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[Dec 29, 2016] The neoliberal MSM narrative that it is a well established fact that Russia influenced US election is nonsense.

Dec 29, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
sanjait -> DeDude... , December 28, 2016 at 06:26 PM
"Russia tampered with vote tallies to help Donald Trump"

Yeah, that seems like a clear statement, but when you consider that the vast majority of people do not habitually read closely and interpret things literally, I can see how this would easily be misinterpreted.

Russia tampered with the election to help Donald Trump. That's a fairly well established fact. It's not the same as "tampered with vote tallies" but an inattentive poll respondent might assume the question was about the former. And most people are inattentive.

likbez -> sanjait... December 28, 2016 at 09:40 PM , 2016 at 09:40 PM
Sanjait,

"Russia tampered with the election to help Donald Trump. That's a fairly well established fact."

You are funny. Especially with your "well established fact" nonsense.

In such cases the only source of well established facts is a court of law or International observers of the elections. All other agencies have their own interest in distorting the truth. For example, to get additional funding.

And that list includes President Obama himself, as a player, because he clearly was a Hillary supporter and as such can not be considered an impartial player and can politically benefit from shifting the blame for fiasco to Russia.

Also historically, he never was very truthful with American people, was he? As in case of his
"Change we can believe in!" bait and switch trick.

There were several other important foreign players in the US elections: for example KAS and Israel. Were their actions investigated? Especially in the area of financial support of candidates.

And then FYI there is a documented history of US tampering in Russian Presidential election of 2011-2012 such as meetings of the US ambassador with the opposition leaders, financing of opposition via NGO, putting pressure by publishing election pools produced by US financed non-profits, and so on and so forth. All in the name of democracy, of course. Which cost Ambassador McFaul his position; NED was kicked out of the country.

As far as I remember nobody went to jail in the USA for those activities. There was no investigation. So it looks like the USA authorities considered this to be a pretty legal activity. Then why they complain now?

And then there is the whole rich history of CIA subverting elections in Latin America.

So is not this a case of "the pot calling the kettle black"?

I don't know. But I would avoid your simplistic position. The case is too complex for this.

At least more complex that the narrative the neoliberal MSMs try to present us with. It might be Russian influence was a factor, but it might be that it was negligible and other factors were in play. There is also a pre-history and there are other suspects.

You probably need to see a wider context of the event.

[Dec 18, 2016] Revealed! Putin personally hacked DNC from surveillance aircraft with bear on board

Notable quotes:
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer, journalist and media analyst. She has lived and traveled extensively in the US, Germany, Russia and Hungary. Her byline has appeared at RT, The Nation, Rethinking Russia, The BRICS Post, New Eastern Outlook, Global Independent Analytics and many others. She also works on copywriting and editing projects. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook or at her website www.danielleryan.net. ..."
Dec 18, 2016 | www.rt.com
Danielle Ryan
RT
Sat, 17 Dec 2016 21:42 UTC Map © Alexey Nikolsky / Reuters Shocking revelations earlier this week as US intelligence officials confirmed with "high confidence" that Russian President Vladimir Putin was "personally involved" in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

According to the anonymous sources inside the anonymous US intelligence agency, Putin's objectives were multifaceted, but the whole thing began as a "vendetta" against Hillary Clinton because she said some mean things about him a few times. Putin is also an "immature 12 year-old child," a former US official with links to the defense industry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed (with high confidence).

The high level, anonymous and completely trustworthy sources also told a major US news agency that Putin himself had piloted a specially-designed Russian spy plane across the Atlantic to personally direct the still-ongoing hacking operations from the air.

via GIPHY
Satellite images seen by a separate anonymous NASA whistleblower are believed to show Putin in the cockpit of the spy plane alongside his co-pilot Boris, a lifelike robotic bear which has been under secret development in the depths of Siberia and has been programmed to attack Putin's enemies on command using a variety of lethal methods.

The NASA whistleblower did not provide journalists with photographic evidence, but the editors had a chat about it in their morning meeting and concluded that it's probably still true.

In fact, the American news agency could not verify any of the claims from the officials who commented for the story, but given that their sources used the term "high confidence" they took this to mean the evidence must be "nearly incontrovertible" and relayed the information to the public with this implication. An understandable decision, since, as we all know, only 100 percent factual information is ever released by anonymous intelligence officials.

Okay, let's rewind. Obviously that bit about the bear and the plane was fake news. And maybe a few other bits, too. But it all demonstrates a point. I've provided you with about the same amount of evidence as NBC has in its story this week claiming Putin personally rigged the US election: I made some allegations, I cited anonymous sources and then I conveyed it to you readers as "nearly incontrovertible" and suggested no further digging or investigation, or even a bit of healthy skepticism, was necessary.

Journalism is dying

There was a time when journalists needed more than 'maybes' and 'probablys' before deciding what their sources told them was "incontrovertible" and delivering half-baked conspiracy theories to the public. That time has apparently long gone.

Imagine for a moment that RT published a story about, oh, let's say Barack Obama personally hacking into Putin's computer. Now imagine the only evidence RT provided was "anonymous FSB officials" and told its readers the story was therefore practically indisputable because these anonymous sources were "confident" in the legitimacy of their secret evidence. Imagine the laughs that would get from sneering Western journalists. Well, that's pretty much exactly what NBC did. And they're not alone. The Washington Post has been at it too, reporting on a "secret" CIA assessment that Russia worked to get Donald Trump elected, quoting anonymous "top officials" and like NBC, providing no evidence.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but for something to be presented to the public as indisputable fact, there must be evidence made available to back it up. Neither the CIA or the FBI have provided any such evidence to the public.

Perhaps the saddest thing though is having to acknowledge that all our debates over fake news and real news really don't matter because the very people we are told to trust are the people who will most adeptly use the public's concerns over fake news to manipulate them. The CIA, for example, is hardly known for its long history of telling the truth. Its employees are literally trained in the art of deception and disinformation. They are hardly averse to creating a bit of fake news or making up 'evidence' where needed. Anything they say or do can be forgiven once someone utters the words "national security".

NBC's story claimed Putin not only wanted to embarrass Clinton with the DNC leaks, but to highlight corruption in the American political system; the emails showing, for example, how the DNC colluded with the Clinton campaign to ensure Clinton, not Bernie Sanders, would be the Democratic nominee.

Now, what better way to encourage people to ignore the corruption in the system than to focus their attention on the idea that Putin is the one who told them about it? Are people really reading these stories and convincing themselves that the CIA is the most credible source of public information on what the Russians are doing?

Clinton's long-shot

We've been hearing about Russian hacking for months, long before the election results in November, so why the sudden confidence in all this new and secret evidence? Why the new assertions that Putin himself directed the hacking? Look at your calendar. The Electoral College votes on Monday and it may be Clinton's last hope. It's a long shot, but in true Clinton character, she won't go down without a fight to the last gasp. Her best hope is to convince the Electoral College that Trump's win was influenced by a foreign power, is therefore illegitimate and that national security will be at stake if he takes office.

Amazingly, in the midst of all this, while Clinton's camp is still trying to get her elected through back-door tactics, Obama has pretty much called the election results legitimate .

Members of the Electoral College are expected to vote the way their states voted, but they are not required to. If Clinton can get enough members to flip their votes, Trump is deprived of the 270 votes he needs to become president. That's what this is really all about - and the media is serving as Clinton's willing accomplice.

Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer, journalist and media analyst. She has lived and traveled extensively in the US, Germany, Russia and Hungary. Her byline has appeared at RT, The Nation, Rethinking Russia, The BRICS Post, New Eastern Outlook, Global Independent Analytics and many others. She also works on copywriting and editing projects. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook or at her website www.danielleryan.net.

[Dec 17, 2016] You think Putin personally supervised the Yahoo hacking? This could make many people patriotic in a hurry.

Notable quotes:
"... this will probably be in tomorrow's washington post. "how putin sabotaged the election by hacking yahoo mail". and "proton" and "putin" are 2 syllable words beginning with "p", which is dispositive according to experts who don't want to be indentified. ..."
"... [Neo]Liberals have gone truly insane, I made the mistake of trying to slog through the comments the main "putin did it" piece on huffpo out of curiosity. Big mistake, liberals come across as right wing nutters in the comments, I never knew they were so very patriotic, they never really expressed it before. ..."
"... Be sure and delete everything from your Yahoo account BEFORE you push the big red button. They intentionally wait 90 days to delete the account in order that ECPA protections expire and content can just be handed over to the fuzz. ..."
"... It's a good thing for Obama that torturing logic and evasive droning are not criminal acts. ..."
"... "Relations with Russia have declined over the past several years" I reflexively did a Google search. Yep, Victoria Nuland is still employed. ..."
"... With all the concern expressed about Russian meddling in our election process why are we forgetting the direct quid pro quo foreign meddling evidenced in the Hillary emails related to the seldom mentioned Clinton Foundation or the more likely meddling by local election officials? Why have the claims of Russian hacking received such widespread coverage in the Press? ..."
"... I watched it too and agree with your take on it. For all the build up about this press conference and how I thought we were going to engage in direct combat with Russia for these hacks (or so they say it is Russia, I still wonder about that), he did not add any fuel to this fire. ..."
"... The whole thing was silly – the buildup to this press conference and then how Obama handled the hacking. A waste of time really. I don't sense something is going on behind the scenes but it is weird that the news has been all about this Russian hacking. He did not get into the questions about the Electoral College either and he made it seem like Trump indeed is the next President. I mean it seems like the MSM was making too much about this issue but then nothing happened. ..."
Dec 17, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
pretzelattack , December 16, 2016 at 3:46 pm

this will probably be in tomorrow's washington post. "how putin sabotaged the election by hacking yahoo mail". and "proton" and "putin" are 2 syllable words beginning with "p", which is dispositive according to experts who don't want to be indentified.

HBE , December 16, 2016 at 4:13 pm

[Neo]Liberals have gone truly insane, I made the mistake of trying to slog through the comments the main "putin did it" piece on huffpo out of curiosity. Big mistake, liberals come across as right wing nutters in the comments, I never knew they were so very patriotic, they never really expressed it before.

B1whois , December 16, 2016 at 6:45 pm

The great sucking pit of need that keeps on giving. when will it abate?

different clue , December 16, 2016 at 6:49 pm

They are only hurt at the loss of their beloved Clintron, and are seizing on the Puttin Diddit excuse.

polecat , December 16, 2016 at 7:45 pm

Did they happen to offer you some Guyana Kool-Aid with that order of vitriol ?

Brad , December 16, 2016 at 10:26 pm

Unfortunately the whole "grief cycle" will get a reboot after next Monday's "Election II".

The rest of us are to be pissed off that the CIA and Clinton clique have continued to agiprop this.

Knot Galt , December 16, 2016 at 10:48 pm

Since the ex-Correct The Record key jockeys are out of a job they have to practice their craft somewhere.

hunkerdown , December 16, 2016 at 5:23 pm

Be sure and delete everything from your Yahoo account BEFORE you push the big red button. They intentionally wait 90 days to delete the account in order that ECPA protections expire and content can just be handed over to the fuzz.

auntienene , December 16, 2016 at 8:07 pm

I don't think I've looked at my yahoo account in 8-10 years and I didn't use their email; just had an address. I don't remember my user name or password. I did get an email from them (to my not-yahoo address) advising of the breach.

Do I need to do anything at all?

hunkerdown , December 16, 2016 at 8:22 pm

auntienene, probably not, but as a general principle it's better to close accounts down properly than to abandon them.

Tvc15 , December 16, 2016 at 10:50 pm

I was amazed as I watched a local am news show in Pittsburgh recommend adding your cell phone number in addition to changing your password. Yeah, that's a great idea, maybe my ss# would provide even more security.

Jeremy Grimm , December 16, 2016 at 4:30 pm

I use yahoo email. Why should I move? As I understood the breach it was primarily a breach of the personal information used to establish the account. I've already changed my password - did it a couple of days after the breach was reported. I had a security clearance with DoD which requires disclosure of a lot more personal information than yahoo had. The DoD data has been breached twice from two separate servers.

As far as reading my emails - they may prove useful for phishing but that's about all. I'm not sure what might be needed for phishing beyond a name and email address - easily obtained from many sources I have no control over.

So - what am I vulnerable to by remaining at yahoo that I'm not already exposed to on a more secure server?

polecat , December 16, 2016 at 7:53 pm

You are vulnerable to the knowledge that Marissa Mayer is STILL employed as a high-level corporate twit --

Lee , December 16, 2016 at 3:05 pm

It's a good thing for Obama that torturing logic and evasive droning are not criminal acts.

Ranger Rick , December 16, 2016 at 3:12 pm

"Relations with Russia have declined over the past several years" I reflexively did a Google search. Yep, Victoria Nuland is still employed.

Pat , December 16, 2016 at 3:32 pm

Yeah, it isn't like Mr. 'We go high' is going to admit our relationship has declined because we have underhandedly tried to isolate and knee cap them for pretty much his entire administration.

Jeremy Grimm , December 16, 2016 at 4:44 pm

Are you referring to Obama's press conference? If so, I am glad he didn't make a big deal out of the Russian hacking allegations - as in it didn't sound like he planned a retaliation for the fictional event and its fictional consequences. He rose slightly in stature in my eyes - he's almost as tall as a short flea.

With all the concern expressed about Russian meddling in our election process why are we forgetting the direct quid pro quo foreign meddling evidenced in the Hillary emails related to the seldom mentioned Clinton Foundation or the more likely meddling by local election officials? Why have the claims of Russian hacking received such widespread coverage in the Press?

Why is a lameduck messing with the Chinese in the South China sea? What is the point of all the "fake" news hogwash? Is it related to Obama's expression of concern about the safety of the Internet? I can't shake the feeling that something is going on below the surface of these murky waters.

Susan C , December 16, 2016 at 5:44 pm

I watched it too and agree with your take on it. For all the build up about this press conference and how I thought we were going to engage in direct combat with Russia for these hacks (or so they say it is Russia, I still wonder about that), he did not add any fuel to this fire.

He did respond at one point to a reporter that the hacks from Russia were to the DNC and Podesta but funny how he didn't say HRC emails. Be it as it may, I think what was behind it was HRC really trying to impress all her contributors that Russia really did do her in, see Obama said so, since she must be in hot water over all the money she has collected from foreign governments for pay to play and her donors.

The whole thing was silly – the buildup to this press conference and then how Obama handled the hacking. A waste of time really. I don't sense something is going on behind the scenes but it is weird that the news has been all about this Russian hacking. He did not get into the questions about the Electoral College either and he made it seem like Trump indeed is the next President. I mean it seems like the MSM was making too much about this issue but then nothing happened.

