…knocks it out of the ballpark, really:
Donald Trump tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media. People are tired of working longer hours for lower wages, of seeing decent paying jobs go to China and other low-wage countries, of billionaires not paying any federal income taxes and of not being able to afford a college education for their kids – all while the very rich become much richer.
To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him. (link)
First paragraph reclaims the progressive critique of the establishment. Second paragraph sets forth, broadly, how progressives should act going forward.
Let us not forget that Trump’s victory rests upon the failure of establishment policies.
As for the spasm of anti-Trump protests: okay, but let’s not waste too much time shaking our fists in his face. Consider the sources of his power, and of ours. (And about that flag-burning thing: Might want to re-think that.)
Bernie shows us that it is never to early, or too hard, to make a clear positive statement.
And Bernie’s statement is the way to move forward. I am looking forward to seeing his movement so great things and prepare the next generation of leaders to tackle income inequality which all Americans are rightly upset about.
We need to take action on Reich’s point and my perspective on the immediate need to dismantle the dysfunctional establishment.
I like Bernie. Many, many of us from working class families agree that we need medicare for all and that the minimum wage should be a livable wage. My only concern with him personally is that I still do not understand why he did not stand up to Hillary.
but also, let’s remember, maybe not.
The problem with counterfactuals is that it would have been a different campaign with its own milestones and dynamics. We don’t know what crap they would have thrown at him or how well his campaign would have handled things.
But that’s not my point. I just mean that he is really pointing the way at this moment, and that we have an opportunity to reclaim the ground that our party should never have let go in the first place.
Donald Trump is not the threat facing us. If Mr. Trump is, for some reason, unable to serve, then Mike Pence will be as bad or worse. The sixty million Americans who either celebrate or ignore his racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment rhetoric are the threat.
I’m glad to hear the statement from Mr. Sanders. We need to find ways to put actual POWER behind that statement, so that it has a chance of actually meaning anything.
This was always my issue with Mr. Sanders. His rhetoric is great, he gives a great speech or angry rejoinder. What I’ve not yet seen him do is create or leverage enough political power to make those words mean anything. He failed to do that in all his time in congress, and he failed to do that during the primary.
The most important difference between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is that Donald Trump absolutely destroyed his primary competitors. Bernie Sanders lost or won by razor-thin margin. Donald Trump dominated. Bernie Sanders competed.
This is the aspect of Donald Trump that is most terrifying to me.
In my view, our challenge is to relegate the forces in America that elected Donald Trump — racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti-environmentalism, and plain old cruelty — to the sidelines and shadows of America. I think we need to do, for our agenda, what conservative Republicans did for theirs in the immediate aftermath of Barry Goldwater’s defeat. After that 1964 loss, it was sixteen long years until that same movement propelled a second-rate movie actor into the White House and set the American agenda for at least forty years.
We need to do the same for our agenda. My private terror is whether there will be an election in 2032 for our party to win — I think it is very likely that the America I have lived in has already died.
Yes, that is the work we have to do. Us, not one guy.
Look, you could fill several posts here about what the Sanders campaign could have done better. Still, didn’t he do well?
He certainly exceeded my expectations. And his two-paragraph statement captures the moment for me.
Too bad he won’t be not the next Senate Budget chair after all.
He did do well, and I like this statement.
In fact, I think that we desperately need prophetic voices calling to us in the wilderness for at least the next four years — Bernie Sanders is among the best there is in that role.
Jehlen over Cheung and Connolly over Toomey. That is where the focus has to be in Massachusetts. We need to be the guiding beacon of progressive government and that requires first passing a progressive income tax which is the next big fight, and I would argue our most important, in the next campaign cycle. Baker is a shoo-in, DeLeo isn’t going away, but this is a great opportunity for we the people to demand the revenue they are starving our state of and the economic equality they refuse to fight for.
That’s my only 2018 priority. I will not work for another paid campaign role, but I will donate a ton of my time and spare cash to that cause. I can’t think of anything more important progressives in this state can do in the next two years.
And it would be lovely if someone could primary out of existence Marty Walsh and a few of these party hack centrists in the state legislature as Jamie Eldridge envisioned.
Primary campaigns require a ton of work and money, and a good alternative. But go for it! If Trump can do it so can you!
Mayoral races in MA are non-partisan. If someone wants to run for Mayor s/he can run for Mayor. I believe Boston holds a preliminary election among all candidates, followed by a runoff between the top two.
