Decision 2016

[Greg]

Moscow had contacts with Trump team during campaign, Russian diplomat says:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mo ... story.html

[Sabin]

Last night, we learned the truth about the alt-right in this country. There are a lot of them. They didn't care enough about McCain or Romney, but they cared enough about Trump to leave their caves. My biggest fear about this election has always been we don't know how many white people are in this country. We usually can count on them not voting. Well, this is what it looks like when they're engaged.

Remember neocons? Remember when we thought we had to be afraid of them? When George W. Bush was elected President, he filled his cabinet with people with fairly long resumes tracing back to previous Republican administrations. I hated them because I disagreed with their bullshit neocon ideology but at least it was a consistent bullshit ideology. Donald Trump is going to load his cabinet up with the alt-right. Their resumes are in tatters. Their reputations tarnished. George W. Bush picked his cabinet based on who worked for his Dad and on the recommendations of others (Cheney, let's be honest). Donald Trump will pick his cabinet based on who sucked his dick at the right time. People like Giuliani, Christie, and Gingrich whose only qualification is they recognized a meal ticket when they saw it. Here's a fun game to play: what job is Sheriff Joe Arpaio going to get? Maybe Homeland Security. Maybe Secretary of The Wall.

My biggest fear about Donald Trump is this: he's going to be a very active, very powerful President. It's impossible to imagine a worse night for the Democrats. Trump gave the House and the Senate the down-ballot coattails they needed. They have no choice but to step in line or he'll tell his earthscum legion of followers to vote them out. Who are we kidding? We can pray for a swift, first term but he'll get reelected. That's what we do.

On a larger note, two nights ago, saw the passing of an era. Hillary Clinton's political career is over after twenty-five years of being in the news every day. But it's not just her. All the Democratic baby boomer heavy-hitters. The Clintons, Gore, Kerry, Biden...they're all done now. The DLC still has some life in it but for the first time in ages there's nobody in the wings waiting for their turn.

[OscarGuy]

My only encouragement is the 48-seat Dem minority in the Senate we have for at least 2 years. There's also the fact that Susan Collins is still hanging in there, as are Lisa Murkowski and Cory Gardner who are either more moderate than the rest of the Senate or are running in blue states where certain actions would be considered suicide for their political careers (see Mark Kirk, Kelly Ayotte).

[Sonic Youth]

And so the protests begin...

http://nypost.com/2016/11/09/protests-b ... ect-trump/

Original BJ asked for encouragement. Hopefully this is encouraging.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-e ... ews&rpc=69

This could settle down tonight or tomorrow. Or, it could be the beginning of a new counter-culture, 1960s style. Only, unlike the 60s, there would be no generation gap. Let's see if this keeps up. At the very least, Trump may have a very vocal majority (I refuse to call them "minority") on his hands. That should keep us going.

[Greg]

I view Trump in 2016 as somewhat similar George W. Bush's bait and switch in 2004. That is, Paul Krugman wrote that it appeared Bush's number-one concern while running for reelection was protecting America from gay-married terrorists, but, once his second term began, his top priority was the at-least-partial privatization of Social Security. That was defeated from even having a vote in Congress, even though Republicans controlled both the House and Senate, with a coalition of Democrats and Republicans who wanted to be reelected (the privatization proved quite unpopular nationwide). Similarly, I do not think Trump really cares about his signature issue, illegal immigrants. After all, he married one. I think he only used this as an issue to get votes from people who would not have voted for him based on the things about which he really cares, reducing financial regulations, etc. How much he can get through Congress will be based on the level of popular opposition to what people discover he truly cares about.

[Big Magilla]

And so the protests begin...

http://nypost.com/2016/11/09/protests-b ... ect-trump/

[Big Magilla]

Article on areas of agreement and disagreement between Trump and the Republican Congress:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2 ... P-Congress

[anonymous1980]

Here's a really interesting article on Cracked.com about the mindset of a large portion of Trump voters and the disconnect between conservatives and liberals.

[criddic3]

His crazier ideas, such as building a wall and getting Mexico to pay for it and deporting millions of people will be thwarted if he actually tries to get them done.

The spend-nothing, do-nothing Republican congress is as apt to be as uncooperative with his plans for rebuilding infrastructure as they were with Obama. His movement will collapse and his supporters will abandon him. Only when the great unwashed wise up and elect a Congress that will do its job will things change. In the mean time all we can do is hope that he doesn't screw up too much until that happens.

We can always hope the Supreme Court justices he appoints will turn out not to be as conservative as they seem.

I wouldn't count on the Republicans not cooperating with Trump on some of his plans. Sure, a portion of the party wants Immigration Reform, but 2018 is a better playground for Republicans than Democrats. So Trump may have more room to maneuver than you think. Your only hope is that the Donald Trump of the past -- the one that used to support Democrats -- is the real Trump. That's the question mark over his presidency. How will he govern?

One thing he did last night was to offer a potentially more serious and softer tone to kick off his transition, with his victory speech. If he follows his own lead, he could surprise us all by being a decent president. All we can do is wait and hope at this point.

