The crash that a lot of commentators have been predicting doesn’t seem to have materialized. Pharma and prison stocks are leading this rally, buoyed by certain knowledge that none of the banking shenanigans of the mid-2000s will ever be punished.
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Poopyman
Not at all OT, this just dropped in my mailbox. Possibly in yours as well.
In its entirety:
mkro
And looking forward to the elimination of the EPA (a Trump campaign promise), end of Elizabeth Warren’s CFPA, elimination of Obamacare and those nasty harmful gubmint regulations.
Villago Delenda Est
Rotsa ruck with that, Hillary. The man is a craven coward, and a narcissist asshole. He will loot the country like he looted his own publicly traded casino corporation.
Gin & Tonic
Ukrainian government bonds are tanking.
Villago Delenda Est
We’ll have to see how the markets react when Drumpf actually puts some of his “promises” into action. These assholes are going to rue the day they sat on their hands and didn’t actively oppose him.
JMG
@mkro: Elimination of the EPA would be a Trump own goal of some magnitude. First eco-catastrophe a la Flint and it’s his fault. Better just to cut funding to the bone. People don’t notice that.
Gelfling 545
Apparently Paul Ryan is claiming Trump has a mandate. Apparently you can lose the popular vote and still have one….if you’re Republican. The actual mandate I’m concerned with is that assholes now will feel legitimized in their anti-social behavior to the danger of the community.
amk
@Poopyman: Very gracious and classy concession speech.
Patricia Kayden
I see that Issa won. Dang it. We couldn’t even get him out. Sigh.
@Gelfling 545:
All Republican Presidents have mandates. Period.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Gelfling 545: he also used the phrase “hit the ground running”. Maybe the best near-term hope is that, like Bush thinking his reelection by people who thought Saddam Hussein did 9/11 meant that the nation was crying out to privatize Social Security, Ryan believe this shit.
SatanicPanic
@Gelfling 545: Who cares? Either way they’ll act like they do.
OzarkHillbilly
@Poopyman:
Fuck that shit. It’s time we stopped playing patty-cake with these assholes. They have been waging war, time we did too.
Villago Delenda Est
@OzarkHillbilly: Take no prisoners war.
p.a.
Once tRump/Rethug Bushite budgets take effect the market will have several moments of clarity. Not to mention the first attempt to renegotiate the national debt.
debit
@OzarkHillbilly: How, exactly, shall we fight? I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but Trump and everything he stands for is obviously what the majority of the country wants. How do you fight that? If the prospect of Trump as our president wasn’t enough to motivate people to vote Democratic, then what possibly could?
chopper
japan’s stock market, OTOH, is shitting the bed.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Has anyone seen anything resembling graciousness among the Trump group, its supporters or talking heads (ie, eg Halprin, Ryan, Morning Joe)?
This is a serious question. Do they know how hated their man is by more than half of those who voted? Are they aware of the responsibility that is now theirs? Is there even a vague suggestion if an olive branch?
Diana
@Villago Delenda Est: this
Hal
Once Giuliani helps implement nationwide stop and frisk there will be an endless supply of prisoners.
gene108
@JMG:
Flint does not seem to have hurt Republicans in MI.
debit
@debit: And I can’t edit. I was going to add that I’m not advocating hopeless resignation as an option, but really, what can we do?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Okay, so Ryan is evidently sucking up already to the Trumplings. I assume someone on their side knows not to lift a leg and piss on half the country.
chopper
@p.a.:
indeed. nothing has actually happened yet. once january comes around and a budget starts getting cut, things may start getting goofy.
mai naem mobile
Well I figured out the name I am going to use for POTUS Herr Trumpfuhrer – Putins Bitch.
chopper
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
he wants to stay speaker. it doesn’t seem likely.
Poopyman
@debit:
Trump got, what, 60 million votes? That’s 20% of the population of country. And Hillary got more votes in total than he. So no. No mandate.
p.a.
I’ve been trying to compose something like this for a while, and I keep writing in hedges, exceptions, and apologies, so I’ll stick to the brief main theme: we survived 8 years of Bush/Cheney, and without bin Laden there was a good chance it would’ve only been 4. Yes, people will be hurt. Yes they (we) will be targeted. But you stand up, live your life as best you can day to day, rely on friends, family, loved ones, vote, rally, march, stand up for yourselves. Ourselves. And really there’s no other option.
gene108
@p.a.:
Considering a large chunk of the national debt is intra government borrowing, telling the Social Security Administration they will get 50% on the trillions in bonds they hold seems doable.
MomSense
@Poopyman:
Republicans get mandates no matter the vote totals. Democrats are obligated to reach out/around, heal, mend fences, build bridges, be nice to Republicans who lost.
catclub
@debit:
when Clinton got a majority of the popular vote?
WarMunchkin
@debit: Electoral majority. Which, honestly, is the only thing that matters, and seats in Congress. This nonsense about mandates based on public opinion and popular vote is just meta. It doesn’t actually matter if them cutting social security and medicare doesn’t manifest in electoral defeat.
GrandJury
Grounds for impeachment.
Then of course there was watergate. Obstruction of justice was the official charge I believe. He does many of these things now. No reason not to think it would suddenly stop when he takes office.
OzarkHillbilly
@debit:
We can do exactly what they have been doing for the past 8 years starting with delegitimizing the president elect, Put pressure on the prosecutors in the various Dem states to bring charges against him for any of the various frauds fe has pulled. The first time a diplomat/Soldier/Airman/Marine/Sailor is killed we can just non-stop 24/7 talk about how the rescue plane/ship was in position and ready to go when they told them to stand down. We should get somebody somewhere with the power to do so to subpoena his tax records. We should start up a web organization to hack into and then release all of his emails from the past 2 decades (I would say we could even make some up but I don’t think we’d need to)
Or maybe you should ask someone smarter than I.
SenyorDave
When is Melania Trump scheduled for deportation?
Kay
Woo hoo! The Trump Casino is OPEN!
Wait until they get their grubby mitts on Social Security. I won’t be that sad though- more than half the people who are wholly dependent on Social Security here voted for these assholes. Oh, well. There’s no cure for stupid.
JMG
There’s no question a significant percentage of Trump voters chose him with notable reservations. If he lets his freak flag go too high and loses them, he goes from big minority support to less big minority support. Unless he’s willing to really overthrow constitutional democracy, he has his own political constraints same as any other president.
MomSense
@mai naem mobile:
Right now I’m thinking Pus$ygrabber in Chief
Cain
@chopper:
Trump is going to fuck him over.. he’s going to go after everyone who didn’t support him in the general. He will also fuck over Obama by tearing down every accomplishment he’s ever done starting with Obamacare, his signature piece of legislation.
OzarkHillbilly
@mai naem mobile: I’ve been using “Putin’s Poodle.”
Shalimar
Good. Let the market stay stable during the last 2+ months of Obama’s watch. Plenty of time for it to go to hell during 4 years of Trump leadership.
sy
“Pharma and prison stocks are leading this rally …”
Let that sink in. The “law and order” president elect who has promised to repeal Obamacare in his first 100 days and big pharma and prison stocks are up.
Mnemosyne
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
As I said in the thread below, when all of the underlings start competing to be the
Fueher’sDonald’s favorite, time to duck and cover. That’s when the bright boys start coming up with ideas like, Since we’ve already stolen all their stuff, why not kill the Jews and sell off their spare parts?Sorry, but it’s not possible to Godwin an actual fascist. David Neiwart warned us about this, and nobody listened.
Dave in Dallas
The market may speak again if consumer spending drops. We’ve gone into austerity mode here starting today. Hope those “white working class” folks weren’t planning on trying to sell me any of their work product–it’s hunker down time in trumpland.
Cain
@Shalimar: I am currently unemployed.. I need to find a job before this happens. :(
trollhattan
@p.a.:
Think of it this way: Cole’s house is gutted and he needs a general contractor to come in and reconstruct it.
–GW Bush comes in with the lowest bid, problem being he literally doesn’t know which end of the hammer to hold and eventually figuring that out, continues tearing out walls, including load-bearing.
–Trump comes in with a very yuuge, classy bid on gold-embossed stationery. First day on the job he (actually one of his people) empties three 6-gallon cans of gasoline on all floors then throws a road flare in through a missing window.
We just elected an arsonist “for change.”
sy
@gene108: Because the state is full of Wallace democrats.
Kay
Are we going to have a show trial for Hillary Clinton? They’re still screeching “lock her up!” and they promised those huge crowds of fans she would be imprisoned.
Will the political prosecution be televised on CNN? They should make it like reality tv. Chris Christie can prosecute, but only IF he hasn’t been indicted himself by then.
That would be the cherry on top the banana republic sundae. They can indict and convict on unspecified crimes of email management and/or political beliefs. Wikileaks can testify wearing a black ski mask. Great tv!
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Update from Michigan: people voted against Hillary because they were mad at Black Lives Matter.
But it wasn’t about race!
ETA: This is an anecdote from a friend, not a poll.
Felonius Monk
Trump said he’s going to bring back jobs. I guess that now means Alec Baldwin gets a 4 year gig on SNL.
jl
People make too much of market rallies and crashes that happen without any clear connection to important and identifiable underlying changes in the real economy. That kind of financial stuff goes up, and it goes down.Financial institutions and corporations were sitting on a mammoth mountain of cash due to uncertainty in the election outcome. They would like to start moving that now.
I do agree that ‘helpful suggestions’ of the p elect (I can’t even type the name) for dealing with national debt will have a connection to the real economy. People won’t be able to pay their bills all over the world, and if domestic creditors are nicked too, then, wow I cannot imagine what would happen.
Contrary to reactionary nonsense, and p elect’s bizarre views, US dollar is, just as much as ever, the irreplaceable base of the world financial system. Mess with that in an irresponsible way, then we will be looking at 2007/9 again, except without competent management. I think it was technically very competently handled taken on its own terms, and directed by both Dem and GOP financial functionaries who were extremely competent, even though I disagreed with the policy direction people like Giethner and Paulson wanted to go after the technical problems were solved. US dollar is king, it makes the world financial system go around. God help us if they mess with that without knowledge or plan.
I think it should be messed with, but very carefully with a consensus long run goal of a more stable world financial system in mind.
I don’t think we will get that now. Maybe I am a worrywort, but I see so many disasters waiting to happen with this new crew.
MuckJagger
I’m only a sample size of 1, and I have no idea whether my experience is mirrored by others: I have both conservative and liberal friends on Facebook; I doubt if it’s a 50-50 split but there are a goodish number of folks on both sides. One thing I’ve noticed is that conservatives *always* share anti-Democrat posts but I rarely see my liberal friends post *anything* political.
So when a conservative reads about Democrats being involved in that whole EpiPen fuck up, they make sure that all their friends know it, and their friends share it with other friends. Doesn’t matter whether or not the story is true, they just accept it as fact because there are a million conservative web sites out there that *prove* their side of the story.
Other than myself, I can only think of one guy on my side of the fence that posts political stuff.
One of the worst things about this election, at least for me, is it makes Sarah Palin look freaking smart. She’ll get a *ton* of TV exposure these next four years.
For me, one of the worst things about this election is it makes freaking Sarah Palin look like a genius.
Dave in Dallas
@GrandJury: I think trump was the lube they used to shove Pence up our keisters. They’ll reluctantly impeach, then carefully select a nice sociopath, like Cruz perhaps, to take over as VP.
p.a.
@JMG: Agreed. Because polling was wrong is no reason not to sift through for info. Exit polls: Trump voter, strongly support: 42%. Hillary: 52%. Both with unfavorables > 50%. I want to say this was more an anti-Hillary than anti-Democrat vote. But it’s complicated above my competence~ won the popular vote, picked up some House and Senate seats (House maybe- believe several too close to calls.)
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
This reminds me of how Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected in 2003.
He sold himself as an outsider, who was good a business, who was rich so he could self finance.
A dozen women came forward and said he sexually assaulted them, he said it was only locker room antics. .
people were bored with the sitting governor and enough people liked Arnold from his tee vee shows.
he had some legislative success at first and then the bubble burst and he left with a 23% approval rating.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I wonder how many of the people solemnly intoning about economic anxiety on CNN and MSNBC today know who Ari Berman is.
gogol's wife
@Kay:
My friends at lunch thought it was highly unlikely they were going to do anything to Hillary. In general my colleagues are much less scary than the Balloon Juice crowd. I hope they’re right.
Roger Moore
@p.a.:
The first part of the debt they’ll “renegotiate” is the part held by the Social Security trust fund, which will be forgiven. That will justify gutting Social Security, as they’ve wanted to do since it was enacted.
Roger Moore
@SenyorDave:
When Trump finds future wife #4.
Shalimar
@Cain: Best of luck for you. I hope you can find something very soon.
I should get a better job myself. Taking care of dogs does not pay well. But I can’t stand the idea of using my law degree for a professional job in this heavily Republican area. Don’t want to be around all the smug, greedy assholes every day. I have retired parents to take care of so I can’t easily move since they like it here.
OzarkHillbilly
I’m gonna go do something that makes sense. Y’all play nice and don’t hurt anybody.
Mnemosyne
@MuckJagger:
Good point. Time to subscribe to the Crooks & Liars Facebook feed and start re-posting.
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne: I listened and then made a snarky comment about him at LGM and he showed up and yelled at me. But he was right, I was wrong.
Roger Moore
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
It was less bored with him- though he was boring enough- than angry about the power crisis. Forget that Pete Wilson was the one who created the deregulated power market and Enron gamed the system; Davis got the blame because he was the man on the spot. And don’t forget that Arnold managed to win reelection, so he wasn’t just a short-term fling.
Shalimar
@Kay: If there is a show trial, it will be Obama, not Hillary. Trump voters are ecstatic they won. They won’t care about Hillary anymore if Republican leaders and news outlets decide to stop talking about her. It is Obama that Trump hates and would actually want revenge against.
WarMunchkin
@Mnemosyne: Can confirm, I have many white economically liberal associates who believe the greatest threat to them is intersectional politics, represented by Black Lives Matter, Feminism/Gamergate and critical race theory. They voted for Obama twice, and try as I might, could not get them to vote in this election. They were in solid, solid blue states, but still.
Hal
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: My favorite thing about Arnold was that Darrell Issa funded Davis’s recall effort hoping to be the next governor and Schwarzenegger swooped in and stole his thunder. Still amazes me the conflict of interest that caused.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
how long before spammers and phishers stop selling Canadian m*ds and start offering Canadian citizenship?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
this country has always been vulnerable to a demagogue.
Huey Long, Joe McCarthy, George Wallace. It was bound to happen.
Couple that with the public liking “celebrities” candidacies like Perot, Jesse Ventura, Schwarzenegger and you have the ingredients for disaster.
Repatriated
@efgoldman: Their failure to do so could be weaponized, if we had a competent media. Oh, f*ck…
Patricia Kayden
@MuckJagger: How does this election make Sarah Palin look like a genius? There was always a chance that Trump could win and he has done so. That says nothing about Palin’s intellect (or lack thereof). And as to her being on tv for the next 4 years, she’s been on our tvs for the last 8 years even though she’s only a half term Governor and failed VP candidate.
Kay
Are we still getting the giant wall for “free”?
