and corruption of our political leaders has been outed and largely rejected. Big losers include the MSM, political industry, and lobbyists.
Another clear result is the massive schism between the urban and rural populace. Rural producers know that without them the urban users have nothing, and yet those same urban elites have attacked their efforts, beliefs and ideals. These elderly eyes point to that rural/urban schism as the difference(s) that created these election results.
Much of the Obama legacy was created through presidential fiat, and that will be immediately rolled back.
Trump will certainly have minimum 18 months to do pretty much whatever he wants by executive fiat on 75% of his campaign planks. It could be overturned later as illegal or overreach or maybe congress will have a different view of how to do it and would be able to run through some legislation and overcome any veto, but it takes a long time to make those things happen.
The Democrats needed to focus on the senate once they made the bad decision to nominate Clinton, but the same groupthink that got coronated Clinton twelve months ago prevented the party from planning for the arrival of alternative narratives as dominant realities.
The polls were correct. That is the primary polls. Clearly showed it was a toss up if Clinton was elected. The population could not get off their asses to vote in the primary.
The worst thing for this: Supreme court. Set for the next 30 years. A corporate court with a social pseudo religious bent.
The winners: Koch et al. Betting there are more than a few business around the world realizing they now have to do business with Trump enterprise Inc. People think the Clintons and other in politics get rich via the political position?
And lastly, what do you think the top brass of our military are thinking right now? How do they respond when the order comes that they know is foolish.
In 2008 I claimed the Obama ‘win’ was a Pyrrhic victory. 2016 is no
different other than a different faction *won*. Elections are
popularity contests of ‘wishful thinking’. Politicians need to pander
in order to ‘win’ by ignoring even the most fundamental mathematics
and physics. Definitely not an intellectual process.
Daniel re: military. Yes, I wondered that myself. I suspect that a shell of Donald managers will be assembled to steer, prevent, slow and redirect his loose cannon impulses. He may be a useful face for the actual actors behind him, his skills run that way. But his comprehension of international issues, history and economics (I mean, the kind that doesn’t involve fraud) seems impossible to upgrade.
Fraud artists operate in two stages — the first scam, and then commiseration with the mark, shedding of blame, and often a second scam based on the first. Stay tuned for his next stage of operation — or maybe this was it?
Noni
PS The military — what I have been wondering is how long it might be before other countries begin edging away from their economic and military ties to the states? What will it take before they begin saying, “Nah, I dont think we need your military bases in our country anymore.” Because that, and trade restrictions, are the chief strategies that the rest of the world can use to discipline the world’s bully.
N
Oh, and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight
I already knew that Republicans have been successful in getting people to vote against their own best interests. The people who voted that way think I am an elitist. I suppose they are correct.
I saw Van Jones on CNN last night say Trump was the “social media” and “reality TV” candidate. Googling it this morning, http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/26/opinions/jones-trump-social-media/, I find he said it a year ago. Does preferring AB to Facebook make me an elitist, too?
Scott Adams: “Pundits said he ignored facts because he didn’t know them or because he was a liar. I said he ignored facts because facts are useless for persuasion. Trump could learn lots of facts if he wanted to do so. But he knew it was a waste of time. “
CoRev
addressed to you because, surprisingly, i agree with what you say here.
the dems have had at best an understanding of economics and policy that is far too abstract to even work, much less be perceived to work by the “simple folk” who form the basis of the economy and perhaps ultimate political power when they get desperate enough… or think they are desperate enough.
i do not like Trump or the loud people who support him, or the ignorant people who believe the lies manufactured for them by the hard right, but i have to say i have lost all hope for the hard left… the people who sound just like Trumpistas turned inside out…
which means, strangely, that i agree with almost all that has been said here… except perhaps with Arne who may be the person i agree with most in some ways, but who seems to completely fail to understand what things that sound good in the abstract actually look like to the people they are pointed at.
I just did a “Find” on this page. It did not find the either the words “labor” or “union.”
In short, if the less educated whites were earning $800 a week at their low skilled jobs instead of $400 we never would have heard of Donald Trump — IOW if they had the benefit of collective bargaining to set their wages by the maximum the consumer would tolerate instead of how little the most vulnerable (immigrant?) could tolerate.
Manufacturing may have moved away but how much manufacturing was there — how much was replaced by robot manufacturing (most I believe) — and how much did most manufacturing pay (I recently read of one refrigerator plant moving south of the border that paid all of $15 an hour here)?
