2 cents

I had the same experience in terms of understanding that Trump could win, but not really being able to think about it. The election was what LA Paul calls a transformative experience.

All year long I felt the misgivings that I remembered that I had about the very same Democratic assurances in the 1980 election — indeed many of the things said about Trump’s unlikeliness were said about Reagan, word for word. I remembered that clearly. But I believed the polls.

It will be interesting to learn why the scientific polls of major organizations, which had been fairly accurate in previous elections, only showed the truth at the very last moment. Through the statistical noise, Clinton had enjoyed a 4-5 point mean-spread which persisted for most of the last year. I certainly believed it: I am always in favor of science.

It could be multiple & geographic factors which are not analyzed for another month. We know that Latino voters are under-sampled, and maybe of 1/3 of them are angry enough at the ruling class to identify Hillary’s membership in that class to be more important than her intellectual command of policy. It also appears that the late dirty-leaks trick from a partisan coterie inside the FBI may have helped more than a bit to dispirit her turnout.

As for fundamentals? Nothing new. This is still the faulty status quo, still perpetuating itself. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and she also might have won the election: Bush v. Gore, repeated with a few new particulars.

We are now back in the other half of that status quo, wherein the GOP is ascendant instead of the Dems. This is not a realignment of the US political scene nor a realignment inside the parties. It means the Democrats might break up before the Republicans, but the old splits still exist within both.

The “stunning upset” instead is of predictions by the opinion polls and of resulting media expectations, even at Fox News (and indeed some Fox-fed Trump supporters in my neighborhood were looking sad and nervous, near the end). Not a basic realignment. Nothing real has changed — at least not yet.

That brings us to the current question, can President Trump govern? He will either be a Reagan-style figurehead over an Administration of Republican regulars, and his supporters stay happy just because they beat the Democrats. Business as usual.

Or else, Trump can try to change the status quo, as he has promised. To do that, he needs to get things through a Republican Congress which is up to its ears in lobbyists (and on the minority side of the aisle too). And he needs to find policy experts to navigate a vast, complex government full of appointed officials and bureaucrats who are up to their ears in lobbyists and may themselves be ex-lobbyists.

It would take an eternity, and the officials are loathe to change the status quo, and even Ronald Reagan didn’t get very far. In short, President Trump is facing Ronald Reagan’s comeuppance.

Indeed the Reaganites quickly discarded their morals for a practice which is now part of the status quo: the widespread adoption of a lot of goofball white-papers written by lobbyists and thinktankers to formulate gov’t policy on everything from economics to the environment. While Congress began its nightly gladhanding of the same crooks at lobbyist soirées, just to get enough funds for the next election. Since the money compels them to do it every night, they read the same white papers, and nothing else.

The Reagan Administration managed all of that faux “great change” with a public relations campaign of lies and nonsense, (wherein Roger Ailes made his bones,) and which most Republicans still believe to this day, (not least via Ailes’ Fox News). Trouble now is, President Trump has to deal with a very different media environment with millions of other active voices, far less forgiving, particularly of someone who has himself so spoiled the political conversation with lies, hatred and stupid impoliteness.

Trump’s win is having a remarkable effect on some his own voters. I am hearing some remarkable conversations. They are almost sorry for it. His statements and behavior are now validated as contributions from their own side, to the diminution of the public’s and children’s morals. Conservative Republicans just lost any claim to being moral, and this reveals them to be the cheap moral relativists they always accuse the liberals of being. This is going to play out for months and years. They all need a therapist, and Trump is hardly qualified.

So, how can President Trump deliver satisfaction to cure the voters’ discontents?
Well curiously that leads us to back to the question of a true realignment. Because if President Trump is cagey enough, he might bypass the recalcitrant Congressional members of his own party with enough liberal and progressive concessions to Congressional Democrats to get the votes to pass certain pieces of legislation.

Thus it is, that Trump might attempt to initiate a populist coalition with elements of the Democratic Party — which would then break-up before the Republican Party, instead of after. But this is not likely: the Democrats aren’t taking this lying down; they’ve got the majority of voters still; they’ve got their knives out after this one; they need only sit back and turn the tables on the Republicans, and it would require so much time and effort from Trump himself that Trump is more likely to become frustrated and impolite again. And soon enough, we will be into the midterms, when the thoughts of his Republican Congress will turn to lobbyists’ largesse.

This could be the final high tide of Republicanism. So cheer up, this is going to be a real hoot!

The TPP is dead. At this point, Trump has done more to positively fulfill my expectations of him than Obama did over the course of two full terms.

Had Obama and the Democrats passed the EFCA instead of just campaigning on it and then going, ‘HA HA HA, You believed us!’ after winning, then the rust belt would still be solid blue. Clinton wouldn’t be President right now, and people like me wouldn’t have much of a problem with it at all.

But no, keep telling yourselves that neoliberalism is awesome and that you’ve got nothing to lose. Then lose even bigger in 2020 as you go up against an incumbent President.

You can point to the popular vote all you want, but that doesn’t decide who gets to be President and never will for precisely this reason–you want to abolish the electoral college so that you can safely ignore the interests of working-class whites and rural voters. That’s all there is to it. You don’t want to have to care about their well-being. You don’t want to have to care if they live or die, because you hate them. You have invented all of these narratives, which say it’s okay to treat rural people like shit because they’re racist (even though they’re no more racist than urban types), that it’s okay if their lives get worse because it makes the lives of people in third world countries better (funny how that improvement never comes out of your hide), that they’re all subhuman filth unworthy of a future because…well, mostly because they don’t vote for you, but you’ll never admit that.

And then you call those people, who you shit upon and spit upon, ‘privileged’.

Tell me this, if we have to account for what you say we have to account for, why do people like you get to blithely dismiss the fact that the same ‘racist’ country that just voted against you, twice voted in a black man named Barack Obama?

You can’t dismiss that. You want to, because it makes it clear that this was more about economic resentment than racial resentment. But you can’t. We won’t let you. We’ll keep throwing it in your face, because it proves to other white people that nothing we say or do will be good enough to make you care about us and our children, too.

You just want to let half the country rot. Think about what kind of people that makes you.

The odds at Russian roulette with a six-shot revolver are not 1 in 6. The cartridge is heavy, and when you spin the magazine, the chamber with the bullet will tend to settle at the bottom. So, less that 1 in 6. That is, assuming you hold the gun the right way up. Turn it upside-down, and the reverse holds. Comey turned the gun.