Boy,Trump sure promised white people a lot of free stuff. The same lunatics he attracted to those rallies will turn on him when he doesn’t deliver. I’ll cheer.
Patricia Kayden
@GrandJury: Who would be impeaching President Trump? The Republican-controlled Congress won’t eat its own. He’ll be fine. Democrats should work towards making sure that he’s a one term President.
Cain
@efgoldman: maybe when he launches a nuclear attack…
Repatriated
@Cain:
Not then. After the ensuing global embargo against the US takes effect, maybe..
Patricia Kayden
@efgoldman:
That’s how I feel. He’s not my President and I will not be responsible for any damage he does to this country and the world at large. I feel bad for people like your wife who are going to be harmed by the ACA’s repeal and other Rightwing actions that Trump will be taking.
MuckJagger
@efgoldman:
Exactly. It’s the “Republican Party (Donald J. Trump, Proprietor)” now, and if they even hint of impeaching him, they’re going to get the shit torched and pitchforked out of them.
Jeebus
LOL wut? Obama had 8 years to punish bankers and did nothing. Why aren’t you casting aspersions on him?
RK
Kay
@Shalimar:
Oh, no. None of that. They all spent 12 months shrieking “lock her up!” and Dear Leader promised them there would be a political prosecution. I think Republicans have to keep their promises or who knows how insane their followers will get?
They better get going on that free wall, too. They promised a giant wall that no one has to pay for. They can pull it out of their ass for all I care, but a promise is a promise.
Patricia Kayden
@mkro: We will be just like that Libertarian paradise known as Somalia. Whoo hoo!!
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Sadly, they won’t. They’ll just clap harder.
Shalimar
@Kay: Lower taxes while dramatically increasing military spending while eliminating the deficit will also be a neat trick.
Albert Z.
@Patricia Kayden: Any viable impeachment prospects will need to come out of the 4th estate in a Watergate/Washington Post type scenario. I know it seems unlikely but he has made enemies out of the press and made fools of more than one editorial board.
Patricia Kayden
@Shalimar: What would the show trial be about? President Obama has run a no drama administration for the last 8 years. I doubt Trump is that dumb or that Republicans in Congress would go along with that. It would be unnecessarily divisive and a complete waste of time. I’m sure Trump has other fish to fry given all of his promises to the poorly educated that they’ll be looking for him to fulfill.
guachi
If Democratic voters are too fickle to routinely show up to the polls, what’s the use in trying to appeal to them?
How does turnout drop 130,000 in Detroit?
MomSense
@RK:
Any mention of the changes to voting laws in those states?
Repatriated
@Kay: He admitted a few times that it could be a ‘virtual wall” and it seemed to make no difference. The sipporters of his that really care about the issue would probably be satisfied with a “wall of vigilantes”, if they got to volunteer for the task.
Nettoyeur
@mkro: There have been cries from various quarters to eliminate Social Security for nearly 80 yrs, Medicare for 50 years, the EPA, the Depts of Education and Energy for over 30 years, and so on. All of these agencies are still alive, and are if anything larger than they were back in the day. The one Federal agency that actually was eliminated was the Civil Aeronautics Board, which dealt with fares, airline safety issues, etc. Jimmy Carter started the move to eliminate it in when airfares were deregulated in 1978, rendering that part of their work unnecessary, but it was not actually closed until 7 years later in 1985. Its remaining safety functions were then distributed to the FAA and NHTSA. I even recall reading that on its final day, the CAB staffers simply moved to offices in the appropriate buildings and continued to do the same work. In the present case, I would guess that any move to gut the EPA would run smack dab into high visibility public issues like those raised by the Flint water crisis and the TVA Kingston coal plant ash pond overflow, both of which have remediation and liability costs that could run into billions (maybe even hundreds of billions) of dollars and complex legal proceedings. A sudden cancellation of ACA without replacement would deprive millions of Americans—many of them Trump supporters—of life-saving medical care. People with long term health problems like cancer and diabetes would die soon and very publicly. Front page features of innocent children and beloved parents and grandparents on the brink of death. A new installment of the “National Death Panel” on display every morning and evening. The political hue and cry would be toxic to any administration and fatal in mid term congressional elections. It is important to alert the public to all these issues, and keep the national press on the stories–which will be irresistible.
Kay
I believe Mr. Trump also promised “great” healthcare plans for free. When does that start? Are they marking it up in Congress yet or will everyone (who is white) just get a voucher?
Mnemosyne
@RK:
The Impact of Wisconsin’s Complicated Voter ID Law
Are you surprised to hear that MI and PA both have repressive voter ID laws? I bet you are.
JDM
The problem I have with the stock market is not the immediate. People in the market tend to like stability, and the election is both over and won by a big enough margin that a challenge seems unlikely. So they like that, and would have either way the election went, as long as it was decisive.
The problem, though, is going to be how the Republicans, controlling Congress and the White House, will respond to any financial crisis, including any they create. History shows us that the GOP does this on a regular basis, and they typically respond poorly. So at what point might it be good to exit the market and sit on cash? That could be any time in the next four years.
Dog Dawg Damn
White liberals are worthless. Occupy fascism. Heh.
BLM is the only group with the organization to stand up to this threat. We should all take a cue from the civil rights leaders of years past. They are the only ones with the experience needed to navigate this. Don’t look to Dem leadership for any help. They are worthless too
Shalimar
@Kay: Republicans never keep their promises. This is part of why their followers are so insane already. But they know Trump is a liar and admire him for it, so I’m not sure they are going to hold him to the same standard as Ryan or McConnell.
GrandJury
Please stop trying to blame individual reasons like black lives matter or turning out the black vote or whatever. There were multiple reasons. There is no one reason. She lost plain and simple. In some cases simply because she didn’t have a penis.
Lots of women voted for Trump so you can’t just say it was because she was a woman either.
RaflW
I went to bed at 3:30am Central, expecting to wake up to a rout. Got up at 10:30, logged in, and was sort of stunned by the rebound. But then, capitalism can easily co-exist with Fascism, at least until the kleptocratic Trumpers ruin our economy.
So I sold several stocks today near 52-week highs. Time to hold some cash I think. It seems totally crazy, but they don’t call it vulture capitalism for nothing.
Patricia Kayden
@RK: Yep. For some reason, too many Black voters decided to sit this election out. Sadly, they will be some of the hardest hit by Trump policies. Not sure what more Clinton could have done to reach out to them. I’ve heard that she didn’t visit Wisconsin during the general election so there is that.
I need to emphasize that I do not blame Clinton for this loss. Any Democratic challenger would have lost to Trump given how this election played out.
Kay
@Repatriated:
Oh, no. That’s not true. He said “virtual wall” and his fans started shrieking so he backed off “virtual” and promised them an actual wall. It’ll be free, too. He’ll lie but there’s video. Free giant wall. That’s what they were promised.
RK
@MomSense: No. It’s a short piece, most of which I posted.
gene108
@Shalimar:
Trillions of dollars of the Federal debt is intra-government borrowing. Tell the agencies, they’ll get a haircut on what they expected to be paid from Treasury and you’ll magically slash the debt.
I wouldn’t put this past Republicans.
Because, if they cut taxes and boost defense spending, there’ll be no money left for anything else and we’ll all have to tighten our belts.
And we’re going to start with greedy government bureaucrats.
That’ll sell pretty well to a lot of folks, and not totally spook the financial markets, because debt payments to non-government entities will still be made.
Shalimar
@Patricia Kayden: The show trial would be for all the really dumb pseudo-scandals they threatened to impeach Obama for in the last few years. I’m not saying they are going to charge Obama. We are still split 50-50 so it would be hard to find a jury that would convict him of bullshit charges. I’m just saying an Obama show trial is more likely than a Clinton show trial.
Patricia Kayden
@guachi: Voter ID laws could explain some of that downturn.
Lizzy L
@JDM:
Do let us know when you figure this out…
RareSanity
@RK:
Yeah, yeah, it’s all black people’s fault…this has been covered in previous threads.
So out of the almost 5 million total votes cast in MI, the election was lost because of 130k black people that didn’t vote for Hillary…and in WI, out of the almost 3 million votes cast, it’s the fault of 90k black people.
Let’s just completely ignore all the white people that didn’t vote for her.
You know, I’m starting to think that a lot of the “Democrats” here have more in common with Trump supporters than they care to admit.
Kay
I myself can’t wait until he “repeals” Common Core.
Common Core isn’t a federal law, it’s state law, so he can’t repeal it, but his dumb-ass fans will never know the difference. Not that any of them had any idea what “Common Core” is anyway. They knew only that Obama supported it and began shrieking.
Mnemosyne
@guachi:
Voter ID laws that were passed after Obama won in 2012.
gene108
@Kay:
Well if Trump can’t get his wall, it’ll be because of the squishy RINO’s in Congress, who need to get primaried from the right.
Republicans have patched the holes in their ship with voter suppression tactics, aggressive gerrymandering and unlimited corporate cash.
I’d like to think this can’t last, but with continued control of the Supreme Court, there’s nothing to change anything, with regards to voting rights and campaign finance reform.
It’s not a coincidence the Republican rise in 2010 coincided with the Citizen’s United decision, and the gutting of the VRA.
JPL
@RareSanity: You are right.
Mai.naem.mobile
@Kay: get with the plan. The plan involves receiving free fertile chicken eggs from Trump Farms and then raising them and exchanging the chickens and eggs for free healthcare. Ten chickens should get you a free doctors visit. Not sure how major surgery works.
WereBear
There’s a lot of speculation about the motivations of Trump voters, but knowing these folks as I do, and considering all the different sociological input, and the excuses and rationalizations put forth by the people involved, it boils down to one word:
Spite.
Patricia Kayden
@Kay: Because there is no way that human beings can scale over or dig under a brick and mortar wall, right? It’s a shame how some people are so gullible and silly. Trump was the perfect conman to sell racists a bill of goods. There will be no wall.
Lizzy L
@Dog Dawg Damn: Sometime in the next four years I would expect the Department of Homeland Security to declare BLM a terrorist organization.
raven
@RareSanity: Hey
Repatriated
Meh. Stage a fake construction crew next to an existing section of the border fence (or, given how these things get memed, an Israeli border fence), then post the video. They want to be fooled!
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
Yep. They’re angry that the culture is leaving them behind, and they’re trying to drag us back.
Patricia Kayden
@Mai.naem.mobile: That is an actual Republican healthcare plan.
Shalimar
@Patricia Kayden: A mega-billion dollar construction contract that a Trump-owned firm can get a big share of? It is a dumb idea, but I wouldn’t be so sure the grift doesn’t make it worth it for them.
Mister Papercut
@Lizzy L: Four years? I’ll wager a crisp twenty that it takes between at least four days, at most four weeks.
Daulnay
@Cain:
Trump’s virtues are that he’s impulsive and vengeful. Ryan is indeed toast. He will settle scores with Republican ‘traitors’ before he goes after the rest of us.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yes, his failure to issue lettres de cachet is truly why Working Class Whites voted for the people vowing to deregulate Wall St every two years.
Patricia Kayden
@Shalimar: I guess anything could happen but I don’t see how you could actually build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico without bankrupting this country. Trump plans to cut taxes for the 1% and big businesses. How many social programs are there to cut for him to have money to waste on a wall?
RareSanity
Hey raven, what’s up?
[begin rant]
I was pretty disappointed by the election results when I woke up this morning, but then I came here to find out it was all black people’s fault that Hillary lost, even though she received 88% percent of our vote.
Apparently, only 100% compliance by black people is acceptable to Democrats.
[end rant]
RK
@RareSanity: No one’s blaming black people which the piece itself makes clear. Just posting some interesting numbers, a part of the story.
Archon
It turns out (in hindsight) that Obama 08 represented that absolute apex of voters that can be won by the current Democratic party.
Shalimar
@Lizzy L: The lesson Republicans have perfected with governors like Scott, Snyder and Walker is to pass all of the really horrible stuff that people will be outraged over in the first few months of your term, then sit back and try not to make waves before you have to run for re-election. Enough people forget over 3 1/2 years that it doesn’t hurt them.
raven
@RareSanity: People are all fucked up most of the time and especially today. I’ve got nuthin to say about all this shit that makes one damn.
mkro
@Nettoyeur: That entire analysis is based on historic precedence of political pressure and norms. The current environment of hyper-polarization means that politicians, particularly Republicans in safe gerrymandered regions, feel no need to moderate because they do not fear any political or voter backlash. Instead, the majority of Republicans in today’s Congress are instead held to purity standards which will require them to vote against the EPA, the Dept of Education, etc.
GrandJury
@RaflW: Meh, the economy in general is one thing I am not too worried about in the short to medium term. It pretty much goes on autopilot.
The thing that sucks is that it’s improving and will keep improving for the forseeable future. So it will make it harder in future elections and of course Repubs will take all the credit..
Roger Moore
@Nettoyeur:
I think you’re spot on, but the question to ask is whether the Republicans are going to see things that way. If they’re smart enough to see those things fill an important role and they can’t be done away with without serious problems, they’ll probably go for some kind of face saving rebranding. They’ll get rid of Obamacare and replace it with a program that covers fewer people and funnels more money to insurance and drug companies but does enough to keep too many people dying from avoidable medical problems. For the EPA, they’ll loosen the pollution standards and turn enforcement over to the states but won’t completely eliminate environmental protections.
That’s if they’re sensible. There’s a real risk that they’re true believers who will eliminate those programs completely and then be shocked when things blow up in their faces. I’m sure there are some Republicans who could go either way. The question is which one will win their internal fight and get to implement their version.
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
Right, Trump never “pivoted”, the voters did.
Evangelicals were able to tapdance around his horrid past by intoning “We’re not electing a minister” and “We are all sinners, after all” ignoring their past cries to elect “people of faith.” He’ll bark and bray and that will be enough to convince the followers that it’s not “bidnez as usual” in Washington, outcomes be damned..
Mnemosyne
@RK:
The interesting numbers are leaving out a big chunk of the story, namely that Michigan has a restrictive voter ID law. As do WI and PA.
The story is not that Black voters magically failed to show up. The story is that they were prevented from showing up.
p.a.
If voter i.d. has had a measurable effect, how much blame to Dem Party for not doing more in the years since passage? How much $ and manpower allocated? Not criticizing, real question.
Patricia Kayden
@WereBear: Last night BBC interviewed two Pastors who claimed that their concern for SCOTUS and abortion compelled them to vote for Trump. Seems like social issues were the impetus for some of Trump’s supporters.
But given the nasty behavior at Trump’s rallies, there is no doubt that spite and bigotry were motivating factors for many who voted for him. Will be interesting to see how they react when we Black and Brown people are still here after 4 years. I have a feeling they think Trump is magically going to exile all of us to some Third World country.
Daulnay
@RareSanity:
Hear, hear! It’s not the drop in Black voting that elected Trump. It’s that the Obama administration didn’t deal with the despair of the group that was solidly in his camp in ’08, what Pew called the Hard-Pressed Skeptics: http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/typology-comparison/types/hard-pressed-skeptics/
They were up for grabs after 2012, and they shifted into the Trump column. It’s math — go look at the Pew categories. Split evenly between Republican and Democratic, with only this group and non-voters in the middle. Look at what the H-P Skeptics cared about. Trump pushed every button they had, while the Democratic and Republican establishment ignored them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
What’s the over/under on Manchin being a Democrat on Thanksgiving Day? Maybe they don’t need or want him, but I doubt he’d ask for much.