Collective bargaining is the great missing right in our economic/political scheme. While hacking in San Francisco a decade or so ago I was witness to a demonstration before the Marriott Hotel on Fourth Street. All day: “Marriott Hotel you’re no good; sign that contract like you should — San Francisco should beware; Marriott Hotel is unfair.” Driving a concierge past the Marriott one Sunday morning I retold this — she said that part of the deal to get the Marriott in there was that it would be unionized. Good luck!
There is no legal — as in punitive criminal — sanction for one side muscling the other in our most important market: our spin-your-wheels-you-ain’t-going-nowhere labor market. (Just don’t get caught take a movie in the movies in our least important.)
Manufacturing? If we were like Germany (most thoroughly unionized in the world) we would be producing twice as many motor vehicles and exporting most of them (at double US auto worker wages).
We still have airliners? Maybe used to: Boeing still builds its legacy aircraft here — but its new 787 Dreamliner according to WIKI is being built in:
“Subcontracted assemblies included wing manufacture (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan, central wing box)[37] horizontal stabilizers (Alenia Aeronautica, Italy; Korea Aerospace Industries, South Korea);[38] fuselage sections (Global Aeronautica, Italy; Boeing, North Charleston, US; Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Japan; Spirit AeroSystems, Wichita, US; Korean Air, South Korea);[39][40][41] passenger doors (Latécoère, France); cargo doors, access doors, and crew escape door (Saab AB, Sweden); software development (HCL Enterprise India);[42] floor beams (TAL Manufacturing Solutions Limited, India);[43][44] wiring (Labinal, France);[45] wing-tips, flap support fairings, wheel well bulkhead, and longerons (Korean Air, South Korea);[46] landing gear (Messier-Bugatti-Dowty, UK/France) … ”
Wouldn’t happen in Germany or any Airbus republic because those countries are run for the most part for their citizens interests for the most part because of labor unions.
Only a labor union empowered America can truly save what manufacturing can be saved from the robots.
Simple way back: progressive states can make union busting a felony. When we “clear and hold” enough states to make our organized middle class way of life the way to go we can take back the Congress and set up the NLRB with the power to mandate a certification election upon a finding of union busting — seems to me simplest and most straight forward way to go.
Right now we have a culture that is so blind to the missing dimension of what’s left of our democracy (LABOR UNIONS!!!) that even on blogs like this nobody even mentions the words. Mentioned them over and over myself — but nobody ever picks up.
That’s why them the people picked Donald.
I watched Donald Trump’s closing ad. He actually said the phrase “working class.” Not “middle class” as in DNC doublespeak. Working class. Frankly, based solely on the words in the ad and abstracting from everything I know about the candidate and the GOP, I would have voted for Trump rather than Clinton (being Canadian, I did neither).
I fully agree, Denis, that collective bargaining is the crucial missing ingredient in American democracy. For that very reason, though, I don’t see how there can be legislation to enforce it. First you would have to elect a strongly pro-collective bargaining majority. But how are you going to do that if you don’t have a genuine democracy to start with? It is like the fable about belling the cat. Nice in theory but puzzling in practice.
I teach a course in collective bargaining and one of the historical paradoxes that I teach about is that the passage of the Wagner Act and similar legislation in Canada establishing an administrative regime of collective bargaining eventually eroded the impetus of the popular movement that led to that legislation. Taft-Hartley was, in effect, based on the same constitutional principles as the Wagner Act thereby making FLRA (non)certification the basis for denying collective bargaining to workers.
President-elect Trump has been dealt a very tricky hand. The global economy has been on central bank life support for eight years now and the low interest rate panacea is clearly nearing its expiry date. He comes into office with no resounding mandate. Last I checked, Clinton had a tiny popular vote majority. Trump’s margins in many of his crucial electoral college victories were fractions of a percent. GOP majorities in both the House and Senate are reduced. And then there are the midterms in two years…
We live in interesting times.