Pat , December 16, 2016 at 7:02 pm

Unfortunately the nightly news is focusing on Obama says Russia hacked the DNC and had it in for Clinton!!! He warned them to stay out of the vote! There will be consequences! Russia demands the evidence and then a story about the evidence. (This one might have a few smarter people going "huh, that's it?!?!")

I do like the some private some public on that consequences and retaliation thing. You either have to laugh or throw up about the faux I've got this and the real self-righteousness. Especially since it is supposedly to remind people we can do it to you. Is there anyone left outside of America who doesn't think they already do do it to anyone Uncle Sam doesn't want in office and even some they do? Mind you I'm not sure how many harried people watching the news are actually going to laugh at that one because they don't know how how much we meddle.

Knot Galt , December 16, 2016 at 10:55 pm

Obamameter. ty L. Scofield ;-)

[Dec 17, 2016] Paul Krugman Useful Idiots Galore

Notable quotes:
"... Shorter Paul Krugman: nobody acted more irresponsibly in the last election than the New York Times. ..."
"... Looks like Putin recruited the NYT, the FBI and the DNC. ..."
"... Dr. Krugman is feeding this "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. He comes across as increasingly shrill and even unhinged - it's a slide he's been taking for years IMO, which is a big shame. ..."
"... It is downright irresponsible and dangerous for a major public intellectual with so little information to cast the shadow of legitimacy on a president ("And it means not acting as if this was a normal election whose result gives the winner any kind of a mandate, or indeed any legitimacy beyond the bare legal requirements.") This kind of behavior is EXACTLY what TRUMP and other authoritarians exhibit - using pieces of information to discredit institutions and individuals. Since foreign governments have and will continue to try to influence U.S. policy through increasingly sophisticated means, this opens the door for anyone to declare our elections and policies as illegitimate in the future. ..."
"... Any influence Russian hacking had was entirely a consequence of U.S. media obsession with celebrity, gotcha and horse race trivia and two-party red state/blue state tribalism. ..."
"... Without the preceding, neither Trump nor Clinton would have been contenders in the first place. Putin didn't invent super delegates, Citizens United, Fox News, talk radio, Goldman-Sachs, etc. etc. etc. If Putin exploited vulnerabilities, it is because preserving those vulnerabilities was more important to the elites than fostering a democratic political culture. ..."
"... It's not a "coup". It's an election result that didn't go the way a lot of people want. That's it. It's probably not optimal, but I'm pretty sure that democracy isn't supposed to produce optimal results. ..."
"... All this talk about "coups" and "illegitimacy" is nuts, and -- true to Dem practice -- incredibly short-sighted. For many, voting for Trump was an available way to say to those people, "We don't believe you any more. At all." Seen in that light, it is a profoundly democratic (small 'd') response to elites that have most consistently served only themselves. ..."
"... Post Truth is Pre-Fascism. The party that thinks your loyalty is suspect unless you wear a flag pin fuels itself on Post Truth. Isnt't this absurdity the gist of Obama's Russia comments today!?! ..."
"... Unless the Russians or someone else hacked the ballot box machines, it is our own damn fault. ..."
"... The ship of neo-liberal trade sailed in the mid-2000's. That you don't get that is sad. You can only milk that so far the cow had been milked. ..."
"... The people of the United States did not have much to choose between: Either a servant of the Plutocrats or a member of the Plutocratic class. The Dems brought this on us when they refused to play fair with Bernie. (Hillary would almost certainly have won the nomination anyway.) ..."
"... The Repubs brought this on, by refusing to govern. The media brought this on: I seem to remember Hillary's misfeasances, once nominated, festering in the media, while Trump's were mentioned, and then disappeared. (Correct me if I'm wrong in this.) Also, the media downplayed Bernie until he had no real chance. ..."
"... The government brought this on, by failing to pursue justice against the bankers, and failing to represent the people, especially the majority who have been screwed by trade and the plutocratic elite and their apologists. ..."
"... The educational system brought this on, by failing to educate the people to critical thought. For instance: 1) The wealthy run the country. 2) The wealthy have been doing very well. 3) Everybody else has not. It seems most people cannot draw the obvious conclusion. ..."
"... Krugman is himself one of those most useful idiots. I do not recall his clarion call to Democrats last spring that "FBI investigation" and "party Presidential nominee" was bound to be an ugly combination. Some did; right here as I recall. Or his part in the official "don't vote for third party" week in the Clinton media machine....thanks, hundreds of thousands of Trump votes got the message. ..."
"... It's too rich to complain about Russia and Wikileaks as if those elements in anyway justified Clinton becoming President. Leaks mess with our democracy? Then for darn sure do not vote for a former Sec. of State willing to use a home server for her official business. Russia is menacing? Just who has been managing US-Russia relations the past 8 years? I voted for her anyway, but the heck if I think some tragic fate has befell the nation here. Republicans picked a better candidate to win this thing than we Democrats did. ..."
"... The truth of the matter is that Clinton was a very weak candidate with nothing to offer but narcissism ("I'm with her"). It's notable that Clinton has still not accepted responsibility for her campaign, preferring to throw the blame for the loss anywhere but herself. Sociopathy much? ..."
Dec 17, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com
Monetas Tuas Requiro -> kthomas... , December 16, 2016 at 05:10 PM
The secret story of how American advisers helped Yeltsin win

http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html

JohnH -> Dan Kervick... , December 16, 2016 at 11:46 AM
PK seems to be a bitter old man...
anne -> sanjait... , December 16, 2016 at 03:08 PM
Nothing to see here, say the useful idiots.

[ I find it terrifying, simply terrifying, to refer to people as "useful idiots" after all the personal destruction that has followed when the expression was specifically used in the past.

To me, using such an expression is an honored economist intent on becoming Joseph McCarthy. ]

anne -> anne... , December 16, 2016 at 03:15 PM
To demean a person as though the person were a communist or a fool of communists or the like, with all the personal harm that has historically brought in this country, is cruel beyond my understanding or imagining.

"Useful Idiots Galore," terrifying.

Necesito Dinero Tuyo -> anne... , December 16, 2016 at 05:25 PM
Dale : , December 16, 2016 at 10:51 AM
trouble is that his mind reflects an accurate perception of our common reality.
Procopius -> Dale... , December 17, 2016 at 02:37 AM
Well, not really. For example he referred to "the close relationship between Wikileaks and Russian intelligence." But Wikileaks is a channel. They don't seek out material. They rely on people to bring material to them. They supposedly make an effort to verify that the material is not a forgery, but aside from that what they release is what people bring to them. Incidentally, like so many people you seem to not care whether the material is accurate or not -- Podesta and the DNC have not claimed that any of the emails are different from what they sent.
Tom aka Rusty : , December 16, 2016 at 11:06 AM
PK's head explodes!

One thought....

When politicians and business executives and economists cuddle up to the totalitarian Chinese it is viewed as an act of enlightment and progress.

When someone cuddles up to the authoritarian thug Putin it is an act of evil.

Seems a bit of a double standard.

We are going to have to do "business" with both the Chinese and the Russians, whoever is president.

Ben Groves -> Tom aka Rusty... , December 16, 2016 at 11:07 AM
Your head should explode considering Trump's deal with the "establishment" in July was brokered by foreign agents.
ilsm -> Ben Groves... , December 16, 2016 at 04:11 PM
curiouser and curiouser! while Obama and administration arm jihadis and call its support for jihadis funded by al Qaeda a side in a civil war.

the looking glass you all went through.

Trump has more convictions than any democrat

... ... ...

Tom aka Rusty -> kthomas... , December 16, 2016 at 01:36 PM
In a theatre of the absurd sort of way.
dilbert dogbert -> Tom aka Rusty... , December 16, 2016 at 12:11 PM
One thought:
Only Nixon can go to China.
anne -> sanjait... , December 16, 2016 at 03:22 PM
Putin is a murderous thug...

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/opinion/david-brooks-snap-out-of-it.html

September 22, 2014

Snap Out of It
By David Brooks

President Vladimir Putin of Russia, a lone thug sitting atop a failing regime....

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/opinion/thomas-friedman-putin-and-the-pope.html

October 21, 2014

Putin and the Pope
By Thomas L. Friedman

One keeps surprising us with his capacity for empathy, the other by how much he has become a first-class jerk and thug....

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/opinion/sunday/thomas-l-friedman-whos-playing-marbles-now.html

December 20, 2014

Who's Playing Marbles Now?
By Thomas L. Friedman

Let us not mince words: Vladimir Putin is a delusional thug....

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/paul-krugman-putin-neocons-and-the-great-illusion.html

December 21, 2014

Conquest Is for Losers: Putin, Neocons and the Great Illusion
By Paul Krugman

Remember, he's an ex-K.G.B. man - which is to say, he spent his formative years as a professional thug....

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/thomas-friedman-czar-putins-next-moves.html

January 27, 2015

Czar Putin's Next Moves
By Thomas L. Friedman

ZURICH - If Putin the Thug gets away with crushing Ukraine's new democratic experiment and unilaterally redrawing the borders of Europe, every pro-Western country around Russia will be in danger....

anne -> anne... , December 16, 2016 at 03:23 PM
Putin is a murderous thug...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/world/middleeast/white-house-split-on-opening-talks-with-putin.html

September 15, 2015

Obama Weighing Talks With Putin on Syrian Crisis
By PETER BAKER and ANDREW E. KRAMER

WASHINGTON - Mr. Obama views Mr. Putin as a thug, according to advisers and analysts....

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/opinion/mr-putins-mixed-messages-on-syria.html

September 20, 2015

Mr. Putin's Mixed Messages on Syria

Mr. Obama considers Mr. Putin a thug, his advisers say....

Gibbon1 -> anne... , December 16, 2016 at 07:15 PM
> By David Brooks
> By Thomas L. Friedman
> By Paul Krugman
> By Peter Baker and Andrew E. Kramer

I feel these authors have intentionally attempted to mislead in the past. They also studiously ignore the United States thuggish foreign policy.

Sandwichman : , December 16, 2016 at 11:06 AM
"...not acting as if this was a normal election..." The problem is that it WAS a "normal" U.S. election.
Ben Groves -> Sandwichman ... , December 16, 2016 at 11:09 AM
Yup, like the other elections, the bases stayed solvent and current events factored into the turnout and voting patterns which spurred the independent vote.
Gibbon1 -> Ben Groves... , December 16, 2016 at 11:57 AM
When people were claiming Clinton was going to win big, I thought no Republican and Democratic voters are going to pull the lever like a trained monkey as usual. Only difference in this election was Hillary's huge negatives due entirely by her and Bill Clinton's support for moving manufacturing jobs to Mexico and China in the 90s.
dilbert dogbert -> Sandwichman ... , December 16, 2016 at 12:13 PM
I would have thought in a "normal" murika and election, the drumpf would have gotten at most 10 million votes.
Sandwichman -> dilbert dogbert... , December 16, 2016 at 01:54 PM
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.
Fred C. Dobbs : , December 16, 2016 at 11:08 AM
To Understand Trump, Learn Russian http://nyti.ms/2hLcrB1
NYT - Andrew Rosenthal - December 15

The Russian language has two words for truth - a linguistic quirk that seems relevant to our current political climate, especially because of all the disturbing ties between the newly elected president and the Kremlin.

The word for truth in Russian that most Americans know is "pravda" - the truth that seems evident on the surface. It's subjective and infinitely malleable, which is why the Soviet Communists called their party newspaper "Pravda." Despots, autocrats and other cynical politicians are adept at manipulating pravda to their own ends.

But the real truth, the underlying, cosmic, unshakable truth of things is called "istina" in Russian. You can fiddle with the pravda all you want, but you can't change the istina.

For the Trump team, the pravda of the 2016 election is that not all Trump voters are explicitly racist. But the istina of the 2016 campaign is that Trump's base was heavily dependent on racists and xenophobes, Trump basked in and stoked their anger and hatred, and all those who voted for him cast a ballot for a man they knew to be a racist, sexist xenophobe. That was an act of racism.

Trump's team took to Twitter with lightning speed recently to sneer at the conclusion by all 17 intelligence agencies that the Kremlin hacked Democratic Party emails for the specific purpose of helping Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton. Trump said the intelligence agencies got it wrong about Iraq, and that someone else could have been responsible for the hack and that the Democrats were just finding another excuse for losing.

The istina of this mess is that powerful evidence suggests that the Russians set out to interfere in American politics, and that Trump, with his rejection of Western European alliances and embrace of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, was their chosen candidate.

The pravda of Trump's selection of Rex Tillerson, head of Exxon Mobil, as secretary of state is that by choosing an oil baron who has made billions for his company by collaborating with Russia, Trump will make American foreign policy beholden to American corporate interests.

That's bad enough, but the istina is far worse. For one thing, American foreign policy has been in thrall to American corporate interests since, well, since there were American corporations. Just look at the mess this country created in Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and the Middle East to serve American companies.

Yes, Tillerson has ignored American interests repeatedly, including in Russia and Iraq, and has been trying to remove sanctions imposed after Russia's seizure of Crimea because they interfered with one of his many business deals. But take him out of the equation in the Trump cabinet and nothing changes. Trump has made it plain, with every action he takes, that he is going to put every facet of policy, domestic and foreign, at the service of corporate America. The istina here is that Tillerson is just a symptom of a much bigger problem.

The pravda is that Trump was right in saying that the intelligence agencies got it wrong about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction.

But the istina is that Trump's contempt for the intelligence services is profound and dangerous. He's not getting daily intelligence briefings anymore, apparently because they are just too dull to hold his attention.

And now we know that Condoleezza Rice was instrumental in bringing Tillerson to Trump's attention. As national security adviser and then secretary of state for president George W. Bush, Rice was not just wrong about Iraq, she helped fabricate the story that Hussein had nuclear weapons.

Trump and Tillerson clearly think they are a match for the wily and infinitely dangerous Putin, but as they move foward with their plan to collaborate with Russia instead of opposing its imperialist tendencies, they might keep in mind another Russian saying, this one from Lenin.

"There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience," he wrote. "A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel."

Putin has that philosophy hard-wired into his political soul. When it comes to using scoundrels to get what he wants, he is a professional, and Trump is only an amateur. That is the istina of the matter.

Fred C. Dobbs -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 16, 2016 at 11:25 AM
If nothing else, Russia - with a notably un-free press - has shrewdly used our own 'free press' against US.

