Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Everybody saw this coming.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

This fight is for everything.

The willow is too close to the house.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Dutch Election Results: The Line Continues To Hold!

Dutch Election Results: The Line Continues To Hold!

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Prime Minister Rutte and his center-right VVD Party (People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) held off the challenge of Gert Wilders and his PVV (Party for Freedom) in today’s Dutch elections.

  • Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s party has won the most seats in parliamentary elections, exit polls say.

    Early results confirmed the exit polls, with his centre-right VVD Party on course for 31 out of 150 seats.

    Three parties are projected to win 19 seats each: Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration Freedom Party (PVV), the Christian Democrats and D66.

    Mr Wilders’ party had been leading in opinion polls but support for the party appeared to slip in recent days.

    With 10.9% of votes counted early on Thursday, the VVD had polled 17.8%.

    Voter participation in the general election was high; the 81% turnout was the highest for 30 years.

    Analysts say a high turnout may have benefited pro-EU and liberal parties.

    “Today was a celebration of democracy,” Mr Rutte said, adding that the Netherlands had said no to the “wrong kind of populism”.

    Although the VVD had lost several seats since the last election, many had expected the party to lose much more ground to the Freedom Party.

As was the case in the recent Austrian reelection, Holland has electorally held the line against the neo-Nationalist populist wave that is threatening many of the EU member states. France is next up in April and May (first and second round elections) followed by Germany in September. The Russians working through their local proxies – the neo-Nationalist parties and movements themselves, as well as through Wikileaks and directly using their entire hybrid war toolkit is seeking to weaken, if not dismantle the EU and NATO. The electoral results so far, in Austria and today in Holland, are promising and show signs that the civil societies in these states is stronger and more robust than many think. And that the vote in favor of Brexit and the election of President Trump may be having a sobering effect on the internal and external drives for neo-Nationalism throughout Europe.

Reader Interactions

134Comments

  1. 1.

    max

    I suspect Erdogan’s little scheme to gin up some counter-propaganda to support the developing nationalist front backfired.

    It was a little too obvious: ‘Vote for the anti-muslim guy so he can be friends with the muslim fascist’ is not a workable scam.

    The French will not elect Le Pen.

    max
    [‘And Elle was very good.’]

  2. 2.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I saw a tweet today (so… somebody said something on the internet) that although LePen leads in the multiparty contest, she’s down twenty points in one-on-one second round match ups. God, I wish we had that kind of vote.

  5. 5.

    Mary G

    I still give America credit for demonstrating what a terrible idea electing the white nationalist is.

  11. 11.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Geert…that word…”freedom”…I do not think it means what you think it means.

    (This also applies to the GOP “Freedom caucus”).

  12. 12.

    jl

    I wonder if the sad mess that is the white nationalist leadership in UK and US has helped knock off some of the attraction.
    Farage revealed himself to be a cynical manipulator and liar after the Brexit vote, and ran off to be Trump’s messenger boy. And if I understand correctly, basically quit as a political leader in the UK, instead ran off to try to wreak havoc elsewhere. As far as I can tell, he basically said in word and deed that breaking shit was fun, hanging around to try to make something work, not so much, he just wasn’t into that kind of job all that much.

    And in the US, the Trumpster loons make the nationalist bozos in the UK look like fricken Confucius, Newton, Einstein and Churchill all rolled into one.

  17. 17.

    jharp

    Was any else as surprised as I was to hear they were using paper ballots only?

    I still can’t get over how the pollsters got Ohio wrong by 9%. How many polls did they have? 867? And all of them were dead fucking wrong?

    Just doesn’t make sense to me.

  23. 23.

    jl

    @jharp: I think a number of countries use old fashioned paper ballots, including most of Canada. I think Canada counts them by hand, maybe in public? I guess I need to go refresh my memory. Maybe one of the many Canadian BJers will correct me if I’m wrong.

    Anyway, that is just too simple, not enough opportunity for manipulation and crony capitalist scams, and maybe puts too much of a high gloss of respectability on real self governance for the tastes of the ruling elite in the US, and their politicians.