This is extremely well said and I couldn’t agree more. I stand with Sen Sanders on this exact sentiment.
I get that people are trying to explain what happened, and this is an entirely human response… but they’re making a hash of it by trying to fold it up into their own grievances. There really is no legitimate problem that people are legitimately angry about for which the solution is ‘Donald Trump.’ Absolutely. None. It’s not even a mistaken set of propositions leading them to a wrong, but understandable, conclusion. It is completely without rational basis at all. Pretending it is rational is like the psychiatrist who argues with the psychoses: he’s got a Napoleon wanna-be on the couch and they’re working out his feelings about just how bleak and lonely the island of Elba is…
There is, also, no purported problem with Hillary Clinton– be it ‘honesty’, ‘ambition’ or ‘integrity’ or ‘transparency’ or anything else — that isn’t demonstrably true about Donald Trump. This too is irrational. You can’t dislike Hillary Clinton for being a purported liar and have as a response to vote for the demonstrated liar Donald Trump. It simply cannot be true that anybody legitimately made the decision upon this basis. And if they say they did, they are lying and most likely to themselves most of all. The decision to vote for Donald Trump, across the board, had to be unconscious and unconscionable. The anger to do exactly that is not legitimate, it is spiteful and childish. It is and anger that is not justified by anything rational, be it economic or social. The need to rationalize their vote in so obvious a dissonant manner , sadly, also comes from unspeakable and unexplainable motives.
People are angry. There are legitimate problems to be angry about. But the anger and the response to the problems do not, here, overlap.
Agree on all points.
Bernie said Trump “tapped into the anger of a declining middle class” (and then empathized with that middle class’s plight). That’s a far cry from “said that people were right to vote for Trump.”
Bernie never says anything like that at all.
It is correct and very pertinent to refer to the anger in this context. Anger is a big part of how Trump won, and we can expect him to try to play that card going forward.
If progressives can cool the anger into some steely determination, then perhaps the Trump voters will come to see that their hotheaded vote was perhaps not so rational and will be open to positive steps.
… he tried to draw a line straight from the ‘middle class’s plight’ through their anger right towards Trump. My point is that no such line exists or can be inferred.
I don’t think he said that they ‘were right to vote for Trump,’ but he did say there was a relationship between their anger, their plight and their vote.
But the unfortunate thing is that there is several decades worth of evidence that shows that they aren’t so much interested in fixing their plight as they are in making sure that there are people who they don’t like who have it worse.
When it comes down to it, “we empathize, here are policy solutions” will always lose to “I empathize, and lets deport the Mexicans.”
You’re sounding like the other side who assumes we all drive Volvos. There are a lot of people who voted for Obama TWICE voted for Trump. I don’t know why, but surely if their only issue was deporting Mexicans Obama wasn’t their candidate?
When I was in OH, IN, WI and IA in 2008 it was folks who felt Dubya was for the insider and wrecked the economy on their backs. They stuck with Obama since he saved GM and Romney said it could drop dead. Not enough coastal dwellers appreciate how big a deal that was in the Midwest. The dealer who sold me my Buick was a first time Democratic voter in 2012 because of that. And when we helped my sister in law buy her new Chevy there were a lot more Trump signs there than Romney or Obama ones combined.
I would like to agree with you, but this election is SCREAMING evidence that I was wrong.
They supported Bernie, who opposed TARP which funded the auto-bailout because he didn’t like other stuff in the bill. Which means that had Bernie, rather than Obama, been President, the American auto industry would have ended. But but but Bernie supported the auto rescue, if only the bill were better in various other ways! That’s a fundamental failure of triage, and demonstrates why Bernie would have made a crappy President.
And then they didn’t like Clinton– who supported the auto rescue– because she wears pantsuits to cover her cankles and Trump says it like it is!
Trump just demonstrated the power of a purely racist appeal to these folks. That isn’t going away. In fact, it will be worse, because next time it will be an overtly racist campaign by a politician motivated by more than personal ego. 2020 will likely be worse, and they will go for it even more because Fuck Political Correctness!, and so they aren’t coming back, no matter how much outreach is done.
White people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2043, according to new census projections.
I suppose I could do worse. See here.