I do not advise testing this hypothesis at home.

Thomas Beale #6: “I’m having trouble understanding the logic here.”

Perhaps I should have been clearer: I was not talking about your understanding. These events (the new rise in racist incidents; boys grabbing girls’ vaginas and saying, “The President can do it, so why can’t I?”) are pushing on them, to reveal it to themselves. I am surrounded by Trump voters and this is obvious. And they don’t want to feel it, they are totally in denial: They volunteer, “Why can’t we all get along?”, and they self-justify, “Well, Hillary said worse things” (but she didn’t). It has obviously gotten deeply under their skins that the public morals and the morals of their own children have been further poisoned, perhaps for generations to come. And they are avoiding their own next logical step: that voting for Trump, not repudiating him, is what did it. That they are the ones to blame for this. Which is why they need a therapist.

The upset in Boston, DC, NY, parts of California, Chicago… is not of Berlusconi being elected PM in Italy; its of Berlusconi being elected Pope. They view the POTUS as the heir to Lincoln, Wilson, FDR – the Pope of Progressivism.

Trump demonstrated that a large number of people are fed up with the policies and products of progressivism and are willing to flout its standards and ideals along the way. The fact that Trump also doesn’t toe the line for Evangelicals, social conservatives, the alt-right, white power, black power, 1st International, or whomever else – it doesn’t make any of those supporters somehow hypocritical for electing him. It means that every alternative group in the USA saw the election of a committed member of the Progressive orthodoxy and standard bearer for further Progressivism, in the most blatant possible way, was not acceptable at all to them and yet would otherwise happen by default.

Further, that this person was absolutely, undeniably, corrupt – in large part through obvious attempts to avoid scrutiny, but not to the extent of declining any forms of income from all comers – helped the case and peeled off progressives who also happen to believe that good government must be ‘good.’ Comey’s little letter might have helped just a little, but the results were largely already obvious. There were too many sources pointing to the corruption, and the output of that corruption (wealth) was already evident.

Anyway, the Progressives are continuing their efforts to destabilize the nation; astroturf, false accusations, and highlighting the everyday activities of various knuckleheads; amplified by the true believers. They will try also to advance their causes and policies and punish any deviation. The 97% vote in DC and the various Republican denunciations of Trump demonstrate that the whole of the Progressive political machinery, which includes most Republican politicians and bureaucrats, will resist meaningful change towards any alternative to Progressivism fiercely.

Like John, I thought Nates high uncertainty was justified, and was nervous. But I tend to average probabilities when I see multiple diverging opinions. I thought it was the proverbial 1 out of six. So Nov 8th was like the first time I could relax, by tomorrow in all probability the threat will be gone (for now at least). So it was just as much of a shock as for the true poll believers.

In any case, its not just the unwelcome political solutions that will be imposed on us. There really has been a surge of what we would call hate crimes. The social climate has severely deteriorated. I work in what might be called the brain-trust part of the economy, and yellow and brown people outnumber whites, and the plurality of the whites are in fact foreigners mostly European as well. So we are all going to feel this hostility towards our minority co-workers (and this in deep blue California). Of course the local news is filled with protests, and stories of hispanic kids scared their parents will be deported. This is so far from a normal “your side lost the election, buckup kind of thing”. People are consoling themselves with calexit dreams.

“It’s like saying that an explanation on why the sky is blue should also work in an imaginary universe where the sky is red.”

No, it isn’t. While your basic points stands that the uncertainty here was about what we knew about our existing world, rather than what world we were living in, JHs point still stands.

The difference between a country that elects Clinton by a hair’s breadth, and one that did exactly what happened on Tuesday is very small, and barely noticeable. It’s like the difference between two very slightly different blues that are so close only those with the sharpest eyes can see it easily.

There were 4 states worth in total 75 EV that went for Trump by what looks like right around 1% of the vote. A total vote deficit for Clinton in those 4 states of 227k votes out of over 22 million. A swing of less than 1% of voters toward Clinton in those 4 states could have resulted in Clinton winning all 75 of their EV, which would like have been described in the press as delivering roughly the PEC expected result. not just the Silver expected result. The only state level miss would have been North Carolina which both described as basically a tossup.

And yet, John’s point is that the difference in the countries and voting habits which produce those two *very* different looking results in the electoral college is quite small.

The exact state boundaries and rule for determine electoral votes are like a computer that can look at those two very similar shades of purple and declare that this one is exactly R220 G7 B218, and this other one is exactly R220 G7 B222. Try looking at these colors http://www.colorspire.com/rgb-color-wheel/. See if you can see the difference when you swap one for the other. I for sure wouldn’t be able to tell without looking at both next to each other under a tester (if even then), and I used to do color matching checks as part of my job. Try some other options like R219 and B220 vs. R220 and B219. See any difference in color?

Percentage wise — that’s the difference in Blue turnout that would have been required in MI, WI, PA and FL to flip the electoral map exactly as I have described.

It’s effectively the same country (regions), unless you look at it under exactly the right microscopic filter, which unfortunately just happened to match the electoral rule situation of this last election.

Holbo is exactly right, any description of what happened on Tuesday that wouldn’t *also* be reasonable in a world where Clinton just barely wins those 4 or 2-3 of those 4 states and wins the electoral college is just a fantasy/nightmare, not a real description of the electorate.

@ Tim Reynolds

So at this point you are openly advocating for Herrenvolk politics for Democrats? Or we should simply ignore racism and sexism and focus exclusively on classism and globilization, while disenfranchisement proceeds apace?

Please enlighten me and propose solutions.

That the election of Trump had anything at all to with neoliberalism is the fantasy of the left. People didn’t vote for Trump to have more fairness, less wealth inequality and a government that serves the interest of all Americans. In fact the Trumpers deeply resent any government programs that help the less well off, they resent their tax money being used to help poorer people have access to health care, or food stamps, or mandates that make the life of the handicapped a little more tolerable, I could go on, it’s a long list.

The Trumpers seek a more nasty world, a world where being selfish is the greatest virtue , where minorities know their place , where hard working immigrants struggling to support their families are rounded up using gestapo goon squads to be put in detention camps and shipped back to where they came from. A world where Women are submissive and sexual play toys.