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    We may be losing now but we can’t stop trying
    So hold that line, baby hold that line
    If you don’t know what to do about a world of trouble
    You can pull it through if you need to and if
    You believe it’s true, it will surely happen
    Shining still, to give us the will
    Bright as the day, to show us the way
    Somehow, someday
    We need just one victory
    And we’re on our way

    T. Rundgren

  28. 28.

    Kropadope

    @jl:

    I think a number of countries use old fashioned paper ballots

    My county in MA uses paper ballots and if they ever try to change that, I’ll organize the riot protest.

  29. 29.

    debbie

    @amk:

    She was interviewed on 60 Minutes. She was low-key and wasn’t raving the way Trump, Erogan, etc. are wont to do.

  30. 30.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: He is not wrong. And, additionally, the Europeans already have the socialized democracy and they know, because they learned the hard way, the real price for the Herrenvolk addition.

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: First Minister Sturgeon is far, far smarter and a far, far better politician than Prime Minister May every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

  33. 33.

    hovercraft

    @Goku:
    One thing that helps/hurts is the multi party system that forces parties to form coalition government and therefore to compromise. There’s also the fact that most of them either lived through or were raised by people who lived through terrible wars, not in some distant land, but right there at home. Add in the close proximity of Russia, it’s obvious meddling and it’s behavior under Putin and you have a different perspective. While we have a nation with kids who aren’t sure who the antagonists were in the civil war, ( yes really), and WWII, they don’t. We’ve had some terrible things happen, Pearl Harbor, 9-11, but they didn’t personally affect most of us, between that and our lack of national service or a draft means most of us are removed from these concerns in our day to day lives. Putin’s aggression and airspace, territorial water violations are very real to Europeans.

  36. 36.

    Another Scott

    @Major Major Major Major: Assuming a “normal distribution”, of course. (If I’m recalling the statistics correctly.)

    I have no evidence to point to at the moment, but I think telephone polling is basically broken now. Too many “normal” people won’t answer numbers they don’t recognize, so the results are skewed, so they have to massage their samples to account for that. And there are all kinds of assumptions in the massaging that they can’t check before the actual election results come in (because it would mean spending lots of money for a real, non-phone-based, survey).

    Yeah, the election probably wasn’t “hacked”, meaning messing with the actual ballot results, but that doesn’t mean the polls didn’t have problems.

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  37. 37.

    jl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Krugman may be hasty. Not sure it is ‘out in the open’ for a lot of the knucklehead and low info Trump voters who were pissed off and wanted to shake things up. The hard core racist Trumpers don’t care, of course. But I think the soft core Trump voters are just getting a whiff of it now with the GOP PPACA repeal and replace fiasco.

    But in the longer run, i think Krugman is right. For example, Krugman’s buddy DeLong has been keeping his ear to the ground, trying to pick up early signs for how the great best and most terrific ever Trump giga-jobs infrastructure program will go. And DeLong hears… well, he hears nothing at all. Good bet even a BS PR fake program can’t even get off the ground, because they are dopes. (Edit: Sorry I misrepresented DeLong’s conclusion, there will be nothing to even not get off the ground, since the Trumpsters are so hopeless they won’t even be able to get a plan off the ground. I hope that makes sense.)

    What Happaned to Trump Infrastructure Push?: Bunga-Bunga Policy, or No Policy at All
    http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/03/the-trump-infrastructure-plan-useful-or-bunga-bunga-policy-there-are-two-ways-the-trump-infrastructure-fiscal-expansi.html

    A few more obvious and brain-dead failures along the lines of the GOP health care mess will do them in, and I think there will be more obvious and stupid failures.

  38. 38.

    jharp

    I’d say the polls were particularly wrong. And a lot, if not nearly, all of them.

    Yet there is no evidence the election was hacked I agree.

  39. 39.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: I’ve been tracking that for a while. I think I mentioned it in one of the Maskirovka posts. Right now the more immediate issue is what’s going on in Belarus.