And I get where you’re coming from. Look, we’re winks and her policies were better then Trump’s or Bernie’s. But it turns out the voters were so pissed at the establishment the old rules didn’t apply. Social democrats are now kosher. As are alt right nationalists friendly with Putin.
My two trump voter friends were sounding like the old Red Bookstore owners in Harvard Square: “its americas fault for expanding NATO, Russia should own those smaller countries”. And these are self identified conservatives. We are in for a long night, I don’t doubt that. But Hillary Coakleyed this and the writing was on the wall, as I’ve been arguing.
And that is the other side of the coin. People are dumb and don’t care about racism or tossing away a half century successful foreign policy, but they also rejected someone super tight with Wall Street and the establishment we would’ve been uncomfortable backing against anyone else.
and I’m not saying you are not–even so, Bernie’s response is also right.
Remember, CMD, we don’t have to reach every last Trump voter. We don’t even need to reach half of them, just a small number.
But Dems have been explaining, reaching out, lstening, begging, pandering for decades and two “white working class” voters skulk to the polls and grudgingly vote Democratic, and Trump says “Deport the Mexicans, kill some Muslims” and a half million of them charge to the polls yelling “Fuck yeah, ‘Murica!!!!!”
The secret that Trump revealed is that Bill Clinton and Obama didn’t do so well because they “reached” these voters, but rather that GWB, McCain, and Romney were too timid and insufficiently explicit in their appeal to base, white-power nationalism. Trump unlocked a secret to getting this demographic to turn out IN FORCE. Every politician who runs in an election next year will crib from the playbook just like NFL teams try to copy the Patriots. Even some Democrats.
This is genie that will not soon be returned to its bottle.
A black commentator, on MSNBC I think, described this as “whitelash”. America was not ready for a black president. America is not ready for a woman president. We are in for a long, hard slog.
There will be blood.
60,275,264 Americans are racists and misogynists, while 60,275,264 are not?
If your “path to victory” is to reform 60,275,264 individuals whom you are stereotyping as racists and misogynists, that’s going to be an long, long path into obscurity and an awfully lonely high pedestal for your self righteous statue.
59,937,885 are racists and misogynist
…??
some sixty million people voted for a man proven to have committed sexual assault. What’s the difference between those who voted for Trump because he has committed sexual assault and those who voted for him despite the fact that he committed sexual assault?
Some sixty million people voted for a man who was proven to have outright lied multiple times. Nearly 60 million people voted for a demonstrated, and rather practiced, liar. What’s the difference between those who may have voted because he’s a liar and those who voted for him despite the fact that he’s a liar?
What possible traits, ideals, mores, habits or emotion could possibly make either instance acceptable? Your answer to that is “anger”? Does their anger justify their vote? According to just about everything you’ve said here, the answer for you is a clear yes: a vote for a molester of women and a serial liar is justified because of anger.
That’s fucked up.
I think I finally understand the point petr was trying to make upthread when he took issue so strongly with what Bernie said about income inequality.
Namely, that petr thinks Bernie is giving moral cover to racists. For racism and mysogeny and disfunction that is simply not excusable. And that any of us who suggest that there is a cause and effect relationship between economic injustice and dislocation, and Trump’s victory, are similarly culpable.
(If I’ve got that wrong, I am sure petr will correct me.)
I don’t agree. True: racism and other violence is not excusable by any circumstances. However, Bernie does not give it a pass by identifying the legitimate grievances that are at issue.
Indeed making that identification makes is possible to move forward in a progressive direction without appeasing the racisim and misogyny in any way.
The moral failure would be failing to do so.
… I say he is mistaken. I don’t think Sen Sanders is giving moral cover to racists. I think he is mistaken in thinking that the anger that fed Trumps victory and the legitimate concerns cited by Sen Sanders are the same thing. That people who are supposedly angry over purportedly being treated unfairly go ahead and vote to treat other people more unfairly is indication that their anger is not legitimate and is, in fact, childish and spiteful and more derived from a nameless — indeed unspeakable — fear than from legitimate grievances. They may not be doing this out of a love of fairness: they might be doing this out of a love of unfairness, so long as they are on the good end of that lever.
