POST-ELECTION HANGOVER
Mobilizing racist and anti-women sentiment was undoubtedly an important part the Trump campaign – especially in the primary race. But it would be a mistake to see this as the only basis for the Trump electoral college win this week – or to demonize all Trump supporters. (Clinton, as we all know, narrowly won the popular vote.) Racial incitement has long been a key element of modern Republican politics – some Trump supporters (and the candidate himself at times) were only more vocal than in previous elections. But there is no reason to believe that racism has somehow become more prevalent since 2012. President Obama remains far more popular than either Trump or Clinton.
The truth is that Clinton lost states (and many counties) won by Obama in 2008 and 2012, and she also won fewer votes from African-Americans, Latinos and youth. In fact the turnout for Clinton was 9 million lower than the Obama peak, while Trump got fewer votes overall than Mitt Romney four years ago. Trump won by slim margins in Rust Belt states where the swing voters are likely to have been working-class men and women who heard from him a populist message (however phony) that found no equivalent from the Democratic Party. If you doubt this, try watching this clip from aTrump pre-election rally (the full speech and transcript here). He spoke in words that could have been delivered by Bernie Sanders without much alteration.
On the bright side, Massachusetts voters roundly defeated the Wall-Street push for unlimited charter school expansion and (in Boston) passed the Community Preservation Act (CPA) for more housing funds; Question 3, mandating less cruelty to farm animals passed -- and, of course, legalized marijuana. Not a moment too soon.
POLITICS IS THE SOLUTION
To believe that Trump’s appeal was entirely based on ethnic nationalism is to believe that a near majority of Americans are driven only by hate and a shared desire for a white supremacist political program. We don’t believe that. And the facts don’t bear it out… This was Clinton’s election to lose. And she lost. A lot of the blame will fall on Clinton the candidate, but she only embodied the consensus of this generation of Democratic Party leaders. Under President Obama, Democrats have lost almost a thousand state-legislature seats, a dozen gubernatorial races, sixty-nine House seats and thirteen in the Senate. Last night didn’t come out of nowhere… This is a new era that requires a new type of politics — one that speaks to people’s pressing needs and hopes, rather than to their fears. Elite liberalism, it turns out, cannot defeat right-wing populism. We can’t move to Canada or hide under the bed. This is a moment to embrace democratic politics, not repudiate them. More
The revenge of working-class whites
For the past 40 years, America's economy has raked blue-collar white men over the coals. It whittled their paychecks. It devalued the type of work they did best. It shuttered factories and mines and shops in their communities. New industries sprouted in cities where they didn't live, powered by workers with college degrees they didn't hold. They were not the only ones who felt abandoned by a rapidly globalizing economy, but they developed a distinctly strong pessimism in its face. On Tuesday, their frustrations helped elect Donald Trump, the first major-party nominee of the modern era to speak directly and relentlessly to their economic and cultural fears. It was a “Brexit” moment in America, a revolt of working-class whites who felt stung by globalization and uneasy in a diversifying country where their political power had seemed to be diminishing. More
Former Obama strongholds sealed the election for Trump
Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House, a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump.
Trump also won 194 of the 207 counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012. More
'Not My President'
Anti-Trump Demonstrations Swell Nationwide
In the wake of Donald Trump's shocking victory, Americans around the country took to the streets Wednesday evening to express their fear, anger, and opposition to what a Trump presidency represents. "Not my president!" was the rallying cry in cities nationwide. "No Trump, no KKK, no fascists USA!" was chanted by thousands on the streets of Chicago; "Stop Trump's hate!" was shouted by demonstrators in downtown Boston; and a crowd of largely Latino high school students chanted "The people united will never be defeated!" in Spanish at Los Angeles' city hall. Many protesters held signs expressing solidarity with Muslims, Latinos, LGBTQ people, women, and other groups insulted or threatened by rhetoric from the Trump-Pence ticket during the presidential campaign. Rallies took place from Kansas City to Austin to New York to Seattle, among many other locales, and were largely peaceful, with few arrests reported. More
For Muslim Americans, Fear and Shock at a Trump Presidency
American Muslims and Arab-Americans woke up Wednesday morning with shock, fear, and a determination to tackle head-on the bigotry that helped propel Donald Trump to the White House. “The U.S. we knew yesterday is no longer the same U.S.,” Khalil Jahshan, the executive director of the Arab Center, told me as the final votes were tallied in the early morning hours. “To me, this is an unprecedented white insurgency. We’re in for some frightening surprises.” Today, America is a nation in which Muslims and other immigrants fear they are no longer welcome… What happens next, says Sohaib Sultan, the imam at Princeton University, depends on Trump himself. “If he tries to put water to some of the fires that he started, then hopefully it won’t result in violence. This is a very, very volatile position for America right now,” he said. More
GLENN GREENWALD:
Democrats, Trump, and the Ongoing, Dangerous Refusal to Learn the Lesson of Brexit
While elite circles gorged themselves on globalism, free trade, Wall Street casino gambling, and endless wars (wars that enriched the perpetrators and sent the poorest and most marginalized to bear all their burdens), they completely ignored the victims of their gluttony, except when those victims piped up a bit too much — when they caused a ruckus — and were then scornfully condemned as troglodytes who were the deserved losers in the glorious, global game of meritocracy. That message was heard loud and clear. The institutions and elite factions that have spent years mocking, maligning, and pillaging large portions of the population — all while compiling their own long record of failure and corruption and destruction — are now shocked that their dictates and decrees go unheeded… Instead of acknowledging and addressing the fundamental flaws within themselves, [elites] are devoting their energies to demonizing the victims of their corruption, all in order to delegitimize those grievances and thus relieve themselves of responsibility to meaningfully address them. More