  41. 41.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @jl: A few more obvious and brain-dead failures along the lines of the GOP health care mess will do them in, and I think there will be more obvious and stupid failures.

    that’s what I tell myself when I’m feeling optimistic

    but the way race underlies US politics, especially discussions of social safety-net programs, goes far back beyond Trump, from the compromises and bribes FDR had to make to get the New Deal passed, to LBJ’s “We’ve lost the South for a generation” (he underestimated) to “You lie!” and Obamaphones.

  42. 42.

    hovercraft

    @debbie:
    Yes she learned that raving like a loon like her dad did wont get her what she wants, but as we’ve seen with Rand and Ron, the fact that she’s tamping down the crazy could lose her some of his most ardent supporters. Yes it gains her some support at the other end of the spectrum, but we’ll have to wait and see how it ends up. I think the only reason she’s anywhere at all is because of all the attacks in France over the last couple of years, but as Adam said, the UK and Twitler have had a sobering effect so we’ll see.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    @Adam L. Silverman

    Yeah, the Belarus machinations are positively byzantine. Can’t tell the villains apart without a program.

    I’ve mentioned before conmsidering the Montenegro stuff the malevolent equivalent of out of town tryouts for a Broadway show.

  44. 44.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Another Scott: The polls had problems, especially in Michigan (WTF, Michigan?), and what you said about phones is definitely true. But the paper ballots/bad polls comment I took to be about hacking, especially since it was in reference to the Dutch were using paper ballots because of hacking concerns…

    ETA: The other thing is, the polls weren’t that wrong by recent historical standards. We’d just been blessed by relative accuracy in 2008 and 2012, which coincided with poll analysis becoming A Thing thanks to cheap processing power and the Internet. Except for fucking Michigan!

  45. 45.

    jl

    @jharp: The pollsters did a good job of predicting the national vote. The problem was in predicting many of the individual state elections, which are the ones that count for the electoral college. Problem was infrequent polling in many states, so historical correlations between demographic, regional, and national trends and individual state votng behavior were used to fill in the gaps, and predict late swings. That was where the pollsters messed up.

    But, the election was decided by less than 200,000 votes in 4 states, not sure it is realistic for mere sampling science and statistics to give good odds in that situation. Political pollsters can’t use surveys full of cheap talk about whether some person will be willing to get off their ass and go vote in X days to get good predictions of turnout.

  46. 46.

    tomtofa

    I notice that Adam uses the term neo-Nationalism in referring to these movements, which seems correct (without going to the perhaps overly charged White-Nationalism). But more and more the accepted term in the media is Populism (as in the story he excerpts), which doesn’t really fit. Yes, they’re resentful and contemptuous of intellectuals and the status quo, but populism, as it has been used for many years, might be a better fit for the Occupy people, the Sanders group, etc.

    Trump is not a populist; Wilders, Petry, and Le Pen aren’t populists, any more than Orban, Erdoğan, or any of the other ‘strong’ ones infesting the world these days. So is this use of ‘populist’ when referring to authoritarian demagogues just more normalizing and avoidance by the media, or has the meaning of the term actually changed that much?

  48. 48.

    jharp

    @jl:

    All I’m saying is Ohio has to be one of if the most polled states in the history of the world.

    And they got it wrong by a lot.

    How or why I don’t know,

  51. 51.

    TriassicSands

    The Dutch election results are semi-good news. They’d be better news if Rutte had won a clear majority, but in Trump World you take what you can get.

    Apparently, the Dutch people haven’t gotten as stupid as fast as the Amurkins have.But then, the US is the world leader in so many things…

  52. 52.

    efgoldman

    @Kropadope:

    My county in MA uses paper ballots

    I like the fill-in-the bubble, read immediately by a machine ballots that our current town in RI and our previous town in MA use.

  53. 53.

    Adam L Silverman

    @tomtofa: The term that Bannon and many of his fellow travelers are using is national populist or populist nationalism or economic nationalist. It is, at its essence, neo-Nationalist. And it contains within it a heavy component of ethno-centrism.