If you compare what people say to what they do you find some remarkable inconsistencies: Anybody who says they can’t vote for Hillary Clinton because she’s a ‘liar’ ought to be including Donald Trump in that ‘I can’t vote for…’ So if they SAY “I’m not voting for Hillary Clinton because she is a liar” but DO vote for Donald Trump who has demonstrably lied very publicly, then we can know that they really did not vote against Hillary on the basis of disliking lies and/or liars. So their actions are in contradiction with their statements. Why? Why, in fact, would someone lie about disliking lying? Because the real reason they can’t vote for her is unspeakable. They can’t bring themselves to admit to it and have to construct a completely false, indeed dissonant, mental framework to get through the action.
Likewise, the people who say they are angry because of economic inequality voted for a charlatan supposed billionaire who stiffs the help regularly. You can’t make this stuff up. If you are angry about inequality the very last person to vote for is Donald Trump. This too is a harsh inconsistency between what is said and what is done. So we can, again, assume that the stated reasons, being at odds with the demonstrated actions, are merely some cover for motivations that can’t be articulated forthrightly.
My issue is with the word ‘the’ in the above sentence. At the very best, I will allow that maybe stone racists have co-opted the legitimate grievances to better facilitate their bile. But that is cover for motivations, not the motivations itself, which is the allusion Sen Sanders makes.
Please don’t take what say to mean there are not legitimate grievances. There are. And, in fact, the solving and the salving of those legitimate grievances will help and heal most the people who are most in the wrong here. But the completely dissonant and chaotic anger these people feel does not come from either a love of fairness or a sense of injustice visited upon them. Quite the opposite, possibly.
This is an interesting argument. But I suggest the economic dislocation of the past several decades, and especially the past 8 years, is not mere window dressing with which racists seek to justify themselves.
Out of the unbearable economic chaos of Wiemar came a buffoonish leader who took power after wining an election with less than a majority.
The privations of Wiemar do not justify what came after, but I believe they do explain it to some extent. It is a lesson that our nation’s elites forgot or discounted, and one that we should not dismiss.
… Do they not teach history in the red states? Are they justified in this path because “our nations’s elites” could not, somehow, control them? Are they, in the red states, that incapable of rational thought? Are they merely puppets and not actors with will and choice? Is it, somehow, axiomatic, and therefore unavoidable, that economic chaos must result in fascism? How does one, therefore, explain FDR and the New Deal?
Does the person who has seen someone else fall, head first, into a buzz saw, bear no responsibility for further safety? That’s the implication I get from your statement.
The fate of the Weimar Republic, rather than simply explain this behaviour, lends creedence to my indictment of it. The “nation’s elite” are not the ones, in this little morality play, who should know better…
…at least in a way that doesn’t put Christian Nationalist ideology first.
In being against lobbyists, being vaguely for universal health care, promising not to cut entitlements, promising to build more American cars rather than openly penning editorials telling GM to drop dead, he was the first Republican in nearly 100 years to run on tariffs and protectionism. He ran against nation building adventures overseas. He ran against containing Russia or China. And he ran against Wall Street and the collusion of Big Business and Big Government. He cribbed a lot from the Sanders, Paul, and Perot playbooks too.
I agree being the most explicitly sexist and racist candidate helped him win the primary. No doubt about that. But it’s not like the broader public is clamoring for entitlement reform, TPP, more nation building abroad, or Big Business tax cuts.
All the ones I’ve talked to voted for Obama twice and were convinced he would untangle the gridlock in Washington, kick out the lobbyists aka drain the swamp, and restore economic prosperity to the middle class.
They all said ‘he just said build the wall to win the primary, everyone knows he cant do that’. I mean, this is a small sample size, but it’s likely more interaction than anyone else here has. No one else here lived in the Midwest. My wife’s entire nursing cohort, including two Mexican Americans, voted for Trump. There is a disconnect deeper here than simply hating Mexicans and Muslims.
No doubt there are more hate crimes and beatings today than there were on Monday. I’ve seen Make America White Again Graffitti and nazi grafitti in Chelsea that wasn’t there three weeks ago. There is a lot of fucked up hatred he has knowingly unleashed, and it was a bizarre white privilege for these moderate independents I know to vote for him despite that. But they exist.
Two girls I have known that have been friends since kindergarten aren’t speaking to each other since they had a bad Facebook argument. One black one white. One Trump voter, one Clinton voter. And after 15 years they arent friends today. I respect Nikita as a black woman unfriending Kelly after all this time, at least temporarily, because of the reaction. But I also know if Kelly was a racist she wouldn’t have been friends with Nikita for 15 years or dated black and latino guys in high school.
are, for the most part, all middle aged white folks who are struggling to make ends meet, after years of Republican and Democratic control of Washington DC. Sure, there is a scattering of kooks in the group, including one self described “follower of God’s law” who wants abortion outlawed (but who also wants welfare outlawed because it just creates lazy people). But for the most part, they are just people for whom the system, managed by George Bush and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama has simply not worked.