They want to see anyone who dares to disagree with their retrograde mentality jailed , they want to force their religion down everybody’s throat. Leftist refuse to believe why so many really voted for Trump, just as they refuse to believe what Islamic terrorists say is their reason for the things they do. For the leftist everything has to filtered through the lens of the working class fighting against their class oppressors. If this were true, every democracy would be run by democratic socialists, the whole world would be Sweden.

The thing that will defeat Trump is not working class solidarity, it will be the train wreck
visited on all those who voted for him that is sure to happen, now he has the power to do the crazy things he said he would do.It won’t be just the poor that are going to be hurt by Trump and his merry band of troglodytes, it will be the very people who voted for him because they finally had a candidate that really thought the way they do. The old saying, be careful what you wish for, comes to mind.

But that doesn’t mean Team Trump necessarily was going to win. Hillary could have won.

Ok fine. But she wins with a Republican Senate, a Republican House, at the very best a SCOTUS where Merrick Garland is the median vote, Republican control of statehouses and governors, a media that at best tilts Republican, etc.

This is a Democratic Triumph? Is it a 50-50 nation?

I will give a plus to Reynolds at 8. I may have to dig up ole Stirling Newberry’s Sparta-Athens piece, I think 2004. Spent a little time this morning trying to remember when urban cosmopolitans beat rural/petty bourgeois reaction: Sparta-Athens, Kamakura-Kyoto + Choshu-Satsuma-Edo, I guess Paris beat Vendee, but the Commune go stomped.

This is why I’m reading Mao. Trump’s America wants to stomp the bosses. There is an opportunity that Bernie found, but that the Democrats will never allow, because it is the oppressed’s turn to make their millions, dammit. And like Mao, I understand that urban liberals are useless.

Heck, I will sign on to parts of Zanelli’s 22 also.

They want to see anyone who dares to disagree with their retrograde mentality jailed , they want to force their religion down everybody’s throat.

Yup. What scares me most, and there is plenty to scare, is Pence and his crew getting power and staffing the mid-levels of gov’t.

But what is with the national hate party on that woman who wouldn’t sign gay marriage licenses in rural America? Can you possibly see how they feel out in Red America, that they might see Blue doing the same, forcing secularism down their throats? Do I have to qualify this by saying that gay marriage as a National Right is good, right just? What I have been saying since 2000 is that the yahoo reaction will be furious, and the centre-left really isn’t prepared to fight, being the ideology of order, rules, law.

Difference between fascists (or radical religionists) and communists is that fascists will die trying, as long as they can take you with them.

I joked about “Revolution” and “Burn Shit Down” because I saw this coming. And leftist populism is much easier under an ineffective centrist like Kerensky or Obama than under a Trump or fricking Hitler.

Look at Obamacare: Trump is now saying that he wants to preserve parts of it. What he is not telling people is that this eventually means a single-payer system. And Bernie is in the perfect position to explain it to the public — well-spoken, well-loved, & camera-ready.

The reason that we DON’T have single payer already, is because it couldn’t get a single Republican vote, and 4 Democratic Senators were bought by the insurance companies.

So, putting it into economics-speak: Obamacare was structured to get to single-payer someday anyhow, by slowly running the private insurers out of the game. How? Because to cover everybody, it makes their risk-pools unprofitable. And that would lead exactly to the present situation, making it necessary to change. –Well, how are you going to explain this to voters?

So, back to opposition politics: The next thing to do is to say, “Health insurers add no value of their own. Why does the insurance industry still get to suck up 20% of the healthcare dollar, for adding no value of their own? This isn’t like fire or auto insurance, where a risk pool can be profitable and work as a private industry. This is something everybody eventually needs. We can reduce healthcare costs 20% across the board.”

If a New Yorker want gay marriage in Peoria, then move to Peoria

What is really really hard is to enforce gay marriage in Peoria while partying in Manhattan. This is like Thomas Babington MacAuley telling the Indians how to live.

Yes it is. The Democratic goal is imperialism, the higher-tech metropole colonizing the savages. And imperialism has it costs and consequences which Democrats weren’t willing to pay.

You need to occupy the conquered land, just can’t rely on the compradors. Otherwise, let them be.

And you ain’t seen nothing yet, cause the Imperialism of American Elites is at its worse overseas.

(John Smith, Imperialism in the 21st Century)

and talking about jokes – just saw Bill Maher telling me I shouldn’t be so nice in the future and WE should not bring a knife to the gunfight – and perhaps there is some truth in it – because if we would have told F…face von Clownstick much earlier to f… off – the Jennifer Lawrence way – we never ever would have now this… problem?

I think there is too much truth in Bob’s view. A lot of this hard-right agenda seems motivated by the fact that it will hurt the left half of the country. Show them there place and so on. So much of this seems to be blame gaming of the left(center) in various ways. And while much of it has merit, the overriding driver of this is our neoliberal run media. An easy way to make lots of money is radio or TV that addicts people by pushing hot buttons -almost always hard-right hot buttons. This goes on relentlessly, particularly in the rural parts of the country. So it brainwashing millions and generating a large constituency for hate and vengeance against the other. The politicians and elites are for the most part simply trying to swim in the toxic socio-political environment, and not being able to navigate it very well, because its just creating too many fault lines. Unless we get control of this whole misinformation industry, the basic divisions are going to keep growing, because after two people have been in different identitarian bubbles for long enough, they just can’t have a meaningful discussion anymore, it really becomes, she is from Venus, and he is from Mars writ large.

LFC:
“that most of the lost mfg jobs are never coming back no matter what govt does), and then offered concrete alternatives. That msg, to the extent she had it, never quite got through loud and clear.”
And thats hugely understated. I kept waiting her to make that case, but
never even saw a feeble attempt. Maybe she thought people would be diligent
enough to go to her web site and read white papers? So they prefered Trumps
empty promise, over what came through as an evasive nothingburger.

Of course that is all water over the dam now. We will have to deal with the
consequences.

Hidari: Sure if she had squeaked through, she would have been in an awful
way. But we would have had two to four years to try improve things. The
mys gradual recover was a breeze on our back. 2-4 more years of renewables expansion -and somewhat better healthcare in the white hinterlands might have
given our agenda at least a smidgeon of credibility. And we still would
have realized how close we came to disaster, and that we can’t ignore these peoples
concerns. The problem here is that the rural revolt came on so quickly
and unexpectantly, that we didn’t know what hit us until it was too late.