  54. 54.

    jl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: You have a point, but if the GOP messes up enough, the softer core bigots will jump off the bigot ship for a while. Not a generation, maybe one or two election cycles. Nixon and Dub managed to do that dirty trick to their own party. We need to take our opportunities as we get them, and then show we can do better for the vast majority.

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TriassicSands: Given Holland’s multiparty system it is very hard for any party to achieve a majority result in any election. There is almost always a plurality based coalition.

  57. 57.

    Goku

    @hovercraft: That’s true. I’ve always thought that part of the reason many European states are social democracies is because they don’t have significant non-white populations.

  59. 59.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    good god, the only president we’ve got “People are screaming, Break up the ninth circuit!”

    Yes, trumpy, your mouth-breathers and knuckle-draggers are intimately familiar with the structure of the federal judiciary

    and keep pissing off those judges who are, after all, only human

    Matthew Yglesias‏Verified account @ mattyglesias 3h3 hours ago
    Demographically, we know the Romney-to-Hillary switchers were whites college grads while the Obama-to-Trump switchers were non-college.
    Zero currently serving federal judges are white people without a college degree.
    It’s likely more than zero Bush-appointed judges dislike Trump, and virtually no Clinton- or Obama-appointed judges like him.

  60. 60.

    jl

    @jharp: Ohio? It was bouncing back and forth, HRC to Trump the whole election and spent a lot of time as Trump territory. I don’t see how Ohio was a big surprise. If the reality is unstable, lots of polling will do nothing at all to make it more stable. I need more details on what you mean. Right now, you just sound wrong about it to me.

  61. 61.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Only because it’s slugged as an Open Thread: I want to thank you for that link a few threads back of the second-grade survey. I put it up on FB and I’ve had more damn fun with it tonight! Several times the site crashed because so many people were trying to pull it up, so I guess I was far from the only person promoting it. Just lots of fun! I think those kids and their teacher are going to be astonished at the sheer volume of responses.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    When President Donald Trump boarded Air Force One on Wednesday morning to travel to Michigan and Tennessee, he didn’t wing it alone: His entire senior West Wing staff traveled with him.
    Accompanying the president out of town on his daylong tour were senior adviser Jared Kushner, strategist Steve Bannon, chief of staff Reince Priebus, counselor Kellyanne Conway, senior aide Hope Hicks, press secretary Sean Spicer and policy adviser Stephen Miller.

    The large number of senior officials present, at all times, is a major contrast with past administrations — and it speaks to the defensive crouch that has become necessary for top aides in a White House defined by rival factions and power centers.

    They’re all paranoid and crazy now. They all follow him around because they are afraid of being “undercut” by the others in the crew if they leave the room.

  66. 66.

    jl

    @tomtofa: I think the corporate media will try to smear any vaguely lefty grass roots democracy as something bad. And branding Trump as a populist is just fine with them, especially since it looks more and more likely Trump will be a massive failure in doing anything positive and will be a great success at messing its own bed and screwing everything up.

    But I think there was a strain of brutally racist, right wing populism in US history. Ben Tillman for example, in South Carolina. Except, unlike Trump, he was an effective, smart, politician who could get a lot done (for white people, and to black people)

  67. 67.

    Another Scott

    @Major Major Major Major: A lot of trees died to make the dutch ballots.

    I’ve never, personally, been concerned about the voting machines in the US. Before we got touch-screen systems here in NoVA (after 2000), we had these walls with these membrane buttons and a big VOTE button at the end. There was no paper receipt and no independent count to verify if the machine count was right. People didn’t worry about it. (We have paper ballots and optical scanners now, because too many people didn’t trust the touch screen PCs, and there were too many glitches with them.)

    And we’ve all seen stories about elections in North Eastern Elbonia that have paper ballots yet have ballot boxes stuffed before the polling places open, or 102% turnout, or …

    Ultimately, the integrity of the elections depend upon the honesty of the people running the elections. Technology can’t prevent corruption – it can only make some types of corruption more difficult.