I cut-and-pasted my comment here over to Economist’s View — with a different first paragraph:
I did a “Find” search of 128 comments on this page and only found the world “labor” four times — the word union once, but in the contexts of “European union” — and the paired words “labor union” not even once.
oh, heck, Denis
i picked up on your “collective bargaining” thesis the first time i read it.
but then what? all i can do about it is agree with you, but then you already agree with you. the question is what can you do, or i do.
i’d love to know what Trump is really thinking about right now…he started his campaign as a lark, never expected the nomination, much less to win…whoops, suddenly he’s POTUS.
i realized that what i wrote above about agreeing with “all of the above” was too abstract and idiosyncratic for it to mean anything to anybody.
all it means is that there is at least a basis of first agreement upon which we might build. but of course won’t.
in particular, while CoRev is right about the “rural producers” it turns out that the rural producers are by an large ignorant and childish. they think that what they want is guaranteed by god and the constitution, about neither of which they know anything. and when they don’t get what they want they think the solution is to ride into town waving their guns and demand the government just go away.
something similar could be said about each of the other “interests” that politicians pander to… in words if not in meaningful policy.
and people like CoRev believe what the paid liars tell them to believe… because they want to believe it and the paid liars flatter them and tell them how smart they are.
while… well, the other side… does the same thing with its own “constituents” and the real problems never get solved while the friends of the politicians party their way towards a situation in which it will no longer be possible to solve the real problems.
Catastrophe
Harold Meyerson
November 9, 2016
https://prospect.org/article/catastrophe?destination=node/226259
There’s one other crucial factor in the revolt of the Rust Belt: deunionization. Exit polls going back to the Nixon presidency have shown that white working-class union members have voted Democratic at a rate roughly 20 percent higher than their non-union counterparts. In two decades following World War II in many of those states, close to half of white working-class men were union members. But deindustrialization, offshoring of jobs, shuttering of factories, and four decades of nearly fanatical opposition to unions from Republican politicians and most American employers took a huge toll on Rust Belt unions. Today, the rate of unionization among private sector workers is under 7 percent, and it’s not much higher in the Rust Belt states. That explains how such former union bastions as Michigan and Wisconsin could, at the prodding of their Republican governors, adopt the anti-union right-to-work laws that had been previously confined to the South. That also explains in good measure why Donald Trump carried those states last night. And with Donald Trump now poised to appoint the tie-breaking justice to the Supreme Court, it’s likely that the Court will deliver a body blow to what’s left of America’s unions through decisions that weaken the public-sector unions that up to now have been able to represent majorities in their particular sectors. (my emphasis)
Coberly,
What the most progressive states could do tomorrow is criminalize union busting. Protect the one market that affects everything else in our society. (WA, OR, CA, NV, MN, IL, NY, MD, ETC)
Time to take union busting as seriously as taking a movie in the movies (get you a couple of fed years).
Easiest thing in the world to do. Don’t have to do anything else once the people have returned to them their economic and political power — the re-empowered middle class can be left to run on auto-pilot; negotiate wages at McDonald’s, etc. But unions have gone missing for so long they are forgotten by our culture.
What it will take is a cultural understanding that having 6% unionization is analogous to having 20 over 10 blood pressure — and how that starves every other healthy process not just labor relations.
Sandwichman,
I only envision criminalizing union busting at the state level first. There are multiple prolabor states with pre-prounion majorities already elected. I live in one of the most prolabor: Illinois.
Washington and Oregon are similar in politics but lacking in heavy working class populations (I suspect) to make it seem urgent.
California seems ideal — if someone, somewhere would only, please, raise the issue: the 10th largest economy in the world and plenty of (shouldn’t be) poor people.
States may add to federal protections (like adding to the minimum wage), just not retract. The state may add, or add to, job safety penalties for instance.
I wonder if it is possible to criminalize union busting state by state for most employers. I’m not a labor law or any kind of law expert, but it seems like an area ripe for preemption claims.
The best explanation I have seen for Trump’s support, from before the vote took place and from a very unlikely source is here.
In case the hyperlink isn’t working in the comment above: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
“What will it take before they begin saying, ‘Nah, I dont think we need your military bases in our country anymore.’ Because that, and trade restrictions, are the chief strategies that the rest of the world can use to discipline the world’s bully.”
How’d that work out for the Philippines?
Mike Kimel,
That article was what I have been thinking. Strip away the prejudice, misogyny, god, gun and what you have is people suffering a loss of feeling in control of their destiny.
You know my focus here was always the labor class. Drew is correct, without unions labor becomes fractured.
We fear Trump as fascism. It’s equated to post WWI Germany and the resultant Nazi movement. Yet, here we are, a nation in it’s longest ever war mode with an economy shifted away from the means to earn money (life sustaining, risk reducing amounts of money) from labor and we wonder why the largest majority group of people (white men) are easily swayed by emotional appeal. Wasn’t that the case in Germany? A beaten people with pressures placed on them such that there appeared to be no escape from the economy debt?