RUSSIA'S UNFREE PRESS

The Boston Globe - Marshall Goldman - January 29, 2001

AS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION DEBATES ITS POLICY TOWARD RUSSIA, FREEDOM OF THE PRESS SHOULD BE ONE OF ITS MAJOR CONCERNS. UNDER PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN THE PRESS IS FREE ONLY AS LONG AS IT DOES NOT CRITICIZE PUTIN OR HIS POLICIES. WHEN NTV, THE TELEVISION NETWORK OF THE MEDIA GIANT MEDIA MOST, REFUSED TO PULL ITS PUNCHES, MEDIA MOST'S OWNER, VLADIMIR GUSINSKY, FOUND HIMSELF IN JAIL, AND GAZPROM, A COMPANY DOMINATED BY THE STATE, BEGAN TO CALL IN LOANS TO MEDIA MOST. Unfortunately, Putin's actions are applauded by more than 70 percent of the Russian people. They crave a strong and forceful leader; his KGB past and conditioned KGB responses are just what they seem to want after what many regard as the social, political, and economic chaos of the last decade.

But what to the Russians is law and order (the "dictatorship of the law," as Putin has so accurately put it) looks more and more like an old Soviet clampdown to many Western observers.

There is no complaint about Putin's promises. He tells everyone he wants freedom of the press. But in the context of his KGB heritage, his notion of freedom of the press is something very different. In an interview with the Toronto Globe and Mail, he said that that press freedom excludes the "hooliganism" or "uncivilized" reporting he has to deal with in Moscow. By that he means criticism, especially of his conduct of the war in Chechnya, his belated response to the sinking of the Kursk, and the heavy-handed way in which he has pushed aside candidates for governor in regional elections if they are not to Putin's liking.

He does not take well to criticism. When asked by the relatives of those lost in the Kursk why he seemed so unresponsive, Putin tried to shift the blame for the disaster onto the media barons, or at least those who had criticized him. They were the ones, he insisted, who had pressed for reduced funding for the Navy while they were building villas in Spain and France. As for their criticism of his behavior, They lie! They lie! They lie!

Our Western press has provided good coverage of the dogged way Putin and his aides have tried to muscle Gusinsky out of the Media Most press conglomerate he created. But those on the Putin enemies list now include even Boris Berezovsky, originally one of Putin's most enthusiastic promoters who after the sinking of the Kursk also became a critic and thus an opponent.

Gusinsky would have a hard time winning a merit badge for trustworthiness (Berezovsky shouldn't even apply), but in the late Yeltsin and Putin years, Gusinsky has earned enormous credit for his consistently objective news coverage, including a spotlight on malfeasance at the very top. More than that, he has supported his programmers when they have subjected Yeltsin and now Putin to bitter satire on Kukly, his Sunday evening prime-time puppet show.

What we hear less of, though, is what is happening to individual reporters, especially those engaged in investigative work. Almost monthly now there are cases of violence and intimidation. Among those brutalized since Putin assumed power are a reporter for Radio Liberty who dared to write negative reports about the Russian Army's role in Chechnia and four reporters for Novaya Gazeta. Two of them were investigating misdeeds by the FSB (today's equivalent of the KGB), including the possibility that it rather than Chechins had blown up a series of apartment buildings. Another was pursuing reports of money-laundering by Yeltsin family members and senior staff in Switzerland. Although these journalists were very much in the public eye, they were all physically assaulted.

Those working for provincial papers labor under even more pressure with less visibility. There are numerous instances where regional bosses such as the governor of Vladivostok operate as little dictators, and as a growing number of journalists have discovered, challenges are met with threats, physical intimidation, and, if need be, murder.

True, freedom of the press in Russia is still less than 15 years old, and not all the country's journalists or their bosses have always used that freedom responsibly. During the 1996 election campaign, for example, the media owners, including Gusinsky conspired to denigrate or ignore every viable candidate other than Yeltsin. But attempts to muffle if not silence criticism have multiplied since Putin and his fellow KGB veterans have come to power. Criticism from any source, be it an individual journalist or a corporate entity, invites retaliation.

When Media Most persisted in its criticism, Putin sat by approvingly as his subordinates sent in masked and armed tax police and prosecutors. When that didn't work, they jailed Gusinsky on charges that were later dropped, although they are seeking to extradite and jail him again. along with his treasurer, on a new set of charges. Yesterday the prosecutor general summoned Tatyana Mitkova, the anchor of NTV's evening news program, for questioning. Putin's aides are also doing all they can to prevent Gusinsky from refinancing his debt-ridden operation with Ted Turner or anyone else in or outside of the country.

According to one report, Putin told one official, You deal with the shares, debts, and management and I will deal with the journalists. His goal simply is to end to independent TV coverage in Russia. ...

(No link; from their archives.)

DeDude -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 16, 2016 at 11:33 AM
"Unfortunately, Putin's actions are applauded by more than 70 percent of the Russian people"

Exactly; the majority of people are so stupid and/or lazy that they cannot be bothered understanding what is going on; and how their hard won democracy is being subjugated. But thank God that is in Russia not here in the US - right?

anne -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 16, 2016 at 11:45 AM
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-2001-02-07/html/CREC-2001-02-07-pt1-PgE133-4.htm

February 7, 2001

Russia's Unfree Press
By Marshall I. Goldman

Watermelonpunch -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 16, 2016 at 04:55 PM
"Infinitely dangerous" As in the event horizon of a black hole, for pity's sake?

Odd choice of words. Should there have been a "more" in between there? Was it a typo?

cm -> Fred C. Dobbs... , December 17, 2016 at 03:42 PM
"Pravda" is etymologically derived from "prav-" which means "right" (as opposed to "left", other connotations are "proper", "correct", "rightful", also legal right). It designates the social-construct aspect of "righteousness/truthfulness/correctness" as opposed to "objective reality" (conceptually independent of social standards, in reality anything but). In formal logic, "istina" is used to designate truth. Logical falsity is designated a "lie".

It is a feature common to most European languages that rightfulness, righteousness, correctness, and legal rights are identified with the designation for the right side. "Sinister" is Latin for "left".

Ben Groves : , December 16, 2016 at 11:18 AM
If you believe 911 was a Zionist conspiracy, so where the Paris attacks of November 2015, when Trump was failing in the polls as the race was moving toward as you would expect, toward other candidates. After the Paris attacks, his numbers reaccelerated.

If "ZOG" created the "false flag" of the Paris attacks to start a anti-Muslim fervor, they succeeded, much like 911. Bastille day attacks were likewise, a false flag. This is not new, this goes back to when the aristocracy merged with the merchant caste, creating the "bourgeois". They have been running a parallel government in the shadows to effect what is seen.

cm -> sanjait... , December 17, 2016 at 03:46 PM
There used to be something called Usenet News, where at the protocol level reader software could fetch meta data (headers containing author, (stated) origin, title, etc.) independently from comment bodies. This was largely owed to limited download bandwidth. Basically all readers had "kill files" i.e. filters where one could configure that comments with certain header parameters should not be downloaded, or even hidden.
cm -> cm... , December 17, 2016 at 03:48 PM
The main application was that the reader would download comments in the background when headers were already shown, or on demand when you open a comment.

Now you get the whole thing (or in units of 100) by the megabyte.

tew : , December 16, 2016 at 11:19 AM
A major problem is signal extraction out of the massive amounts of noise generated by the media, social media, parties, and pundits.

It's easy enough to highlight this thread of information here, but in real time people are being bombarded by so many other stories.

In particular, the Clinton Foundation was also regularly being highlighted for its questionable ties to foreign influence. And HRC's extravagant ties to Wall St. And so much more.

And there is outrage fatigue.

Ben Groves -> DeDude... , December 16, 2016 at 11:34 AM
The media's job was to sell Trump and denounce Clinton. The mistake a lot of people make is thinking the global elite are the "status quo". They are not. They are generally the ones that break the status quo more often than not.

The bulk of them wanted Trump/Republican President and made damn sure it was President. Buffering the campaign against criticism while overly focusing on Clinton's "crap". It took away from the issues which of course would have low key'd the election.

cm -> DeDude... , December 17, 2016 at 03:55 PM
Not much bullying has to be applied when there are "economic incentives". The media attention economy and ratings system thrive on controversy and emotional engagement. This was known a century ago as "only bad news is good news". As long as I have lived, the non-commercial media not subject (or not as much) to these dynamics have always been perceived as dry and boring.

I heard from a number of people that they followed the campaign "coverage" (in particular Trump) as gossip/entertainment, and those were people who had no sympathies for him. And even media coverage by outlets generally critical of Trump's unbelievable scandals and outrageous performances catered to this sentiment.

Jim Harrison : , December 16, 2016 at 11:24 AM
Shorter Paul Krugman: nobody acted more irresponsibly in the last election than the New York Times.
Sandwichman -> Jim Harrison ... , December 16, 2016 at 11:53 AM
Looks like Putin recruited the NYT, the FBI and the DNC.
DrDick -> Sandwichman ... , December 16, 2016 at 11:57 AM
Nah, Wall Street and the GOP recruited them to the effort.
Sandwichman -> DrDick... , December 16, 2016 at 01:57 PM
GOP included in FBI. Wall Street included in DNC, GOP. It's all just one big FBIDNCGOPCNNWSNYT.
sanjait -> Jim Harrison ... , December 16, 2016 at 03:06 PM
He can't say it out loud but you know he's including the NYT on his list of UIs.
tew : , December 16, 2016 at 11:26 AM
Let me also add some levelheaded thoughts:

First, let me disclose that I detest TRUMP and that the Russian meddling has me deeply concerned. Yet...

We only have assertions that the Russian hacking had some influence. We do not know whether it likely had *material* influence that could have reasonably led to a swing state(s) going to TRUMP that otherwise would have gone to HRC.

Dr. Krugman is feeding this "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. He comes across as increasingly shrill and even unhinged - it's a slide he's been taking for years IMO, which is a big shame.

It is downright irresponsible and dangerous for a major public intellectual with so little information to cast the shadow of legitimacy on a president ("And it means not acting as if this was a normal election whose result gives the winner any kind of a mandate, or indeed any legitimacy beyond the bare legal requirements.") This kind of behavior is EXACTLY what TRUMP and other authoritarians exhibit - using pieces of information to discredit institutions and individuals. Since foreign governments have and will continue to try to influence U.S. policy through increasingly sophisticated means, this opens the door for anyone to declare our elections and policies as illegitimate in the future.

DrDick -> tew... , December 16, 2016 at 11:56 AM
It is quite clear that the Russians intervened on Trump's behalf and that this intervention had an impact. The problem is that we cannot actually quantify that impact.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-backs-cia-view-that-russia-intervened-to-help-trump-win-election/2016/12/16/05b42c0e-c3bf-11e6-9a51-cd56ea1c2bb7_story.html?pushid=breaking-news_1481916265&tid=notifi_push_breaking-news&utm_term=.25d35c017908

Sandwichman -> tew... , December 16, 2016 at 01:17 PM
"We only have assertions that the Russian hacking had some influence."

Any influence Russian hacking had was entirely a consequence of U.S. media obsession with celebrity, gotcha and horse race trivia and two-party red state/blue state tribalism.

Without the preceding, neither Trump nor Clinton would have been contenders in the first place. Putin didn't invent super delegates, Citizens United, Fox News, talk radio, Goldman-Sachs, etc. etc. etc. If Putin exploited vulnerabilities, it is because preserving those vulnerabilities was more important to the elites than fostering a democratic political culture.

cm -> Sandwichman ... , December 17, 2016 at 04:00 PM
But this is how influence is exerted - by using the dynamics of the adversary's/targets organization as an amplifier. Hierarchical organizations are approached through their management or oversight bodies, social networks through key influencers, etc.
David : , December 16, 2016 at 11:58 AM
I see this so much and it's so right wing cheap: I hate Trump, but assertions that Russia intervened are unproven.

First, Trump openly invited Russia to hack DNC emails. That is on its face treason and sedition. It's freaking on video. If HRC did that there would be calls of the right for her execution.

Second, a NYT story showed that the FBI knew about the hacking but did not alert the DNC properly - they didn't even show up, they sent a note to a help desk.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fbi-probe-dnc-hacked-emails_us_57a19f22e4b08a8e8b601259

This was a serious national security breach that was not addressed properly. This is criminal negligence.

This was a hacked election by collusion of the FBI and the Russian hackers and it totally discredits the FBI as it throwed out chum and then denied at the last minute. Now the CIA comes in and says PUTIN, Trump's bff, was directly involved in manipulating the timetable that the hacked emails were released in drip drip form to cater to the media - creating story after story about emails.

It was a perfect storm for a coup. Putin played us. And he will play Trump. And God knows how it ends. But it doesn't matter b/c we're all screwed with climate change anyway.

sglover -> David... , December 16, 2016 at 02:50 PM
"It was a perfect storm for a coup. Putin played us. And he will play Trump. And God knows how it ends. But it doesn't matter b/c we're all screwed with climate change anyway."

It's not a "coup". It's an election result that didn't go the way a lot of people want. That's it. It's probably not optimal, but I'm pretty sure that democracy isn't supposed to produce optimal results.

All this talk about "coups" and "illegitimacy" is nuts, and -- true to Dem practice -- incredibly short-sighted. For many, voting for Trump was an available way to say to those people, "We don't believe you any more. At all." Seen in that light, it is a profoundly democratic (small 'd') response to elites that have most consistently served only themselves.

Trump and his gang will be deeply grateful if the left follows Krugman's "wisdom", and clings to his ever-changing excuses. (I thought it was the evil Greens who deprived Clinton of her due?)

100panthers : , December 16, 2016 at 02:17 PM
Post Truth is Pre-Fascism. The party that thinks your loyalty is suspect unless you wear a flag pin fuels itself on Post Truth. Isnt't this absurdity the gist of Obama's Russia comments today!?!
ilsm -> 100panthers... , December 16, 2016 at 04:29 PM
Obama and the Clintons are angered; Russia keeping US from giving Syria to al Qaeda. Like Clinton gave them Libya.
Jerry Brown -> sanjait... , December 16, 2016 at 04:46 PM
I agree. Unless the Russians or someone else hacked the ballot box machines, it is our own damn fault.
ilsm : , December 16, 2016 at 04:27 PM
the US media is angered putin is killing US' jihadis in Syria
Mr. Bill : , December 16, 2016 at 08:27 PM
"On Wednesday an editorial in The Times described Donald Trump as a "useful idiot" serving Russian interests." I think that is beyond the pale. Yes, I realize that Adolph Hitler was democratically elected. I agree that Trump seems like a scary monster under the bed. That doesn't mean we have too pee our pants, Paul. He's a bully, tough guy, maybe, the kind of kid that tortured you before you kicked the shit out of them with your brilliance. That's not what is needed now.
Mr. Bill -> Mr. Bill... , December 16, 2016 at 08:39 PM
What really is needed, is a watchdog, like Dean Baker, that alerts we dolts of pending bills and their ramifications. The ship of neo-liberal trade bullshit has sailed. Hell, you don't believe it yourself, you've said as much. Be gracious, and tell the truth. We can handle it.
Ben Groves -> Mr. Bill... , December 16, 2016 at 09:51 PM
The ship of neo-liberal trade sailed in the mid-2000's. That you don't get that is sad. You can only milk that so far the cow had been milked.