    I’m all for having systems to eliminate hanging chads and dimpled chads and over-votes and all the rest. Yes, there should never be a question about the voter’s intent, and there should never be a fuzziness in the count. If 150M people vote, we should be able to accurately tell if someone wins by 1/150M, not say “it’s too close”.

    But, in addition to actually being fair and accurate, the system must be seen as being fair and accurate. And if that means lots of trees must die, well, then I guess that’s the way it has to be.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  70. 70.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Another Scott: In my opinion, and if I recall correctly the UN agrees with me, the right way to run an election at any scale is to have paper Scantron ballots filled out by hand and then scanned, with a hand recount should the need arise.

    ETA: Also, you can just use recycled paper

  71. 71.

    jl

    @amk: If the big dope will change his mind and do whatever the last person in the room tells him is the greatest most terrific, top, thing, then everyone has to be the last person in the room.

  72. 72.

    max

    @debbie: She worries me. She’s so normal-seeming. Hopefully the French will see through that.

    Compared to Trump, she IS normal. She really is left-wing (compared to Hollande!) on economics, Unfortunately, she’s also a big ole racist.

    In America everything is bigger and better and we’ve got the biggest and best racist con artist of them all.

    max
    [‘Things are looking Macron to me.’]

  76. 76.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay: “He likes to ask other aides what they think about each other,” said a former campaign aide. “If you’re not with him, he might be listening to someone else tell him how you’re wrong. You might be the topic of conversation, and it might not be good for you.”
    One Republican strategist with close ties to the White House said: “Everybody’s terrified of being undercut.”

    God, that is hilarious. These laughs mean a lot to me in these dark times. I can’t wait for the day Reince Preibus decides to spend more time with doorknob collection, but I think poor dumb damn Spicy goes first.

  79. 79.

    jharp

    @jl:

    In the absence of any evidence to the contrary it’s pretty clear I’ve got nothing.

    I’m still just stunned that it happened.

  80. 80.

    hovercraft

    @Kay:
    How sad and pathetic, I’m sure Twitler loves the fact that they are all clinging to him trying to see who can crawl the furthest up his ass, he also loves that they are competing with each other to be the top dog. The fact that they’re all scared they’ll be stabbed in the back is music to my ears, they are deplorable people who are doing real harm to people every day. This nest of vipers deserve each other.

  81. 81.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    very white crowd behind trumpy in Nashville tonight– looks like Kellyanne didn’t want to turn her back on Bannon long enough to review the set

    ETA

    Adrian Carrasquillo‏Verified account @ Carrasquillo 27m27 minutes ago
    I asked Trump how often he’s going to do these rallies: “We’re going to do these rallies every two weeks.”

  83. 83.

    jl

    @jharp: I am slowly moving from shocked to merely stunned. I’ve only calmed down as it has become increasingly clear that they are so inept, won’t be able to do as much damage as quickly as I feared.

  84. 84.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    @jl: Federal elections are paper ballot with pen counted by hand. I was an assistant clerk in the 2006 election – so going off memory. One scrutineer per party can be present per polling station to challenge ballots. Votes are signed off by poll clerk, ballots are placed in a sealed signed bag, and then in a box in a box and all seals signed. I believe recounts happen with the chief riding (district) electoral returning officer when counts are under 1% difference and in front of a judge when under 0.5%. The chief returning officer cannot vote unless it is a tie.

    As an aside in the Austrian elections – had it not been for some faulty glue on postal ballot envelopes, they would have voted before the US election and maybe had a different result. Trump’s election affected their vote away from the hard right party.

  86. 86.

    max

    @Goku: Does anybody have any insight into why European polities are so different than the US?

    The Euro and Germany. Full stop. There was a very good oped in the NYT on this yesterday (or today, whichever):

    Will Angela Merkel Save the West? Don’t Count on It
    To understand Ms. Merkel’s ambivalent liberal legacy, we must start with economics. Under her leadership, Germany has steadily performed well — at the expense of other European countries. Within the zero-sum economy of the eurozone, Germany has enjoyed huge balance-of-payments surpluses, selling machine tools and cars to consumers around the Continent. France, Italy and other former exporters, meanwhile, have fallen behind.