“The TPP is dead. At this point, Trump has done more to positively fulfill my expectations of him than Obama did over the course of two full terms.”

Why are you certain if this? Republican lead rs still want it. There are decent odds that some cosmetic changes are demanded and afterwards Trump simply declares that he’s negotiated a ‘great deal’ like he promised and it is approved.

For some reason I have a strong urge to call the “Clinton wins” timeline the Prime Timeline and call real life Earth-2. It feels like we are living in an alternate universe.

I think John Holbo is too optimistic in thinking that much “depends on what Trump does.” I have no idea what his actual plans are, if he has any, or whether he might envision a government much more to my liking than he has let on. But what I think is much more important is the context in which he comes to power, and certain personality/character traits which are pretty clearly true of him.

The context I’m talking about has several aspects:

1. There is a surprising (to me, anyway) taste for fascism in a non-trivial chunk of the population that now is emboldened to press their cause. Some of this is due to the hollowing out of the middle-class; some is due to loss of white privilege and a sense of threat from enemies who don’t resemble the white model citizen; some is due simply to opportunism of people from the InfoWars/Breitbart worlds, talk radio, and various other mostly subterranean groups who have been organizing people around apocalyptic visions of how things are all going to hell (and have been for a long time).

2. The strength of democratic institutions that gird against the threats mentioned in 1 are now as weak as I have ever heard of them being here. The respectable, neutral media is no longer trusted by much more than the the people who voted for democrats in this election, and is also much smaller and less able to do its job due to downsizing/shrinkage. Both major parties have largely lost contact with the interests of their traditional voting blocks, and so will be hard pressed to whip their members and voters to respond against genuinely virulent anti-democratic forces. There are fewer and fewer points of cultural reference that provide a common framework by which people can identify themselves as “all in this together.” (Note, for instance, how the two major campaign slogans, rightly understood, are not just anodyne platitudes, but are actually substantive visions that are also anathema to a significant portion of the people in the opposite camp.) And a significant share of the elites who have profited so greatly from the last 20-40 years of the neo-liberal trickle-up economy seem to have disconnected their well-being from that of the hoi polloi. So it’s hard to see how the ballast of these institutional forces is going to be heavy enough to keep the ship of state aright when someone tries to blow it over.

3. There are a lot of people right now itching for a fight. If this leads to what looks like chaos in the streets (and there seem to be no shortage of provocateurs right now), there will be a significant amount of support for efforts to restore order. As the Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke has put it (on Twitter), “These temper tantrums from these radical anarchists must be quelled. There is no legitimate reason to protest the will of the people.” and “How to stop riots. 1)Declare state of emergency. 2)Impose early curfew. 3)Mobilize Nat Guard. 4)Authorize ALL non lethal force. 5)Tear gas.” This will of course not quell the protests.

So I will not be surprised if events overtake Trump’s intentions, whatever they may be.

Is there reason to expect that Trump would respond in a temperate, soothing way to such events? Given that neither he nor the sycophants that have become his inner circle (with the possible exception of VP Pence) seem to have any scruples at all, and seem to have highly reactive, bullying, and and opportunistic tendencies, I think there will again be very little counterweight against reacting maximally, violently, and oppressively towards such protests and opposition. Whether or not Trump really has a desire to be a fascist leader, he has the right skill set and surrounds himself with similarly intemperate people. So if we are in the position of hoping for the calm, steady decency of Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and the institutional Republican party to keep things from spiraling out of control, I am not too hopeful that the center will hold.

And all this is to consider just domestic forces, as though we weren’t engaged simultaneously in a number of high-stakes international disputes with various antagonistic players, each with their own motives to disrupt business as usual in the U.S.

It will take one hell of a fast and effective progressive organizing effort to offer some stable counterweight to what I think could be an overwhelming pull of chaos and fascist repression. Glad to be wrong, of course.

I’d really like to read an italian analysis of Trump vs. Berlusconi. In general the US President is a more powerful position than prime minister, but I don’t know enough about italian politics to say for sure.

I’m guessing people are focusing policy too much, and the Trump administration is going to be dominated by scandals of incompetence and corruption. Trump is basically the apex of the GOP as a party of direct mail scammers, it is not a party fit to govern.

‘My guess is that it’s highly nuanced, highly local, highly personal: but what do I know? Or you?’

Well – we interviewed over 200 Trump voters – and if you are truly interested… and if there is a yuuuge diversity but as we mostly concentrated on Trump voters in the Rust Belt
it was highly local, highly personal but not too nuanced…

Zanelli @ 22
They want to see anyone who dares to disagree with their retrograde mentality jailed , they want to force their religion down everybody’s throat. Leftist refuse to believe why so many really voted for Trump, just as they refuse to believe what Islamic terrorists say is their reason for the things they do.

Agree on your characterisation of Leftists, but as I work in the US for weeks at a time and talk to colleagues (educated health, business and IT types) and also locals working tough service jobs, I discovered this year a surprising number of people from all levels who say they would (presumably did) vote for Trump, while talking very rationally about everything else. I had previously assumed that Trumpers probably did sign up to the ‘selfishness as a virtue’ ideal, but my anecdotal evidence says otherwise.

I think a more basic analysis is possible: many Trump voters have pretty much seen through the ideological left’s elitist attitude, their eternal campaign to control speech and their utter inability to simply look at the real world, make observations and use evidence (all of which is generally uncomfortable for one’s precious ideology) and produce thinking based on facts rather than abstract programmes based on fantasies from their academic echo chambers. They may not know any of this in a pedagogical fashion, but they can spot bullshit pretty quickly, and what they see is self-appointed intellectuals who broadcast but never listen – not as a matter of interlocutary style, but as a fundamental approach to the world.

A real problem is that such people have infected the mainstream political left so now ‘left’ = post-modernist ideologue, aka politically correct idiot, take your pick. Rational people who thought they were on the left in old school terms (labour union politics etc) have no party.

It’s therefore pretty easy to understand large numbers of voters not voting for Hillary and voting for Trump: she belongs to a party that does not listen or observe, and isn’t interested in their situation in principle, only in its own ideology. He doesn’t have an ideology. He may be lying through his teeth but at least he’s doing it in a way they can understand.