Shalimar
@Archon: We were very close to a depression in 2008. It was a contrast between sunny Obama and absolutely obviously disastrous Republican rule. It wouldn’t be shocking for 4 years of Trump to lead to an even bigger “holy shit” Democratic coalition.
Lizzy L
@Mister Papercut: I didn’t say it would take four years. But no bet.
RareSanity
@RK:
Maybe…
It is curious how the same “interesting number” keeps showing up over and over again.
As I said in a previous thread, Democrats may want to examine this phenomenon as part of what went wrong in this election. I doubt it will happen though.
Patricia Kayden
@p.a.: Good question. I often wonder why Dems don’t focus on fighting voter ID and other oppression tactics every day instead of waiting for election years to talk about it. It feels as if we bob along and then every four years start panicking about Republican tactics against minority voters. Should be more of a priority for the DNC.
Roger Moore
@RareSanity:
And those people “decided” not to vote; deliberate voter suppression had nothing to do with it.
gene108
@RareSanity:
I think the bigger issue is Democrats were confident the Obama model of high voter turn out among minorities, to off-set the loss of white votes, was their path to a strangle hold on the Presidency.
If minority turn-out is low, the Obama model does not win.
As has been posted elsewhere this could very well be the result of voter ID laws that drive down African-American turnout. I don’t know right now.
But since the Obama model is not lock to win the Presidency, where should Democrats go now?
Again, I don’t know.
As either rikyrah or lamh36 pointed out in one of the earlier threads, there’s no way for the AA vote (and minority votes in general) to cancel out the will of the majority of people, i.e. whites.
Shalimar
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not sure what the odds of Manchin switching are, but I can tell you his chances of winning a Republican primary in 2018 if he does switch: 0%.
MuckJagger
@Shalimar: AND building a wall AND fixing America’s infrastructure. That would be a very neat trick.
Ella in New Mexico
Speaking of Wall Street and Big Pharma and no one getting punished for misbehaving…
Does anyone else suspect that the insurance industry colluded to raise all the Obama care premiums on the exchanges just before an election in order to piss everyone off so they voted for Trump?
RK
@trollhattan: So you’re saying many so-called religious folk are hypocritical jokes? That just can’t be.
Another Scott
@MuckJagger: Your post reminds me of a comment I read on a technical magazine (something about cell phones or similar). The poster was complaining about repressive government regulation and lacking freedom and so forth. I couldn’t believe it. I was considering posting some snark like, “I’m sorry the G-Man followed you home from work and forced you to have broccoli and microwaved potatoes with your dinner…” or similar, but it seems pointless.
Too many seemingly normal people really do believe that they’re being oppressed by Washington. They’ve bought into the framing that DC is crushing the life out of America even though most people have only one even marginally coerced interaction with the federal government in a year – when they file their taxes. Even those who don’t want to be “forced” to buy insurance have an out, but they would rather gripe about it instead of recognizing the benefits of Obamacare (no lifetime caps, no pre-existing conditions, community rates, free preventive care, etc., etc.). People use such strong language, when looking around the word there are real-life examples of genuine oppression and tyrrany and we don’t have anything like that here.
– S.I. Hayakawa
Winning isn’t a matter of using the right magic words, it’s a matter of getting people to think (and act) the way you want them to think (and act). That’s a very tough task, especially when it involves getting people to act differently.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
gene108
@Patricia Kayden:
Cases have been filed and filed again. The reason the voter ID laws did not go into effect in 2012 was because of legal challenges.
But if the courts are hellbent on deciding voter ID is a okay, when it gets to the judge, there’s not a lot that can be done on that front.
Mnemosyne
@Daulnay:
As I said last night, I guarantee you that the Hard-Pressed Skeptics were very concerned about Black Lives Matter this year. Only one candidate played to that fear, and it was the white supremacist.
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
Sure there will be a wall. There’s already a wall in a lot of places, and we’ll build it in even more places. The work will be done at immense cost by politically connected contractors who will give big kickbacks. Trump may or may not have been a billionaire before the election, but he’s going to be bigly rich by the time his term is up.
dogwood
@Kay:
They will never turn on him. Most don’t really care about policies and walls. They liked the hate-fest. The biggest mistake that democrats make is believing that candidates with lots of sane policy plans will appeal to the masses. That’s always been Hillary’s weakness as a candidate. Outside of partisans with specific concerns, most voters don’t really care about anything but their taxes. They vote for the candidate who tells an story about the country that resonates with them. The most effective I saw Hillary was in the dnc film where she talks about her mother’s deprived chilhood and how it shaped her views. If that Hillary had appeared on the stump or in debates, she would have changed some hearts and minds.
jenn
I posted below, but figure I’ll post here, too:
Absofuckinglutely, we do whatever we can to hold the line. They want a left, thinking, version of the Tea Party? Let’s give them one. It’s going to be a lot of work, we’re going to have to stay on top of incoming legislation, and then we’re going to have to make a lot of noise – whatever noise might be required.
There have been a lot of things I’ve been thinking about this morning. One was Obama’s oft-repeated line that the arc of history bends towards justice. I’ve always had a problem with that line (much as I like the sentiment) because it sounds as though that bend just happens naturally. It doesn’t. It takes all of us working together, shoulder to the wheel, to make that arc bend. My shoulder is to the wheel, and I am ready to get back to work.
Another thing that I have been thinking of is a Joss Whedon scene from the TV show Angel. It may be my favorite scene of any TV show, ever. And it’s the very last one of the series. The fight to make the world a better place NEVER ENDS. We may lose battles, we may win battles, but the fight never ends. And while winning battles is undeniably important, losing battles is also inevitable – so what is most important is not the winning, but the fighting. Not giving up, but ever-working towards a better future.
So while I understand the desire to give in to hopelessness, please don’t. I have shed an awful lot of tears today, hugged friends, coworkers, and random strangers – and I plan to do more of both the crying and the hugging. But I am also determined, because I hold this truth to be self-evident: all men and women are created equal, regardless of race or creed or sexual orientation or anything else that those who hate wish to throw in to divide us. And whatever I can do to fulfill that truth, I will do.
Hugs to you all.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: Also, fear.
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
Sure there will be. There’s already a wall in plenty of places along the border, and we’ll spend a ton of money paying Trump’s cronies to build more. He may not have been a billionaire before the election, but he’s going to be yugely rich by the end of it.
MuckJagger
@Patricia Kayden: She’s backed a number of nimreps who have won…Joni Ernst, etc. She was one of the first national politicians to jump aboard the Trump train. She’ll be lauded on the TV chatterbox shows for her insight.
RareSanity
@Mnemosyne:
While I don’t disagree with the voter suppression issue, the theme of “blacks didn’t support Hillary like they did Obama” has a much more ominous implication…whether intentional or not.
Instead of focusing on why ~6% of a group, that is 13% electorate voted a certain way, why is no one “interested” in why ~50% of a group (white women), that is ~30% of the electorate choose to vote for Trump?
Repatriated
@MuckJagger: Start a war and use it as a pretext to take a metric f*ckton of mil spending off-budget. Pointing out that sleight of hand will be unpatriotic ’cause War Preznit.
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
Good thing that Trump is perfectly comfortable with bankruptcy, then, isn’t it. He’ll renegotiate our debt for pennies on the dollar!
kc
That’s been abundantly clear for a long time.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
A story I posted yesterday said that PA’s law had been stayed by a judge, but poll workers were still demanding photo ID despite that.
But, yes, let’s wonder about the “mysterious” absence of minority voters in states with Voter ID laws. Such a mystery.
p.a.
@Patricia Kayden: @gene108: I’m not talking challenges etc, which are necessary. I’m talking boots on ground getting folks the i.d. they need.
Patricia Kayden
@RareSanity: I don’t think anyone is blaming Black people for Secretary Clinton’s loss. As many have pointed out here, voter ID laws depressed the Black vote. That’s not Black people’s fault. Voter ID restrictions will probably only get much worse now that Trump and Republicans have full control of the government.
WereBear
EXACTLY. I understand President Obama is devoting his post-Presidency time to this very project.
JordanRules
@RareSanity:
This right here. My gawd. This.
Shalimar
@MuckJagger: The TV chatterbox shows didn’t have Palin on as a high-profile surrogate during the campaign. Her public appearances were minimal or at least not publicized widely. There is no reason to expect her to become more prominent now. Palin has fallen behind all of the younger, blonder spokesmodels.
Mnemosyne
@RareSanity:
Because nobody wants to talk about the fact that (my fellow) white women are racist as fuck.
Trump was endorsed by the motherfucking Ku Klux Klan and white women still voted for him. SMH.
dlm
@Mnemosyne: Don’t know where this was happening, but I’m in SE PA. I was not asked to show ID. The only person that had to show ID was a young man voting for the first time. This was the first time since the Bush years, I was not asked to show it. Of course, I always refused. It’s not the law.
geg6
@Patricia Kayden:
That’s easy. Presidenting while black can surely be twisted into high crimes and misdemeanors. I have no doubt they’ll try.
gene108
@p.a.:
One thing the 2000 debacle in Florida made crystal clear to me is a large or most conservatives do not care about civic norms. They care about winning.
If voter caging ten thousand minority voters, in Florida, helped get Bush, Jr. into the White House, they were overjoyed with it.
If Voter ID can help keep Democrats out of elected office, they will be all for it.
You really do not get sweeping progressive reforms, or I don’t think we have as a country, unless you can somehow reach the collective consciousness of Americans, where people start to be truly frightened, disgusted, and tired of a bad thing.
Since Voter ID is good for conservatives, I do not see how you get there. They do not feel the same way you do about the issue and there’s nothing that will change there minds, because there belief in Voter ID laws is not based on a rational solution to an existing problem.
Mai.naem.mobile
If I have any non voter or Putin’s bitch voter whine about shit that Putin’s bitch pulls,i am going to remind them bbbuttt,Hilz was for abortion,remember. Also too, her super sekret emails.
Gelfling 545
@Shalimar: some local non-profit that needs an attorney? Not the best pay but can be satisfying work.
Kay
I hope we get a one year update on Trump’s promises:
1.free “great” healthcare plan
2. free giant wall
3. all manufacturing jobs “back” – not sure “back” from where or what that means but I’m sure now that he’s President he’ll be asked these questions
The Great Man said everyone in charge was dumb and he alone could do all this easily, so we’ll need a progress report.
Also- Ivanka said we get free childcare, right? When do they set that up?
Shalimar
@p.a.: There were groups out trying to register people to vote and get them the ID they needed. In Georgia, Iowa, Texas and I believe Pennsylvania, those groups were shut down and investigated for vote fraud. Acorn also used to do that very thing. They were destroyed. Republican officials are on that aspect of vote suppression too.
schrodinger's cat
@Shalimar: That would be an excellent way to flush the country’s reputation down the toilet.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Never.
RareSanity
@gene108:
…and there is my point. This was a fools errand in the first place, if you are solely depending 90%+ support from one group to win an election, you’re gonna have a bad time. To then follow that unrealistic expectation with…for lack of a better term, blame…against the group for not meeting it, you are adding insult to injury.
There is no other demographic that has been almost unanimously supportive of Democratic candidates than black people, now there are fingers being pointed because they didn’t deliver 90% support? We fought voter suppression on a level not seen since the Jim Crow South, and STILL delivered 88% support.
Where is the “examination” into why white voters, in general, are walking away from the Democrats?
You know what, I’m tired of arguing this, it’s pointless. Until people get their heads out of their asses and stop trying to find scapegoats…especially ones that turn out with 88% support…the Democratic party will be the one in an extended minority status, not Republicans.
RK
I guess you can say Trump’s white nationalist act payed off.
Mnemosyne
@dlm:
Here’s the WaPo story about it. I’m not familiar with the state, so I don’t know the locations.
trollhattan
Holy fuckballs, it’s starting already.
“I want to be president for all Americans.”
JPL
@RareSanity: Most of us know that Rudy will implement a nationwide stop and frisk policy. Although, I’m a white female, I am scared to death. Today I’m numb, but tomorrow it’s time to regroup.
geg6
@Kay:
All the idiots around here are convinced that the steel industry is coming back to the area and we will soon have miles long steel mills lining the Ohio from Pittsburgh to Cincinnatti, just like in the good old days. And they will all have jobs that pay good money and benefits, just like in the good old days. And none of that paying union dues for nothing, because unions had nothing to do with the good old days (they just stuck up for the lazy ni***rs). It’ll be great!
Betty Cracker
@gene108: Well, we can’t count on white women, not that we’ll have another female candidate anytime soon, so the point is likely moot. That’s what surprised me the most.
Shalimar
@schrodinger’s cat: Yes. It would be stupid as hell. Are you sure Trump and the majority of Republicans wouldn’t want to do it anyway?
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
Like they care what the rest of the world thinks of us.
dogwood
@RareSanity:
Every demographic has unlikely and infrequent voters among the group. It is believable to me that Obama tapped into that group of black voters more effectively than Hillary. That’s not a knock on her or on those voters. I’d hazzard a guess that Romney picked up a nice chunk of Mormons who rarely vote as well.
jenn
@RareSanity: I haven’t read all of the threads today, but I’m sorry that that’s what they have felt like to you and others. No, it is not the fault of black people or hispanics or Asians. There’s a long list of reasons why we lost, and now we have to try to rectify those reasons for 2018 and 2020.
Gelfling 545
@Patricia Kayden: I don’t believe we have yet determined just how dumb Trump might be. Every time I think I know he ups the ante.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
Anecdotally, white morons in Michigan were pissed about Hillary and Obama’a support for Black Lives Matter.
But it was all about economic anxiety!
JPL
@trollhattan: Bring back the Hummers.. wahoo!
schrodinger's cat
@Roger Moore: They will have to care when it pinches them in the pocketbook.
RK
@RareSanity: I regret posting those numbers without others.
Mnemosyne
@dogwood:
I suspect there was a religious issue that some minority men had with a woman being president. That might explain the slight drop in support.
RareSanity
@Patricia Kayden:
I’m not even trying to say that people are doing this purposely, or even consciously…but there is no doubt that there is one demographic that is getting the lion’s share of “analysis” post-election than others.
This is one of those things that I guess is just does not scream out to you unless you are part of that demographic. These are exactly the types of things that disaffected voters are SCREAMING at Democrats…YOU DON’T LISTEN! (you being the general you, not specifically Patricia Kayden)
The Democratic leadership hides behind this wall of statistics and intellectual superiority, and it turns people off to the message. Democrats need to shut up and listen, and stop talking AT everybody.
Shalimar
@schrodinger’s cat: When it pinches them in the pocketbook, it is always liberals’ fault. They won’t make the connection.
Gelfling 545
@GrandJury: You’d do well to add ” in my opinion” to that rather broad and didactic statement.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Shalimar: there’s a reason that Boehner and Ryan kept a lid on impeaching Obama, and I still can’t believe they managed it. Rudi may be crazy, but he ain’t stupid, ditto Christie, and I think Trump can/will be made to people like that. Maybe I mean Ivanka Trump can be made to listen to that.
dlm
@Mnemosyne: Thank you. After reading the article, I believe it.