    Germany’s economy is built on Germans saving more than they consume. This creates powerful deflationary dynamics for the entire currency bloc. Germany has refused to accept slightly higher domestic inflation as a condition for letting the rest of the eurozone grow. Even now, German representatives on the European Central Bank’s governing board are demanding higher interest rates to placate irate German savers who are seeing no return on their money.

    The relentless effort to keep wages and prices down in Germany has shaped political life across Europe. In Italy, two of the leading opposition parties — the Five Star Movement and the Northern League — oppose the common currency. The failure of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s reform agenda owes a great deal to Italy’s economic stagnation. In France, François Hollande won the presidency in 2012 after saying that he would persuade Ms. Merkel to support a more pro-growth policy for the eurozone. He did no such thing. His lackluster efforts at reducing unemployment and expanding growth are behind his record-level unpopularity and the collapse in support for mainstream parties we see today.

    The eurozone works for Germany because it provides a mechanism for turning German economic might into a depoliticized, anonymous set of macroeconomic rules. This was why the Greek crisis of 2015 was so traumatic for Germany and why Ms. Merkel and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, were unforgiving in their treatment of Greece.

    And on and on. All the big muckety-mucks of the world profess how wonderful she is, but she’s the Sgt. Schultz of the EU, and precisely why the EU is in the situation. Without the troika’s brain damage the nationalist parties wouldn’t be getting any traction, Russians or no Russians.

    max
    [‘Own worst enemies, etc. etc.’]

  88. 88.

    Lapassionara

    @tomtofa: agree. I keep wondering why T is referred to as a populist. Using the word makes him seem benign and leading a movement of the left out people who want to get a voice at he table. But his appointments show that he is a plutocrat who wants to enrich himself and his friends. He is a con artist, a pretender.

    In Nashville tonight, and see why it is a red state. Local news fawning all over T. A good crowd of protesters across from the venue, in the bitter cold. Heartening to see, but the news people, clearly awed by him.

  90. 90.

    efgoldman

    @Kay:

    They’re all paranoid and crazy now. They all follow him around because they are afraid of being “undercut”

    And there’s not a single goddamned one of them on the plane, except maybe the pilots, who would know the truth if it walked up and peed on them.

  92. 92.

    amk

    @max: For a Sgt. Schultz, she seems to be doing pretty well for herself and her country. All the EU fubars do not start and end with her.

  93. 93.

    NotMax

    Listening to what little could stomach of Dolt 45 railing against the judicial stay today, it was eerily like reliving George Wallace screaming “Segregation now, segregation forevah!”

  94. 94.

    Thru the Looking Glass...

    @Adam L Silverman: if I’m not mistaken, the term ‘national socialist’ isn’t currently being used anywhere… looks good in print… has a nice ring to it when spoken out loud…

  96. 96.

    tomtofa

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Thanks, Adam. That seems to be a relatively recent employment of the term. Still irritating that news stories more and more refer to the ‘populist movements’ springing up, without attaching the ethnocentrist, racist, nationalist labels they should have.

  97. 97.

    jl

    @Lapassionara: As I said above, i think there is a strain of racist right wing populism in US history that fits the Trump phenomenon. I mentioned Ben Tillman from South Carolina. Nasty brutal racist, also very wealthy, IIRC, who, in some ways like FDR, had no qualms about kicking some fellow filthy rich interests’ asses, if it would help him win elections.

    So, much as I think the corporate media will distort and simplify for their own nefarious purposes, I can’t say using ‘populist’ for Trump is flat out wrong. Well, there is one thing that is very wrong about it, and that is, so far, every populist thing out of Trump’s mouth as been a big fat lie or an ignorant fantasy. So, in that minor sense, Trump is not a populist, but I doubt the corporate media will get into sophisticated nuances like that.

  99. 99.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Thru the Looking Glass…: Yes, but the problem is that it feeds the Doughy Pantload based argument that the NAZIs, and therefore fascism, are actually left of center/liberal phenomena because socialist was in their name.