Sure there are a few people in my life whom I suspect voted for the DUMB candidate. Nobody I know personally has told me they planned to or did vote for him and frankly I hope they never do. I would never be able to look at them the same way again.
If you and others are quick to label anyone who did not support HRC as a racist or misogynist or worse, and that represents the approach of the Democratic Party’s outreach, we’re screwed.
Bill told her to go to Notre Dame and speak to a group of union catholic workers and her aides said ‘irish catholics are not our target demo-let’s go elsewhere’.
Many, many people who voted for Bill twice just voted for Trump. Many, many people who voted for Obama twice just voted for Trump. Are they the full 59 million, no, but the 5-10 million concentrated in the rust belt who’s history goes Bill, Bill, Bush, Bush, Obama Obama Trump need to be reached out to and brought back.
…though targeting certain demos over others is just good campaign management. As for the voting pattern, that doesn’t make people bad, but maybe confused. The parties have been pretty consistent for the past generation. It seems like people should make up their mind which party to vote for and stick with it for the most part.
Maybe because our nominee was perceived as being compromised as an insider who took money from Wall Street and profited off of her political career. Maybe people were tired of the same two families always running for President and had an opportunity to reject them both in the same election. There are a lot of explanations besides racism and misogyny.
I think Sen. Warren put it best that we have to hold Trump’s feet to the fire when it comes to his agenda. He said he hated Wall Street, but all of his advisers are Wall Street insiders. He said he wanted to be inclusive, but he ran the most divisive campaign in American history. He said he wants to restore relations with our foes, but he also will cancel the Iran and Cuban deals. So there are a lot of contradictions and he has some hard decisions to make. When he makes good ones, he has my support, when he backs bad ones, he has my dissent.
No. There are not any explanations of this kind. None.
They voted for racism and misogyny. They cannot possibly not have known and voted accidentally. It’s what they deliberately did. You can try to rationalize it all you want but that’s what actually happened. They didn’t ‘overlook’ in for a higher purpose. They went low. This is EXACTLY as though disliking Pope Francis the college of Cardinals went and made SATAN the Pope. There is no ‘higher purpose’ or ‘legitimate anger’ that requires decent people to vote racism and misogyny. The sordid elision that ‘racism and misogyny’ were not enough to repel their vote makes it even worse. If that’s not enough, what is?
Maybe the answer is simply that they are not decent people.
These people have lost their jobs, their homes, their families, and to quote Michael Moore, “Their Bronze level ObamaCare won’t even get them a F’ing Percocet” but they need to look past all that and surrender to YOUR social causes…..and not doing so makes them the devil himself…
… his brother, his legs, his parents and his chance at an education all within the space of ten years.
Never once did he even consider that as an excuse to do something monstrous and spiteful for the sake of assuaging his own self pity. Instead he got a job and, as the oldest surviving child, put his five siblings through school. He married my grandmother during the height of the Great Depression and started a family that spent their first 15 years on rations and privation that would drive lesser people into thievery and despair.
And he never once mentioned any of this to any of his grandchildren. I found out about much of this at his funeral when people were lining up around the block to eulogize him for his toughness, his determination and his generosity. I had to fill in the rest by questioning relatives and friends of the family.
So don’t tell me what’s ‘easy for me to say’.
If you don’t have the conversation you can’t convince them to come to the light. Half of them are deplorable, I won’t defend that half. But the half that aren’t need to be brought over to the light in order for us to assemble winning majorities in the future.
Even the “non-deplorable” half feel too much like fellow-travellers right now.
I am simply not buying the apologia here. Our esteemed contributor johntmay is rather straightforwardly taking the position that the Democrats have lost this demographic by demanding that they “surrender to your social causes.” Which is another way of saying: “Give us stuff that benefits white uneducated males. Only.”
In order to be a Trump voter on “purely” economic issues, a voter had to overlook some rather extreme transgressions of the bounds of simple human decency. Quoth the purely economic Trump voter: “Well, he is talking about my problems, that’s for sure, and boy he tells it like it is! I don’t particularly want to round up and deport Muslims…” (here comes the important part) “but I guess I really don’t care if someone else does.”