The polls were clear. Trump did not stand a chance against Sanders. It was not Sander per say. It was what he was saying which was a more complete picture and a positive one to boot.
I fear the dems have still not learned.
coberly,
Just out of curiosity, which do you disagree with me about, that I am an elitist, or that Republicans get people to vote against their interests?
Arne
i will try to answer that. Please try to remember that what I say is at best a troubled approximation.
I think you are competent and honest. One of the commenters here I most often agree with. But we got into a disagreement that you seemed to take personally in a way I did not mean it to be. I often say stupid things, and I have been cruel when I did not mean to be. So if I say to someone that something he has just said is “cruelty by stupidity” I do not think I am being insulting. In my perfect the world that person would say to me “what do you mean?” As I hope I would say if someone said that about something I said. Then we could discuss what I meant and why I said it. Then you could agree with me or not. Instead what happens is the other person gets his feelings hurt and i find i have made an enemy.
The fault is clearly mine for not knowing how to talk in a way that does not hurt people’s feelings.
Specifically what you said here that I did not agree with….by no means as strongly as I did not agree with that other thing you said… (or seemed to say) was that
people voted against their own self interest. I do not agree that you can conclude that the people voted against their own self interest. Their are other “self interests” than money, which people feel are more important than money…. when they are not yet desperate for enough money to prevent harm to those other “self interests.” Moreover it is not at all clear to me that the people who voted for Trump were even voting against their self interest in money. The Democrats have NOT been all that good for the “poor” in spite of always talking as though they were so terribly concerned for the poor.
That last might take rather extensive argument for us to even know what each other was talking about.
Second, you seemed to be okay with being an elitist (or thought one). I am not okay with that. In fact you are at least a bit of an elitist in that you do not understand… or did not understand in that first argument i talked about here… the consequences to real people of your desire to save an extra fifty cents a week toward your early retirement outside of the Social Security system. That is exactly how elitists and the elite think: ” If if would cost me one dime to keep an innocent man out of an extra year in the pen I would find a way to rationalize keeping the dime.”
And yet, I think you are honest and competent…. but find it almost impossible to understand how the other half lives.
And that why i did not agree with you here, even while agreeing with CoRev that “the producers” have a point of view that needs to be respected…. even while I think that at least some of those “producers” are arrogant ignoramuses.
I am quite sure I have not made anything clear.
coberly,
“I am quite sure I have not made anything clear.”
This is the only coherent statement in your post.
Sammy:
There are other places you can post to. You might want to try some of them. You are not adding value to this thread with your comments. Take the hint Sammy and do not push your luck.
“You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Lee Atwater
Forget this “populist” bs and realize that Donald Trump is the President because he had the balls to say “Nigger, nigger” again.
His white vote had nothing to do with better jobs, or better trade deals. It had everything to do with “Nigger, nigger”.
It had nothing to do with “urban/rural” it had everything to do with “Nigger, nigger”.
If you think his opposition to TPP or the reworking of NAFTA will suddenly recreate the 60’s, you are an imbecile.
American manufacturing reached its peak in the early 50s, mainly because the rest of the civilized world had lost its manufacturing ability in WW II. It declined from there.
The next time some ah points out the rusting factories and the loss of jobs, point out that most of them happened in the 40 years before NAFTA(not that I am defending NAFTA).
Trump won because he finally showed people that blacks and browns were the enemies, and said it in such unmistakable ways that even the stupid white voters had a villain.
Populist; rural: my ass.
He won because he is a racist. And so are his voters.
emichael,
The 50’s are calling. They want their indignation back.
Sammy said the magic word: coherent.
Wouldn’t it be great if at least one of our political parties had a coherent platform.
Dems praise unions as means to improve the lives of workers and curse supposed fascism from the Donald. Then those same Dems push for open borders, crappy trade deals, and more and more often treat the individual as though he were merely an agent of the all important state.
JimH’s four points in his post at 2016 8:54 am are spot on.
Dems push the xenophobe, racist, and isolationist meme’s constantly then tell US workers “we got your back.” I think what workers are saying to the elites is -yeah, sure you do.
Hey Mike:
Who is David Duke claiming he backed this year and is responsible for him being elected. If you want to go down that road, the only ones pushing xenophobia, racist, and isolationist issues this year are the Repubs. Repubs were laughable against Duke backed Trump.
Just shoring up my argument that states can make union busting a felony (taking it as seriously as taking a movie in the movies for instance). State and federal laws against bank robbing exist side by side (so could movie copyright protections, no?).