  102. 102.

    TriassicSands

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I know that, Adam, it’s the default in most parliamentary systems. I was just pining for the clearest statement possible — the rejection of the barbarians. I’ll have to go through each party and see where they fall politically to see if there was at least a majority for sanity.

  103. 103.

    Adam L Silverman

    @tomtofa: You’re welcome. I think part of the problem is that journalists don’t really know what to do with this stuff. You can get left of center/left wing populism, but it basically quickly merges with socialized democracy so you really don’t see the term used much in that regard. And in the US most people have little knowledge of the historically liberal populists like Bob LaFollette and what they were trying to and did accomplish. But everyone’s heard of William Jennings Bryan and his form of populism, which was religiously reactionary and, I’d argue, at least nominally white supremacist.

  104. 104.

    tomtofa

    @jl:
    But even during Tillman’s time he was known to be virulently opposed to the populism of SC, since the term was attached to a more progressive (ie, not so adamantly anti-Black) agenda. White-nationalist = populist? Maybe even then…

  105. 105.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TriassicSands: Given that almost every other party had made it clear ahead of time that they would join a coalition with Rutte, and Rutte made it clear he would form one, to block Wilders and his party from power, I’m not sure how much clearer they needed to be. That Rutte and his party got a very solid plurality and Wilders did far worse than predicted is a good sign.

  106. 106.

    amk

    personal anecdata

    In one of the engineers forum, I had asked for a paid consultant for one of our projects. Got many responses from experts from us of a, germany, france and australia. One pattern I noticed was how americans responded with bullets point questionnaires as compared to the conversational and polite tone from others. Guess which way I am leaning?

  107. 107.

    tomtofa

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Right, or someone like La Guardia – Republican, almost authoritarian, but an ally of FDR and on the side of the ‘little people’. Not necessarily actual little people, of course, though given his stature that would have been understandable ;-)

  108. 108.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: Hey, why no love for Pitchfork Ben? Faubus? Wallace? Big tradition of racist right wing populism in the US. For some reason they are all gone now. Trump surely is not one of them. For one, merely on the basis that that the right wing racist populists were shrewd and competent and could get things done ( both for good and for very bad).

    But, the 19th century names, not very well remembered. I don’t know how many know who Tillman is. But he took away damn near very vote there was to take from African-Americans, and was the founder of white rule in South Carolina that lasted until the civil rights era.

  109. 109.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @tomtofa: @Adam L Silverman: The liberal populist movement that existed 100 years ago did mesh with the progressive movement. But there was also a dark side to populism; it tended to be religious in a particular evangelical protestant way, it tended to be more than a bit racist, it tended to be anti-intellectual, and so on. White working class and economic anxiety.

    I am suspicious of populist movements

  110. 110.

    jl

    @tomtofa: There were several populist parties back then, and Tillman, a good Democrat, was surely very opposed to them and whatever specifics they put in their platforms. They were successful third parties by US standards, and elected governors and Congress people. So maybe in that sense he was against populism.

    But Tillman did pass important legislation that helped working (white) people at the expense of business.

  111. 111.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @jharp:

    I still can’t get over how the pollsters got Ohio wrong by 9%. How many polls did they have? 867? And all of them were dead fucking wrong?

    They weren’t off by 9%. If you take the last poll from each of the major pollsters and average them, they show Trump leading Clinton in Ohio 46.1% to 43.4%. That average is almost dead on for Clinton’s share of the vote, which was 43.2%. It was off on Trump’s support by about 5%; he actually got 51.3%. What happened is that undecideds and Johnson supporters broke very heavily for Trump.

  113. 113.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jl: I’m aware of them. But everyone knows of Bryan because of Inherit the Wind and the Scopes Trial. Its in all the textbooks, even the ones in Texas! Wallace is known. But Faubus and Tillman are not widely known outside their states. Huey Long is somewhere closer to Wallace.

  116. 116.

    GregB

    Haven’t heard Doughy Pantload in reference to Jonah Goldberg in a long time.