Trump was a coo, he was not supported by the voters. But by the global elite.

Mr. Bill : , December 16, 2016 at 10:28 PM
Hillary Clinton lost because she is truly an ugly aristocrat.
Mr. Bill -> Mr. Bill... , December 16, 2016 at 11:49 PM
The experience of voting for the Hill was painful, vs Donald Trump.

The Hill seemed like the least likely aristocrat, given two choices, to finish off all government focus on the folks that actually built this society. Two Titans of Hubris, Hillary vs Donald, each ridiculous in the concept of representing the interests of the common man.

At the end of the day. the American people decided that the struggle with the unknown monster Donald was worth deposing the great deplorable, Clinton.

Mr. Bill -> Mr. Bill... , December 17, 2016 at 12:11 AM
The real argument is whether the correct plan of action is the way of FDR, or the way of the industrialists, the Waltons, the Kochs, the Trumps, the Bushes and the outright cowards like the Cheneys and the Clintons, people that never spent a day defending this country in combat. What do they call it, the Commander in Chief.
Mr. Bill -> Mr. Bill... , December 17, 2016 at 12:29 AM
My father was awarded a silver and a bronze star for his efforts in battle during WW2. He was shot in the face while driving a tank destroyer by a German sniper in a place called Schmitten Germany.

He told me once, that he looked over at the guy next to him on the plane to the hospital in England, and his intestines were splayed on his chest. It was awful.

Mr. Bill -> Mr. Bill... , December 17, 2016 at 12:55 AM
What was he fighting for ? Freedom, America. Then the Republicans, Ronald Reagan, who spent the war stateside began the real war, garnering the wealth of the nation to the entitled like him. Ronald Reagan was a life guard.
btg : , December 16, 2016 at 11:09 PM
Other idiots...

Anthony Weiner
Podesta
Biden (for not running)
Tim Kaine (for accepting the nomination instead of deferring to a latino)
CNN and other TV news media (for giving trump so much coverage- even an empty podium)
Donna Brazile
etc.

greg : , December 16, 2016 at 11:57 PM
The people of the United States did not have much to choose between: Either a servant of the Plutocrats or a member of the Plutocratic class. The Dems brought this on us when they refused to play fair with Bernie. (Hillary would almost certainly have won the nomination anyway.)

The Repubs brought this on, by refusing to govern. The media brought this on: I seem to remember Hillary's misfeasances, once nominated, festering in the media, while Trump's were mentioned, and then disappeared. (Correct me if I'm wrong in this.) Also, the media downplayed Bernie until he had no real chance.

The government brought this on, by failing to pursue justice against the bankers, and failing to represent the people, especially the majority who have been screwed by trade and the plutocratic elite and their apologists.

The educational system brought this on, by failing to educate the people to critical thought. For instance: 1) The wealthy run the country. 2) The wealthy have been doing very well. 3) Everybody else has not. It seems most people cannot draw the obvious conclusion.

The wealthy brought this on. For 230 years they have, essentially run this country. They are too stupid to be satisfied with enough, but always want more.

The economics profession brought this on, by excusing treasonous behavior as efficient, and failing to understand the underlying principles of their profession, and the limits of their understanding. (They don't even know what money is, or how a trade deficit destroys productive capacity, and thus the very ability of a nation to pay back the debts it incurs.)

The people brought this on, by neglecting their duty to be informed, to be educated, and to be thoughtful.

Anybody else care for their share of blame? I myself deserve some, but for reasons I cannot say.

What amazes me now is, the bird having shown its feathers, there is no howl of outrage from the people who voted for him. Do they imagine that the Plutocrats who will soon monopolize the White House will take their interests to heart?

As far as I can tell, not one person of 'the people' has been appointed to his cabinet. Not one. But the oppressed masses who turned to Mr Trump seem to be OK with this.
I can only wonder, how much crap will have to be rubbed in their faces, before they awaken to the taste of what it is?

Eric377 : , -1
Krugman is himself one of those most useful idiots. I do not recall his clarion call to Democrats last spring that "FBI investigation" and "party Presidential nominee" was bound to be an ugly combination. Some did; right here as I recall. Or his part in the official "don't vote for third party" week in the Clinton media machine....thanks, hundreds of thousands of Trump votes got the message.

It's too rich to complain about Russia and Wikileaks as if those elements in anyway justified Clinton becoming President. Leaks mess with our democracy? Then for darn sure do not vote for a former Sec. of State willing to use a home server for her official business. Russia is menacing? Just who has been managing US-Russia relations the past 8 years? I voted for her anyway, but the heck if I think some tragic fate has befell the nation here. Republicans picked a better candidate to win this thing than we Democrats did.

Greg -> Eric377... , December 17, 2016 at 12:11 PM
Well said, Eric377.

The truth of the matter is that Clinton was a very weak candidate with nothing to offer but narcissism ("I'm with her"). It's notable that Clinton has still not accepted responsibility for her campaign, preferring to throw the blame for the loss anywhere but herself. Sociopathy much?

This has made me cynical. I used to think that at least *some* members of the US political elite had the best interests of ordinary households in mind, but now I see that it's just ego vs. ego, whatever the party.

As for democracy being on the edge: I believe Adam Smith over Krugman: "there is a lot of ruin in a nation". It takes more than this to overturn an entrenched institution.

I think American democracy will survive a decade of authoritarianism, and if it does not, then H. L. Mencken said it best: "The American people know what they want, and they deserve to get it -- good and hard."

[Dec 15, 2016] Exclusive: Top US spy agency has not embraced CIA assessment on Russia hacking – sources

Dec 15, 2016 | uk.reuters.com

The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, three American officials said on Monday.

While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) does not dispute the CIA's analysis of Russian hacking operations, it has not endorsed their assessment because of a lack of conclusive evidence that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, said the officials, who declined to be named .

An ODNI spokesman declined to comment on the issue.

"ODNI is not arguing that the agency (CIA) is wrong, only that they can't prove intent," said one of the three U.S. officials. "Of course they can't, absent agents in on the decision-making in Moscow."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose evidentiary standards require it to make cases that can stand up in court, declined to accept the CIA's analysis – a deductive assessment of the available intelligence – for the same reason, the three officials said


marknesop says: December 13, 2016 at 6:17 am
But all of them, without exception, accept that the Democrats' server was hacked by Russia, and that it was Russia who leaked the information through Wikileaks, and that Russia also hacked the Republicans but declined to release incriminating or influential material it had in its possession. There is, to my knowledge, no evidence of this, either.

[Dec 02, 2016] No attempt at DNC of learning the history of neoliberalism, no attempt at any serious research about how and why it descroyed the US society

Notable quotes:
"... If I was in charge of the DNC and wanted to commission a very cleverly written piece to exonerate the DLC and the New Democrats from the 30 odd years of corruption and self-aggrandizement they indulged in and laughed all the way to the Bank then I would definitely give this chap a call. ..."
"... I would ask the Author to start with the Powell memo and then make an investigation as to why the Democrats then and the DLC later decided to merely sit on their hands when all the forces the Powell memo unleashed proceeded to wreak their havoc in every established institution of the Left, principally the Universities which had always been the bastion of the Progressives. That might be a good starting point. ..."
Dec 02, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Paul Art November 29, 2016 at 7:14 am

If I was in charge of the DNC and wanted to commission a very cleverly written piece to exonerate the DLC and the New Democrats from the 30 odd years of corruption and self-aggrandizement they indulged in and laughed all the way to the Bank then I would definitely give this chap a call.

I mean, where do we start? No attempt at learning the history of neoliberalism, no attempt at any serious research about how and why it fastened itself into the brains of people like Tony Coelho and Al From, nothing, zilch.

If someone who did not know the history of the DLC read this piece, they would walk away thinking, 'wow, it was all happenstance, it all just happened, no one deliberately set off this run away train'. Sometime in the 90s the 'Left' decided to just pursue identity politics. Amazing.

I would ask the Author to start with the Powell memo and then make an investigation as to why the Democrats then and the DLC later decided to merely sit on their hands when all the forces the Powell memo unleashed proceeded to wreak their havoc in every established institution of the Left, principally the Universities which had always been the bastion of the Progressives. That might be a good starting point.

[Nov 23, 2016] Trump won because Democratic Party governance eviscerated those communities

Notable quotes:
"... Judging by the people who Trump has appointed, it is looking like an ugly situation for the US. If he actually hires people like John Bolton, we will know that a betrayal was certain. While I think that it is probable that he is the lesser evil, he was supposed to avoid neoconservatives and Wall Street types (that Clinton associates herself with). ..."
"... I think it would be a mistake to attribute too much "genius" to Trump and Kushner. It sounds like Kushner exhibited competence, and that's great. But Trump won in great measure because Democratic Party governance eviscerated those communities. ..."
"... This is akin to how Obama got WAY too much credit for being a brilliant orator. People wanted change in '08 and voted for it. That change agent betrayed them, so they voted for change again this time. Or, more accurately, a lot of Obama voters stayed home, the Republican base held together, and Trump's team found necessary little pockets of ignored voters to energize. But that strategy would never have worked if not for Obama's and Clinton's malfeasance and incompetence. Honestly, Hillary got closer to a win that she had a right to. That ought to be the real story. ..."
Nov 23, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Altandmain November 23, 2016 at 5:09 pm

Does anyone else get the overwhelming impression that the US is heading for an impending collapse or serious decline at least, unless it puts a fight it against the status quo?

Judging by the people who Trump has appointed, it is looking like an ugly situation for the US. If he actually hires people like John Bolton, we will know that a betrayal was certain. While I think that it is probable that he is the lesser evil, he was supposed to avoid neoconservatives and Wall Street types (that Clinton associates herself with).

I find it amazing how tone deaf the Clinton campaign and Democratic Establishment are. Trump and apparently his son in law, no matter what else, are political campaigning geniuses given their accomplishments. For months people were criticizing their lack of experience in politics like a fatal mistake..

I think that no real change is going to happen until someone authentically left wing takes power or if the US collapses.

aab November 23, 2016 at 5:30 pm

I think it would be a mistake to attribute too much "genius" to Trump and Kushner. It sounds like Kushner exhibited competence, and that's great. But Trump won in great measure because Democratic Party governance eviscerated those communities.

This is akin to how Obama got WAY too much credit for being a brilliant orator. People wanted change in '08 and voted for it. That change agent betrayed them, so they voted for change again this time. Or, more accurately, a lot of Obama voters stayed home, the Republican base held together, and Trump's team found necessary little pockets of ignored voters to energize. But that strategy would never have worked if not for Obama's and Clinton's malfeasance and incompetence. Honestly, Hillary got closer to a win that she had a right to. That ought to be the real story.

Daryl November 23, 2016 at 6:09 pm

It is not clear to me what exactly a collapse entails. The US doesn't have obvious lines to fracture across, like say the USSR did. (I suppose an argument could be made for "cultural regions" like the South, Cascadia etc separating out, but it seems far less likely to happen, even in the case of continuing extreme economic duress and breakdown of democracy/civil rights).

The US is and has been in a serious decline, and will probably continue.

[Nov 19, 2016] The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss of jobs. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun.

It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism has been disastrous for the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial heartland, now little more than its wasteland ..."
"... The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate. ..."
"... two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair: offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. ..."
"... Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime. ..."
"... In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus, a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic) minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate, stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined. ..."
"... But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital (which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century capitalism. ..."
"... Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this. ..."
"... Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though, was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. ..."
"... Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too, along with a number of social drivers. ..."
"... The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico. ..."
"... I contend that in some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision appeared in sharp relief with Brexit. ..."
"... Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity, so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions that predate the emergence of identity politics. ..."
"... It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the plight of their cherished white working class. ..."
"... The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity. Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory present. ..."
"... Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'. ..."
"... Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness' threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation. Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like a minority vote. ..."
"... Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority, much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'? ..."
"... I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective. ..."
"... In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s." ..."
"... Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote: "the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate." ..."
"... In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found, a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.' ..."
"... In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country, and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time, more and more power. ..."
"... To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their 2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced to pay. ..."
"... This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman white underclass (or so they see it). ..."
"... You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you), you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back. Nobody trusts the elite at all. ..."
"... You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem. ..."
"... One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016: the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people. This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party. ..."
"... Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery. ..."
"... None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it. ..."
"... . It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part. ..."
"... This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to the Ivy League, which is 90% of them. ..."
"... Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a "boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win? ..."
"... "The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians." ..."
"... "It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of rubble.' ..."
"... "One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats, one would be quite mistaken." ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... "At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response, governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to, and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time, is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon known as Goodhart's law. (..) ..."
"... " what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically, and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right to vote. ..."
"... "The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened. ..."
"... "The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism. It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun." ..."
"... They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue collar work. ..."
"... trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been "correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic party, have to accept. ..."
"... trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama was defending keeping what was already there. ..."
"... "Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html ..."
"... Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. "" ..."
Nov 19, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

dbk 11.18.16 at 6:41 pm 130

Bruce Wilder @102

The question is no longer her neoliberalism, but yours. Keep it or throw it away?

I wish this issue was being seriously discussed. Neoliberalism has been disastrous for the Rust Belt, and I think we need to envision a new future for what was once the country's industrial heartland, now little more than its wasteland (cf. "flyover zone" – a pejorative term which inhabitants of the zone are not too stupid to understand perfectly, btw).

The question of what the many millions of often-unionized factory workers, SMEs which supplied them, family farmers (now fully industrialized and owned by corporations), and all those in secondary production and services who once supported them are to actually do in future to earn a decent living is what I believe should really be the subject of debate.

As noted upthread, two factors (or three, I guess) have contributed to this state of despair: offshoring and outsourcing, and technology. The jobs that have been lost will not return, and indeed will be lost in ever greater numbers – just consider what will happen to the trucking sector when self-driving trucks hit the roads sometime in the next 10-20 years (3.5 million truckers; 8.7 in allied jobs).

Medicaid, the CHIP program, the SNAP program and others (including NGOs and private charitable giving) may alleviate some of the suffering, but there is currently no substitute for jobs that would enable men and women to live lives of dignity – a decent place to live, good educations for their children, and a reasonable, secure pension in old age. Near-, at-, and below-minimum wage jobs devoid of any benefits don't allow any of these – at most, they make possible a subsistence life, one which requires continued reliance on public assistance throughout one's lifetime.