Gelfling 545
@Kay: But they’ll forget it. All they really wanted was the anti-Obama.
FlipYrWhig
@Daulnay:
Here’s the problem, though. Trump somehow has magical powers where it’s enough for him to push the right buttons without explaining, you know, HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO FUCKING WORK IN ANY WAY OR HOW MUCH IT STANDS TO COST OR ANYTHING CHRIST ALMIGHTY. Any other politician of a conventional sort would start to draw up a plan for how to help the poor, or how to reassure people that things will be more fair, or what have you. And the moment you draw up a plan, you hit logistical difficulties, have to strike balances, end up pissing people off, and so forth. And that leads me to believe that Trump, button-pusher, isn’t really so much particularly skilled at button-pushing but in actuality is skilled at being “politically incorrect” in ways that can _pass_ for button-pushing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a politician _this_ able to get away with never having to get beyond, “[THING] is a problem, big problem, disaster. And the people trying to fix [THING] are stupid, stupid, weak people. But I can solve [THING] and it’ll be tremendous.” FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY DOESNT ANYONE CARE THAT HE NEVER SAID HOW IT WOULD HAPPEN. It’s so inexplicable it verges on demented brilliance.
dlm
@geg6: Sounds alot like the coal miners in North East PA. They don’t understand we are moving on and those jobs are going and gone.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Joy Reid has been making the connection between BLM and the FBI/LE resentment of Clinton for a couple of weeks now, and specifically wrt Comey and the last gasp of emails. Just as a lot of white people who see politics as a zero-sum racial contest, and can’t grok that Obama would do anything for them, there are those who can’t not see an “Only”, or worse, in front of “Black Lives Matter”
trollhattan
@JPL:
TEPA (TRUMP! EPA) mandate: Everybody roll coal or you can’t use the highway.
Cain
@Patricia Kayden:
That is why dear Debbie should have been kicked out long ago. Obama had his own setup and didnt need the DNC. That’s also why he was a change agent. I’m sick of the goddam DNC and their stupidity. We need to burn them to the ground and pick better people who are aggressive and want to put democrats in charge of as many positions as possible across the country. Hell I feel like I should be running for the job.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: I looked at his/her link, and the concerns of those skeptics are pretty gauzy, and the idea that Democrats “ignored ” those concerns is pretty ridiculous. For the 5000th, but alas probably not the last time, Democrats have proposals to address those concerns, the “skeptics” refuse to take yes for an answer.
JMG
In four years, the hard-pressed skeptics will be even more hard-pressed. Assuming no foreign crisis, a big assumption, the only promise Trump can deliver on are his ethnic and religious persecution pledges. This will not go well. I don’t know what I can do to stop any of that, but by damn it’s my duty as a citizen to stand witness for the oppressed. Let the record show some of us objected to the death of our country’s ideal.
liberal
@p.a.: Look…the budgets could impact the economy in only certain ways.
If they gut spending, yes, that’s going to have a nasty impact on the economy.
If they cut taxes on the superwealthy, that’s not going to hurt the economy. It certainly might balloon the budget deficit, but we’re so far from an inflationary regime that that doesn’t matter, except to the (large) extent that it represents a waste of resources. But from the point of view of Keynesian stimulus, it’s not a negative (though of course tax cuts for the rich don’t have much stimulative effect). It only has a negative effect if it leads to spending cuts.
If they ramp up spending on the military, then, apart from offsetting budget cuts elsewhere, it will have a stimulus effect.
My own guess is that they’ll gut much of the government budget. But they might pull crap like frontload the military spending increase and backload the cuts (e.g. medicare not slashed for anyone under 55).
In the medium run, I expect it to be a disaster. Short run, there’s no reason for it to be, except for panicked animal spirits who worry about Trump starting a nasty war. (These spirits live in financial markets and impacts on consumer spending outside the US, too.)
It’s not that I think the animal spirits are wrong. It’s just that I think, while it is clearly sufficient to mark Trump as a threat, the chance that he’ll really go full fascist/start a war/etc leading to markets tanking isn’t that likely. Of course, if you look at probability weighted by loss, it’s horrible, but it’s still not that likely.
Likeliest thing is that he acts as a kind of figurehead, doesn’t go full fascist, and signs the shit the congressional R’s send him. That’s bad enough, and it will hurt the economy, but they have to actually do stuff before it hurts the economy.
Cain
@Patricia Kayden: I think RareSanity asked a fair question. Why didn’t the women vote? Where were the rest?
StringOnAStick
The DOW futures were down over 800 points last night, so a profit taking bounce back was a bout the easiest play on the board today. If the markets close up at all, the orange shitgibbon will call it just another part of his “fabulous mandate”.
In my current career as an RDH, I get to talk with people from many different walks of life and jobs. The high level private investment guy I worked on early this summer told my boss that he was putting his clients at 60% cash, said the market was overvalued and had no compelling reason to keep rising, other than the fact that the US has the safest markets in the world so money comes here just for that reason. Drumpf does anything to screw up the latter, and the MOTU and corporate boards are going to be seriously pissed since not all of them can be positioned to profit on a massive decline (because someone has to take the other side of the bet,no matter how complex its structure). TL:DR: ignore the market today and let the shock waves pass before you can expect to see some sort of direction emerge.
I do suspect too many religious people voted for Drumpf because of the USSC and abortion. There were 3 Drumpf signs in our neighborhood; 2 were for families that are ultra-Catholics with the gory bumper stickers, and the other is a prison guard/authoritarian/crappy neighbor who screams horrible things at his wife and teenaged kids; one set of the Catholics does that as well, so yeah, authoritarians. In their mind it is worth trashing the country to save the blastocycts.
I’m sure my father the wingnut mining engineer is thrilled that the evil EPA is soon to be toast, and I won’t even say what he calls the Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service. If he could still drive that far, I could see him showing up at the Bundy’s next last stand.
Gelfling 545
@gene108: Well the mJority of the people voted Clinton, just not in the right places.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It strikes me as a very useful description of a kind of person, the kind Thomas Frank and Chris Matthews fetishize. But that IGNORING THE WHITE WORKING CLASS bit never really gets around to what not-ignoring looks like. Because, as you rightly point out, Democratic candidates for 80 years have been articulating plans and _actually doing things_ for the specific benefit of the white working class, or hard-pressed skeptics, or what have you, but that group spits in our eye anyway. I don’t get what everyone imagines happening. So it becomes a matter of “signaling” or “communications” or “framing,” maybe? It’s definitely not a 9-point plan or a zippy slogan. We’ve done those. It’s not working.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: But that’s the rub. Even though his plans amount to complete fantasy, people bought the rhetoric.
Also, it’s not really true about other politicians. Yes, it’s true of anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun, but Granny Starver’s budgets are complete hocus pocus, yet the Village considers him a man of good standing and intelligence.
RareSanity
@FlipYrWhig:
Because it is ideas that spur political passion, not policies. It’s been that way throughout history, and it will continue that way.
I’m sure it’s comfortable to sit back and know that the policies of Democrats are far superior to those of Republicans, but we are sitting back after losing saying that. Democrats are losing the war of ideas, and it appears that there is no plan on how to change this.
My favorite politician of all time is JFK. He didn’t get elected, or popular, based on policies…it was his ideas that got people to support him, and the policies flowed from there. Can you imagine where this country would be if JFK decided never to say “We choose to go to the moon”, because he didn’t have a concrete plan on how to do it? I’m not saying lie…JFK seriously wanted to go to the moon, he had no idea how it would happen. But that didn’t stop him from promising it.
Democrats don’t inspire people anymore, that should be the lesson taken from last night. Obama inspired people, Hillary did not.
RK
@FlipYrWhig: Someone said the professional class took him literally and not seriously while the white working class took him seriously and not literally. And no doubt his celebrity and image as a successful businessman blunted a lot of his buffoonery.
CarolDuhart2
@geg6: And they are idiots. Steel mills in China no doubt pay half in wages, and there are no unions. Steel mills in Germany pay well and have unions, but benefits come out of taxes, so employers don’t have to focus on those. Transport on ships faster than anything we have here brings stuff to the warehouse in less than 2 days.
Those manufacturing jobs are never coming back. Again, lower wages, compliant local governments who pay for things like roads and efficiant transport, and a big global market elsewhere means that factories in Cincinnati just aren’t going to compete.
FlipYrWhig
@JMG:
By Negroes and Mexicans and refugee terrorists and the liberals who coddle them, you mean? Because that’s who they think they’re hard pressed by now.
Cain
@RareSanity: This.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: No. Signing NAFTA was not doing something for the benefit of the working class.
Now, of course, it’s absolutely true that while WJC signed NAFTA, it was actually a Bush 41 treaty, and at the Congressional level it was the Dems who opposed it and the R’s who favored it, on average.
Furthermore, the roots of 2008 lie in the deregulatory frenzy of the 1990s. While that’s hardly owned by the Dems, a lot of Dems were complicit.
Not a dime’s worth of difference? Of course not. But the Democratic Party is not a working class party. Sure, they’re more closely aligned with the interests of the working class, but that’s not the same thing.
Gelfling 545
@Mnemosyne: We even had reports of people being asked, inappropriately, for ID here in WNY where we have no voter ID law.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: the closest thing to policy that Daulnay’s dear and sainted skeptics are concerned about is that gov’t benefits to the poor are inadequate. If only it were clear which party was (by an imperfect longshot) protecting and expanding the social safety net. There’s some vague concern about jobs. One party wants massive infrastructure spending, the other side advocates trickle down tax cuts. The fact that the skeptics are self-described low-information voters is the problem, not that they’re “ignored”
liberal
@CarolDuhart2: Look, that’s all true, but we should stop pretending that the strong dollar policy of the 1990s had nothing to do with it.
Not to mention currency manipulation by the Chinese.
Micheline
@debit: He lost the majority vote.
WereBear
You are right. But it doesn’t matter, because they don’t want to hear that.
They want to live exactly the way their parents/grandparents lived. They want that life. By this time, it’s a “tradition” and the way life ought to be. That is what they saw growing up and their minds. stopped. there.
They want to graduate from high school and get a job with benefits and a pension and they are going to throw a tantrum until they get it. Trump promised them that. End of story.
liberal
@RareSanity: Agreed.
schrodinger's cat
I deleted NYT from my bookmarks, they are still soft pedaling Trump’s ascendancy.
negative 1
@Betty Cracker: Maybe we stop ‘relying’ on tribal politics at all.
We can argue the efficacy of the campaign, but in the end the calculus is pretty simple — if her campaign was that great, the two of us wouldn’t be in this particular thread at all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
one of OBama’s numbers guys was on the Hayes show a while back and said that Michigan was ripe for Republican plucking, that Obama winning had been a double fluke, first the various Republican clusterfucks up to and in the ’08 cycle, the second time to the auto industry rescue, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” and the 47% remarks. Although Trump’s money is definitely older and arguably greater than Romney’s, his affect was far less patrician and detached, and in the mercurial jumble of his campaign it was harder to cast him as a plutocrat. The good will from the auto rescue clearly didn’t last and/or transfer to HRC
liberal
@Shalimar: Yeah, well, it’s up to us to make sure they make the connection. It’s not fair, but that’s the playing field we’re on.
negative 1
@liberal: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-democrats-killed-their-populist-soul/504710/ This is my favorite article so far about the unstated economic views of both parties. Personally, when people say ‘not a dime’s worth of difference’ what they are really talking about is economics, and specifically what’s stated in it.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: OK, but Ryan is a good example: Ryan is taken seriously because he makes charts, graphs, and tables. It doesn’t matter that the visuals and numbers are ridiculous; it matters that they look like the things that smart people do. See also Betsy McCaughey’s LOOKIT THIS HUGE BINDER AMIRITE? tactic for wrecking health care reform. But Trump would be asked “How do you do that?” and he’d say “You do it.” That is not adhering to reason. That is just naked bullshit. And since it’s Trump, millions of people lap it up. I don’t know if it’s because he’s a famous businessman and thus trustworthy, which is one option, or because he pisses off liberals wicked hard so nothing else matters, which is where I’m leaning today. Conventional politicians don’t get to coast on attitude like that. Trump does. It’s a sight to behold, honestly.
Betty Cracker
@negative 1: I’m not going to pretend to know all the answers, not after having been so spectacularly wrong. I’ll leave that to the people whose candidate couldn’t win the primary.
negative 1
@Betty Cracker: Touchy? All I’m arguing is rather than view everyone as a homogenous block and say ‘let’s win all whites’ like I have something in common with a trump voter, maybe instead we try selling the message or walk the walk on inclusiveness. But you’re right, we definitely should’ve doubled down on calling everyone ‘bro’ or say the kids were clueless given how many millenials showed up.
hueyplong
Must have been a downer for the president-elect when someone told him James Watt is dead, and that Cheney’s ability to decouple from the human upon which he is feeding prohibits Dick’s personal direction of the Surprise Attack on ISIS.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Yes, it does. And he spent all his time attacking the public workers unions or fighting with CalGOP.
liberal
@sy: LOL. Wait till Ryan et al. slash the NIH. I’m sure that’s going to do wonders for Pharma. Who the fuck does all their basic research, not to mention train all their people?
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: The Republican Party isn’t a working class party either. Republicans haven’t earned their votes at all. That’s what I don’t get. Why is the reaction only on this one track, where “Democrats don’t listen to the concerns of people like me SO FUCK ALL Y’ALL, but Republicans ALSO don’t listen to the concerns of people like me but at least they’re not Democrats”? I genuinely don’t get that. I don’t know why the people who think Democrats are snobs, so they vote Republican, don’t have any interest in anything the Republicans then proceed to do. Because what they do amounts to… nothing for them either! That’s why the whole thing just seems like one big sneer at the n199er-lovers.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Of course they are. They don’t want to admit their complicity.
Iraq War, Part II. They will go to the mat to defend Trump rather than admit they were wrong about anything.
NMgal
@RK: Jesus, I guess I didn’t realize that whites were still 70% of the electorate. Fuckin’ white people, man. And I say that as one. There’s a reason I get nervous when I get too far north into Colorado from where I live. It just gets overly white, and you can’t trust those people, apparently, to be reasonable.
Betty Cracker
@negative 1: Am I supposed to be familiar with your political views? Because I’m not. I was agreeing with the post I was replying to that it doesn’t make sense to blame minority voters. If we’re going to point fingers, there are more obvious places to start. That said, I don’t think it was particularly crazy to anticipate that women would vote in greater numbers for the first female nominee than they had for male nominees in the past. It turned out to be WRONG, but it wasn’t a kooky idea. There is such a thing as a gender gap.
JMG
@FlipYrWhig: Trump spent over a year telling them “You people are the greatest. What you want I will give you. What you hate, I do too.” They were being conned, but they took it as being courted and made important. They will be given only symbolic goodies in return, nothing of real value. About all he can deliver on is kicking the hate objects as hard as he can.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: There were people on twitter, Josh Barro and I think David Frunm among them, pointing out that those early votes among Hispanics in FL were being matched by infrequent white voters. I wrote them off. Even the ObamaBros of the 1600 podcast warned that Republicans would “return home” to Trump as election day got closer, even without Comey. I believed the polls that said college educated whites would vote for Clinton. So, from what I could see, did most Republicans and the Trump campaign. Everybody’s predictions got scrambled this time around.
liberal
@Kay:
Agreed.