[The Original BJ]

I'm usually not this emotionally open on here, but as one of the younger members of the board, I could really use some encouragement from those who have been through more bad election nights than I have. Because I am in a BAD place, and have spent most of the last twelve hours sobbing. This feels way different from my disappointment over 2004 -- I remember being crushed and frustrated over Kerry's loss, but I don't remember shedding a single tear, and I knew the Dems would just have to regroup in four years and try again. I felt discouraged, but still saw the potential for an optimistic future up ahead. But last night's events have me very, very afraid for the future of our nation, and I don't feel that it's something a few drinks and a day or two of acceptance will help me get past.

To Sonic's point, what is the Dem post-mortem on this election? To further embrace racism? Misogyny? A complete and total disavowal of actual facts? Up until election night, I'd have posited that Bernie Sanders likely would have won as well as Hillary would have; this morning, I wonder if any Dem could have overcome the Trump insurgency that shockingly reared its head last night. (I even started to wonder if Hillary might have even stood a better chance against a Rubio or Bush or Kasich -- certainly not the common wisdom heading into the evening -- just simply because they didn't stir up the feelings of white revolt that Trump carried to victory). And, depressingly, I even started to wonder the point of "going high," when an opponent who so consistently "goes low" as Trump can run the table the way he did by doing so.

I think the most horrifying thing to me is that, much as I disliked George W. Bush in '04, I understood why that race was neck-in-neck all the way, and most of the elements along the way, from the conventions to the debates to the press endorsements, signaled a battle where neither side was clearly running far ahead. And yet, the entire Republican campaign this season was a catastrophe, from the clown car primaries, to one outrageous scandal after another for Trump, to Trump's totally uncouth behavior all season long, to Trump's incessant lying, to the nightmare Republican convention, to drubbings at all three debates, to high-profile Republicans denouncing his candidacy, to the press siding astoundingly with Clinton, to the highly publicized Democratic ground game. I don't want to underrate Clinton's weaknesses -- they showed themselves to be far more significant than I imagined when I cast my primary vote for her -- but for Trump to end up the victor after such a dumpster fire of a campaign is mind boggling, and truly has me terrified for what this portends for the level of cultural discourse and standards of decency for our nation.

And what will his presidency be like? He's not just going to cool it now that he's the most powerful man in the world, is he? The number of potential scandals still out there -- his unreleased taxes, more supposedly horrifying Apprentice tapes, more accusations of assault, the Trump U fraud case -- even makes me wonder what the next TWO MONTHS will be like, before he's even inaugurated!

And truly, my heart breaks for Hillary Clinton. No, she wasn't perfect, but she worked so hard for this for so long, and so deserved to have the historic moment we all anticipated last night. That she managed to lose to that total slimeball while still winning the popular vote only feels like adding insult to injury. (And seriously -- fuck the electoral college.)

I'm just so horrified and sad for our country, and I don't think I've ever felt so hopeless in my entire life before.

[Mister Tee]

I don't think the electoral college system has ever worked in favor of the Democratic Party.

Four times the EC & popular vote have diverged; all four have thrown the election to a GOPer. (Though 1876 wasn't so much an EC reversal as a corrupt bargain -- read Vidal's 1876 for the details.)

I hope no one's been waiting on my analysis, because obviously my thinking is worth nothing. That my utterly incorrect forecast was shared by essentially all analysts in either party (press reports are that, at 7PM, all DC insiders agreed Hillary was an easy winner) is no consolation. This outcome simply doesn't square with all the political facts I understand: a president with a mid-50s approval, unemployment under 5% and improving, no significant overseas quagmires, a united party, vs. a buffoon with no experience who's loudly denounced by multiple office-holders of his own party and rejected by the editorial boards of Republican newspapers across the country. That simply doesn't compute to any kind of loss, even one in the Electoral College. The numbers we were seeing 2-3 weeks ago felt about right for the gestalt.

It's hard not to blame the Comey intrusion. It interrupted what was feeling like a smooth glide, and very likely affected the votes of some of those GOP women who were leaning toward Hillary but, not wanting her to win in a blowout given the "suspicion", voted for Trump thinking he'd lose anyway. (In that sense, this is Brexit Part 2.) And fuck the NY Times, and all subsequent media, who spent two years trying to turn the idiotic email story into some kind of scandal to match the dozens of disqualifying stories they had about Trump.

The Bernie Bros. are out in force saying Hillary "lost" the election on her own, that their guy would have easily won. Which I think is total horseshit, but we don't have an alternative universe in which to play that game out. Unacknowledged is that Hillary in fact did turn out her voters -- analysis at 8PM made it look like she'd easily carry Florida, give how she'd maximized her targeted groups. It's just that Trump got staggering margins: running up votes way beyond McCain/Romney in traditional GOP areas. In that sense, I think the wisdom we've heard the past month ("a normal Republican, like Kasich or Rubio, would have beat her easily") should be turned on its head: it was Trump's willingness to nakedly do the George Wallace appeal that revved up the rural vote in a way those establishment candidates had failed to do.