In the U.S. (a neoliberal pioneer), poverty is closely linked with inequality and thus, a high GINI coefficient (near that of Turkey); where there is both poverty and a very unequal distribution of resources, this inevitably affects women (and children) and racial (and ethnic) minorities disproportionately. The economic system, racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not separate, stand-alone issues; they are profoundly intertwined.

I appreciate and espouse the goals of identity politics in all their multiplicity, and also understand that the institutions of slavery and sexism predated modern capitalist economies. But really, if you think about it, slavery was defined as ownership, ownership of human capital (which was convertible into cash), and women in many societies throughout history were acquired as part of a financial transaction (either through purchase or through sale), and control of their capital (land, property [farmland, herds], valuables and later, money) often entrusted to a spouse or male guardian. All of these practices were economically-driven, even if the driver wasn't 21st-century capitalism.

Also: Faustusnotes@100
For example Indiana took the ACA Medicaid expansion but did so with additional conditions that make it worse than in neighboring states run by democratic governors.

And what states would those be? IL, IA, MI, OH, WI, KY, and TN have Republican governors. Were you thinking pre-2014? pre-2012?

To conclude and return to my original point: what's to become of the Rust Belt in future? Did the Democratic platform include a New New Deal for PA, OH, MI, WI, and IA (to name only the five Rust Belt states Trump flipped)?

kidneystones 11.18.16 at 11:32 pm ( 135 )

Thomas Pickety

" Let it be said at once: Trump's victory is primarily due to the explosion in economic and geographic inequality in the United States over several decades and the inability of successive governments to deal with this.

Both the Clinton and the Obama administrations frequently went along with the market liberalization launched under Reagan and both Bush presidencies. At times they even outdid them: the financial and commercial deregulation carried out under Clinton is an example. What sealed the deal, though, was the suspicion that the Democrats were too close to Wall Street – and the inability of the Democratic media elite to learn the lessons from the Sanders vote. "

The Guardian

kidneystones 11.18.16 at 11:56 pm 137 ( 137 )

What should have been one comment came out as 4, so apologies on that front.

I spent the last week explaining the US election to my students in Japan in pretty much the terms outlined by Lilla and PIketty, so I was delighted to discover these two articles.

Regional inequality and globalization are the principal drivers in Japanese politics, too, along with a number of social drivers. It was therefore very easy to call for a show of hands to identify students studying here in Tokyo who are trying to decide whether or not to return to areas such as Tohoku to build their lives; or remain in Kanto/Tokyo – the NY/Washington/LA of Japan put crudely.

I asked students from regions close to Tohoku how they might feel if the Japanese prime minister decided not to visit the region following Fukushima after the disaster, or preceding an election. The tsunami/nuclear meltdown combined with the Japanese government's uneven response is an apt metaphor for the impact of neo-liberalism/globalization on Japan; and on the US. I then explained that the income inequality in the US was far more severe than that of Japan and that many Americans did not support the export of jobs to China/Mexico.

I then asked the students, particularly those from outlying regions whether they believe Japan needed a leader who would 'bring back Japanese jobs' from Viet Nam and China, etc. Many/most agreed wholeheartedly. I then asked whether they believed Tokyo people treated those outside Kanto as 'inferiors.' Many do.

Piketty may be right regarding Trump's long-term effects on income inequality. He is wrong, I suggest, to argue that Democrats failed to respond to Sanders' support. I contend that in some hypothetical universe the DNC and corrupt Clinton machine could have been torn out, root and branch, within months. As I noted, however, the decision to run HRC effectively unopposed was made several years, at least, before the stark evidence of the consequences of such a decision appeared in sharp relief with Brexit.

Faustusnotes 11.19.16 at 12:14 am 138

Also worth noting is that the rust belts problems are as old as Reagan – even the term dates from the 80s, the issue is so uncool that there is a dire straits song about it. Some portion of the decline of manufacturing there is due to manufacturers shifting to the south, where the anti Union states have an advantage. Also there has been new investment – there were no Japanese car companies in the us in the 1980s, so they are new job creators, yet insufficient to make up the losses. Just as the decline of Virginia coal is due to global forces and corporate stupidity, so the decline of the rust belt is due to long (30 year plus) global forces and corporate decisions that predate the emergence of identity politics.

It's interesting that the clear headed thinkers of the Marxist left, who pride themselves on not being distracted by identity, don't want to talk about these factors when discussing the plight of their cherished white working class. Suddenly it's not the forces of capital and the objective facts of history, but a bunch of whiny black trannies demanding safe spaces and protesting police violence, that drove those towns to ruin.

And what solutions do they think the dems should have proposed? It can't be welfare, since we got the ACA (watered down by representatives of the rust belt states). Is it, seriously, tariffs? Short of going to an election promising w revolution, what should the dems have done? Give us a clear answer so we can see what the alternative to identity politics is.

basil 11.19.16 at 5:11 am

Did this go through?
Thinking with WLGR @15, Yan @81, engels variously above,

The construction 'white working class' is a useful governing tool that splits poor people and possible coalitions against the violence of capital. Now, discussion focuses on how some of the least powerful, most vulnerable people in the United States are the perpetrators of a great injustice against racialised and minoritised groups. Such commentary colludes in the pathologisation of the working class, of poor people. Victims are inculpated as the vectors of noxious, atavistic vices while the perpetrators get off with impunity, showing off their multihued, cosmopolitan C-suites and even proposing that their free trade agreements are a form of anti-racist solidarity. Most crucially, such analysis ignores the continuities between a Trumpian dystopia and our satisfactory present.

I get that the tropes around race are easy, and super-available. Privilege confessing is very in vogue as a prophylactic against charges of racism. But does it threaten the structures that produce this abjection – either as embittered, immiserated 'white working class' or as threatened minority group? It is always *those* 'white' people, the South, the Working Class, and never the accusers some of whom are themselves happy to vote for a party that drowns out anti-war protesters with chants of USA! USA!

Race-thinking forecloses the possibility of the coalitions that you imagine, and reproduces ideas of difference in ways that always, always privilege 'whiteness'.

--

Historical examples of ethnic groups becoming 'white', how it was legal and political decision-making that defined the present racial taxonomy, suggest that groups can also lose or have their 'whiteness' threatened. CB has written here about how, in the UK at least, Eastern and Southern Europeans are racialised, and so refused 'whiteness'. JQ has written about southern white minoritisation. Many commentators have pointed that the 'white working class' vote this year looked a lot like a minority vote.

Given the subordination of groups presently defined as 'white working class', I wonder if we could think beyond ethnic and epidermal definition to consider that the impossibility of the American Dream refuses these groups whiteness; i.e the hoped for privileges of racial superiority, much in the same way that African Americans, Latin Americans and other racialised minorities are denied whiteness. Can a poor West Virginian living in a toxified drugged out impoverished landscape really be defined as a carrier of 'white privilege'?

I was first pointed at this by the juxtapositions of racialised working class and immigrants in Imogen Tyler's Revolting Subjects – Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain but this below is a useful short article that takes a historical perspective.

Why the Working Class was Never 'White'

The 'racialisation' of class in Britain has been a consequence of the weakening of 'class' as a political idea since the 1970s – it is a new construction, not an historic one.

.

This is not to deny the existence of working-class racism, or to suggest that racism is somehow acceptable if rooted in perceived socio-economic grievances. But it is to suggest that the concept of a 'white working class' needs problematizing, as does the claim that the British working-class was strongly committed to a post-war vision of 'White Britain' analogous to the politics which sustained the idea of a 'White Australia' until the 1960s.

Yes, old, settled neighbourhoods could be profoundly distrustful of outsiders – all outsiders, including the researchers seeking to study them – but, when it came to race, they were internally divided. We certainly hear working-class racist voices – often echoing stock racist complaints about over-crowding, welfare dependency or exploitative landlords and small businessmen, but we don't hear the deep pathological racial fears laid bare in the letters sent to Enoch Powell after his so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968 (Whipple, 2009).

But more importantly, we also hear strong anti-racist voices loudly and clearly. At Wallsend on Tyneside, where the researchers were gathering their data just as Powell shot to notoriety, we find workers expressing casual racism, but we also find eloquent expressions of an internationalist, solidaristic perspective in which, crucially, black and white are seen as sharing the same working-class interests.

Racism is denounced as a deliberate capitalist strategy to divide workers against themselves, weakening their ability to challenge those with power over their lives (shipbuilding had long been a very fractious industry and its workers had plenty of experience of the dangers of internal sectarian battles).

To be able to mobilize across across racialised divisions, to have race wither away entirely would, for me, be the beginning of a politics that allowed humanity to deal with the inescapable violence of climate change and corporate power.

*To add to the bibliography – David R. Roediger, Elizabeth D. Esch – The Production of Difference – Race and the Management of Labour, and Denise Ferreira da Silva – Toward a Global Idea of Race. And I have just been pointed at Ian Haney-López, White By Law – The Legal Construction of Race.

Hidari 11.19.16 at 8:16 am 152

FWIW 'merica's constitutional democracy is going to collapse.

Some day - not tomorrow, not next year, but probably sometime before runaway climate change forces us to seek a new life in outer-space colonies - there is going to be a collapse of the legal and political order and its replacement by something else. If we're lucky, it won't be violent. If we're very lucky, it will lead us to tackle the underlying problems and result in a better, more robust, political system. If we're less lucky, well, then, something worse will happen .

In a 1990 essay, the late Yale political scientist Juan Linz observed that "aside from the United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government - but Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s."

Linz offered several reasons why presidential systems are so prone to crisis. One particularly important one is the nature of the checks and balances system. Since both the president and the Congress are directly elected by the people, they can both claim to speak for the people. When they have a serious disagreement, according to Linz, "there is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved." The constitution offers no help in these cases, he wrote: "the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate."

In a parliamentary system, deadlocks get resolved. A prime minister who lacks the backing of a parliamentary majority is replaced by a new one who has it. If no such majority can be found, a new election is held and the new parliament picks a leader. It can get a little messy for a period of weeks, but there's simply no possibility of a years-long spell in which the legislative and executive branches glare at each other unproductively.'

http://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doomed

Given that the basic point is polarisation (i.e. that both the President and Congress have equally strong arguments to be the the 'voice of the people') and that under the US appalling constitutional set up, there is no way to decide between them, one can easily imagine the so to speak 'hyperpolarisation' of a Trump Presidency as being the straw (or anvil) that breaks the camel's back.

In any case, as I pointed out before, given that the US is increasingly an urbanised country, and the Electoral College was created to protect rural (slave) states, the grotesque electoral result we have just seen is likely to recur, which means more and more Presidents with dubious democratic legitimacy. Thanks to Bush (and Obama) these Presidents will have, at the same time, more and more power.

Eventually something is going to break.

dbk 11.19.16 at 10:39 am ( 153 )

nastywoman @ 150
Just study the program of the 'Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland' or the Program of 'Die Grünen' in Germany (take it through google translate) and you get all the answers you are looking for.

No need to run it through google translate, it's available in English on their site. [Or one could refer to the Green Party of the U.S. site/platform, which is very similar in scope and overall philosophy. (www.gp.org).]

I looked at several of their topic areas (Agricultural, Global, Health, Rural) and yes, these are general theses I would support. But they're hardly policy/project proposals for specific regions or communities – the Greens espouse "think global, act local", so programs and projects must be tailored to individual communities and regions.

To return to my original question and answer it myself: I'm forced to conclude that the Democrats did not specifically address the revitalization – rebirth of the Rust Belt in their 2016 platform. Its failure to do so carried a heavy cost that (nearly) all of us will be forced to pay.

Soullite 11.19.16 at 12:46 pm 156

This sub seems to have largely fallen into the psychologically comfortable trap of declaring that everyone who voted against their preferred candidate is racist. It's a view pushed by the neoliberals, who want to maintain he stranglehold of identity politics over the DNC, and it makes upper-class 'intellectuals' feel better about themselves and their betrayal of the filthy, subhuman white underclass (or so they see it).

I expect at this point that Trump will be reelected comfortably. If not only the party itself, but also most of its activists, refuse to actually change, it's more or less inevitable.

You can scream 'those jobs are never coming back!' all you want, but people are never going to accept it. So either you come up with a genuine solution (instead of simply complaining that your opponents solutions won't work; you're partisan and biased, most voters won't believe you), you may as well resign yourself to fascism. Because whining that you don't know what to do won't stop people from lining up behind someone who says that they do have one, whether it'll work or not. Nobody trusts the elite enough to believe them when they say that jobs are never coming back. Nobody trusts the elite at all.

You sound just like the Wiemar elite. No will to solve the problem, but filled with terror at the inevitable result of failing to solve the problem.

mclaren 11.19.16 at 2:37 pm 160

One brutal fact tells us everything we need to know about the Democratic party in 2016: the American Nazi party is running on a platform of free health care to working class people. This means that the American Nazi Party is now running to the left of the Democratic party.

Folks, we have seen this before. Let's not descend in backbiting and recriminations, okay? We've got some commenters charging that other commenters are "mansplaining," meanwhile we've got other commenters claiming that it's economics and not racism/misogyny. It's all of the above.

Back in the 1930s, when the economy collapsed, fascists appeared and took power. Racists also came out of the woodwork, ditto misogynists. Fast forward 80 years, and the same thing has happened all over again. The global economy melted down in 2008 and fascists appeared promising to fix the problems that the pols in power wouldn't because they were too closely tied to the existing (failed) system. Along with the fascists, racists gained power because they were able to scapegoat minorities as the alleged cause of everyone's misery.

None of this is surprising. We have seen it before. Whenever you get a depression in a modern industrial economy, you get scapegoating, racism, and fascists. We know what to do. The problem is that the current Democratic party isn't doing it.

Instead, what we're seeing is a whirlwind of finger-pointing from the Democratic leadership that lost this election and probably let the entire New Deal get rolled back and wiped out. Putin is to blame! Julian Assange is to blame! The biased media are to blame! Voter suppression is to blame! Bernie Sanders is to blame! Jill Stein is to blame! Everyone and anyone except the current out-of-touch influence-peddling elites who currently have run the Democratic party into the ground.

We need the feminists and the black lives matter groups and we also need the green party people and the Bernie Sanders activists. But everyone has to understand that this is not an isolated event. Trump did not just happen by accident. First there was Greece, then there was Brexit, then there was Trump, next it'll be Renzi losing the referendum in Italy and a constitutional crisis there, and after that, Marine Le Pen in France is going to win the first round of elections. (Probably not the presidency, since all the other French parties will band together to stop her, but the National Front is currently polling at 40% of all registered French voters.) And Marine LePen is the real deal, a genuine full-on out-and-out fascist. Not a closet fascist like Steve Bannon, LePen is the full monty with everything but a Hugo Boss suit and the death's heads on the cap.