Trumps is certainly changing his tone, if not his tune. Perhaps having been elected, he’s now starting to consider his legacy already?

He says he wants to repeal and replace Obamacare, keeping certain provisions, including protections for people with pre-existing conditions who previously had no access to insurance. Huffpost reports that after a meeting with President Obama, who had urged him to consider this, Trump said: “I told him I will look at his suggestions, and out of respect, I will do that,”

Trump’s apparent flexibility is now being mocked on Twitter; one user posted:

TRUMP: “Let’s get that Muslim Band going

“Band? We thought you said ban”

TRUMP: “No way, that’s harsh. Also, how’s that Mexican mall coming?”

“What is really really hard is to enforce gay marriage in Peoria while partying in Manhattan. This is like Thomas Babington MacAuley telling the Indians how to live…You need to occupy the conquered land, just can’t rely on the compradors. Otherwise, let them be.”

I always appreciate bob’s posts, even if I’m never sure how much irony to read in them. I think this analogy is worth thinking about, perhaps directly in connection to Tim Reynolds @8. In keeping with the latter, I think it’s true that this in part a problem about a deep ignorance of and indifference sometimes bordering on contempt for the half of the country that tends to the right.

In one sense, if we’re going to win we need some form of empathy with at least some in that half in order to draw voters from there or, more importantly, not alienate them to the point of motivating them to actively stop us.

On th other hand, bob’s analogy makes me wonder if our lack of effective empathy is due to a phony liberal abstract empathy. We say they’re backward savages and unredeemables, but add so let’s tell them so and overcome them democratically. But either they’re savages and this is a war of civilization against its opposite or it’s not. Either we send missionaries to the heart of darkness or we send conquistadors.

(Other analogies to consider: is our relation to our own dark continent so different from our relation to ISIS and radical Islam? How and why is our response different? Is our dilemma of intraleft conlift among an advance guard bourgeois leadership and a rust belt proletariat and a reactionary rural peasantry at all enlightening? Will war in the petty bourgeois peasants save our revolution?)

Liberalism cannot bear the open contempt that true empathy demands. We need not contempt OR sympathy, vilifying or dehumanizing, but the kind of sympathy that requires greater contempt–let’s see them as true deplorables, as people who have as Marx said of the workers, truly been dehumanized, damaged in their humanity, then recognize it is precisely because half our country, having been made monstrous, are acting like monsters that they require our sympathy, for both their sakes and for our own.

But this might mean giving up the metaphysics of freedom, the otherworldly theology of possible worlds so dear to missionaries, philosophers, science fiction writers, and liberals. Not fatalism, the priotity of the future, but realism, the priority of the present.

You ask what the the left should do a couple of times but from the broader context of your post it seems like you’re really talking to the center. The left lost nothing on Tuesday, they were defeated months ago followed by the center giving them several good kicks to the head to rub it in.

If you’re really asking what the center should do then I can offer a few tips. Try treating your supposed allies on the left with at least as much respect as Obama showed to Trump yesterday. Try incorporating some of their ideas and passion into your program. Don’t spend all your post-convention time courting conservatives, billionaires, and war criminals instead of the 45% of your own party that you just ran against in the primary. Most of all, don’t nominate a soulless pathological liar with no political skills to lead your party.

Mr. John Garrett raised a question on the 12th of september at 4:22 pm as to what exactly Trump voters think, stating that most of “us” don’t know any such voters, or do not speak to them if “we” do. Is this is a general characteristic of this forum, is it really true that most here know no Trump voters, or communicate little with them ?

I do know many Trump voters, and visit this forum often and I suspect I am not alone.

sidd

The Donald is not one to keep the Capos in line … evidently he’s been asking how often he will have to commute to DC. So I think basically “institutions” is in play while the boys sort things out from their various entrenched positions. Consistency and legal nicety don’t figure to figure. Anyway the real action will be street-level while social norms get revised: the Facebook fake-news thing is still in full swing, with all the horrible intolerant things the left is perpetrating.

@37
Yes fair enough, but remember as we know you can knock at least 5, maybe 10, percent off of any ‘lead’ any progressive politician or position has in the thoroughly unreliable opinion polls. In any case, Obama was associated with neoliberalism, yes, but he didn’t have the constant aura of sleaze about him that the Clintons did. He was, to a certain extent, an outsider. Clinton was an insider practically since birth. She and Bill were associated with The System in a way Obama just wasn’t.

There was also the issue of Clinton’s constant warmongering rhetoric, which everyone seems to be very keen to forget about (again, Obama didn’t have that baggage).

Finally there was the gender issue. Sure Obama had the race issue, but African Americans liked him, and that made up for it. Women (by which I mean real women, not Guardian columnists) didn’t particularly like Hilary.

Individually, she could have dealt with these issues, but all of them together were fatal and it was probably the constant air of corruption and sleaze that follows the Clintons around like a black fog that was the deciding factor.

John Garret@41: “Seems to me the first step toward understanding would beto recognize that we (and most of us don’t know a single Trump voter, and if we do we don’t talk to him/her) have no idea what motivated individuals.”

Speak for yourself. I run a small business in what is now a purple state. While the small city I live in, is more Democratic and liberal than not, I’ve talked to at least a dozen people since the election who admitted voting for Trump, and gave reasons. I have family members that voted for the guy, one of whom has been being an a**hole on facebook since the result dropped.

I’m uneducated in politics and economics but don’t let that stop me… Numbers 14 and 17 seem on point, to me. Liberals had to swallow neoliberalism, am I right? Progressives kept trying to get through but not succeeding. Sanders presented a clear way forward and then said that progressives could not allow Clinton a honeymoon (assuming that she would be elected). So the best we could hope for, from this standpoint, was that Clinton would follow through and maybe succeed a little bit with the backup of a strengthened senate (hopefully). How much simpler, on the other side, to just put on a red cap and vote with a big “FU.” I thought I was prepared for the Trump win, but it was still shocking to see. Nevertheless, after a couple of days, I admitted that I understood it.

All this justified hatred of neoliberalism. But is there any alternative, that doesn’t mean first destroying the economy, before trying to rebuild it to try some untested theory? Thats why the dems were soft-neoliberals, you can’t simple replace something overnight without eliminating peoples source of sustenance. So lets quit hitting on soft-neoliberalism. Its the only alternative available. The discussion should be about how and howfar and how fast we soften it.