    Made me chuckle.

  118. 118.

    Brachiator

    France is next up in April and May (first and second round elections) followed by Germany in September.

    The craziness must be fought wherever it turns up. Consider Australia.

    . .Pauline Hanson and One Nation had an absolute shocker of an election campaign in Western Australia. In the lead-up to last Saturday’s vote Hanson was roundly condemned for praising Russian president Vladimir Putin, was forced to apologise after making anti-vaccination remarks and saw five candidates resign from the party.

    But despite running a train-wreck of a campaign the party still managed to nearly double its vote compared to last year’s federal election and has further cemented its status as Australia’s fourth largest, and fastest growing, political force..

    In earlier interviews, Hanson expressed admiration for Trump.

  119. 119.

    jl

    @tomtofa: Also, I am using ‘populist’ in same way I think the corporate media does, which I think is used to to refer to any impulse to pursue any policies designed to help ordinary people, and oppose crony capitalist corporations and entrenched power and wealth. That kind of populism has appeared from time to time in both major parties (though admittedly very rarely in GOP), and in third party movements. So I am using populist in that sense, not just to mean the populist movement, or specific third parties.

  122. 122.

    dww44

    @Another Scott: We used to have the punch optical scan paper ballot, which I loved. Then in 2002 the state bought Diebold voting machines for every single precinct in all 159 counties. We are still voting on those same machines 14 years later. No paper trail whatsoever. No way to know if and when a hack might have occurred. Not good.

  123. 123.

    tomtofa

    @jl:
    Yeah, but that’s what’s bothering me – there’s scant evidence that the current populists have any intentions in those directions…

  125. 125.

    jl

    @tomtofa: I agree with you there.

    I don’t like the organized populist movements and parties in US history, but they did have some good economic impulses, just too much bad stuff mixed in, like racism, xenophobia and anti-intellectualism. I worry that some will try to smear the good impulses by association with the bad, It is a silly way to argue. Nonsense like “you know who else liked dogs…” and “Well, HItler liked freeways too, you know.” is always just around the corner. But corporate media gets away with that stuff all the time.

    Edit: and I don’t like freeways all that much. I prefer trains. But I don’t use the ‘Hitler liked freeways too, you know’ argument.

  126. 126.

    Anonymous patient

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m so glad there are other folks I respect who see how juvenile and ignorant that Socialist = leftwing concept really is!

    When I tried to explain that to MrsJ it was so stupid she could not grasp how Jonah was able to write it down seriously!

    Nazis are liberals….how stupid can one be?

  127. 127.

    tomtofa

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m afraid I use it loosely and naively, thinking mainly of people who feel that the general population is being exploited by a small elite and want to redress that repression and inequality. I tend to the left rather than the right, so dismiss those who introduce ethnocentrism into the equation. To me that’s just demagoguery.

    2017? It may just not be the right time for it. I can’t think of a national figure who fits my view. I’d settle for a good European-style socialist, but those are a dying breed as well…

  129. 129.

    Anonymous patient

    @dww44:

    Which state are you describing? Diebold no doubt designed those machines to be controlled by… someone unknown to the voting regulators!

  131. 131.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Anonymous patient: You’d be surprised. Its now the common understanding for a lot of conservatives. I’ve even seen it used by conservatives who are the children of Holocaust survivors. I’ve also seen and heard it used by highly educated conservatives that should no better. Unfortunately its become a tribal indicator.

  132. 132.

    pseudonymous in nc

    The big question for Dutch coalition-forming is whether GL will want to be in (50/50 among voters, based on polling) or whether the VVD will seek some kind of arrangement with the small Christian parties. It’s a gamble for GL: they’ll want to prove that they’re not simply an opposition party, but they won’t want to be neutered and suffer the fate of PvdA. D66 already knows that it suffers in government vs opposition, regardless of who the primary partner is, but it’s more willing to take that deal.

  134. 134.

    Jonathan Hockey

    I have yet to see actual results reported anywhere???

    Do Netherlands decide their government by poll???

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