Does anyone notice a pattern here?

This is an international movement. It is sweeping the world . It is the end of neoliberalism and the start of the era of authoritarian nationalism, and we all need to come together to stamp out the authoritarian part.

Feminists, BLM, black bloc anarchiest anti-globalists, Sandernistas, and, yes, the former Hillary supporters. Because it not just a coincidence that all these things are happening in all these countries at the same time. The bottom 90% of the population in the developed world has been ripped off by a managerial and financial and political class for the last 30 years and they have all noticed that while the world GDP was skyrocketing and international trade agreements were getting signed with zero input from the average citizen, a few people were getting very very rich but nobody else was getting anything.

This hammered people on the bottom, disproportionately African Americans and especially single AA mothers in America. It crushed the blue collar workers. It is wiping out the savings and careers of college-educated white collar workers now, at least, the ones who didn't go to the Ivy League, which is 90% of them.

And the Democratic party is so helpless and so hopeless that it is letting the American Nazi Party run to the left of them on health care, fer cripes sake! We are now in a situation where the American Nazi Party is advocating single-payer nationalized health care, while the former Democratic presidential nominee who just got defeated assured everyone that single-payer "will never, ever happen."

C'mon! Is anyone surprised that Hillary lost? Let's cut the crap with the "Hillary was a flawed candidate" arguments. The plain fact of the matter is that Hillary was running mainly on getting rid of the problems she and her husband created 25 years ago. Hillary promised criminal justice reform and Black Lives Matter-friendly policing policies - and guess who started the mass incarceration trend and gave speeches calling black kids "superpredators" 20 years ago? Hillary promised to fix the problems with the wretched mandate law forcing everyone to buy unaffordable for-profit private insurance with no cost controls - and guess who originally ran for president in 2008 on a policy of health care mandates with no cost controls? Yes, Hillary (ironically, Obama's big surge in popularity as a candidate came when he ran against Hillary from the left, ridiculing helath care mandates). Hillary promises to reform an out-of-control deregulated financial system run amok - and guess who signed all those laws revoking Glass-Steagal and setting up the Securities Trading Modernization Act? Yes, Bill Clinton, and Hillary was right there with him cheering the whole process on.

So pardon me and lots of other folks for being less than impressed by Hillary's trustworthiness and honesty. Run for president by promising to undo the damage you did to the country 25 years ago is (let say) a suboptimal campaign strategy, and a distinctly suboptimal choice of presidential candidate for a party in the same sense that the Hiroshima air defense was suboptimal in 1945.

Calling Hillary an "imperfect candidate" is like calling what happened to the Titanic a "boating accident." Trump was an imperfect candidate. Why did he win?

Because we're back in the 1930s again, the economy has crashed hard and still hasn't recovered (maybe because we still haven't convened a Pecora Commission and jailed a bunch of the thieves, and we also haven't set up any alphabet government job programs like the CCC) so fascists and racists and all kinds of other bottom-feeders are crawling out of the political woodwork to promise to fix the problems that the Democratic party establishment won't.
Rule of thumb: any social or political or economic writer virulently hated by the current Democratic party establishment is someone we should listen to closely right now.

Cornel West is at the top of the current Democratic establishment's hate list, and he has got a great article in The Guardian that I think is spot-on:

"The neoliberal era in the United States ended with a neofascist bang. The political triumph of Donald Trump shattered the establishments in the Democratic and Republican parties – both wedded to the rule of Big Money and to the reign of meretricious politicians."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/17/american-neoliberalism-cornel-west-2016-election

Glenn Greenwald is another writer who has been showered with more hate by the Democratic establishment recently than even Trump or Steve Bannon, so you know Greenwald is saying something important. He has a great piece in The Intercept on the head-in-the-ground attitude of Democratic elites toward their recent loss:

"It is not an exaggeration to say that the Democratic Party is in shambles as a political force. Not only did it just lose the White House to a wildly unpopular farce of a candidate despite a virtually unified establishment behind it, and not only is it the minority party in both the Senate and the House, but it is getting crushed at historical record rates on the state and local levels as well. Surveying this wreckage last week, party stalwart Matthew Yglesias of Vox minced no words: `the Obama years have created a Democratic Party that's essentially a smoking pile of rubble.'

"One would assume that the operatives and loyalists of such a weak, defeated and wrecked political party would be eager to engage in some introspection and self-critique, and to produce a frank accounting of what they did wrong so as to alter their plight. In the case of 2016 Democrats, one would be quite mistaken."

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/18/the-stark-contrast-between-the-gops-self-criticism-in-2012-and-the-democrats-blame-everyone-else-posture-now/

Last but far from least, Scottish economist Mark Blyth has what looks to me like the single best analysis of the entire global Trump_vs_deep_state tidal wave in Foreign Affairs magazine:

"At the end of World War II, the United States and its allies decided that sustained mass unemployment was an existential threat to capitalism and had to be avoided at all costs. In response, governments everywhere targeted full employment as the master policy variable-trying to get to, and sustain, an unemployment rate of roughly four percent. The problem with doing so, over time, is that targeting any variable long enough undermines the value of the variable itself-a phenomenon known as Goodhart's law. (..)

" what we see [today] is a reversal of power between creditors and debtors as the anti-inflationary regime of the past 30 years undermines itself-what we might call "Goodhart's revenge." In this world, yields compress and creditors fret about their earnings, demanding repayment of debt at all costs. Macro-economically, this makes the situation worse: the debtors can't pay-but politically, and this is crucial-it empowers debtors since they can't pay, won't pay, and still have the right to vote.

"The traditional parties of the center-left and center-right, the builders of this anti-inflationary order, get clobbered in such a world, since they are correctly identified by these debtors as the political backers of those demanding repayment in an already unequal system, and all from those with the least assets. This produces anti-creditor, pro-debtor coalitions-in-waiting that are ripe for the picking by insurgents of the left and the right, which is exactly what has happened.

"In short, to understand the election of Donald Trump we need to listen to the trumpets blowing everywhere in the highly indebted developed countries and the people who vote for them.

"The global revolt against elites is not just driven by revulsion and loss and racism. It's also driven by the global economy itself. This is a global phenomenon that marks one thing above all. The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism has just begun."

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-11-15/global-Trump_vs_deep_state

efcdons 11.19.16 at 3:07 pm 161 ( 161 )

Faustusnotes @147

You don't live here, do you? I'm really asking a genuine question because the way you are framing the question ("SPECIFICS!!!!!!) suggests you don't. (Just to show my background, born and raised in Australia (In the electoral division of Kooyong, home of Menzies) but I've lived in the US since 2000 in the midwest (MO, OH) and currently in the south (GA))

If this election has taught us anything it's no one cared about "specifics". It was a mood, a feeling which brought trump over the top (and I'm not talking about the "average" trump voter because that is meaningless. The average trunp voter was a republican voter in the south who the Dems will never get so examining their motivations is immaterial to future strategy. I'm talking about the voters in the Upper Midwest from places which voted for Obama twice then switched to trump this year to give him his margin of victory).

trump voters have been pretty clear they don't actually care about the way trump does (or even doesn't) do what he said he would do during the campaign. It was important to them he showed he was "with" people like them. They way he did that was partially racialized (law and order, islamophobia) but also a particular emphasis on blue collar work that focused on the work. Unfortunately these voters, however much you tell them they should suck it up and accept their generations of familial experience as relatively highly paid industrial workers (even if it is something only their fathers and grandfathers experienced because the factories were closing when the voters came of age in the 80s and 90s) is never coming back and they should be happy to retrain as something else, don't want it. They want what their families have had which is secure, paid, benefits rich, blue collar work.

trump's campaign empathized with that feeling just by focusing on the factory jobs as jobs and not as anachronisms that are slowly fading away for whatever reason. Clinton might have been "correct", but these voters didn't want to hear "the truth". And as much as you can complain about how stupid they are for wanting to be lied to, that is the unfortunate reality you, and the Democratic party, have to accept.

The idea they don't want "government help" is ridiculous. They love the government. They just want the government to do things for them and not for other people (which unfortunately includes blah people but also "the coasts", "sillicon valley", etc.). Obama won in 2008 and 2012 in part due to the auto bailout.

trump was offering a "bailout" writ large. Clinton had no (good) counteroffer. It was like the tables were turned. Romney was the one talking about "change" and "restructuring" while Obama was defending keeping what was already there.

"Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course - the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/opinion/19romney.html

So yes. Clinton needed vague promises. She needed something more than retraining and "jobs of the future" and "restructuring". She needed to show she was committed to their way of life, however those voters saw it, and would do something, anything, to keep it alive. trump did that even though his plan won't work. And maybe he'll be punished for it. In 4 years. But in the interim the gop will destroy so many things we need and rely on as well as entrench their power for generations through the Supreme Court.

But really, it was hard for Clinton to be trusted to act like she cared about these peoples' way of life because she (through her husband fairly or unfairly) was associated with some of the larger actions and choices which helped usher in the decline.

Clinton toward the end offered tariffs. But the trump campaign hit back with what turned out to be a pretty strong counter attack – ""How's she going to get tough on China?" said Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro on CNN's Quest Means Business. He notes that some of Clinton's economic advisors have supported TPP or even worked on it. ""

http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/11/news/economy/hillary-clinton-trade/

[Nov 19, 2016] The 2016 election sounded the death knell for the identity politics by Michael Hudson

www.counterpunch.org

What is the Democratic Party's former constituency of labor and progressive reformers to do? Are they to stand by and let the party be captured in Hillary's wake by Robert Rubin's Goldman Sachs-Citigroup gang that backed her and Obama?

The 2016 election sounded the death knell for the identity politics. Its aim was to persuade voters not to think of their identity in economic terms, but to think of themselves as women or as racial and ethnic groups first and foremost, not as having common economic interests. This strategy to distract voters from economic policies has obviously failed...

This election showed that voters have a sense of when they're being lied to. After eight years of Obama's demagogy, pretending to support the people but delivering his constituency to his financial backers on Wall Street. 'Identity politics' has given way to the stronger force of economic distress. Mobilizing identity politics behind a Wall Street program will no longer work."

Michael Hudson

[Nov 19, 2016] Break Up the Democratic Party

Nov 19, 2016 | economistsview.typepad.com

RGC : , November 17, 2016 at 07:38 AM

Break Up the Democratic Party

By Michael Hudson
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
..................
The danger of not taking this opportunity to clean out the party now

The Democratic Party can save itself only by focusing on economic issues – in a way that reverses its neoliberal stance under Obama, and indeed going back to Bill Clinton's pro-Wall Street administration. The Democrats need to do what Britain's Labour Party did by cleaning out Tony Blair's Thatcherites. As Paul Craig Roberts wrote over the weekend: "Change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class is left intact after a revolution against them. We have proof of this throughout South America. Every revolution by the indigenous people has left unmolested the Spanish ruling class, and every revolution has been overthrown by collusion between the ruling class and Washington." Otherwise the Democrats will be left as an empty shell.
Now is the time for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the few other progressives who have not been kept out of office by the DNC to make their move by appointing their own nominees to the DNC. If they fail, the Democratic Party is dead.

An indication of how hard the present Democratic Party leadership will fight against this change of allegiance is reflected in their long fight against Bernie Sanders and other progressives going back to Dennis Kucinich. The past five days of MoveOn demonstrations sponsored by Hillary's backer George Soros may be an attempt to preempt the expected push by Bernie's supporters, by backing Howard Dean for head of the DNC while organizing groups to be called on for what may be an American "Maidan Spring."

Perhaps some leading Democrats preferred to lose with their Wall Street candidate Hillary than win with a reformer who would have edged them out of their right-wing positions. But the main problem was hubris. Hillary's coterie thought they could make their own reality. They believed that hundreds of millions of dollars of TV and other advertising could sway voters. But eight years of Obama's rescue of Wall Street instead of the economy was enough for most voters to see how deceptive his promises had been. And they distrusted Hillary's feigned embrace of Bernie's opposition to the TPP.

The Rust Belt swing states that shifted away from backing Obama for the last two terms are not racist states. They voted for Obama twice, after all. But seeing his support Wall Street, they had lost faith in her credibility – and were won by Bernie in his primaries against Hillary.
Donald Trump is thus Obama's legacy. Last week's vote was a backlash. Hillary thought that getting Barack and Michelle Obama to campaign as her surrogates would help, but it turned out to be the kiss of death. Obama egged her on by urging voters to "save his legacy" by supporting her as his Third Term. But voters did not want his legacy of giveaways to the banks, the pharmaceutical and health-insurance monopolies.

Most of all, it was Hillary's asking voters to ignore her economic loyalty to Wall Street simply to elect a woman, and her McCarthy-like accusations that Trump was "Putin's candidate" (duly echoed by Paul Krugman). On Wednesday, Obama's former Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul tweeted that "Putin intervened in our elections and succeeded." It was as if the Republicans and even the FBI were a kind of fifth column for the KGB. Her receptiveness to cutting back Social Security and steering wage withholding into the stock market did not help – especially her hedge fund campaign contributors. Compulsory health-insurance fees continue to rise for healthy young people. This was the profit center Obamacare offered the health-insurance monopoly.

The anti-Trump rallies mobilized by George Soros and MoveOn look like a preemptive attempt to capture the potential socialist left for the old Clinton divide-and-conquer strategy. The group was defeated five years ago when it tried to enlist Occupy Wall Street as part of the Democratic Party. It's attempt to make a comeback right now should be heard as an urgent call to Bernie's supporters and other "real" Democrats that they need to create an alternative pretty quickly so as not to let "socialism" be captured by Soros and his apparatchiks carried over from the Clinton campaign.

http://michael-hudson.com/2016/11/break-up-the-democratic-party/

RGC -> im1dc... , November 17, 2016 at 08:42 AM
"but without shutting out the wealthy, business interests, or US Corporations."

A very large part needs to be shut out. Or at least FDR thought so:

FDR: I Welcome Their Hatred

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjSTQwamo8M

RGC -> RGC... , November 17, 2016 at 08:49 AM
So does Bernie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlmuKtyhDKg

Dan Kervick -> im1dc... , November 17, 2016 at 09:41 AM
"Reconstructed" might be a better term. But barging full steam ahead with the Wall Street-friendly Chuck Schumer, as though nothing has happened, seems particularly obtuse on the part of the Democrats to me.

There is now a growing movement among the Berniecrats to join the Democratic Socialists of America and build it up into a much larger and more influential organization capable of exerting real political pressure on the political process.

im1dc -> im1dc... , November 17, 2016 at 12:19 PM
"without shutting out the wealthy, business interests, or US Corporations"

I should have been less opaque and simply added that America is a Capitalist based nation and shutting out its Capitalists, who risk their capital for profit, is exactly like biting the hand that feeds.