I’m through with these people. My spite for them won’t get in the way of advocating policies that stand on their own merit, but concern for them? Nope.
negative 1
@FlipYrWhig: They think republicans do listen to them. Trump specifically said it was the chinese that took their jobs. It may be wrong, but it’s addressed to them. From CNN exit poll data this morning — half of Michigan’s electorate feel trade takes away jobs, supported Trump 57% to 36%. In Ohio 47% of voters say trade hurts workers, voted Trump 2 to 1. Clinton solidly won the people in Michigan (31%) who think trade creates jobs , won the same folks in Ohio, same stuff in Pennsylvania. So, they think China stole their jobs and only trump cares, while they think Clinton is saying ‘it’s OK better jobs are going to come back’ while they look around and see…
liberal
@NMgal: It’s much worse in Britain, from what I understand. We’re lucky our number is as low as it is. (Spoken as a middle-aged white male.)
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: Bingo. In retrospect, Trump probably had it in the bag the minute he started babbling about “political correctness.” I don’t know a single disgruntled white man who doesn’t feel the keen burden of PC, and Combover Caligula promised to lift that weight. Good enough!
Patricia Kayden
@Betty Cracker: I wonder what the White women who voted for Trump think he’s going to do for them. This is a man who let it be known that women who have abortions should be punished. He boasted about sexually assaulting women. He’s a philanderer and has used derogatory terms to describe women he doesn’t like. Hell, he called Secretary Clinton a “nasty woman” during a televised debate.
What exactly will he do for women? Trump has zero respect for women — unless he’s sexually attracted to them.
NoraLenderbee
I guess the coal mines will start up, the steel mills will burn coal to make steel, and the miners and stillworkers will eat steel and wear clothes made out of coal.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: Look, I agree. But it doesn’t matter that neither you nor I think that in no way, shape, or form have the Republicans earned those votes. What matters is what the voters think.
Patricia Kayden
@negative 1: Isn’t that highly ironic given that Trump manufactures all of his goods overseas and is thus responsible for some of the trade that has resulted in jobs that could be done by Americans being done by foreigners?
Trump manufactures his goods overseas and voters elect him to do what exactly? Sigh.
Patricia Kayden
@NoraLenderbee: And we will frack the hell out of the earth. There was a brainless Republican from N.Y. on BBC last night saying that fracking is our economic savior. Yeah, that makes sense.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: Trump and his millions of Rubes, well, those people are idiots.
The Village and Ryan? I know there’s all this talk about how wrong, perhaps even evil the Village is, but frankly I don’t think they’re very smart either.
Of course, there’s the other factor that is hard to tease apart: their paychecks come from people with distinct class interests.
liberal
@Patricia Kayden: No we won’t. Not until the Saudis ramp down oil production.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@Patricia Kayden: Fracking is one of the reasons coal declined. You would be better off not trying to use logic to understand what happened.
liberal
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Jesus Christ, while watching the returns, it was like fucking gremlins coming out of the wainscotting.
liberal
@efgoldman: Well, could we please start backsliding on so-called free trade agreements? That would be a good start.
negative 1
@Betty Cracker: And I was responding to your upset that we can’t count on ‘white women’. My point is that I really dislike tribal politics in general, and it would seem that relying on groups to back ‘one of their own’ is not only morally wrong but apparently not all that effective. My larger point is that on this board, yes during the primary, their was a bunch of ugly shit said about people based on race and gender. But you can’t say you believe in equality and then say I don’t have to listen to you because you’re [race here]. If [race here] equals white, it’s still not saying equality for all races. The rethugs argued ‘whites versus all’ and won the election, maybe we don’t accept ‘whites versus all’ and hope ‘all’ wins we just concentrate on better ideas. To each their own.
liberal
@Patricia Kayden: LOL. Not to mention, didn’t he hire lots of Polish immigrants for one of his construction jobs, then treat them like shit?
Fighting stupid is hard.
FlipYrWhig
@negative 1: But that’s where JMG‘s suggestion about “symbolic goodies” comes in. Trump should have been made to say WHAT HE WOULD DO. Every Democrat and almost every previous Republican would have been drilled by their consultants to say “Chris, my Great American Infrastructure Fund is a portfolio of $X billion in projects that will generate Y million jobs, Z thousand of which will be in the Great Lakes region, with loan guarantees for entrepreneurs who rehabilitate brownfields and shuttered industrial sites,” or whatever. That’s the nature of running for office. He didn’t have to do that. And it didn’t really bother anyone that he didn’t. And I wonder if anyone’s ever really had to do it at all, because I wonder if anyone listens–or if it’s all just “symbolic goodies” anyway, so who the fuck cares.
GrandJury
@negative 1: They are sadly mistaken if they think all those Chinese jobs are coming back under prez trump. The rust belt will still be the rest belt.
I don’t buy these economic reasons for the result. The economy is doing pretty good right now and that didn’t help Hillary’s numbers in places that benefit from it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@liberal: I’m talking about last week and over the weekend. Barro, for one, was as surprised by the actual results as anyone, I think.
Gin & Tonic
@liberal: Yup. Crude needs to be above $50 for US fracking to make sense.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
My theory as of yesterday is that they’ve realized on some subconscious level that conservative economics are always going to screw them, so they may as well vote for the party that promises to put them back at the top of our racial caste system.
There’s also a weird thing specifically with evangelicals that they’re told that bad people (like the Antichrist) will say they want peace when they secretly want war, so it’s better to go with the warmonger (or the guy who says he’s going to screw you) because at least they aren’t lying.
Betty Cracker
@Patricia Kayden: I don’t know. My guess based on general familiarity with the demographic is that the evangelicals closed their eyes and imagined a SCOTUS that would overturn Roe v. Wade and the others are almost as susceptible to white nationalist appeals as white men.
JMG
@liberal: Those agreements are treaties. Breaking them would both alienate other signees, and lead to retaliation. If all of a sudden a pair of socks at Wal-Mart costs $20 and the mill still isn’t reopening, trade suddenly looks better. Probably being held responsible for China’s workers seeing double-digit unemployment might not be such a hot idea either. Isolating ourselves from the international economy is pretty much impossible at this point. We can work to make it work better for more people, and should, but that’s about it.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: OK, but what I’m also getting at is that I have a hunch that _even the people voting for Republicans_ would freely admit that the Republicans haven’t done anything for them. It’s not transactional, it’s entirely symbolic. And the symbolic goodie is that you get to watch liberals squirm.
trollhattan
@NoraLenderbee:
Actual rust britches held up by rust belts–could work.
I’m ramping up my coal-fired lead smelter come January–plenty of car batteries need recycling around here.
geg6
@dlm:
Those steel jobs haven’t been here since the Reagan administration. I don’t know how the fuck they believe this bullshit. But they do.
Gin & Tonic
@liberal: Yup, the Bonwit Teller building, site of Trump Tower. They were very likely illegals, he paid them shit with no benefits, and had them destroy iconic sculptures that the Metropolitan Museum had asked be preserved. Trump said they had no value and had the Poles break them up.
FlipYrWhig
@JMG: I’ve also been wondering about the overlap between “people who profess outrage at trade deals” and “people who are proud to shop at Wal-Mart.” Lots of shared space on that Venn diagram.
Iowa Old Lady
So we’ll get to see what heightening the contradictions looks like.
Mnemosyne
@Betty Cracker:
My asshole cousin in WI has started posting abortion memes, so, yep.
Ruviana
@Cain: I know Richard Mayhew decided to take some time, and boy do I get that but, and I’m really just tossing this out there, and I haven’t read through the thread yet, how does one roll back ACA? It’s big and complex and has lots of moving parts. What happens? I really am curious.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: @Mnemosyne: not even anecdata, but I feel like I heard a lot more Trump voters mention the USSC than Clinton. Speaking of Venn diagrams, as Flip was, I’d like to see one on people mad about CU (Not Timid) who voted for Trump.
Betty Cracker
@negative 1: Well, there are different ways to look at “tribal” politics. If you’re in a vulnerable or marginalized group, you tend to look for folks who will have your back or at least not actively seek to destroy and disenfranchise you, particularly if another “tribe” has had the knives out for you for centuries.
ellie
@Patricia Kayden: Behold! The Invaka Voter:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/meet-the-ivanka-voter?utm_term=.nd434n67W5#.vspPbWmQEZ
Miss Bianca
@RareSanity: What makes you think we aren’t “interested” in it? And what makes you think the answer isn’t staring you in the face? With white bigots, whiteness is going to trump everything. These white women are voting White First, Women Nowhere.
JPL
@Mnemosyne: A neighbor’s number one issue is abortion. She voted for Hillary.
She actually understands that pro-life should work after birth also.
I firmly believe that we are more pro-life than most evangelicals..
The idea that once you are born, you need to pull up your boot straps is ridiculous
Jim, Foolish Literalist
sadly, this was predictable by anyone who’s followed the Village.
The Iraq War is now a footnote in our national political discourse.
Kay
@Iowa Old Lady:
Oh, there were a specific list of promises. Trump made many, many promises.
They’re already dropping “lock her up” because it was utter and complete bullshit. Next to go will be The Wall. After that “bringing manufacturing jobs back” will drop off the agenda.
The tax cuts for rich people will go in immediately though. Job One.
Mike in Pasadena
@Roger Moore: california’S power crisis was not created by governor Davis. First, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) set it in motion with a series of decisions about what they saw as the future of electric energy in the U.S. Then a majority of the commissioners on the California Public Utlities Commission (CPUC) ordered the regulated electric utilities to create a bullshit “stakeholder” process to develop a proposal to be filed at FERC. After two years of filings at FERC by hundreds of parties and dozens of decisions issued by FERC and the CPUC, the Independent System Operator and also an ill-fated Power Exchange started operations. The governor had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. However, he failed to use his magic penis to fix everything when ENRON, NRG, and many other out of state crooks blew up the market. Davis was a convenient bystander to scapegoat and besides, we got to elect a big movie star for our governor! Yippee. To my everlasting regret, I was a utility lawyer who helped create the mess. I watched as many good men who tried to stop the train wreck before it was created were fired, crushed, or demoted. I knew ashe we wrote tariffs for the ISO and PX that we were setting a disaster in motion, but I tried to fix it rather than fight it outright or resign. I have the grey hair and wrinkles to prove all of it.
Tazj
@Betty Cracker: This is my guess also based on family members that are evangelicals. Overturning Roe v Wade is the most important issue to them. They also hate gay marriage and feel Christians are being persecuted. They understand the importance of appointments to the Supreme Court. So what if Donald Trump uses “locker room” talk? Sometimes God uses imperfect men as per Michelle Bachmann. I know these people, they vote as if their lives depend upon it.
Some other white women I know just want their taxes cut and services cut to lazy people. They’ll vote for anyone who’ll get that done.
dogwood
@liberal:
I think it probably matters just as much what voters feel as what they think.
Davebo
Over at LGM they’ve gone from blaming the media to now blaming the electoral college.
It’s almost as if they can’t grasp the fact that a shit load of Americans preferred Trump over Clinton.
Kay
The Trumpsters basically fell for “free stuff”. He told them they can have everything they want and no one has to pay for any of it.
I suppose Democrats COULD do that…except it’s a lie.
Peale
@Kay: Well you know, once you give white people free stuff, they’ll just vote for you blindly. I’m surprised there weren’t Trump Phones and Coupons for Nikes.
Major Major Major Major
@Davebo: I got chewed out on Facebook for posting something about how we should focus on blaming the people who voted for Trump. Apparently I was supposed to be blaming the Democratic party.
MarySNJ
@gogol’s wife:
I agree. I doubt they’ll do anything more to Hillary. I think the point of all this e-mail crap, the hearings after hearings, threats of prosecution etc, was strictly politics. They wanted to neutralize her as a political threat and they succeeded. Well actually, the Media wanted a horse race and are partly to blame for aiding and abetting the impression that this was a big deal, but those making threats in Congress know there´s nothing to pursue. Hell, one of the Congressmen even bragged on video that the Benghazi hearing was about bringing down Hillary’s approval ratings. They won’t care about the Clinton Foundation either now that she’s lost. Now, that said, I think Guiliani is just petty enough to want to get even because she beat him in the Senate race, but that would run a risk of making him look vindictive when people are expecting leadership.
My biggest concern now is the apparent schism in the FBI, those aligned with Guiliani and Trump and those who are trying to remain neutral. Will they harrass the young woman who sued Trump for raping her? Will the other women he abused feel threatened? I can see Trump getting his cronies there to “investigate” those women who have already dealt with being abused by Trujmp.
Archon
@Kay:
I think Trump might be in a position where he has to build something on the southern border, even if it’s bullshit. That was basically the centerpiece of his campaign.
Once he’s told that all his other plans (like deportation or breaking out of our trade deals) will cause a major recession he’ll drop those.
Hal
@Betty Cracker: My evangelical former friend/coworker basically said that was why he was voting Trump. Actually did not think either candidate was qualified, but scotus. That was it.
What’s amazing about this logic is that the Supreme Court has had several conservative appointments and yes, abortion rights have suffered, but until now no death blow because past presidents have had some impetus to nominate legitimate justices with some sense of precedent. Trump has no such compunction, unless someone pulls him aside and tries to talk legacy.
Kay
I myself am looking forward to Ivanka selling her shoes out of the White House. This is big for her. Lots of merchandising and branding opportunities.
guachi
@Davebo: The electoral college is, ultimately, to blame. Fewer votes, still wins is a sign of a broken electoral system.
Twice in five years is a sign of sickness.
NW Phil
@dlm:
Yep. We can dig coal so much cheaper from our open pit mines in the west.
Of course who needs it anyway? The price for LED lighting has dropped so low it’s replacing CFLs in the stores (bulbs last longer too). Natural gas is cheap. Solar cells are cheap. Battery technology is rapidly improving for storage.
Peale
@Kay: How about the Hugest Military In History. And No one will ever disrespect us again. And our allies will pay for our protection.
catclub
@Davebo:
But not an actual majority of voters.
Archon
@Davebo:
I know Republicans will proceed as if they won 80 percent of the vote but we shouldn’t lose site of the fact that Clinton is on pace to win the popular vote.
Mnemosyne
@Davebo:
If you want to get technical about it, a few hundred thousand voters preferred Hillary, but Trump won the electoral college.
If you want to look at what gerrymandering the whole country looks like, look at the map from yesterday. They concentrated on winning enough states, not votes, and they used Voter ID and other voter suppression laws to do it.
catclub
@MarySNJ: I disagree. Hailing Hillary into court will make a marvelous distraction.
It encourages the chants of ‘lock her up’ to continue. It gets revenge. And if she is acquitted, then the system is rigged and he can complain more about that.
Happy to be wrong.
The Moar You Know
@Ruviana: We got an email from our insurance broker this morning. They are ready to dismantle it and are excited at the prospect – our CEO thinks our rates will go down. I pointed out to her that if the insurance companies thought their cash flow would go down they wouldn’t be nearly so excited about this. Of course, my credibility is shit anyway since I confidently predicted a Clinton win. Being the only lib here really sucks.