The Long Death March of the Dismal Dollar Democrats
Contempt for the white working class cost Hillary Clinton the White House to no small degree. The exit polls are very clear on that. Those polls also tell us I think that Bernie Sanders would very likely have prevailed over Trump in a general election. His leftish populist campaign was pitched largely to the economic and anti-plutocratic grievances and sentiments of the white majority working and middle classes, most of whom aren’t frothing racists, nativists, and sexists (Hillary’s “deplorables” comment notwithstanding). I think enough of those voters would have recognized Sanders as a more authentic articulator of their views and anger than Trump for Sanders to have prevailed over the Deplorable Donald… (My last online comment prior to Election Day: “Think about this. fellow workers and citizens. The biggest nightmare for the ‘party of FDR’ tomorrow is a big turnout by the white working class. Put that in your historical pipe and smoke it.”) More
NAOMI KLEIN: It was the rise of the Davos class that sealed America's fate
They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry. But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview – fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine – is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake? … Neo-fascist responses to rampant insecurity and inequality are not going to go away. But what we know from the 1930s is that what it takes to do battle with fascism is a real left. A good chunk of Trump’s support could be peeled away if there were a genuine redistributive agenda on the table. An agenda to take on the billionaire class with more than rhetoric, and use the money for a green new deal. More
The Establishment’s Massive ‘Intelligence Failure’
The U.S. power Establishment — the two national parties, the bureaucracy, the “deep state,” the military, the security establishment, Wall Street and the corporations — all have believed in their own exceptionalism and right to dominate and determine the course of American society — and indeed even much of the rest of the world. We had no reason to expect that the Republican Party could serve as the natural voice of those who feel disenfranchised and economically marginalized — dissed in the fullest sense. In this sense, Trump was a revolution from within the ranks of the Republican Party. Or perhaps more accurately, he seized the mechanism of the Republican Party to broadcast a message that the Republican establishment could not see or believe until too late. More
Lack of Enthusiasm for Hillary, Not Trump Strength, Cost the Election
Contrary to alarming perceptions put forth in the major media contending that Donald Trump's stunning victory this week portends a swing to the right in US politics, voter turnout figures compared to past years suggest otherwise. The numbers show that it was lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton, rather than any particular enthusiasm for Donald Trump, which cost Democrats the election… What this means is that it wasn't Trump's strength, but Clinton's weakness in the polling places which cost the Democratic party the election. Nearly 10 million people less voted Democrat in 2016 than in 2008, and 6 million fewer than in 2012. Given that the total number of registered voters remained the same or increased slightly, 15% fewer people voted Democrat in 2016 than in 2008. The conclusion cannot be escaped that many of the people who voted Democrat in 2008 and in 2016 either stayed home or voted for Trump. The Washington Post reports that, across the US, "Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House, a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump." More
Bernie Sanders Said He Could Beat Donald Trump; Party Sabotaged Him Anyway
Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s insurgent left-wing opponent during the primaries, repeatedly warned voters and the Democratic establishment that he had a greater chance of defeating Trump. “Bernie Sanders continues to be the strongest candidate in the race to keep Donald Trump out of the White House,” his campaign stressed in a May press release. Polling done that month by a variety of news outlets and firms consistently found that Sanders had a double-digit percentage point lead over Trump, with Sanders’ average margin over the Republican being three times larger than Clinton’s average lead of 3.3 percent. Experts said Sanders’ sizable lead over Trump was largely due to his popularity among independents and young voters, two groups with whom Clinton did not do nearly as well. Sanders pollster Ben Tulchin noted at the time that the Vermont senator’s overwhelmingly “positive profile stands in stark contrast to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who are both deeply unpopular.” More
ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
if the current vote tallies continue roughly they way they are, Donald Trump will join Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, and George W. Bush as presidents who lost the popular vote but still took the nation’s highest office, in every case with huge impacts. The Electoral College was established at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to prevent the public from voting directly on our national leader. Ostensibly, it was meant in part to protect small states from being bullied by bigger ones. It also installed a “three-fifth bonus” that gave plantation owners a 60 percent headcount for their slaves… There is no useful function for the Electoral College, a vile 230-year-old holdover from the bad old days of the southern slaveocracy. It poisons our electoral process. More
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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
The Obama administration says it is going to bomb the once and future al-Qaeda group in Syria (now calling itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham) in addition to ISIS. These are clearly bad and dangerous people, but rather than bombing them by illegally intervening in Syria, perhaps it would be more effective for the US to pressure its allies in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar (and Israel) to stop supporting and financing them.