It’s pretty clear that: The country hasn’t changed. It’s still a majority Democratic country and increasing. The Comey letter was all that was needed to make the difference. Her staff would rather blame the Comey letter, than to admit that they should have paid a lot more attention to rustbelt swingstate voters, so that the Comey letter wouldn’t have stopped her from winning.

Michael Moore on Morning Joe is 44 minutes long, but a really great and eye-opening discussion:
http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/michael-moore-joins-wide-ranging-election-talk-806604867876

@61
[grave, but bemused tone of voice] “You know, Trump really could win the election. It’s very possible and perhaps even likely.”
[smugly weary tone of voice, as if speaking to a dim-witted, overactive child] “Yes, of course, it is possible that Trump could win the election. Anything is possible.”

It’s normal that left or centre left people in America should now fight and blame each other, but hopefully a more collective soul searching might eventually happen. If you want opinions from outsiders then, I’m sure there’s plenty of us who can offer them.

All Hillary needed to fo IMHO was go to a few white economically depressed areas and say something like:
Let me be honest with you.
Your old job isn’t coming back.
Even if we got General Widget to move back, most of the jobs would be done by robots.
I will bring newer better jobs.
They will be jobs you will feel proud to do.
You will feel important again.
The pay will be better.
The working conditions will be better.
They will be safer jobs.
They have to give first crack at any job to local residents.

Avoid: Fancy logic, and big words. The last thing you want to do is to try to prove your
superiority by using fancy speech, that shows that you are smarter than they are.

As I said earlier, expecting them to discover this by going though thousands of pages of your white papers was delusional.

Hi John, bad link and typos. That’s so me.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/11/12/it_wasnt_the_polls_that_missed_it_was_the_pundits_132333.html

Cheers.

Hi John, Fair points, re: arrogance in tone and frankly self-esteem.
The compliments I can give, I’m happy to give. You’re not arguing with me, however. You’re arguing with Sean Trende, who I’ll quote for the benefit of others:

“There is a fast-building meme that Donald Trump’s surprising win on Tuesday reflected a failure of the polls. This is wrong. The story of 2016 is not one of poll failure. It is a story of interpretive failure and a media environment that made it almost taboo to even suggest that Donald Trump had a real chance to win the election.”

I’ve made it clear elsewhere that if people really believed Trump is an extinction-level threat, then those who did so behaved in a manner that strikes me, at least, as arrogant, foolhardy, and cavalier.

I believe you and others here to be careful, cautious, sober, funny and sensible. (not necessarily in that order) Ergo, you do/did not believe Trump to be an extinction-level threat and relied upon the polls. You’re in excellent company for whatever that’s worth.

Chopin, a wonderful lunch, research, and sunshine lie ahead. Thank you for the opportunity to respond. I could well be wrong about everything but the outcome of the election.

I think a more basic analysis is possible: many Trump voters have pretty much seen through the ideological left’s elitist attitude, their eternal campaign to control speech and their utter inability to simply look at the real world, make observations and use evidence (all of which is generally uncomfortable for one’s precious ideology) and produce thinking based on facts rather than abstract programmes based on fantasies from their academic echo chambers. They may not know any of this in a pedagogical fashion, but they can spot bullshit pretty quickly, and what they see is self-appointed intellectuals who broadcast but never listen – not as a matter of interlocutary style, but as a fundamental approach to the world.

A real problem is that such people have infected the mainstream political left so now ‘left’ = post-modernist ideologue, aka politically correct idiot, take your pick. Rational people who thought they were on the left in old school terms (labour union politics etc) have no party.

It’s therefore pretty easy to understand large numbers of voters not voting for Hillary and voting for Trump: she belongs to a party that does not listen or observe, and isn’t interested in their situation in principle, only in its own ideology. He doesn’t have an ideology. He may be lying through his teeth but at least he’s doing it in a way they can understand”

)))))))))))))

There is a fair degree of truth in what you say. But this doesn’t ennoble those who found their political identity in the sexist, racist, and outright vicious campaign of Donald Trump as you seem to what to do. Their voting represents a hate crime. And it’s pretty scary, it even surprised a cynic like me.

Among those that I know personally, not social media or passing acquaintances, they generally fall into two categories – blindly partisan (hate government, maybe hate liberals), and deeply misanthropic (really hate government, really hate liberals.)
At least that’s the anecdotal evidence from this central Floridian.”

Same here, I live in Central Florida. It’s very ugly.

Bob Zanelli: That the election of Trump had anything at all to with neoliberalism is the fantasy of the left. People didn’t vote for Trump to have more fairness, less wealth inequality and a government that serves the interest of all Americans.

The left fantasy is that Clinton did or could credibly offer more fairness, less wealth inequality or a government that serves the interest of all Americans.

Twenty-five years of neoliberal “it’s complicated” drained all the credibility out of any potential Democratic populism.

This is like arguing I couldn’t stand the person who had bad table manners so I chose to go with the rapist. Complaining about the faults of the democrats seems pretty strange when the other choice was a sociopath.

Omega Centauri @74
Partly because I knew whom I was voting for, I didn’t read the candidates’ websites (or white papers, which HRC, at least, doubtless had).

But I did watch or listen to the debates (I missed about 10 minutes in the last one, but basically I heard all of them). And when Trump started on his I-will-bring-back-good-jobs-by-ripping-up-trade-agreements shtick, HRC should have said: “Nonsense, these are empty promises that can’t be met. Stopping dumping of Chinese steel in the US is fine, but it won’t bring back a ton of assembly-line steel jobs b.c of automation. No one has a magic-wand solution, but Trump’s promises to bring back the economy of the ’50s are just lies and illusion. If you vote for him thinking that will happen you are falling for a con. But here’s a couple things we can do (besides raising the minimum wage) to start bringing some decent jobs back to depressed parts of the country.” And then, having already turned to her economic advisors for one or two ideas — never mind that they would work, all they had to be was comprehensible and not in multi-syllabic technospeak — she should then have proceeded to mention them.

And in the course of three debates with Trump, she said, as best I can recall, nothing like that.