Davebo
@guachi: @catclub:
The campaign was run based on the electoral college. If it was a situation where the popular vote could seal the deal I guarantee you the campaign would have been run differently.
The point is, Trump won based on the rules in play. I recall many heckling Bernie supporters for whining about the rules a few months back.
Roger Moore
@liberal:
There aren’t enough working class people left to make a functional working class party in our system, not to mention that a lot of working class whites seem to despise working class minorities, which makes finding common cause challenging. I’m sure that’s the way the MOTU like it.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
If Hillary does go on trial, we will officially be a banana republic. Full stop.
Patricia Kayden
@Mnemosyne: Abortions decrease under Democrats.
The Moar You Know
@Archon: Most meaningless observation ever. Who will take the oath on Jan 20? Not Clinton.
waysel
@Kay: “The same lunatics he attracted to those rallies will turn on him when he doesn’t deliver. I’ll cheer.” They will not turn on him. All most of them really wanted was to be able to say “nigger” anywhere, any time, to end welfare for people they despise, and to end all abortions. They’ll be very happy. When they lose economically, the GOP will provide another culprit, the media will back the GOPs story, and so on.
Askew
@RK:
This is the story. People can rage all they want here but Hillary didn’t turn the base out. The exit polls show that there was lower Latino turnout than for Obama. Dems can’t win a campaign of lesser than two evils and based on fear. Hillary didn’t generate excitement or a reason to vote for her. There was no Hope. No Change You Can Believe In. Just a laundry list of campaign promises that meant nothing and a lot of talk about how awesome she was. And then she insulted millions of Americans by calling them deplorable. She ran as the Democratic Romney and lost.
Warren, Biden, or Sanders would have won this election.
Miss Bianca
@Davebo: Actually, no…Clinton won the popular vote So it’s not that more people voted for Trump than Clinton…so piling on the Electoral College is far from inapposite.
Van Buren
@guachi: At least some of that can be attributed to population drop.
Peale
@liberal: I think Social Security may be dead as a political winner for Dems, though. If we can’t get people motivated on our side to save it…I mean, millennials don’t want to hear about it as a reason to vote for anyone. I think we should just ditch it to be trendy and hip. I mean Obama almost cut it as part of the “Grand Bargain” so I can see why no one believes that it is a core program that Democrats believe in anyway.
Let’s be hip. Medicare vouchers are obviously the hip thing to do.
Mike J
Just got a phone call from the doctor. Says the new valve fits perfectly, and they’re going to start closing. Another hour and mom should be out of surgery.
frosty
@Mnemosyne:
I worked a PA polling place last night and asked the election judge about it because I was seeing some voters show their DL. In PA new voters and those with changes in registration had to show ID, same as it always was. And not necessarily a photo ID. A utility bill with the voter’s name and address as registered was all that was needed.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
That’s what I was saying before. Democrats who tried to pull that sort of thing would be pilloried, and they’d stammer and dither and the resulting video would be deemed to be the reason they lost the election. Trump answers “But how do you do it?” with “You do it,” and it’s just another wacky day on the campaign trail.
kindness
Big protests regarding the outcome of this election going on out here in Oakland. They told us to go home early. While it would be nice that they are concerned for their employee’s well being we all know they just don’t want the liability.
I asked if I could join the protests with a Kaiser banner and was told no. They don’t think I’m very funny. Go figure. (I meant it. I wasn’t trying to be funny at all)
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: I said this in the last thread and I’ll say it again with an addition: if I were the Clintons or the Obamas, I’d be out of the country by Thanksgiving with plans and the ability to not come back.
Davebo
All that said, as we naval gaze we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we ran a competent highly qualified candidate though perhaps with an unfortunate last name. She lost. It sucks.
That doesn’t mean we should change our views or goals for the country. Sometimes you lose and you can’t believe people chose the other side. It happens. Again, it doesn’t change what I want for the country or how I think those goals are best obtained. I’m not going to try to empathize with the other side and I really could care less about trying to understand their “concerns”. I’ll just keep working and hope to have better results next time.
Shalimar
@Mnemosyne: The Antichrist is supposed to fool good people. Does it really make sense that he will do this by pretending to be a peacemaker when he actually will destroy everything? It seems more likely that he will admit to being the perversity of every Christian value and Christians will vote him into office despite this for their own reasons.
For people who believe in pre-millennial dispensationalism (I’m agnostic, so I don’t), Trump is what they should be worried the Antichrist will be like. He admits his evil, and all the conservative Christians support him anyway.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Mike J: that’s good to hear
GrandJury
Not really in the mood but I may as well point out that I told everyone that the latinos would not show up because they never show up. Everyone disagreed with me.
I was hoping it wouldn’t matter though. She didn’t get African Americans to come out either so it probably would not have mattered.
Curious about people saying her African American numbers were down. Comparing to Obama is probably not fair since he was exceptionally good for turning them out for obvious reasons. What about pre-Obama?
RaflW
@GrandJury: The global economy is actually quite fragile, and while the ultra-short-timeframe Wall Streeters see profit in Pharma, oil & gas, and some other industries, we IMO cannot escape the impact of the coming retrenchments in world trade.
Plus, the GOP is gonna totally shit the bed on domestic fiscal matters. Mark my words, they are ignoramuses when it comes to econ. They think a gov’t bond default would be a good thing. They will be proven wrong. I’m not a gold bug, but I’d be holding an above average amt in cash in any retirement plans/nest eggs for a while.
Patricia Kayden
@liberal:
What would the Democratic Party have to do to be a “working class” party? It’s my understanding that Secretary Clinton wanted to increase the minimum wage, offer free university/college education to low income students, invest in HBCUs, bolster the ACA, raise taxes for corporations, etc. Democrats could do more but they’re certainly not hostile towards so-called working class Americans — especially when compared to the Republican Party.
Cacti
@Mnemosyne:
I have a feeling Pence will talk them out of that one, or at least will try.
But yeah, if they try to prosecute Hillary, Trump may as well start appearing in public with epaulettes and a chest full of medals.
kindness
@Peale: – Well that’s because up till now no one has actually lost any Social Security benefits. Well, outside of I have to wait till I’m 67 to collect 100%. Just wait till Trump’s program kicks in and kicks them in the teeth. They’ll hate Democrats but will vote for them anyhow. See, those folk don’t really care about being consistent.
Archon
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t think it’s meaningless in the sense that’s its not like 2004, where liberals genuinely wondered if there was some permanent Republican majority on the horizon. Most of us are in shock but I don’t think anyone is thinking that the situation is hopeless.
Roger Moore
@negative 1:
Tough luck, because tribal politics will continue to exist no matter how you feel about them. The essence of the Republican party is white tribal politics, and that’s going to continue as long as non-whites demand to be included in the political process. Unilateral disarmament isn’t going to work as a way of dealing with it.
D. Mason
@GrandJury: Is it possible that her smearing him during the ’08 primary had anything to do with People’s view of her?
Felonius Monk
@Kay:Apparently some of them aren’t her shoes:
(Source)
Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess.
FlipYrWhig
@Askew:
Why just imagine if Donald Trump had insulted millions of Americans!
Patricia Kayden
@Mike J: Good to hear.
Davebo
@Miss Bianca: I never claimed that Trump won more votes. But Hillary isn’t going to be sworn in in January.
That said, +1 for the use of inapposite.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mike J: Thank you for sharing relatively good news.
SatanicPanic
@Patricia Kayden: not a white working class party anyway.
RaflW
@The Moar You Know: They know how destabilizing that would be. It would set off a panic. Seriously.
I really believe Barack and Hillz love this country and would by no means cut and run like that. Now, that said, I’d encourage Sasha and Malia to think about going to school in, say, Hawaii. They’d still be in the US, but pretty far from most thugs.
GrandJury
@D. Mason: Oh please. People forget about pu$$gate in 2 weeks. You think something that happened in 2008 was a factor? Unless of course the media screams about it 3 times a day like the friggin emails. I don’t think that was as much of a factor either.
There were a lot of reasons. Trying to say that it was this or that is pointless.
Served
Making America Great already.
Peale
Trump as Dictator Proposition Bets:
*Date that Trump’s picture first appears on “Forever” Stamps: 6.1.18
*Date “Petition” to replace “Teddy Roosevelt” with Trump on Mt. Rushmore: 11.1.19
*Date Trump Announces that his successor is Ivanka will be taking over after his 82nd birthday: 3.1.2023
Overs, unders?
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
That’s how you know their “concern” about abortion is fake. They just want to punish women for getting pregnant.
A friend’s sister is pro-life and pretty devoutly Catholic, so she works in a shelter for pregnant homeless women that lets them stay until they get on their feet. That’s someone who’s actually “pro-life.”
And, yes, she voted for Hillary in MI.
FlipYrWhig
@Patricia Kayden:
It seems to be all about signaling. Look messier, maybe? :P
Patricia Kayden
@Askew: Many of Trump’s supporters were deplorable. There was nothing wrong about Secretary Clinton pointing out that fact.
Shalimar
@Archon: I am actually a little hopeful long-term. Republicans were going to elect another president at some point. This one is disastrous. He will damage the country over the next 4 years, but half the country still opposes him. As long as he isn’t allowed to cancel elections in 2020 and declare himself emergency president-for-life, we will move on. And his mismanagement could kill Republican party credibility once and for all since he is going to implement Republican ideas unchecked and those ideas are economically horrible for 99% of the country.
Mike in Pasadena
@RareSanity: Excellent point. Trump’s election had nothing to do with white voters who cast ballots for him. He was elected only because only most black people voted for Hillary. She did not get every single black vote.
NW Phil
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: re: Arnold Schwarzenegger
and that went so well for the GOP –
Only the 2 Democrats on the ballot for Senator
House has 38 Democrats to 13 Republicans (last total I could find)
No sign of Republicans in the CA executive offices
Democrats still rule the state legislature
seaboogie
@Mike J: Yay for your mom (and you!) thank you for sharing your good news today.
My own heart is so full of sadness. I’ve understood for some several weeks that this election was going to take the measure of the racism, misogyny and fear in this country, and clearly I – along with so many others – lacked the imagination and understanding to see how pervasive it is. At least we now have a bright (albeit harsh) sunlight on the situation that we are dealing with.
So as I sit with deepened understanding and the attendant grief, I will search out each bit of good that I can find, and the great news about your mother is a wonderful start in that process.
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
The broker just didn’t bother to mention that the quality of your coverage will go down even faster.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Served: don’t worry. those layoffs will never happen. Trump will yell and them and threaten a 35% tariff just like he promised.
D. Mason
@Askew: I’m sure there are a pile of Democrat Senators, Congressfolk, Governors, and Retired military that most people have never heard of who could have beaten Trump. Hell, you might have had a higher voter turnout than Hillary but the DNC didn’t hand pick any of them, or you, they picked Hillary Clinton.
FlipYrWhig
@Shalimar: As many people have said, Rick Scott, Sam Brownback, and Scott Walker have all been economically horrible, and have all been reelected. Horror doesn’t seem to kill credibility over there.
negative 1
@Betty Cracker: What are the different ways to look at it? Tribal politics means all [group] votes for this person because they care about your group only. If so, why wouldn’t every white person vote trump? He explicitly appealed to them, after all. I guess I’m the sucker for voting for Hillary.
From where I sit all you’re encouraging is ‘just wait until [this group] is in power, then we’ll oppress [that group]’. An eye for an eye leaves…
FlipYrWhig
@D. Mason: I just can’t believe the DNC didn’t let us vote in 50+ primaries and caucuses like the last time.
liberal
@Shalimar:
Some shit is completely irreversible, though, absent a bloody revolution.
For example, suppose they give a ton of Federal land (most of which isn’t national parks) to the states. That’s never coming back.
negative 1
@Roger Moore: But I’m white and I vote Democratic. Am I stupid for doing so?
ET
It takes money to make money – so the rich (in this case the people/companies who are investing) will always figure out a way to make money in any situation. Which is of course what you know whose voters hate but……
Patricia Kayden
@Gin & Tonic: Oklahoma has engaged in so much fracking that it has caused earthquakes. Fracking doesn’t have to make sense for Rightwingers.
liberal
@Patricia Kayden: How about not supporting free trade agreements?
Certainly there are posters here at BJ who think it’s “selfish” to value an American job over a Chinese job (cacti, Martin).
liberal
@Patricia Kayden: Just saying they’re not a working class party. A working class party would never select someone who as president signed NAFTA.
Doesn’t mean that they aren’t better for the WC than the Republicans. Doesn’t mean that their interests never overlap with those of the WC. Just means that they’re not a WC party.
waysel
@RareSanity: y
liberal
@Cacti: I think prosecuting Hillary is very unlikely. Why bother with that when they get to do other, bigger things, like gut the federal government?
Kay
@Felonius Monk:
Of course she ripped someone off. That’s how the Trump Family make money.
That’s good, right? Americans think so. They admire thieves. They’re “winners”.
liberal
@Shalimar: I completely disagree. While I think a show trial of HRC is very unlikely, it’s much more likely than a show trial of Obama.
Patricia Kayden
@negative 1:
That’s what you got from Betty Cracker’s comments? Really?
Mnemosyne
@Askew:
Scroll up. Both MI and WI passed voter suppression laws after 2012.
It’s no mystery why minority turnout was down. It was deliberate and done with malice aforethought after the last election.
Davebo
@liberal:
If that’s how you feel you should be ecstatic today. 35% Tarriffs here we come! What could possibly go wrong eh?
Cacti
@liberal:
Proof please.
It’s not nice to lie.
Shalimar
@FlipYrWhig: True, but I go back to that stock market comparison over the last 85 years between Republican presidents and Democratic presidents. We were getting close to a recession anyway just by virtue of cyclical economies. Trump will make that far worse and the stock market is going to suffer greatly under his leadership.
If I were the Democrat in 2020, that is the one ad I would focus all my efforts on: This is what your retirement account would look like for the last 90 years under Republican presidents, this 10 times better number is what it would look like under Democratic presidents. Don’t vote Republican, their economic ideas do not work.
Patricia Kayden
@liberal: Secretary Clinton was explicit about not supporting the TPP. Not sure why you are accusing her of supporting free trade agreements. Her husband signed NAFTA but she is not responsible for his actions.
Cacti
@liberal:
Because Trump is a very thin-skinned and vengeful person, and the one doesn’t really get in the way of the other with full control of all 3 branches of government.
liberal
@dogwood: Different word, same idea.
oldgold
Clinton was supposed to have a great GOV. And, we were told there was massive and yesterday their were long lines. BS!
A main driver in this loss was poor Democratic turnout. Hell, Trump received more than a million fewer votes than Romney and roughly the same as Kerry.
For example, look at Wisconsin which the Dems lost by 27,000.
2012 2016 Difference
Dem 1.62 Million 1.38 Million – 240,000
GOP 1.407 Million 1.403 Million -4,000
liberal
@Patricia Kayden: I’m pretty sure her position on TPP was a flip-flop.
More to the point, Obama is fully in favor of it.
Davebo
@liberal:
Right now the Peso is worth 1 US nickel. It doesn’t take NAFTA to make that appealing to manufacturers and it was the same situation back in the 1990’s when NAFTA was enacted.
In other words, it wasn’t a trade deal that caused the flight of US manufacturing jobs.
liberal
@oldgold: You can lead a horse to water…
Cacti
@oldgold:
Yep, the Clinton turnout machine was inferior to Obama’s in every way.