Obviously there are evil wealthy people such as that rich women who was caught asking Mitt Romney about 'eliminating, reducing or cutting off benefits to the 47% who refuse to work and earn a living' so her taxes would be cut. Obviously there are evil businesses that are predators and take and do not give back. Obviously there are evil MNC corporations, Apple is in my sites, that refuse to pay their fair share of taxes to run this nation.

But, as obviously there are super kind and nice wealthy people, businesses, and corporations that go out of their way to give back to their communities and the vote for Democrats.

The wealthy, American businesses, and MNC corporations will always be lead, in most places on earth, by those who want lower taxes and less regulation, that's built into the nature of having more and the desire to control it rather than give it to a government. IT IS NOT EVIL.

Accept that concept and you know why I believe the Democrat Party must be a welcoming home for the Capitalist Risk Takers, without any acrimony or embarrassment, but with open arms and respect for what they've accomplished with their lives.

Peter K. : , November 17, 2016 at 07:52 AM
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/02/why-liberals-should-support-a-trump-nomination.html

Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination

By Jonathan Chait

February 5, 2016
8:54 a.m.

The initial stupefaction and dismay with which liberals greeted Donald Trump's candidacy have slowly given way to feelings of Schadenfreude- reveling in the suffering of others, in this case the apoplectic members of the Republican Establishment. Are such feelings morally wrong? Or can liberals enjoy the spectacle unleavened by guilt? As Republican voters start actually voting, is it okay to be sad - alarmed, even - by the prospect that the Trump hostile takeover of the GOP may fail?

There are three reasons, in descending order of obviousness, for a liberal to earnestly and patriotically support a Trump Republican nomination. The first, of course, is that he would almost certainly lose. Trump's ability to stay atop the polls for months, even as critics predicted his demise, has given him an aura of voodoo magic that frightens some Democrats. But whatever wizardry Trump has used to defy the laws of political gravity has worked only within his party. Among the electorate as a whole, he is massively - indeed, historically - unpopular, with unfavorable ratings now hovering around 60 percent and a public persona almost perfectly designed to repel the Obama coalition: racial minorities, single women, and college-educated whites. It would take a landscape-altering event like a recession for him to win; even that might not be enough.

Second, a Trump nomination might upend his party. The GOP is a machine that harnesses ethno-nationalistic fear - of communists, criminals, matrimonial gays, terrorists, snooty cultural elites - to win elections and then, once in office, caters to its wealthy donor base. (This is why even a social firebrand like Ted Cruz would privately assure the billionaire investor Paul Singer that he wasn't particularly concerned about gay-marriage laws.) As its voting base has lost college-­educated voters and gained blue-collar whites, the fissure between the means by which Republicans attain power and the ends they pursue once they have it has widened.

What has most horrified conservative activists about Trump's rise is how little he or his supporters seem to care about their anti-government ideology. When presented with the candidate's previous support for higher taxes on the rich or single-payer insurance, heresies of the highest order, Trump fans merely shrug. During this campaign, Trump has mostly conformed to party doctrine, but without much conviction. Trump does not mouth the rote conservative formulation that government is failing because it can't work and that the solution is to cut it down to size. Instead, he says it is failing because it is run by idiots and that the solution is for it to instead be run by Trump. About half of Republicans favor higher taxes on the rich, a position that has zero representation among their party's leaders. And those Republicans are the most likely to support Trump.

Trump's candidacy represents, among other things, a revolt by the Republican proletariat against its master class. That is why National Review devoted a cover editorial and 22 columns to denouncing Trump as a heretic to the conservative movement. A Trump nomination might not actually cleave the GOP in two, but it could wreak havoc. If, like me, you think the Republican Party in its current incarnation needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt anew, Trump is the only one holding a match.

The third reason to prefer a Trump nomination: If he does win, a Trump presidency would probably wind up doing less harm to the country than a Marco Rubio or a Cruz presidency. It might even, possibly, do some good.

The Trump campaign may feel like an off-the-grid surrealistic nightmare, The Man in the High Castle meets Idiocracy. But something like it has happened before. Specifically, it happened in California, a place where things often happen before they happen to the rest of us, in 2003, when Arnold Schwarzenegger won the governorship. At the time, the prospect of Schwarzenegger governing America's largest state struck many of us as just as ghastly as the idea of a Trump presidency seems now. Like Trump, Schwarzenegger came directly to politics from the celebrity world without bothering to inform himself about public policy. He campaigned as a vacuous Man of Action in opposition to the Politicians, breezing by all the specifics as the petty obsessions of his inferiors.

...

Pinkybum -> Peter K.... , November 17, 2016 at 09:04 AM
I think the takeaway is that Republican politicians lie and lie and lie and lie even about recent history. The exasperating thing to me is the complete inability of a Democratic politician to effectively counter these lies with facts. I wasn't that impressed with Sanders ability to argue effectively to be honest.

My mind goes back to the abortion question in the last debate. Trump's accusation that Clinton wanted to rip babies out of mother's wombs at 9 months has no basis in medical science or actual practice. However, despite being someone who should be an "expert" on women's issues could not articulate accurately how medically preposterous this notion was or even the facts behind late term abortions and why women need them at all. Surely a politician of Clinton's "skill" would at least have an anecdote ready about a woman who had a late-term abortion.

Peter K. -> Pinkybum... , November 17, 2016 at 09:38 AM
" The exasperating thing to me is the complete inability of a Democratic politician to effectively counter these lies with facts. "

Yes but the election isn't just about that. Hillary was the establishment candidate and the establishment isn't delivering. Trump was the outsider - he took over the Republican party - and it didn't matter that he lies or is obnoxious to a certain type of voter.

I think either Sanders or Obama would have won.

Pinkybum -> Peter K.... , November 17, 2016 at 10:14 AM
Obama is the establishment candidate. However, Obama has charisma and I think we need more politicians like this. I'm past caring whether or not they are great at policy (apparently Hillary was and she still couldn't argue effectively against Trump!) I want someone who can effectively argue the case for progressive policies. We know progressive policies are the right ones we just need someone who can fight for those policies. They need an encyclopedic knowledge of the shit Republicans have done, why it is wrong and how progressive policies have worked for the betterment of the 99 percent.
Peter K. -> Pinkybum... , November 17, 2016 at 10:48 AM
Obama campaigned on hope and change, not that everything is great and shut up and don't complain. Plus he didn't have scandals hanging over him.

My basic point is that center-left pundits like Chait were very wrong about Trump and the election. They were probably wrong about Sanders as well.

RGC : , November 17, 2016 at 09:12 AM
November 15, 2016
The Roosevelt Institute

The unheard winning and bold economic agenda
Findings from Roosevelt Institute's Election night survey
....................
Economic change election and the working class vote

Throughout this election cycle, polling conducted on behalf of the Roosevelt Institute and others revealed the potential of a "rewrite the rules" narrative, message and bold policy agenda to win broad and deep public support. It fit the times where voters wanted change and were tired of corporate interests dominating politics at the expense of the middle class.

It was also appealing to swing groups including white college graduates and white working class women. True, Trump always enjoyed big margins among the white working class men who identified with him, and they turned out for him early and in growing numbers. But there were points where Clinton was outperforming Obama with white working class women.

The data does not support that idea that the white working class was inevitably lost, as polls showed fairly resilient support with white working class women, until the Clinton campaign stopped talking about economic change and asked people to vote for unity, temperament and experience and to continue on President Obama's progress. As we shall see, both the Democratic base and white working class voters are struggling economically and would demand change in their own ways.

http://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Dcor_PE_RTR_Ealert_11.15.2016_for-release.pdf

RGC -> RGC... , November 17, 2016 at 09:27 AM
Three Myths About Clinton's Defeat in Election 2016 Debunked

Posted on November 14, 2016
By Lambert Strether

This post is not an explainer about why and how Clinton lost (and Trump won). I think we're going to be sorting that out for awhile. Rather, it's a simple debunking of common talking points by Clinton loyalists and Democrat Establishment operatives; the sort of talking point you might hear on Twitter, entirely shorn of caveats and context. For each of the three talking points, I'll present an especially egregious version of the myth, followed by a rebuttal.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/three-myths-about-clintons-defeat-in-election-2016-debunked.html

Tom aka Rusty -> RGC... , November 17, 2016 at 09:46 AM
In Michigan and Ohio HRC was known as "Mrs. NAFTA."

Probably not fair, but what about politics is fair?

Pinkybum -> Tom aka Rusty... , November 17, 2016 at 12:31 PM
Clinton's responses to the charges about NAFTA were incredibly weak. This is strange considering she must have known that topic was going to be raised - why was she so unprepared?
ilsm -> Pinkybum... , November 17, 2016 at 01:05 PM
The dead did not vote enough in Pa. Oh, Wi, Fl, etc

She presumed the DNC could fix all those states.

Pinkybum -> ilsm... , November 17, 2016 at 03:21 PM
Did the dead also tell pollsters they were going to vote Democrat?
Tom aka Rusty -> Pinkybum... , November 17, 2016 at 01:07 PM
Lots of Dem post mortems reported in various media.

Interesting for us sideline players.

Peter K. : , November 17, 2016 at 09:34 AM
http://theweek.com/articles/661872/why-hillary-clinton-lost

Why Hillary Clinton lost

by Ryan Cooper

Nov. 16, 2016

llary Clinton was an extraordinarily terrible candidate for the Democrats to run in 2016.

Donald Trump's approval rating is 38 percent. President Obama's just bumped up to 57 percent. No amount of furious dissembling from humiliated Clinton partisans will convince me that Obama - and very probably Bernie Sanders* - wouldn't have beaten Trump handily.

So what gives?

Let me start by noting that the overall polls were off, but not by that much. They predicted a Clinton victory by about about 3 points. And in the popular vote, that prediction was reasonably close. Clinton is ahead by a bit less than 1 percent nationally, with many votes still to count.

What tipped the election was about 100,000 votes spread across just three states: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Here's where the polls did seriously botch things. Trump won these states by 1, 0.3, and 1.2 points respectively (assuming the close result in Michigan holds). The poll averages showed Clinton winning these states by roughly 6 points, 3 to 7 points, and 2 to 5 points respectively, depending on who you ask.

Some people did correctly point to this outcome being a possibility. Remarkably, most of them relied heavily on gut-check analysis. Zach Carter and Ryan Grim wrote way back in February that Trump could win by peeling off Rust Belt states, based on little more than intuitions about trade and general voting patterns. Michael Moore hypothesized something similar. Nathan J. Robinson wrote around the same time that Clinton would lose because she is a wooden, uninspiring campaigner who was almost uniquely vulnerable to Trump-style attacks on character and integrity.

Van Jones was perhaps most prescient of all. In June, he argued that Trump would not gaffe himself out of the election, because outrageous statements help him get attention on social media; that tut-tutting about his lack of realistic policy would not work, because voters neither know nor care about that; and that he could potentially win over Rust Belt whites attracted to Trump's anti-trade messaging, because "we're not paying attention to a big chunk of America that is hurting - that would accept any change, the bigger the better."

With the benefit of hindsight, I think we can add a couple more factors to the pile. First is the self-deception of the Clinton campaign and its media sycophants. She did not visit Wisconsin at all between April and the election, and largely abandoned Obama's working-class message from 2012 in favor of portraying Trump as a dangerous, woman-hating maniac.

They were enabled in this by pro-Clinton publications, which churned out endless slavish portrayals of Clinton as some kind of wizard of politics and policy, whose grasp of fine detail would surely deliver the electoral goods. In fact, it turned out that her vaunted algorithm-driven turnout machine was contacting tons of Trump voters. Paul Romer points to the problem of "mathiness" in economics, where complicated and intimidating theoretical symbolism is built up without establishing clear linkages to the real world. Lots of computers, theories, and datasets might be the most sophisticated way to attack voter turnout, or it might be a way to simply appear sophisticated while dismissing people whose ideas don't come packaged with a science-y veneer. (Something similar seems to have happened to the wonky election-simulator people.)

Then there is the Clintons' omnipresent aura of scandal and corruption, which is about 50 percent unfair double standard and 50 percent totally their fault. The political media has been obsessed with the Clintons for 20 years to a frankly psychotic degree, particularly given how much worse the stories about Trump were. On the other hand, the Clintons enable that coverage with a paranoid and secretive attitude, and an obvious hatred of the press. The Clinton Foundation coverage was unfair compared to the much worse Trump Foundation, but then again, there was some genuinely skeezy stuff in there. There's a good chance that FBI Director James Comey's vague letter about emails to congressional Republicans, which led to an extremely ill-timed media firestorm, tipped the election to Trump. But then again, she might have avoided the whole story by following the dang rules in the first place.

I always assumed that if Clinton were nominated for president, the race would be dominated by some weird quasi-scandal that dragged on for month after month. It's not fair, but it is simply the reality of the Clintons. At some point, one simply has to take that into account.

That brings me to a final point: Clinton's general political affect. She is not a great campaigner (by her own admission), a rather robotic speaker, and most of all, a dynasty politician who very obviously got the nomination because the party elite cleared the decks for her. Given how the party has evolved, her political history was filled with devastating indictments of her judgment and priorities. Even after getting a reasonably good party platform (after just barely beating back about the most unlikely primary challenger imaginable), she was a non-credible vehicle for it. Without Obama's mesmerizing charisma and political energy, her image was defined by things like taking millions of dollars for secret speeches to Wall Street banks and refusing to release the transcripts. She simply was not a good fit for the party, and a terrible avatar of the party in a country furious at self-dealing elite institutions of all kinds.

Hillary Clinton was a heavily compromised candidate and bad campaigner who grossly misjudged the political terrain, and thus bled just enough of the Obama coalition to let Trump sneak past. If we ever get to vote again, let's hope the party learns from this epic disaster.

And that, now, is the key question: Where do the Democrats go from here?

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/10/hillary-clinton-lost-bernie-sanders-could-have-won/?utm_term=.92d64f147de5

ilsm -> Peter K.... , November 17, 2016 at 01:06 PM
the split is 23%, 23% and 4% of registered voters. 50% sat it out.
RGC : , November 17, 2016 at 09:42 AM
Reading Keynes - Part 3
L3 Impact of Keynes

This 1000 word article traces the impact of Keynesian theories on the 20th century.