Either one is active racist xenophobe, or one just doesn’t give two shits.
That’s the best apologia one can make, and it doesn’t sell.
I mean, really, you have to go straight into “Well, other than that, Herr Hitler had some good ideas on the economy” territory here.
I am not quite as pessimistic as somervilletom, but I’m not far behind. When the next cop is caught shooting an unarmed child on youtube, and something like what happened in Dallas this past summer again, don’t you think outspoken BLM activists will suddenly find themselves whisked off to Gitmo under the Patriot Act?
If someone can point to a historical figure who rose to power as a demagogue, and then stopped behaving thus because of civic responsibility, I would love to hear about it.
What seems more likely to you? That struggling people just wanted change and didn’t care about the Full Trump Doctrine, or that they’re active racist xenophobes?
Again, racism can’t be ignored in this election. It might even have made the difference, because for the first time I can remember racists unified under one banner. But, we do millions of Americans a disservice (and we do ourselves one) if we chalk it all up to that.
It doesn’t matter which is more likely, because there isn’t really much of a difference in my view.
That’s why right-wing politics used to have the “dog whistle.” A thing heard only by those intended to hear. Why were there dog whistles? Because everyone thought that if you went full in George Wallace, decent people would be appalled and you would lose. As crummy as dog whistles were, at least there existence pre-supposed some threshold of simple human decency.
It irritates me when I see the crappy, useless mainstream media write that Trump used dog whistles in the campaign. He didn’t. He got a bullhorn, turned the volume all the way up, and screamed “Hey, Fido!”
… if they didn’t want to wake up next to a whore… they shouldn’t get in bed with a whore.
And, if they do want to wake up next to a whore, they can’t expect to go directly to church without confessing first. Actions have consequences, or didn’t you notice?
Neither will Muslim or Mexican roundups. Those were lies told to rubes in the Republican primary that were downplayed in the general election for a focus on jobs and trade and that’s what won him the voters who elected and relected Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The Reagan Democrats still exist and they went for Trump, despite most people here pretending otherwise.
Who didn’t pretend? Me, a guy who spent the last 8 years in the middle of the country. Paul Simmons, a guy from Western PA who worked on those campaigns. Jasiu, a Michigan native. And JimC, our resident skeptic.
That’s about it-the rest of you thought attacking racism and bigotry and not bothering with his false economic promises was a winning strategy. It wasn’t.
Granted, if Democrats had been bold enough when the controlled the government to repeal Patriot, if Obama had veteoed the NDAA, and if we actually had closed Gitmo then your sentence would be irrelevant since those powers wouldn’t be in the hands of the President anymore.
Trump voter after Trump voter I talked to said they knew the bulk of what he promised was bullshit, they just wanted to see the political class punished for it’s indifference. They got what the wanted, the question now is who pays the price and how much? I agree it’ll likely be women and people of color. But if it’s too much in that direction it’ll inspire a backlash. The voters who ignored that won’t be able to if those are the policies he follows.
Worst case scenario: all our nightmares unfold as we feared
Likely scenario: It’s Dubya all over again. Big government conservatism with an uglier face and open hostility to immigrants. Under the best case scenario they are fucked, and it’s really shameful since I’ve met scores of immigrants whose status is now under threat and I feel horrible for them. Their stories weren’t highlighted by anyone on our side.
Midlikely scenario: the right wing gets pissed he’s a social moderate, get pissed when the wall doesn’t come up, and when he veteos entitlement reform. There wont be enough Dems to fund his infrastructure plans and trade renegotiations, he alienates all sides, the GOP ditches him again to salvage their majority.
And the Dems, if wise, smarten up and focus like a lazer on his economic promises. Non whites don’t vote in midterms, and the map is really bad, so we will need to win back a substnatial number of the voters we are mocking now to have a shot at retaking Congress in two years to stop the bleeding.
All of these scenarios are possible, some are more probable than others, none of them would’ve been happy if our candidate had won. She didn’t, so we have to be open to work where we agree and hypervigilant about dissenting where we don’t. Bernie and Warren have a very easy playbook to follow back to power.
… their motivations were deplorable, they did a monstrous thing.