Hi John, I realize on the re-read I may have crossed the line with the ‘Still laughing’ or even ‘smart’ folks. If so, apologies. I really do want people here to take the concerns of the hicks more seriously. Many may ‘believe’ they do. But those most in need of help: black and white aren’t hearing it. And what these folks do hear, did not draw them to the Democratic candidate in anything like the numbers necessary to defeat Trump.

I am quite serious about the modelling. As long as Trump opponents kept congratulating each other on a ‘sure thing’ in November, I remained optimistic about an upset.

I reread the February thread by JH: very insightful then, and even more now in retrospect.

I agree with OP too. Before the election I thought that, even if HRC would win, the fact that we were so close to Trump should have been ground for some serious thinking about the state of the nation.

As a side, think of the alternate world where Weiner’s pics do not cross state borders. Sometimes empires fall for the stupidest accidents…

– as this started out to be such a joyful thread about jokes and comedy let’s spend the next two and a half years pondering who was right or wrong about the outcome of this erection – that should keep us all busy – and structure time in a pleasant way up to the beginning of the next erection…?

The best joke (that is, best to my taste) I encountered about the Trump campaign was this one —

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qIQbydyHwc

— and it’s still just as good. But then, it’s not whimsical. Also, the joke itself is not premised on the impossibility of a Trump victory; if anything, the opposite.

Are you seriously betting on Trump being more of a “Berlusconi” than a “Mussolini”? After the misplaced confidence, even arrogance, of the “liberal” media (and your colleagues here on CT) that Clinton would win handily? Your position allows you to make such claims; the dozens and dozens of victims of hate crimes perpetrated since the election, in the name of Trump, do not have such luxury. You yourself admit to being deeply worried. So maybe you should stop making bets and predictions that hope for the best and look around you and realize that the worst is already here and beginning its work.

@109
‘How does the Trump vote break down between those who would have voted for him over, say, Sanders, and those who were mostly against technowonkery, or those mostly against a woman (any woman)?’

How does the Trump vote break down between those who voted for Trump because somebody took Trumps Twitter away and he stopped twittering in the last week and all of his Twitter fans.

And as we now (probably) all have heard every single contributing possibility from Me voting for Hillery because Bernie begged me – but some friends of mine who still live in the basements of their parents voted for Trump because the believe in the theory of Susan (Sarandon) that we need the Fascist to get a Bernielike in 2020 – it might be time to focus
on ‘the American Worker’ -(Turned around Rust Belt or not)

So what you guys are going to do that in the next election they are going to vote for us again?

@109
“I’d really like to read an italian analysis of Trump vs. Berlusconi.’

Pronto!
– come un abitante della città di amore Verona ai tempi di Berlusconi –
as an inhabitant of the city of love Verona in the times of Berlusconi I feel entitled
to tell’yall:

Si è incomparabile – (It’s incomparable) –
or as Berlusconi once so famously said:
Sono un amante, non un combattente -(I’m a Lover not a Fighter!)

Hallleluja!
Halleluja!!

and another ‘joke’ – or not:

83 years in a country very, very far away from our homeland the working class was devastated.
33% of the nation’s working population was unemployed!
In words: Thirty-three percent!
And along came a Racist Monster – played on the population’s fear of no hope. promised to make the nation great again and decreed that all should work in the country.

And in just 6 years this Racist Monster got the unemployment rate down to 0!
In words ‘zero’!

And it’s often forgotten – that’s why a lot of Germans liked their Nazis so much…

I mean the US Embassy in Israel obviously. Which just as obviously means that the 2 state ‘solution’ is dead.

Berlusconi had far more power than Trump will have. First because the de facto power of a prime minster in a parliamentary system is larger than that of a president in a presidental system and second because of his media empire.

‘Berlusconi had far more power than Trump will have.’

Could be? – but it could be like:
What is the difference between a German and an Italian Fascist?
(answer)
The German Fascist takes it very seriously.

So we just might have to wait how seriously the American Fascist takes it?

– but shouldn’t we at least celebrate that America is discovering ‘the American worker’?

All of Americ suddenly seems to have realized that there are ‘real workers’ living in our country who are doing ‘real work’.

Awesome! –
Absolutely awesome!! –
It’s nearly as awesome when American Idol discovered Kelly Clarkson!!
and Michael Moore is everywhere as he know a few workers personally and everybody wants to know from him how these workers really are!

Halleluja!

For those who are very confused about why Trump was elected this should be helpful

http://www.juancole.com/2016/11/donald-inspired-universities.html

I’ve worked in nearly every presidential campaign since JFK. Hilary Clinton was the worst candidate and ran the worst campaign of any candidate in my memory. We weren’t responsible for this, she and her advisors were. Yes, we didn’t do enough, yes, too many people stayed home, yes, neoliberal arrogance. But Bernie and many others would have kicked Trump’s butt.

JG

Just in:

Senator Bernie Sanders, who lost to Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, would have beaten Donald Trump by a historic margin if he had been the party’s nominee, according to a pre-election poll. The national survey of more than 1,600 registered voters, conducted by Gravis Marketing two days before the general election, found that 75-year-old Vermont Senator would have received 56 per cent of the vote while Trump would have won 44 per cent.

And sorry, but this is the time when the Democratic Party chairs get reshuffled those at the front are moved to the back, those who were first are now last. I wish the struggle could be delayed, but I am probably wrong.

Somebodies, some factions are gonna pay. It will in aggregate perhaps be unfair. But bets were made and leadership was demanded, and the failure is catastrophic and irrevocable. A new party, nation, and world may perhaps be rebuilt someday. Previous leaders and activists of certain descriptions can just go away.

The failure has put the actually most vulnerable at risk in horrible ways, and Democrats should be riotous in our protection and demand for protection. The leadership should go to minorities as an expression of our defiance and our strategy.
Intersectionally, age should be given priority over other categories. Experience has much less value in Trumpland.

Perhaps this is a little too facile but I think in general conservatives have a more reality based understanding of human nature , but they use this understanding to make an ugly world , while liberals truly desire a better world but generally lack a reality based understanding of human nature. Of course the trick is to develop reality based political strategies that have a chance of improving the world we live in given its true nature.

John Garrett, can you elaborate about what specific mistakes hrc campaign did? I know nothing about campaigning and i am curious. Thanks.