If there were no federal legislation at all barring firing organizers I don’t think anybody would think that states could not criminalize that. Economic crime is real crime.
Just because copyright legislation is the province of the federal government doesn’t ‘t mean that states cannot add their local protection against violations, if they wanted to.
I would go so far as to assert that states may mandate their own (or federal?) certification elections — on the grounds that federal preemption that has no teeth at all (placebo effect for most organizers; absolute no protection at all for organizing) actually violates the First Amendment protection of commercial association. I think that is what Sandwichman was saying above.
” I think what workers are saying to the elites is -yeah, sure you do.” Mike Hansberry
Except that Trump is the elite writ large. He inherited great wealth. He failed in many of his business efforts, though he was smart enough to lose other people’s money. And he ended up with still having enough money to be a top tier elite. He displays his upper caste status brazenly and with pride. So how does this make him the darling of the down trodden common guy. There’s a missing link. I think the racial part is a big piece of the missing part.
Look,
the “right” and “the people” are racists. it’s in the basic genetic structure of all living organisms.
but humans, even dogs and cats, can learn to control their racism, and after living together, or working together for a common cause or against a common enemy, the former hated other becomes “part of us” against some other hated other. maybe there is a stage beyond that where all the hated others turn out to be germs and viruses.
that was my, hopefully coherent, relude to saying i don’t like Sammy much or the other ignoramuses that come here filled with hate…. but they have been twisted by, first, very very good liars, and second, by the hate that comes back at them for their hate.
i don’t expect to really change anyone, but to the extent that we don’t “push the racist… meme” we have a chance of if not curing them, then avoiding make more like them than we have to.
i don’t know if the vote had to do with ‘better jobs” in the sense of a real need, but it had to do with better jobs as a perception
and as long as the left thinks that money is the purpose of life, they will be just as bad for us as the right.
and if that is incoherent, i would like to point out that the whole great big thing… the human problem… the desires and fears of all of us and them… is incoherent. it’s up to us to try to make something coherent and decent. for “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,… which create chaos and hate and misery.
i can’t create coherence for you, but if you make it your life’s work, you might create some for yourself… that is some that is not the doctrine of lies you choose to believe because it makes you feel virtuous for a moment.
“What the hell went wrong?”
1> A well worn and useful rule of politics was basically ignored: You can’t beat something with nothing. I watched every game of the WS including paying close attention to the TV ads funded by both campaigns. They were as different as night and day. Madame Secretary for all her millions in image management and brand awareness and social media, apparently settled on “I’m not Trump” as the key message for what was probably the largest available TV audience just prior to the election. That was it.
“I’m not X” isn’t something. It’s less than something. And Trump’s ads while full of blustery BS did at least manage to project something like a winner. Something.
2> Tragically outsized naivete about Bogama’s legacy. Which the Clinton campaign welded itself to early and often. In classic HRC style, believing her coronation was secure by running against fu%kface von clownstick, she refused to consider the message her own party was sending her during the primary: That this was a change election. That preserving and defending the Obama administration was actually quite hazardous to her chances. Yeah yeah okay he’s popular but… really?
3> A useless media machine forced to choose between journalism and quarterly revenues decided to normalize Trump and sell more corn chips, pickups, prescription medications etc. As Zucker and Les Moonves both acknowledged “Yeah, he’s bad for the country but god look at those ratings!”
And for those who insist on blaming racism or sexism for her defeat I will only add that Madame Secretary couldn’t hold on to a plurality of *white women*. Against an adulterous pussy grabbing failed casino, beauty pageant, and real estate magnate turned game show host. Really? Buyer’s remorse anybody?
Problems 1 and 2 will hopefully be self correcting. I take some small measure of comfort in the very real potential of this loss meaning the end of the Clintons and their sleazy foundation. Forever. Along with all the bagmen and women who went along for the gravy. I’m looking at you Donna Brazile, Rahm Emmanuel, John Podesta, Markos Moulitsas, Josh Marshall et. al. Good bye and good luck with the lobbying careers, the lot of you.
I don’t know how to fix number 3 and it’s something we’re probably stuck with as long as we make “Ad friendly environments” the context for actual journalism content. The medium is the message as a smart Canadian wrote some decades ago.