Nobody will be ‘brought over to the light’ without the light reveals the sheer monstrousness of their actions. That’s what makes the light the light: it reveals. It forces a confrontation by stripping away shadows where things we don’t want to admit are hidden.
Trying to ‘bring them over to the light’ while hiding the monstrous nature of what happened and what they did is, in fact, just shifting the darkness around.
Here’s what I know about myself: My very first reaction to the election was to get stinking drunk; the morning after, hungover and rancid with self-pity and anger, I imagined I could acquire six bullets, find James Comey and I would slowly and purposefully lodge them deep in his brain without the aid of a gun. That’s a monstrous fantasy. I’m ashamed to own it. I am not a decent person. That is what the light reveals to me.
Doubtless those that supported him because he groused about lobbyists will feel betrayed now that he is hiring them. I can see the hue and cry forming already.
Not really, I don’t think any of his supporters give a tinker’s damn about lobbyists.
They are speaking to the non-deplorable branch of the Trump voters when they talk about improving conditions for working families, and when they talk about working with Trump to make that happen if he’s willing to be serious about it. They are beginning from the premise that we can cut across party lines to create a working families coalition that is not politics as usual and they are inviting Trump to be part of that rather than lining up with the GOP elite. Smart. They are also making it clear that if he works to operationalize bigotry they will oppose him every step of the way.
but not on the reaching out.
Democrats did NOT demand accountability for the plunder of our economic system that led to the long and deep recession. Consequently I expect this to recur.
They did NOT address income inequality with nearly the urgency that was and is appropriate.
Economists are quick to explain how free trade creates wealth, but Democrats did NOT take steps to ensure that this wealth would reach the people. A few job-training programs does not cut it.
So I think the best you can say is that Democrats talked a good game and went home. That’s a recipe for—well, for Donald Trump.
Over a million people in Mass voted for Donald. Saugus, Bourne and Agawam are fertile ground for the KKK? Maybe 5% of Donalds support is racist.
In my district in Franklin?
…than any enlightened 21st century American ought to be.
Racism is not some caricature of a crazed villain who shouts his hatred at every turn.
Most of the people who lived in the battleground states of the civil rights era were like those whom each of you described. Most people said something along the lines of “I don’t have anything against colored people, I just think this (the Civil Rights Act of 1965) goes to far”. Why do you think the now-trite phrase “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” originated?
There is a world of difference between Trumpism and the KKK.
Reality is deeper than caricatures and media stereotypes. I suggest that perhaps each of you has been watching too much television.
And I know what it’s like to get stares for being part of a mixed race couple down South. In Arkansas and Texas. Surprisingly didn’t get any in South Boston but I braced her for it when we visited.
They acknowledge the racism and admit it doesn’t disqualify him for them, which shows the depth to which they rejected Hillary Clinton and her background and the passive racism that doesn’t acknowledge the hurt this incoming administration will do.
My best friend from my job in Chelsea is terrified his temporary refugee status will be cancelled and he will have to move. He’s a great community leader and in a just world would allowed to run for office in Chelsea, but instead he is worried about his status. This is not good. There are a ton of people I’ve grown to know and love as friends in this community who are going to worry that the land they fleed too from persecution is not longer the beacon of hope it’s supposed to be.
I am embarrassed and ashamed for my country right now, but I also know we don’t beat back this tide without acknowledging the half of his supporters who aren’t deplorables and who might be willing to give our agenda a shot down the line. We gotta do both simultaneously. It’s wrong to just dismiss the racism as not a big deal, categorically and morally wrong. But it is also wrong to presume that the racism was his only appeal, the kind of wrong that leads to further losses of this magnitude our country literally cannot afford to endure.
I think there are loads of white Americans who voted for Trump, in North and South, Midwest and West, who don’t think of themselves as racist. They don’t use words like nigger or spic, they may chuckle at but don’t tell racist jokes, and they can all rattle off a relatively small number of neighbors, friends, colleagues who are great people who happen to be brown and black (and also happen to be in lots of similar non-skin demographics).
I think that an awful lot of these people aren’t racist against a black or a Latino. Instead, they’re bigoted against groups of blacks or latinos, particularly if those darker skinned people are in the 15-39 age group and are expressing any of their race’s respective sub-culture in language, clothing, music, or other social indicator.
Michael Edwards from their job site doesn’t induce a bad reaction, nor does David Ortiz from MLB. I do think that images of BLM and Hispanic SEIU picketers did, in fact, push them toward Trump by the millions.