Archon
@Shalimar:
If economic comparison arguments worked with voters the Republican party wouldn’t exist right now.
liberal
@Davebo: Yes. Goods just magically cross the border, somehow, and the government has no say in that. Not to mention all the other structures created by these trade deals, which would just appear out of thin air in the absense of government.
gene108
@Shalimar:
People aren’t voting Republican because of their economic agenda. Trump laid that lie bare. Trump was all over the place on economic stuff and a lot of it was in direct opposition to traditional Republican dogma about free trade.
But economic issues is what Democrats have because they sure are not going to win on ginning up white racial resentment.
Mnemosyne
@Mike in Pasadena:
It’s no mystery why minority voters didn’t turn up in the same numbers as 2012: MI, WI and PA all passed restrictive voter ID laws.
It’s only white dudebros desperately looking for someone — anyone! — else to blame for Trump’s victory who think it’s a mystery.
You know who’s to blame for Trump winning? Racist white voters. And I say that as a white person.
liberal
@Cacti: Yes, it’s a judgement call. By the same token, Trump could launch an all-out nuclear holocaust the day after he’s inaugurated, if the brass goes along and the guys in the silos turn those keys.
I’m just saying that, in my humble estimation, it ain’t gonna happen. But there’s no proof of that, of course.
Miss Bianca
@D. Mason: Name one. That “you’ve never heard of”. Name one. Besides the guys who ran in the primary and didn’t win. Since you know so much.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@liberal:
Real life is never that simple. Take my job – it’s a medical device company with both American and Taiwanese investors, it designs the stuff in the US, does the product introduction in the US, makes it in China, does the repair work here in the US. So basically we’re all interdependent on each other.
JMG
@Cacti: A show trial would not be in Trump’s best interests, which doesn’t mean he wouldn’t do it. It would enrage Democrats and actually give the Villagers conniptions. It would make his humiliated opponent the object of widespread sympathy. Above all, he might not get a conviction. The former director of the FBI who headed the original investigation would be a pretty strong defense witness. Judges may be ideological, but letting Trump pick the venue and jury would be a bridge too far. Trial would be in DC, scene of the alleged crime.
liberal
@Mnemosyne: None of us taking an opposite view is claiming that vote suppression played no role. We’re claiming it can’t explain the numbers we’re seeing (ie, about 5 million votes less than 2012).
Of course, you could make the argument that there is a state (NC? I haven’t looked at state-by-state numbers) where it was enough to make a difference in the electoral college vote. I’m just saying that it doesn’t explain the decrease in popular vote from 2012 to 2016.
SenyorDave
@MarySNJ: I can see Trump getting his cronies there to “investigate” those women who have already dealt with being abused by Trujmp.
Can’t see that. He might get caught, and the media might actually cover something now taht he’s president elect. I’d like to see someone pull together an article enumerating his sexual degeneracy. How about interviewing the Miss Teen USA contestant who said he strolled around backstage while the candidates were changing (some of whom were 15 years old)?
Mnemosyne
@oldgold:
VOTER ID LAWS.
That’s what happened.
Those people didn’t fail to turn out. They were blocked from voting.
PIGL
@OzarkHillbilly: we can talk all we want. We don’t have the 24/7 media foghorn, so talk will go nowhere. Things are only bad of Democrats do them. The Republicans know what works, and doing gets them 100% victory. What exactly will stop them?
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
Look at the fucking link I posted earlier in the thread. It’s posited that it suppressed at least 5 percent of the vote in Wisconsin.
Again: minority voters didn’t “fail” to turn out. They were blocked. And now some whiners are asking why Black voters “failed” to show up instead of asking why White voters voted for a white supremacist.
seaboogie
Moving on to practical matters, I remember when Obama was first elected, and being excited to see who he picked for his cabinet, given the colossal mess the economy was in (remember that?).
It’s going to be very interesting to see who Trump comes up with. Seems like we were joking about this a couple days ago, and it is now our new reality. He has no friends, but he does repay the loyalty of his sycophants – for a while, at least. Wonder who all those “best people” are going to be…
BlueDWarrior
@PIGL: Themselves, mostly. Remember the permanent Republican Majority in 2004… yeah.
But it’s going to take some doing on our part and I would not be surprised if we end up seeing a purge of varying extents in the DNC home office in the next couple of months. The next year, at least, for the National and State committees are going to be absolutely brutal in terms of those chair fights.
Peale
@oldgold: I will put it this way. It is possible that they “hit their numbers” but the numbers were set too low. Its also possible that the GOTV effort prevented an even bigger disaster. Or, that because polls said “Clinton by 7 in Wisconsin” they moved their GOTV effort to North Carolina instead. That’s what polls are supposed to do – help you allocate resources effectively. She had a lot of money, but not THAT much money.
But that is kind of why I’m a bit more optimistic than I was in 2004. I don’t think we have to talk about shedding anyone from the party. Yes, change the face and the leadership (the chair of the party should never be a campaign issue). But its not like 2004 where everyone was like “maybe we need to throw out the gays. The anti-gay vote is killing us.”
The Republicans did not actually blow us out in the battleground states. We lost most of them, but they now point to the fact that those are states that may require additional effort. Trump actual didn’t ignite a groundswell of New Republican voters to vote against Clinton. The GOP still has the problem of the “Missing” white voters. Whites only voted for him 1% more than the last election. They have been hitting 60million votes give or take a few for the past four elections. We need to find out who our “missing voters” actually were (and I’m sure they are studying this right now). We’ve lost 10 million voters since 2008, but its not like they are voting 3rd party or moving over to republicans. Otherwise, we would be down to California and maybe New York and a handful of counties here and there. It’s not the worst problem to have, either. Its not like Trump is suddenly going to be likeable to Dem Leaning voters.
Davebo
@liberal:
No. Ironically they are meticulously tracked by none other than the US Census bureau. For imports Entry Manifests are filed, for exports SED’s are filed. Ask a customs broker, it’s really not that complicated.
What you seem to want is more restrictions on imports which I suppose is all well and good in a vacuum but we export a lot of shit and the rest of the world will be paying attention.
My point was that NAFTA is blamed for job losses in America by demagogues, most of whom damn well know better but don’t care because it plays well with certain rubes. A lot of them just elected Donald Trump president.
SiubhanDuinne
One small thing to cheer: Kelly Ayotte has just conceded in her bid for re-election, so we have one more Dem pickup in the Senate.
Archon
@Mnemosyne: Liberals are constantly caught off guard by the right’s Nietzschean view of politics. It’s not unique to liberals in America though.
Betty Cracker
@negative 1: I said nothing of the sort.
Shalimar
@Mnemosyne: Beyond just those states and laws, Florida in 2011 under Scott made it almost impossible for former felons to get their voting rights restored. Over 10% of the adult population in Florida can’t vote for this reason, most of them minorities. That is a deciding factor in a state Trump won by a point.
Peale
@SiubhanDuinne: YAY!!!!!!
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: My dudebro friends are on Facebook right now sharing a Thomas Frank op-ed blaming liberals for a Trump victory.
Peale
@Major Major Major Major: Let’s let him select our next candidate then.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s a Big Biden deal–yay for a bright spot.
Ruviana
@CarolDuhart2: And geg6 too, what do the people say? I live in the so-called southern tier so people here are similar but I’m trying to figure out how they understand the return of these mythical jobs. Bruce Springsteen sang My Hometown in 1984; Billy Joel sang Allentown in 1982. This isn’t something new. I’m trying to figure out how they imagine that such things (coal mining, steel mills) will come back other than through magic. Because if we want to change the narrative it’s these kinds of questions we need to ask and understand.
Baud
I’m glad the stock market didn’t crash.
@SiubhanDuinne: Needed good news.
@Major Major Major Major: We’re not taking responsibility for other voters’ decision.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
One of them must have been in the previous thread: because we didn’t court him and kiss his ass, we forced — forced! — him to stay home yesterday. Forced!
BlueDWarrior
@Ruviana: Perhaps the only thing that can break the spell is to have someone explicitly run on doing it and fail. Otherwise I have no idea how you get around it.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: Apparently that’s awful neoliberal sellout banker-tool of us.
@Peale: I believe he tried this time ’round.
Aleta
@SiubhanDuinne: that’s big. thx for glad news.
Cat48
Trump promised the oldsters several years times he wouldn’t do anything to their Social Security or Medicare. That doesn’t mean he won’t raise the eligibility age on both programs and cut whatever for future recipients.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Will take that silver lining, where it appears.
We retained Harry Reid’s seat in Nevada too. (That will be old news to you from last night.) Welcome, Catherine Cortez Masto. First Latina US Senator.
I am still gutted by the results.
At grocery store, looking at other customers and wondering who was a “pod person”, although this is Raleigh/Wake County and a spot of cheery dark blue.
Fresh thread?
lahke
Late to the thread, as usual, so may have missed seeing this discussed. What happens to the fraud case against Trump U?
Aleta
@Mike J: Best wishes to your Mom.
Elizabelle
@Mike J: Wonderful news. Wishing your mom a speedy and complete recovery.
Patricia Kayden
@SiubhanDuinne: Great news, indeed!! Cannot stand Ayotte. If only Issa could have gone too. Oh well.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Couldn’t care less.
BlueDWarrior
@Cat48: To be honest, that is the best we can hope for regarding those programs, since it’d be a legislative edit that can be undone by a future Democratic Congress.
JMG
@lahke: Supposed to go to trial in December. Another postponement likely, I guess. Totally in Trump’s interest to settle. Now that’s he’s Pres-elect, money won’t be a problem. The grifters know the Treasury’s credit is good.
dlm
@Ruviana: Religion is based on magical thinking and look how many believe that.
Cacti
@lahke:
The first Clinton Presidency settled for us whether the powers of the Presidency protect one from litigation against conduct prior to holding the office:
They don’t.
That suit only goes away if the plaintiffs drop it.
Major Major Major Major
@Baud: Just trying to complain, man.
Patricia Kayden
@seaboogie: I read on Little Green Footballs that Trump is considering Palin as Secretary of the Interior. I guess as many have said that Guiliani will be our next Attorney General or Secretary of Department of Homeland Security. Oh joy.
JMG
@Elizabelle: I’m in Massachusetts. I know how you feel. I look at strangers and neighbors and wonder, “are they one? My unknown secret enemies who hate me?” Could make me a bit paranoid, but the feeling will pass.
Fair Economist
@Archon:
I’m definitely not worried about a genuine Republican majority. In a few years, these same rural whites will be even worse off than they are today, thoroughly disillusioned, and they won’t turn out to vote.
I do worry about voter suppression and manipulation methods being used. Voter ID alone can undo the effect of years of demographic change. If they’re willing to be blatant enough, they can overcome almost any demographic change just by limiting the available voting machines. There’s also the possibility of an outright coup – refusing to yield power. So there still are things to worry about, even if being at the wrong end of a permanent majority isn’t one of them.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
right now, the meme is a great white wave ushered in Trump, but as others point out, he got less votes than Mittens.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
Is he blaming totebaggers or the actual left.
Pretty much seems like the totebaggers stayed home.
BlueDWarrior
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: The wave it seems was more carrying the Democrats away from shore in a low tide than carrying Republicans to shore in a high tide.
LongHairedWeirdo
Yeah, and hey, you were all saying Donald Trump could launch a nuclear war. Well, HAS HE? No!
So, you see, the markets are fine, no nuclear wars; see, you were all a bunch of worry warts!
Patricia Kayden
@SenyorDave: Trump himself is on record bragging about ogling teenaged beauty pageant contestants.
Renie
@Elizabelle: I thought it was just me doing that today. I was out for several hours running errands in my NYS republican area and found myself looking at other white people wondering, is that person a racist trump supporter? I never thought stuff like that before, found it very odd. It was like an Us vs Them mentality was taking over.
Corner Stone
I get the feeling we’re about to see four new threads in 11 minutes.
SIA
@SiubhanDuinne: Wow well I’m very glad about that. I wanted Ms Ayotte gone.
OTH as all the MOTUs gleefully clap their hands over rising healthcare stocks, I’m pretty terrified that my health insurance will soon be gone. Unreal. Surreal. HALP
Bobby D
@The Moar You Know: Try working for the military. I’ve got about 3 people, total, on the base I can commiserate with, the rest are stoked that the orange menace won. They might be singing a different tune when they get deployed to Tehran though.
Patricia Kayden
@JMG: Massachusetts voted for Secretary Clinton. Why would you be looking at anyone and questioning if they were one of Trump’s supporters? I live in Maryland and am super happy that we overwhelmingly went for Secretary Clinton. If I lived in a state which voted for Trump, I’d be very uncomfortable today.
JPL
@Patricia Kayden: NAFTA was passed under the poppy Bush administration. Clinton actually improved it. This is another MSM lie. If Clinton had just let it stand as is, his fingerprints would not be on it.
debit
@Patricia Kayden: I seriously LOLed at that. It shouldn’t be funny, but the idea of these idiots running the country into the ground is making me laugh.
ETA: Sorry, it’s not funny. It’s just the only reaction I can have right now, other than dismay and sadness.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
Honestly, I remember a sense of relief when I showed up at the place to cast my vote in the primary. There was a Don Knotts looking guy at the door and he told me, “Aw, don’t worry about this one, friend. The DNC has it covered *sniff*”.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Ruviana:
My parents left Pittsburg in the 1960s because the mill jobs were going away. I have relatives who’ve spent the last 40-50 years waiting for those jobs to come back, any day now. And it’s not like those mill jobs were all that good – 12 hour days with with your shift changing every two weeks.
Baud
@JPL: I don’t think so. NAFTA was negotiated under Bush, renegotiated and enacted under Clinton. Who ran and won on it, by the way.
debit
@SIA: Ditto on losing my insurance. I guess this will be a question for Mayhew: If I’m in a Blue state with its own exchange, can the feds still gut it?
Major Major Major Major
@Corner Stone: Me too.
C. Isaac
Ayotte just conceded. Hassan is now a US Senator.
Tiny, miniscule bright spot.
JMG
@debit: Nobody knows, because the Republicans haven’t even begun to address the issue. They didn’t think Trump was going to win either. Ryan said on the radio two days ago Obamacare was here to stay if Clinton won. This is a party that runs against not just government, but governing, and now they have to do it.
Corner Stone
I have left the “coming to despise” phase and flat out have a hate-on for Kasie Hunt now.
D58826
Well that didn’t take long. One of the never Trumpers is now blaming – drum roll please – Obama for giving us Trump. Never mind that the never trumpers were unable to come up with a plan to stop him and this guy has spent the past year accusing Hillary of treason over the e-mails. Maybe if he had spent more tim,e on the never Trump campaign………….
One thing that I have never understood is why after the blowout in 2010 more time and effort wasn’t spent rebuilding the farm system at the state and local levels. There seemed to be a faith in the demographics would always deliver the WH and maybe in time an occasional Congressional majority.
Kay
Email from one of my sisters:
Oh, God. I’m just so sorry.
debbie
@JPL:
No, the real issue is that the treaties did not kill jobs. The companies trying for more profits moved the jobs overseas, not smart or forward-thinking enough to consider that third world countries might be enterprising enough to just do it themselves. The treaties tried to make some order out of yet another chaotic situation caused by American greed.