And finally I am also looking forward to the buyer’s remorse about to hit The Donald’s many voters in about 6 months as they realize he barely remembers what he promised them, much less manages to enact any of it. If you pay attention to his career and history (I can’t recommend David Cay Johnston’s “The Making of Donald Trump” strongly enough in that regard) you see quite quickly he’s neither a detail oriented nor principled person. Ad hoc compromise and “the art of the deal” will be the order of the day. It’s going to be quite a show. And Alec Baldwin will keep showing up on SNL too.
Amateur Socialist ,
For Trump voters if buyers remorse holds off for 6 months then he is hitting it out of the park. I think it came a lot quicker in 2008 when people saw how little hope and change they were about to get from Obama.
Speaking of Obama , I think after he is out of office and can no longer pardon Hillary, Trump needs to appoint a special prosecutor to finish off the Clintons once and for all. Democrats will whine about it but he will be doing them a favor . They are a dark filthy cloud hanging over the party.
If democrats have any hope in 2020 there has to be a big bonfire of all the losers , tossing in everyone associated with the idea of running Clinton in 2016 is a must.
Sanders will be too old , but if team blue wants to run Warren that would be a plan. Of course that will mean biting at the hand of Wall Street .
If Trump is as bad as some think he will be then it should be a cakewalk if the DNC can manage to fake caring about the little people long enough to pull it off.
.
However long it takes it’s going to get funny. Or ugly, probably depending on how you voted.
And it’s not just his voters who will be screaming. I’m looking forward to the line of corporate execs outside the white house from Google, Facebook, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, et al. who want to have a word with President Trump regarding his plan to have his Treasury Secretary declare China a currency manipulator. Or his desire to change the visa rules regarding H1Bs. Etc.
Crawford it probably was answered above somewhere but I will give you the most common sense short list of what went wrong. #1 The economy was flat lining with no growth in GDP for a long time. #2 Bringing improperly vetted immigrants by the thousands over her from Syria. #3 The huge premium increases in Obama care just prior to the election. #4 All the WikiLeaks disclosures of fraud and abuses by individuals while in office at high level government positions. #5 The huge national and trade deficits where higher taxes and more regulation seemed like their only solution. #6 proposing open border policies when most working citizens were saying “shut the front door”. This is some of what the hell went wrong. The last thing of great importance is that people are no longer voting for a party any more, they are voting for a person-candidate that must have strong personal character and traits of, trust, integrity, humility and competency.
Ryan:
Not worth answering you in any length because you are mostly wrong as usual. https://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/obamas-numbers-july-2016-update/ and https://soapboxie.com/us-politics/14-Facts-About-The-Obama-Presidency-That-Most-People-Dont-Know
1. No
2. No, there is a long process to bringing immigrants to America from the Middle East.
3. Insurance premiums are driven by the Healthcare Industry which needs to be corrected and Congress will not touch it. There is still the MLR and ratios to deal with in the PPACA plus competition. What Trump proposes is similar to what runs the banking industry where two states charter all the banks in the nation because they have the most lax rules. There is not real competition amongst bank and Usury prevails.
4. WikiLeaks guy may be correct but he is also a “Yuge” security disaster.
5. Trade deficits are down mostly because of more oil in the US which Congress is hoping to Export.
6. Border policies are the same as what they have been for years. Building a wall is stupid when creating jobs in Mexico keeps them home. Jobs in Mexico is a Great Wall.
“strong personal character and traits of, trust, integrity, humility and competency.” Trump has all of these in a negative fashion. He lack each one of these. Whie America like you are afraid, afraid of The Black Man in The Big White House and a woman potentially being in charge of a nation. Trump played on those fears and people such as yourself believed it.
I wrote this a decade ago and it plays into Trumps methodology: For the poor white man in the 19th century, poverty added the injury of being socially invisible when compared to a man of wealth or prominence. Not acknowledging their presence created a class of insignificance effectively shamed into oblivion as a class not worthy of notice. Adams did not speak of the black man and Slavery took it one step further creating a stigma worst than that of poverty and more shame inducing. Slaves were economic chattel to be disposed of at the discretion of their owners without observance of their being and at a separate class lower than that of the poorest white man. While not as overt in the 20th century, the distinction of black slave versus poor white man has kept the class system alive and well in the US in the development of a discriminatory informal caste system. This distraction of a class level lower than the poorest of the white has kept them from concentrating on the disproportionate, and growing, distribution of income and wealth in the US. For the lower class, an allowed luxury, a place in the hierarchy and a sure form of self esteem insurance.