Manta @127
It’s just that I didn’t want to come across as blaming the HRC campaign team for *everything* since, although I voted for her (and expected her to win), I was not active in the campaign, I don’t have any insider perspective on it, and thus feel I should exercise some restraint about saying ‘it’s all their fault’ in the aftermath. (That said, I haven’t been all that successful in exercising such restraint here and elsewhere. But a lot of HRC paid staffers and volunteers doubtless worked hard, and having been involved in campaigns in the past, I feel for them, whatever mistakes they might have made. Hindsight is 20-20….)

People didn’t vote for Trump to have more fairness, less wealth inequality and a government that serves the interest of all Americans. In fact the Trumpers deeply resent any government programs that help the less well off, they resent their tax money being used to help poorer people have access to health care, or food stamps, or mandates that make the life of the handicapped a little more tolerable, I could go on, it’s a long list.

The campaign, among other things, was saturated with false equivalencies, and now the post-election recriminations look saturated with false dichotomies to me. Yes, the left-of-center parties across much of the Western world, including the Democrats, have no good answer to working-class people who used to be economically more or less secure (which only ever was the case, in the US, for white working-class people) and now face an economic decline and loss of status to which most of them can’t adapt. This is a structural political problem, and it’s not being made the top priority it needs to be. I cheered for Sanders and what his movement has achieved, but even they fall far short, especially in an era of the Trump, and given that going right-wing was always an option for the white working-class (only, it’s up from 40 or 50% to now 70% or thereabouts, that is, from an almost 50/50 split between R and D to a 40-point advantage for R under Trump, up from a nearly 30-point advantage when Romney was running against Obama; I’m quoting numbers because I think having a quantitative idea of the size of the problems is a good thing). Their desire to kick the establishment in the teeth was known, was even reflected in the polls, and was much discussed. I’m not surprised they did. They’re behaving like what we’ve seen many times before.

What did take my by surprise was that the movement wasn’t counteracted by those who aren’t under economic stress. The typical Trump voter, after all, is more affluent than the typical Clinton voter, and the racial split is just terrible. Every single-factor white demographic (white women, white educated people…) voted for Trump. Around here, well, read what a well-regarded Alaskan journalist/feature writer has to say. The Nazis had propaganda, the Soviets had dezinformatsiya, and Trump has Breitbart, its networks, and help from the Macedonian meme factories. People swallowed it whole. Fear works. And they threw POC and other minorities under the bus.

I’m finding myself with a much reduced tolerance for mono-causal, simple-blame approaches. Sure, I, too, yelled at the TV and wanted Clinton just to give some straight talk about jobs that won’t come back. She’s actually done this a few times, as far as I know, but never very prominently. Why? Well, read your Breitbart (it’ll be a good idea going forward — these people are now senior advisors of the executive; quite a career). They were just waiting for her to do it. Her campaign would have been toast.

From now on, standing up for justice in the face of Trumpian attacks will take different kinds of networking than going out with a strategy to wrest back votes in order to keep Trumps reign as short as possible.

[PS: Apologies for dropping out of a conversation unceremoniously a few weeks ago. I never responded to Lupita. Also, the conversations around moderation policy have led me to conclude to give up the pseudonymity and post under my everyday identity.]

@ 131, 134. I certainly don’t have every reason it was such a bad campaign, but here are some:
– Total failure to engage directly with Trump’s lies and rhetoric, and to keep at it
– No press conferences, no engagement with ordinary people ever
– Her sustained lies re email, Foundation, etc., etc. Never apologize, never explain.
– Absolute unwillingness to engage with people who disagreed with her
– Repetition, no humor unless programmed – most people thought Trump was funny
– Never a moment of spontaneity
– Complete faith that ads and money would win

A start but maybe somebody wants to expand the list. Some of this applies to Dukakis, Gore, etc. but they weren’t this bad.

Thanks, John Garrett @140.

“I’m really tired of being told here and elsewhere what “they” (Trump voters) think, feel, want, what they hate and resent, etc., etc. Seems to me the first step toward understanding would beto recognize that we (and most of us don’t know a single Trump voter, and if we do we don’t talk to him/her) have no idea what motivated individuals. My guess is that it’s highly nuanced, highly local, highly personal: but what do I know? Or you?”

Well I know a bunch of them. They are: all white, mostly over age 50 although a few 20-somethings in there too, men and women, some urban and some rural, some highly educated and some not.

Many of the 20-somethings could have easily been Bernie supporters and in fact a few were. They see the system screwing everyone their age they know and they’re looking for someone to change things. They never gave a damn about Hillary, even the women, because she was old news. They wanted things shaken up. I am afraid they’re going to get that.

The older ones? Racist at core. Really fucking racist. It got expressed in many ways, some subtle, but if I had to name one thing that’s it.

Fausse Copine

Someone is going to write a PhD analysing HRC’s one-on-one engagements with minorities this election – and the reactions to them on the bifurcated media. but any number of others will do. It really is a spectacle to watch shocked liberals wonder at how anyone could vote for Trump, labelling such a vote ‘racist’ all the while ignoring those here who giddily, excitedly celebrated Clinton – which I’d also call ‘racist’.

Even Salon – not Jacobin by a stretch – saw fit to publish this. Jacobin also had an article about the wall Bill built, and that Barry extended.

—-
Going beyond epidermal definitions, I want to ask that we think of the instability of Whiteness. As Whiteness is dominance and privilege, many can become white, and we can maybe think about how others react to losing Whiteness and its wages. Any other race abolitionists here?

Tim Reynolds #8:

“You can point to the popular vote all you want, but that doesn’t decide who gets to be President and never will for precisely this reason–you want to abolish the electoral college so that you can safely ignore the interests of working-class whites and rural voters”

If this is so, the voters in the states of “working-class whites and rural voters” (granted for the sake of argument) have had the edge in the House, the Senate, *and* the White House for a very long time. How’s that been working out for you?

@127: She did get votes. Lots of votes. Millions more than her rival in the primaries, and a million more than her rival in the general as of the present writing.

Adding to what Joy said @148 – the Electoral College was an anachronism almost as soon as it was established and probably would never have existed at all save as a mechanism to keep the slave states happy.

I also know some Trump voters, some professionally, some I regret to say in my family circle (not that it’s easy to know that you work with and for people who were willing to put such a person in the Oval Office). All white men. None of them are hurting financially. It’s racism, sexism, and right wing politics at work.