Obama directs Pentagon to target al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria
President Obama has ordered the Pentagon to find and kill the leaders of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria that the administration had largely ignored until now and that has been at the vanguard of the fight against the Syrian government, U.S. officials said.
The decision to deploy more drones and intelligence assets against the militant group formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra reflects Obama’s concern that it is turning parts of Syria into a new base of operations for al-Qaeda on Europe’s southern doorstep, the officials said. The move underlines the extent to which Obama has come to prioritize the counterterrorism mission in Syria over efforts to pressure President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, as al-Nusra is among the most effective forces battling the Syrian government. More
THE DEVIL YOU DON'T KNOW:
Trump is not all bad news for the Middle East
The election of Trump today may not necessarily be the unmitigated disaster it is currently being portrayed as - at least not necessarily for the Middle East. There may even be a sigh of relief in many quarters in the Middle East precisely because Trump’s more isolationist discourse, if it were to be put into practice, would mark a sharp departure from Clinton’s hawkish, interventionist record… President Obama had serious problems with the Washington foreign policy playbook, whereas with Clinton, it would have been business as usual for countries like Saudi Arabia – a key pillar of US foreign policy and security order in the region. With Trump, we’ll have to wait and see but we do know he has issues with not just the Washington playbook, but also the entire establishment… In the end, a clueless populist who lacks an appreciation for the nuances of the Middle East may turn out to be far less destructive to the region itself than an intelligent operator who knows what makes it tick. More
Why the Iran Deal Will Survive the Trump Presidency
Trump’s triumph is sending shockwaves through the foreign policy community, particularly among supporters of the Iran nuclear deal. Reuters has already reported that Trump’s election puts the Iran Deal “on shaky ground.” … Trump’s win no doubt introduces uncertainty into the already complicated status of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). But the notion that Trump can or will single-handedly dismantle JCPOA overstates his likely power as president. Three factors will constrain his ability to unravel the Iran deal: the relatively low importance of Iran in the current landscape of American politics, the essential security implications of the Iran deal for Russia, and the economic ambitions of Europe. More
Obama’s Final Arms-Export Tally More than Doubles Bush’s
The Obama administration has approved more than $278 billion in foreign arms sales in its eight years, more than double the total of the previous administration, according to figures released by the Pentagon on Tuesday. Many of the approved deals — most but hardly all of which have become actual sales — have been to Mideast nations, including key allies in the campaign against Islamic State militants and countries that have been building up their defenses in fear of a nuclear Iran. Saudi Arabia has been the largest recipient, reaping prospective deals worth more than $115 billion, according to notices announcing the deals that were sent to Congress for approval.
“Nobody even comes close” for the number of deals and total value, said William Hartung, director of the Arms Security Project at the Center for International Policy. More
HOW THE U.S. MILITARY CAN SAVE $1 TRILLION
The United States could reduce Pentagon spending by over a trillion dollars in the next decade—spending $5.2 trillion rather than the currently planned $6.3 trillion— by adopting strategy of military restraint. That’s the bottom line of a study I produced along with several colleagues as part of “Developing Alternative Defense Strategies 2016,” an exercise organized by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, where groups from five think tanks used CSBA’s “Strategic Choices” software to reimagine the U.S. military budget… That starts with restraining ourselves from the temptations that great power affords— making war less often and more deliberatively, deflatingour definition of security so it is distinguishable from global dominance and ceasing to insist that we alone can boss humanity. More
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