If you wish to know why violent crime occurs amongst the poor, pick up Dr. Gilligans “Violence: Reflections On a National Epidemic” Look for the one word in both my statement about and in the book and you will discover how Trump has manipulated a population. Is HRC the best? Would have preferred Warren or even Sanders. We got HRC instead and too many of us dwelled on her faults repeatedly. Some of us deserve to experience Trump; but, the rest of us will pay for it.
7(?) investigations of HRC and 8 reports. $tens of millions spent by Republicans to investigate and nothing to show in charges as made from establishing “intent” other than being careless. Take it back to Bill and the same occurred and Congress managed to establish Bill got a blow job and did not pay for it. Where is Ken Starr today??? Covering up a rape by a football player at Baylor. How apropos.
If you wish to hang on to those beliefs go ahead; but, you are a fool to do so. Make no mistake, Trump is a racist, misogynist, and a xenophobe who plays on the fears of the people around him. To negate him we have to quit “living on the satisfaction of our skin being white.” Our time is coming when we will be the minority.
Run you have painted the false picture of success by the pat administration. First most of those 10M jobs created were low pay service jobs that are not considered livable wage jobs. Second the 4.9% unemployment rate you believe is as wrong and mis guided as the BLS bureau of liar statistics knows and if false government propaganda as is the true or real rate of inflation is also convoluted by the government. Third Julian Assange should be given a presidential pardon and there should b e no political prisoners in or of the United States. Fourth trade deficits and illegal border crossings are down only just in the past year because there are no more low paying jobs to find in this country and fracking has greatly increased the natural gas supply. Fifth you call me and every republican a racist with no justification as I worked over 35 years with all minorities and strongly supported diversity. You just don’t get it but you think you do…I grew up on the streets of Detroit where change means something one begs for on the street corners. You know nothing about crime, gangs, drugs struggle and sacrifice to doing the right thing because you read a few books. My whole life was and still is a struggle everyday to do what is right and to have some food at night. Did you notice there was no preppy protesters in Detroit last night because there is nobody left in Detroit to protest. Detroit IS the “rust belt” that all the new media pundits like to insultingly call the states that quietly off the polling charts rebelled and voted for Trump and that you want to call racism. Wrong again Run. The Clinton’s legacy will always be tarnished of greed and corruption and she would have been view world wide a very weak president with no economic growth except for the oligarchs…
Run you have painted the false picture of success by the pat administration. First most of those 10M jobs created were low pay service jobs that are not considered livable wage jobs. Many of these were better paying jobs. The Pres does not do job descriptions, companies do. How many jobs were created under Boy George Bush in comparison???. Second the 4.9% unemployment rate you believe is as wrong and mis guided as the BLS bureau of liar statistics BS, you again have shown you do not know what you are talking about. BLS is accurate. What is missing is your knowledge on the topic. knows and if false government propaganda as is the true or real rate of inflation is also convoluted by the government. What no mention of PR which would be at least a sound answer. Third Julian Assange should be given a presidential pardon and there should b e no political prisoners in or of the United States. He does not rate one. If you can indict HRC on mishandling classified documents (which you can not do), why would you let Assange off the hook for “stealing” classified documents??? Fourth trade deficits and illegal border crossings are down only just in the past year Deficits have been dropping yearly as shown by the image below. because there are no more low paying jobs There is plenty of low paying jobs in Michigan. to find in this country and fracking has greatly increased the natural gas supply. Fifth you call me and every republican a racist with no justification as I worked over 35 years with all minorities and strongly supported diversity. Deficits have been decreasing yearly You just don’t get it but you think you do…I grew up on the streets of Detroit where change means something one begs for on the street corners. No, I didn’t. I call Trump a racist, xenophobe, and a hater of women. You know nothing about crime, gangs, drugs struggle and sacrifice to doing the right thing because you read a few books. My whole life was and still is a struggle everyday to do what is right and to have some food at night. Did you notice there was no preppy protesters in Detroit last night because there is nobody left in Detroit to protest. So what, I am a City of Chicago refugee what would you like to tell me about low, income white people and minorities. I went to school with them and enlisted with them and watched them die. as I am also a Vietnam era X-Marine Sergeant who enlisted after high school. Tell me how tough life was, you had it good. Detroit IS the “rust belt” that all the new media pundits like to insultingly call the states that quietly off the polling charts rebelled and voted for Trump and that you want to call racism. Clinton won Detroit. Muslim and Black intimidation at the polls was pretty clear. I live in Michigan. Clinton Wrong again Run. The Clinton’s legacy will always be tarnished of greed and corruption and she would have been view world wide a very weak president with no economic growth except for the oligarchs… You have no proof of greed and corruption. She has survived multiple investigations by a Republican House and the FBI with no charges being filed. Keep making it up though.