Baud
@Kay: That’s been happening everywhere. I myself could barely do anything today.
goblue72
@debit: A state could certainly run an exchange as a place to purchase individual policies – but without the Federal subsidies and other parts of Obamacare (mandatory issue, bar against pre-existing condition limitations, etc), they will be almost completely useless.
Eliminating Obamacare also means eliminating the eligibility increase to Medicaid that occurred as part of the ACA. Watch uninsurance rates skyrocket back to levels higher than pre-ACA.
There’s not way to spin this. Trump winning combined with Democratic fecklessness in taking back Congress is going to result in a really bad 4 years.
seaboogie
@Renie:
I hear you. As I mentioned in previous comments, the defining moment of watching coverage during this election was filmed outside a Trump rally. Clinton protesters were carrying “Love trumps hate” signs, and a pro-Trumper was screaming “Hate Will Win! Hate Will Win!” And it did.
For me, it is important not to hate or over-otherize the Trump people, because that is just a different side of their same coin. For meaningful change to happen, there needs to be a dialogue, and that includes listening on this end too. Otherwise defensiveness reigns, and nothing changes. I am not angry today, but deeply, deeply sad.
C. Isaac
@Baud:
I work at a software company as technical services.
Half our creative design dept. called out sick today.
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: To be honest, I’m not all that surprised that Trump got that many votes from women. OT, but i read Katherine Switzer’s autobiography (she’s the first woman who signed up for the Boston Marathon when it was all male and almost got thrown out when the race director spotted her on the course) and she said when she started distance running men were the most supportive and women were the most hostile.
Corner Stone
@JMG:
They loved voting to repeal Obamacare because they knew it would gin up their morons and get vetoed by Obama. I seriously doubt they are capable of coming up with the “replace” part of repeal and replace. And if they just vote to repeal…I think even their idiot fucking moron voters may eventually take notice.
Baud
@C. Isaac: I would have too if I could have.
seaboogie
@seaboogie: the defining moment *for me*. Apparently I do not have permission to edit my own comment, per FYWP.
Elizabelle
@Renie: and you know others are looking at us and wondering: white. Is she a Trumpster?
PsiFighter37
@Baud: I was useless at work. I did the interviews that I had signed up to do, but otherwise was virtually worthless. I had to turn the volume off when Obama was speaking because I couldn’t take the optimism. People are going to visit his presidential library and think it’s an alternate reality, because the GOP is going to take an ax to every single thing he ever did.
goblue72
@Lizzy L: FBI basically did that with the Black Panther Party. Why would President Fuckstain be any different?
Cacti
@Kay:
America voted for its oldest founding value.
Visceral hatred of non-white people.
debbie
On the bright side, looking at my family’s posts on FB, my holidays are wide open and will be the least expensive of my life.
Going forward, I am going to try to keep Tim Kaine’s Faulkner quote in mind: “They killed us, but they ain’t whupped us yet.”
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@JMG: Worth noting if the GOP lets their freak flag run and shuts it all down, that’s it a lot of sweet, sweet money those insurance companies aren’t going to get. I am sort of betting the GOP will ether waffel a lot and end up doing nothing or just change the name from “Obama care” to “Affordable Health Care Act”
JPL
@Baud: Thanks for the correction, but I knew it was poppy who started it.
I am so paralyzed with fear, I don’t know what to do.
barbecue swinger
And so it begins: Trump chooses Myron Ebell, climate change denier, to head EPA transition team:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-picks-top-climate-skeptic-to-lead-epa-transition/
debit
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: I really don’t think they can waffle and do nothing. People come into my office all the time screaming about the mandatory insurance. They’re going to expect that to be the first thing that’s repealed.
Corner Stone
@debbie: I am considering cancelling Thanksgiving and Christmas based on one unfortunate relative.
goblue72
@Corner Stone: Bwahahahahahahahaaha.
They’re gonna repeal Obamacare and they won’t replace it with anything absent a useless fig leaf like some new and equally useless version of an HSA. And maybe they’ll let people buy insurance over state lines, for a complete race to the regulatory bottom like we have with credit cards.
A lot of working poor people will lose Medicaid, but so many of them are brown, the GOP won’t care. Most of the reduction in the uninsurance rate was from Medicaid expansion. And the Exchanges are providing coverage for such a small slice of the population, they won’t give a shit.
debit
@Corner Stone: You can come to my house. You can all come to my house.
Major Major Major Major
@debbie: let’s book a balloon-juice cruise!
ETA: @debit: or go hang out with Walter!
Patricia Kayden
@ellie: That was an infuriating read. Just because he has a beautiful, articulate daughter, that in no way qualifies Trump to be President. These women have just elected a misogynist and they and their daughters will pay the price for that.
JPL
@debbie: Actually I know that. Manufacturing in our country has increased, but it’s jobs that robots can do.
Part of me hopes that Trump puts a tariff on China imports, just to punish the assholes that voted for him.
Corner Stone
@goblue72: I guess we will see, fuckface.
goblue72
@Corner Stone: Sucks that you were so, so, so very wrong. So very wrong.
SatanicPanic
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: I feel like this is wishful thinking. They’re all terrified of getting primaried. I don’t see how they explain how they could pass 45+ repeal bills during the last 6 years but not pass one now.
debbie
@JPL:
I wasn’t saying you didn’t know. I was just venting. I wish just once we could have an election where people were fully informed.
I am literally sick to my stomach.
seaboogie
@Betty Cracker:
I’m probably going to start a flame war with this, but so be it. It feels to me like there is a not insignificant portion of white women, primarily hetero ones in their fertile years, who kowtow to men and their views. Be that on the right or on the super-left or Libertarian fronts. Been in a few heated twitter battles with the latter during this election.
OTOH, when I did GOTV phonebanking for Hillary on Sunday, the super-annuated cohort of Dem women (and plenty of mens too, plus a few youngs) was seriously representing. Per my own feels, and what I have witnessed in general, once you are post-menopausal, women have no fucks left to give, unless they are still trying to appease their husbands (witness Trump and son Eric peering at their wives’ ballots during voting yesterday.
Yes, there are a million exceptions to this, especially here – but it makes a lot of sense to me, and perhaps explains this trend.
JPL
@debbie: Oh, I know… We all know, but since MSM is dead in our country most don’t.
debbie
@Corner Stone:
I know. There’s a photo on my feed of Trump sitting behind a gold-plated desk in the Oval Office. Kill me now.
This is what kills me. I quietly let my family members bitch and moan and degrade and slander a man they knew I respected. And now I’m supposed to sit quietly and absorb all of their gloating. Fuck all of them.
The brother I thought was the most reasonable thinks Trump will be great for the country. He thinks the first thing Trump should do is pardon Hillary so the country can move forward. PARDON HER FOR WHAT???
Corner Stone
@goblue72: Insert yourself inside yourself.
Cacti
@seaboogie:
Gloria Steinem herself made the point that women tend to become more radical with age. Because the men holding the levers of occupational and social mobility tend to have no use for women when they are no longer seen as f**kable.
PsiFighter37
I’d like to see Kamala Harris be our nominee in 2020. Too early to think about it, I know.
Honestly, who the fuck do we even have to run in 2020? If it is Andrew Cuomo, I will shoot myself.
lahke
@seaboogie:
The problem is not that liberals don’t empathize with the downtrodden white working class that supposedly is the Trump base, it’s that they hate the “elites”: I’ve been through this with a friend who came from a rural, midwestern family. She’s all the time calling out the arrogance of the elites looking down on the rural white southern poor, and went so far as to accuse me of same. I asked her for an example of when I had done this and she had none–it was just a given that I must feel that way.
I’ve come to think that this is a projection out of massive insecurity. The mere existence of an alternative way of life is seen as an insult to these people, because they themselves see the contrast and project the disdain. I live in a city and go to the opera? I must be looking down on someone who lives on a farm and goes to NASCAR. Why do they believe that? Maybe believing that is better than the truth, which is that I don’t care what they do, and don’t obsess over the contrast. But in their eyes, I’m ignoring, overlooking, they’re flyover world, and that’s condescending. They must always be front and center, be important, set the agenda, or they’re insulted. They are suffering privilege deprivation.
Kay
@Baud:
Oh, don’t worry Baud. I’m sure there will be a chorus of scolding pundits telling Donald Trump to “unite the country” like they did Obama.
seaboogie
@Cacti: And – as always – the motive seems to be economic security and validation of our desirability.
Omnes Omnibus
@JMG: I left a comment for you in the We Hold the Line thread.
Omnes Omnibus
@Renie: I spent the day trying to avoid people so that I didn’t have wonder about them.
Kay
@debbie:
Unspecified email crimes. She was formally charged by a Morning Joe panel, and then the Trump mob convicted her.
That’s what happens to political opponents now. Nor-mal-IZED. It’s a banana republic.
Miss Bianca
@Cacti: and she got royally flamed for it too, as I recall – or was that for suggesting that maybe some young women were supporting Bernie Sanders rather than HRC at least in part because young men were? I for one found the theory plausible.
debbie
@Kay:
Yeah, but will the Dems meet during the Inauguration to plot a path of total obstruction?
Felonius Monk
@Corner Stone: Corner, you are far too nice to that asshole.
Irony Abounds
@goblue72: Anyone who thinks optimistically right now really has blinders on. This is the one big chance for the GOP to do it all. Get rid of Obamacare, the Department of Education, change Medicare to a voucher program, limit abortion rights, likely establish discriminatory voter id requirements for federal elections, defund Planned Parenthood, you name it. Obama will be remembered as the first black President, perhaps as the guy who got Bin Laden, but otherwise his legacy will be zippo because the Republicans will do whatever they can to gut any progress made the last 8 years. Trump’s not going to give a shit about any of it because he is a clueless fuck when it comes to policy. Pence will be running that show and they will be merciless. The filibuster will be either suspended, severely limited or outright repealed, because this is their chance to take the country back to the 1920s and you can be damn sure they’ll take it. I’m thoroughly disgusted, with the sexist, racist asshats who voted for Trump, the Democrats who did next to nothing to develop strong candidates at the Congressional and state level and simply kept the door open for Hillary for 8 years, at Hillary for running a pretty mediocre campaign (too many days off for debate prep, diving into Arizona and to a lesser extent Georgia and almost completely neglecting Wisconsin and Michigan, depending too much on anti-Trump ads and not enough on positive ads), at younger voters and minorities for not showing up in sufficient numbers – and in the case of younger folks wasting too many votes on dumb Gary Johnson and vile Jill Stein), and with the American people in general for being so gobsmackingly stupid to even allow Trump to survive Iowa in the first place let alone garner enough votes to win the whole enchilada (or I guess in his case the Trump Taco Bowl).
I’m more angry now that late last night, and in no mood for the reconciliation requested by Obama and Clinton.
seaboogie
@lahke: Great comment – and it feels super-legit to me. I don’t know where I heard or read this, but basically the quote is that “EVERYONE is just trying to keep their shit together and get through the day”. So in my sorrow, I am working on empathy and compassion for those whose deepest, and highly motivating feelings are fear, anger and hate. Guess I’d rather be sad with an open heart, than feel that other way.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: Yesterday, before everything turn to shit, I stopped in a convenience store on the way home from work. The clerk was Indian/Pakistani and, after I paid, he said, “Today is decision day.” I responded “Yes, it’s election day, but I voter early.) Very diffidently, he asked who I voted for. I told him Hillary and that “I couldn’t even” wrt Trump. He broke in a big grin and gave me two thumbs up. I felt great. I wonder how he is doing to day.
Kay
@debbie:
I don’t think they should obstruct. Donald Trump says he can do all these great things he promised alone. He better get busy. That angry mob he created will come after him if they don’t get everything they want. Free wall, free health care, manufacturing jobs and the freedom to screech insults at all the people they don’t like.
I hope Obama golfs for the next 3 months and spends plenty of time with his (lovely) family. He’s earned it.
Screw them. They own it. I’ll be fine.
OGLiberal
@GrandJury: We went into this election with high undecideds. I think a lot of them were white women. I think white men in key states swung from Obama in ’12 to Trump in ’16 because Clinton was a woman. This was already reflected in the polls that had Clinton ahead in places like MI, WI and PA. I think a lot of those undecided women swung late to Trump, giving him a narrow win in those states. Given that she was a woman and the horrible things he said to/about women, she should have done much better with white women than Obama. But in MI, which is the one of these states where I could find exit poll data from 2012 and 2016, she polled almost exactly the same with white women as Obama. I think the undecided women broke for Trump late specifically because Clinton is a woman….white Americans need a daddy as leader, even one who is a sexist racist pig.
Disclosure….I’m a white dude. And I don’t want a daddy….I wanted a sane, level-headed, experienced, tough woman. I got a small fingered man-child.
Thank you, Midwest USA. NC and FL were to be icing. You were the firewall. Fail.
debbie
@Kay:
I know you’re right, but I don’t have to like it. ;)
seaboogie
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m in Sonoma – so big Hispanic community – and my thoughts turned to them last night as the returns started to point to where we are now. The irony, of course, is that the wine industry (that makes everyone want to visit here) absolutely relies on their presence and labor.
Felonius Monk
@debbie:
I’m willing to bet that you will have the last laugh on this. Sometime within the first 18 months of Trump’s term, your brothers will be saying: ” Who voted for this idiot? How did he ever get elected?” Bank on it, Debbie.
Ruviana
@lahke: Dead thread but this is exactly some of what TJ Vance gets at in Hillbilly Elegy. I’m not defending his conservatism but it’s an interesting view of this kind of thinking. Vance has a law degree from Yale. He knows how to “pass” if you will in upper-middle class culture. But he notes that he gets a visceral sense of loathing and anger when someone he’s talking to uses big words that he knows and uses too! It’s like you said that your interests are themselves seen as an affront. I don’t like NASCAR and I don’t like sportsball of any sort, so when places like here are all in on sports I go somewhere else. I know people like that stuff, and that it isn’t somehow an attack on who I am. Working class people will sometimes act like it is an attack on them.
ETA: I love the concept of privilege deprivation by the way.
Philbert
@Irony Abounds: True all. No filibuster = blank check. I think Trump will sign most anything put in front of him just so it has his name on it, and a lot in the first 100 days. I expect a big Reagan-Keynsian stimulus of tax cuts, military spending, and the infrastructure bill they have delayed until the GOP could get its name on it, with spending cuts on anything that might benefit dark people and unmarried women. Supreme Court picks will reduce the validity of elections and allow even geater free reign. Then the big cuts to Medicare and SS will come later due to the budget crisis they have so carefully created. Also they will trash and burn all the bedding, kitchenware, and anything in the White House they can get away with destroying, that the Obamas have touched. Um, somehow I’m not real optimistic today.
debbie
@Felonius Monk:
As my Mamaw would have said, “From your lips…”
Peanut Gallery
May be a dead thread, but no reason we can’t go the full T-Bogg, here….
JDM
@Lizzy L: well, that’s what they say about golf. It’s easy, just hit this ball into that hole. :)
tybee
@Peanut Gallery:
first Tbogg of the election season.
Karen Andrews
@debbie: that would be best for the country although I’m not sure America is worth saving. Violent, stupid people make up at least half the place.