It’s not racism. It’s an internal, semi-conscious bias. Splitting hairs? Perhaps. In my mind it’s an important distinction. There aren’t thirty million people in America who support the KKK, but there may well be 30 million who are nervous above black and brown people banding together to push for political reforms or just to hang out and express an other culture.
A really important distinction.
You’ve put together what I failed to do with your words. This is what I mean by passive racism, it’s still racism, but it’s the kind that’s comfortable with the covert systematic racism that underpins every facet of American life, not the kind that wants to put people in camps. And we do have this thing called the Constitution and Bill of Rights that can’t be voted away. They are certainly going to be under assault, which is why being vigilant is critical. I am not naive, dark times are a coming.
But making sure they last two years instead of four or eight requires substantially reforming our party, it’s message, and it’s core audience from the grassroots up. The Clinton era of corporate party building has come to an end. I would rather it didn’t in this way, but there is an opportunity now to consolidate the left and get it back on it’s feet.
You’ve put together what I failed to do with your words. This is what I mean by passive racism, it’s still racism, but it’s the kind that’s comfortable with the covert systematic racism that underpins every facet of American life, not the kind that wants to put people in camps. And we do have this thing called the Constitution and Bill of Rights that can’t be voted away. They are certainly going to be under assault, which is why being vigilant is critical. I am not naive, dark times are a coming.
But making sure they last two years instead of four or eight requires substantially reforming our party, it’s message, and it’s core audience from the grassroots up. The Clinton era of corporate party building has come to an end. I would rather it didn’t in this way, but there is an opportunity now to consolidate the left and get it back on it’s feet.
I encourage you to ask Brandon Mayfield about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Or, perhaps, talk to Jose Padilla about Habeas Corpus — he was held for YEARS without charges or counsel. Does that fact the Mr. Padilla was eventually convicted make his abuse acceptable?
We have never had a president who so loudly and repeatedly shouted his contempt for American values, laws, practice, and history — never mind our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Just how would you differentiate the racism and sexism of the crowds who demand that we deport immigrants or lock up Hillary Clinton from “the kind that wants to put people in camps”?
I take these people at their word. I encourage the rest of us to do the same.
Today at my job we were discussing what churches could be converted into sanctuaries and how that process would work and whether the organization could provide legal aid to immigrants. One of our best employees could have his status revoked which would be his life in danger.
I respect and fear the danger, I also think protests and drum circles are pity parties that are a poor substitute for real action. I also think writing off the entire electorate as racist is a poor substitute for real engagement with constituencies we have taken for granted.
That’s not good enough. Nor is it a distinction with any difference if the bias is passive-aggressive.
So what if they don’t actively support the KKK? They voted for the candidate the KKK actively does support. There was a time I thought that a KKK endorsement would be an absolute disqualifier.
Last I checked, every newspaper in the country that supported and endorsed Hillary Clinton — and that was pretty near as makes no never mind to actually every newspaper in the country — were run largely by white people who are very much susceptible to the same semi-conscious biases and they didn’t flinch.
I think you are correct that they are nervous but they are many times more resentful than they are anxious. And it is the resentment that fuels the ‘push them toward Trump by the millions.” This is the resentment of a child on the playground who is told to share the ball: he finds the world so unfair in its requirement that he be fair. And I think this resentment, more so than the nerves, is fed and stoked. Yeah, they are manipulated and used. And they eat it up, with relish.
Her message is a bit more detailed and entirely consistent with Bernie Sanders’s message. The important part here is that they are appealing to the frustrated/angry arm (as opposed to the bigoted arm) of the Trump voters. The frustration/anger cuts across party lines and is largely class based. They understand this. Trump may understand this. They’re seeking common ground for the common people. We’ll see what happens.
http://heavy.com/news/2016/11/elizabeth-warren-speech-donald-trump-afl-cio-facebook-live-work-with-video/
Trump said that if elected he will ban members of his administration from accepting speaking fees from corporations with registered lobbyists for five years. The move is a jab directed at Clinton, who has raked in millions in speaking fees and has not released transcripts from those speeches.
“I am going to forbid senior officials from trading favors for cash by preventing them from collecting speaker’s fees,” he said
…but I also am not sure Trump has the authority to ban them from doing so after resigning from government service.
Posted while enjoying his new lakefront villa paid for by the Clintons?