Ryan and Run,
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.”
Trumps victory is because of the disappearance of the $800 job for the $400 job. That caused the missing vote in the black ghettos — that caused the extra vote in the white ghettos — both of which ghettos are far off the radar screen of academic liberals like Hill and O.
I notice the white ghetto 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 will show up for $400 (especially since Walmart killed supermarket contracts). Fast food goes strictly to foreign born who will show up for $290 a week if that’s all they’re paying (or less!).
Don’t expect the 100,000 out of maybe 200,000 Chicago gang age males to show up for a life time of indentured servitude. Did I mention, manufacturing was 6% of employment 15 years ago — now 4% (disappearing like farm labor; look to health care for the future?)?
Disappearence of collective bargaining and bargaining institutions which supply political funding and lobbying equal to oligarchs plus most all the votes …
… votes: notice?
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Let me restate what I stated above:
Just shoring up my argument that states can make union busting a felony (taking it as seriously as taking a movie in the movies for instance). State and federal laws against bank robbing exist side by side (so could movie copyright protections, no?).
If there were no federal legislation at all barring firing organizers I don’t think anybody would think that states could not criminalize that. Economic crime is real crime.
Just because copyright legislation is the province of the federal government doesn’t ‘t mean that states cannot add their local protection against violations, if they wanted to.
I would go so far as to assert that states may mandate their own (or federal?) certification elections — on the grounds that federal preemption that has no teeth at all (placebo effect for most organizers; absolute no protection at all for organizing) actually violates the First Amendment protection of commercial association. I think that is what Sandwichman was saying above.
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As I have said over and over here and elsewhere, deterring union busting at state level should be a breeze through most legislaturs in multiple progressive states (which also happen to be the most prosperous states and therefore potentially the most influential states across the country.
From there it is “clear and hold.”
I see collective bargaining as such a core social as well as economic right that I think that a US Constitutional Amendment should be prepared. A few years of Donald and I am sure we can take back the House and the Senate.
If progressives’ number one push were for re-unionization I’d be absolutely sure. (Remember, Bernie beat the Hell out of Hill versus Donald.)
Denis
i wish i knew a way to get all the people here to sit down and try to understand each other… as a beginning: working out a plan would come next.
nearly everyone has at least a corner of the truth/solution, or at least a perception that needs to be understood… if only to understand the lies that created it, and why those lies are believed.
but as to “the breeze” through the state legislatures. i have talked to some of those legislators and it doesn’t matter what party they are all impervious to anything a mere constituent has to say.
and the local democratic party is perfectly willing to spend a whole evening talking about demanding “civility” while ignoring a perfectly simple and fair way to “fix” social security.
what looks easy and obvious to you and me is up against human nature, and in that field it’s the politicians who hold the cards.
Finally dug this out:
The Wage That Meant Middle Class
By Louis Uchitelle, APRIL 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/weekinreview/20uchitelle.html
“Leaving aside for a moment those who have lost their jobs, what of those who still have them? Once upon a time, a large number earned at least $20 an hour, or its inflation-adjusted equivalent, and now so many of them don’t.
“The $20 hourly wage, introduced on a huge scale in the middle of the last century, allowed masses of Americans with no more than a high school education to rise to the middle class. It was a marker, of sorts. And it is on its way to extinction.”
@EMichael
Clinton lost the people who voted for Obama in 2012 in places like MI and WI. Did those white Obama voters become virulent racists all of a sudden in the last 4 years? That was literally the margin of victory (well, and POC no showing up to vote in Detroit, Milwaukee, etc.)
Racism played a part for sure. A huge part. But leaving it at that is naive and facile and only makes for self righteous indignation rather than calculated introspection which might lead to Democratic victories in the future.
efc:
The state implemented picture ID requirements, limited voting booths in heavily populated areas, tried to eliminate straight party voting, is heavily gerrymandered, and aggression at voting place. Really, do you think someone who voted against HRC is going to admit to being a bigot in an exit interview. They are smarter than that efc.
Well, at least we have Alec Baldwin, then.
Yeah let me know when we get the post election protest thread started. I expect the “emergency” curfews to be in place in most major cities before Xmas. Under Bogama.