Even so, Hillary will win the popular vote. Nate Cohn a NYT estimates a 1-2% margin for her; 2-3 million votes (don't look at the totals you see today; there's always 7-10% of the vote that gets counted later than election day, and, since much of it comes from the west coast, it always favors the Dems). It's no consolation -- and certain will be ignored by the GOP and press -- but it says we're not collectively as bad a country as having the system elect Trump would suggest.

But it's going to be awful. Huge numbers of the worst people in the country are going to be empowered. The GOP tactic of refusing to fill Scalia's seat will not only not be punished, it will be rewarded. God knows what damage a fully Republican government can do -- the Bush administration was bad enough, but the party's moved six degrees loonier since. Look to NC or KS for a preview. (And how weird that NC booted its governor last night for doing this, but then voted to replicate the experiment nationally.)

By the way, Lichtman -- who wavered this year like a GOP Senator regarding Trump -- ended up in the right place: since his sixth Key down was based on Gary Johnson getting more than 5%, that Key ended up not falling in the end, which predicted a Hillary win. And since his model has always said it predicts who'll win the popular vote, he was on the money again. For all the good it dd.

[Sonic Youth]

We shouldn't, though, Sonic. We aren't at fault for this. We did everything we could to stop it. Just like ITALIANO didn't vote for Berlusconi. It wasn't his fault and we don't (and never did) blame him personally for that.

That's true, too. But if other people are furious at our country, I have no problem being the target of their anger. Let's think of it as constructive criticism. Hopefully, I can take their anger (along with mine) and put it to good use. I have a beautiful daughter who I love more than life itself. I owe it to her, at the very least, to do just that.

The one thing I can say in defense - and it's a meager defense - is that Hillary Clinton WON the election, as far as I'm concerned. Like Al Gore in 2000, she won the MOST votes, EXCEPT... we have a stupid fucking system called the Electoral College where a presidential candidate can receive the most votes and yet - due to a quirk in the map and in the distribution of population - lose the election. I don't think there is anything like it in the rest of the world. Not only that, there is no other electoral process in this country that follow such a system. State governors, senators, representatives, mayors, local school boards, everything, the rule is "Most votes = winner".... EXCEPT for the office of the presidency. And unless I'm mistaken, I don't think the electoral college system has ever worked in favor of the Democratic Party. And it will never be changed. The Republicans don't want to change it, and who can blame them? Twice in the past 16 years, they've been the beneficiaries of this system. Why would they want to change it? And this system was devised by our "beloved" Founding Fathers and codified in the Constitution. That's Holy Writ in this country. It would be like changing God's law. (You CAN change things in the Constitution, but it's an extremely difficult process.) At the very least, there should be a law that allows the winner of the popular vote but the loser of the Electoral College some sort of consolation prize, like one-third of the executive duties or something like that. The winner of the presidency should be given full powers only if he/she wins both the EC and the PV, which Donald Trump did not do. That rule would be just as nonsensical, but at least it would be more equitable.

[ITALIANO]

We did everything we could to stop it. Just like ITALIANO didn't vote for Berlusconi. It wasn't his fault and we don't (and never did) blame him personally for that.

I know, and I know that you or Sonic Youth don't have anything to do with Trump's election. I'm not stupid. Still, you have no idea how many Americans - sometimes even on this board - used to ask me things like: "How can you Italians have voted for a Berlusconi" - half-smiling. They knew that I personally hadn't, but they didn't care. They may have been nasty, but in a way they were right because Berlusconi WAS the expression of a certain Italy, which was sadly - back then - the majority. That he was elected Prime Minister said a lot about my contry and about its values (or lack of). So it also said something about me, and about the context I was living in (Berlusconi, of course, isn't Prime Minister anymore). Now I feel I can do the same about America.

[Big Magilla]

There's a lot of blame to go around.

I fault the media most of all. Almost to the end, every time something awful came to light about Trump, they felt obligated to perpetrate the myth that Clinton was untrustworthy.

I fault the Clinton campaign for not focusing on jobs, the single issue most voters cared about. Too much time was spent on defending her and castigating Trump for the obvious and not enough on what she was going to do for people. Directing them to her website instead of telling them outright was not the best idea.

I fault the nitwits who voted for ridiculous third party candidates.

I fault the old farts who want to turn the clock back to the good old days.

I fault the women who held their noses and voted for unfocused change over their own best interests.

It's time to turn off the news and get back to the solitude of the fantasy world of the movies.

[Sonic Youth]

And I want to say something to Criddic. I hope you didn't ultimately end up voting for Donald Trump. If you did, please don't tell me. I don't want to know.

I was struck, however, by many of the things you said earlier in the year. You were just as appalled at Trump as the rest of us, and you suggested you weren't going to vote for him. I'm sure you didn't vote for Clinton either, but even so, what you said meant a lot to me. We're never going to agree politically, but your disgust and (hopefully) rejection of Trump shows your basic humanity. I really appreciated it.