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has created awareness of the great gap between academic models and reality. IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard said that modern DSGE macroeconomic models currently used for policy decisions are based on assumptions which are profoundly at odds with what we know about consumers and firms. More than seven different schools of macroeconomic thought contend with each other, without coming to agreement on any fundamental issue. This bears a striking resemblance to the post-Depression era when Keynes set out to resolve the "deep divergences of opinion between fellow economists which have for the time being almost destroyed the practical influence of economic theory."

Likewise, today, the inability of mainstream economists to predict, understand, explain, or find remedies for the Global Financial Crisis, has deeply damaged the reputation of economists and economic theories. Recently, World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer stated that for more than three decades, macroeconomics has gone backwards. Since modern macroeconomics bears a strong resemblance to pre-Keynesian theories, Keynesian theories have fresh relevance, as described below.

In the aftermath of the Great Depression, economic misery was a major factor which led to the Russian Revolution and the rise of Hitler in Germany. Conventional economic theory held that market forces would automatically and quickly correct the temporary disequilibrium of high unemployment and low production in Europe and USA. Keynes argued that high unemployment could persist, and government interventions in the form of active monetary and fiscal policy were required to correct the economic problems. Many have suggested that Keynes rescued Capitalism by providing governments with rationale to intervene on behalf of the workers, thereby preventing socialist or communist revolutions. There is no doubt that strong and powerful labor movements in Europe and USA derived strength from the economic misery of the masses, and also took inspiration from the pro-labor and anti-capitalist theories of Marx. While it is hard to be sure whether Keynes saved capitalism, we can be very sure that Keynes and Keynesian theories were extremely influential in shaping the economic landscapes of the 20th Century.

Keynes actually met Roosevelt (FDR) to try to persuade him of the necessity of an aggressive fiscal policy and of running budget deficits, in order to lift the US economy out of recession. He was only partially successful. FDR, like nearly all political leaders as well as economists of the time, was convinced of the necessity of balancing budgets: this is the same 'austerity' being touted today as the cure for economic problems. Leading economists like Lionel Robinson and Friedrich Hayek argued in favor of austerity, and said that Keynesian remedies were dangerously wrong. They held the view that the Great Depression had been caused by excessively easy monetary policies in the pre-Depression period, and Keynesian interventions in the form of further easy monetary and fiscal policies would only prolong the agony.

FDR was not quite convinced by Keynes, but was politically savvy enough to announce that he would not balance the budget on the backs of the American people. Accordingly, he did go against his personal convictions, as well as his campaign promises of balancing the budget, which he believed to be a sound and necessary economic policy. Keynes felt that the economic policies of FDR were timid and hesitant, and prolonged the recession un-necessarily. In light of contemporary experience of the tremendously aggressive expansionary monetary policy in the post-GFC era, we can see that bolder steps by FDR would not have caused the harms that he was afraid of. In fact, after the economy recovered somewhat, FDR went back to conventional wisdom and started reducing budget deficits in 1936. This created a mini-recession which has been labelled the "Roosevelt Recession of 1937". Duly chastened, FDR embraced Keynesian policies with greater conviction, and increased deficit spending right up to the second World War. It was the effectiveness of Keynesian policies that led even arch-enemy Friedman to state that "We are all Keynesians now," though he later recanted. Indeed, he master-minded the Monetarist counter-revolution in the 1970's which eventually led to a rejection of Keynesian insights, and a return to the pre-Keynesian ideas of austerity as a cure for recessions. Forgetting the hard-learned lessons of Keynes led to a recurrence of problems very similar to those faced by Keynes in the form of GFC 2007.

Following the GFC, there has been a resurgence of interest in Keynes and Keynesian Theories. In the "Return of Depression Economics", Krugman argued for the continuing relevance of Keynes, and stated that we could end the Great Recession immediately by implementing Keynesian policies. China implemented Keynesian policies, and used a fiscal stimulus of $586 billion spread over two years, to successfully combat the global recession created by the GFC. Unlike countries forced to implement austerity, which further wrecked their economies, the Chinese economy was able to perform well in the aftermath of the GFC. The Shanghai index had been falling sharply since the September 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, but the decline was halted when news of the planned stimulus leaked in late October. The day after the stimulus was officially announced, the Shanghai index immediately rose by 7.3%, followed by sustained growth. Speaking at the 2010 Summer Davos, Premier Wen Jiabao also credited the Keynesian fiscal stimulus for good performance of the Chinese economy over the two years following the GFC.

Meanwhile, even IMF acknowledged the failure of austerity, the anti-thesis of the Keynesian policy. Massive damage was caused to Greece, Ireland, Portugal and other economies which were forced to tighten budgets in response to the recession. In the see-saw battle between Keynesians and Monetarists, after three decades of darkness, the Keynesian star seems to be rising. Strange as it may seem, many fundamental insights of Keynes were never actually absorbed by conventional economists. Keynes himself said that he had the greatest difficulty in escaping the habits of thought created by an economics education. Mainstream economists never made this escape. As a result, Keynesian theories remain an undiscovered treasure offering deep insights into current economic conditions.

https://sites.google.com/site/21stcenturymacroeconomics/keynes/l3

Fred C. Dobbs : , November 17, 2016 at 10:25 AM
The Glaring Contradiction at the Heart of Donald Trump's
Economic Policy http://nyti.ms/2eJFsw4 via @UpshotNYT
NYT - Neil Irwin - November 17

Campaign promises are easy. Governing is hard.

It is a truism that Donald J. Trump and his team will soon learn. And a fascinating example has emerged since the election, courtesy of global currency markets. It is a study in the kind of complex trade-offs that Mr. Trump rarely grappled with during his campaign but will face many times a day in the Oval Office.

A centerpiece of Mr. Trump's campaign was the United States' trade deficits. He pledged to eliminate them and create a resurgence in American manufacturing.

He has also pledged tax cuts, infrastructure spending and deregulation. That set of policies has led markets to expect speedier economic growth and thus higher interest rates in coming years. That, in turn, is driving the value of the dollar higher on currency markets. Since Election Day, the dollar is up 2.6 percent against an index of six other major currencies. The value of the Mexican peso has fallen 10 percent against the dollar, a remarkable swing for the United States' third-largest trading partner.

You don't need to be an economist to see what that means: A pricier dollar makes it harder for American manufacturers to compete overseas; it gives an advantage to companies that locate operations elsewhere; and it will, all else being equal, tend to make the trade deficit higher rather than lower.

This is not to suggest that the shift in the currency so far is a major disaster for American manufacturers and other exporters (though those that ship their goods to Mexico will feel the brunt of it). There was a bigger rise in the dollar in 2014 and 2015 that damaged export sectors even more.
Photo

A board displaying the exchange rate for the Mexican peso and the dollar in a bank in Mexico City this week. Credit Henry Romero/Reuters

But let's imagine that Mr. Trump follows through on the policy mix he's hinted at so far: a combination of loose fiscal policy (think more spending on defense and infrastructure, and tax cuts) and tighter monetary policy (the Federal Reserve raising interest rates faster than
had seemed likely before the election). At that point, the dollar could move more decisively higher, creating a tension that the president and his advisers would have to resolve one way or the other.

As a rule of thumb, said Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a 10 percent rise in the dollar would be expected to increase the current account deficit (a broader concept than trade deficit, but closely related) by 1 to 1.5 percent of G.D.P. in the ensuing two to three years.

In that scenario, Mr. Trump's pledge to eliminate the $500 billion United States trade deficit would have just become $180 billion to $270 billion harder.

This is the kind of dilemma presidents face all the time. The Oval Office debate might go something like this: The Commerce Secretary complains, "Mr. President, this strong dollar is just killing our manufacturers; they can't compete with this kind of appreciation." The Treasury Secretary, who is in charge of the currency, responds, "It's a necessary evil, Mr. President; our economy is booming so much that global investors just can't get enough of United States assets."

When there are these kinds of disputes, the president has to decide. And when a president tries to find a solution that answers both concerns, there are always complex ripples. For example, "let's appoint Fed officials who will cut interest rates" might temporarily let you have both a booming domestic economy and a competitive export sector, but would mean an increase in inflation - which will make both the bond market and many retired Americans living on fixed incomes unhappy.

The tension between currency policy and trade policy is just one example. Mr. Trump's promises to repeal Obamacare while keeping some of its most popular features would be hard to carry out in practice. Virtually every issue in tax policy, diplomacy and regulatory policy features similar complex trade-offs.

None of this is to say that these tensions are unsolvable, or that Mr. Trump won't overcome his lack of a policy background to arrive at good solutions. But he will almost certainly find out soon that "Make America Great Again" is a slogan, not an answer.

RGC : , November 17, 2016 at 10:39 AM
Jo Michell

Economics, Ideology and Trump

So the post-mortem begins. Much electronic ink has already been spilled and predictable fault lines have emerged. Debate rages in particular on the question of whether Trump's victory was driven by economic factors. Like Duncan Weldon, I think Torsten Bell gets it about right – economics is an essential part of the story even if the complete picture is more complex.

Neoliberalism is a word I usually try to avoid. It's often used by people on the left as an easy catch-all to avoid engaging with difficult issues. Broadly speaking, however, it provides a short-hand for the policy status quo over the last thirty years or so: free movement of goods, labour and capital, fiscal conservatism, rules-based monetary policy, deregulated finance and a preference for supply-side measures in the labour market.
Some will argue this consensus has nothing to with the rise of far-right populism. I disagree. Both economics and economic policy have brought us here.

But to what extent has academic economics provided the basis for neoliberal policy? The question had been in my mind even before the Trump and Brexit votes. A few months back, Duncan Weldon posed the question, 'whatever happened to deficit bias?' In my view, the responses at the time missed the mark. More recently, Ann Pettifor and Simon Wren Lewis have been discussing the relationship between ideology, economics and fiscal austerity.
I have great respect for Simon – especially his efforts to combat the false media narratives around austerity. But I don't think he gets it right on economics and ideology. His argument is that in a standard model – a sticky-price DSGE system – fiscal policy should be used when nominal rates are at the zero lower bound. Post-2008 austerity policies are therefore at odds with the academic consensus.
This is correct in simple terms, but I think misses the bigger picture of what academic economics has been saying for the last 30 years. To explain, I need to recap some history.

Fiscal policy as a macroeconomic management tool is associated with the ideas of Keynes. Against the academic consensus of his day, he argued that the economy could get stuck in periods of demand deficiency characterised by persistent involuntary unemployment. The monetarist counter-attack was led by Milton Friedman – who denied this possibility. In the long run, he argued, the economy has a 'natural' rate of unemployment to which it will gravitate automatically (the mechanism still remains to be explained). Any attempt to use activist fiscal or monetary policy to reduce unemployment below this natural rate will only lead to higher inflation. This led to the bitter disputes of the 1960s and 70s between Keynesians and Monetarists. The Monetarists emerged as victors – at least in the eyes of the orthodoxy – with the inflationary crises of the 1970s. This marks the beginning of the end for fiscal policy in the history of macroeconomics.

In Friedman's world, short-term macro policy could be justified in a deflationary situation as a way to help the economy back to its 'natural' state. But, for Friedman, macro policy means monetary policy. In line with the doctrine that the consumer always knows best, government spending was proscribed as distortionary and inefficient. For Friedman, the correct policy response to deflation is a temporary increase in the rate of growth of the money supply.
It's hard to view Milton Friedman's campaign against Keynes as disconnected from ideological influence. Friedman's role in the Mont Pelerin society is well documented. This group of economic liberals, led by Friedrich von Hayek, formed after World War II with the purpose of opposing the move towards collectivism of which Keynes was a leading figure. For a time at least, the group adopted the term 'neoliberal' to describe their political philosophy. This was an international group of economists whose express purpose was to influence politics and politicians – and they were successful.

Hayek's thesis – which acquires a certain irony in light of Trump's ascent – was that collectivism inevitably leads to authoritarianism and fascism. Friedman's Chicago economics department formed one point in a triangular alliance with Lionel Robbins' LSE in London, and Hayek's fellow Austrians in Vienna. While in the 1930s, Friedman had expressed support for the New Deal, by the 1950s he had swung sharply in the direction of economic liberalism. As Brad Delong puts it:
by the early 1950s, his respect for even the possibility of government action was gone. His grudging approval of the New Deal was gone, too: Those elements that weren't positively destructive were ineffective, diverting attention from what Friedman now believed would have cured the Great Depression, a substantial expansion of the money supply. The New Deal, Friedman concluded, had been 'the wrong cure for the wrong disease.'

While Friedman never produced a complete formal model to describe his macroeconomic vision, his successor at Chicago, Robert Lucas did – the New Classical model. (He also successfully destroyed the Keynesian structural econometric modelling tradition with his 'Lucas critique'.) Lucas' New Classical colleagues followed in his footsteps, constructing an even more extreme version of the model: the so-called Real Business Cycle model. This simply assumes a world in which all markets work perfectly all of the time, and the single infinitely lived representative agent, on average, correctly predicts the future.
This is the origin of the 'policy ineffectiveness hypothesis' – in such a world, government becomes completely impotent. Any attempt at deficit spending will be exactly matched by a corresponding reduction in private spending – the so-called Ricardian Equivalence hypothesis. Fiscal policy has no effect on output and employment. Even monetary policy becomes totally ineffective: if the central bank chooses to loosen monetary policy, the representative agent instantly and correctly predicts higher inflation and adjusts her behaviour accordingly.

This vision, emerging from a leading centre of conservative thought, is still regarded by the academic economics community as a major scientific step forward. Simon describes it as `a progressive research programme'.
What does all this have to with the current status quo? The answer is that this model – with one single modification – is the 'standard model' which Simon and others point to when they argue that economics has no ideological bias. The modification is that prices in the goods market are slow to adjust to changes in demand. As a result, Milton Friedman's result that policy is effective in the short run is restored. The only substantial difference to Friedman's model is that the policy tool is the rate of interest, not the money supply. In a deflationary situation, the central bank should cut the nominal interest rate to raise demand and assist the automatic but sluggish transition back to the `natural' rate of unemployment.

So what of Duncan's question: what happened to deficit bias? – this refers to the assertion in economics textbooks that there will always be a tendency for governments to allow deficits to increase. The answer is that it was written out of the textbooks decades ago – because it is simply taken as given that fiscal policy is not the correct tool.
To check this, I went to our university library and looked through a selection of macroeconomics textbooks. Mankiw's 'Macroeconomics' is probably the mostly widely used. I examined the 2007 edition – published just before the financial crisis. The chapter on 'Stabilisation Policy' dispenses with fiscal policy in half a page – a case study of Romer's critique of Keynes is presented under the heading 'Is the Stabilization of the Economy a Figment of the Data?' The rest of the chapter focuses on monetary policy: time inconsistency, interest rate rules and central bank independence. The only appearance of the liquidity trap and the zero lower bound is in another half-page box, but fiscal policy doesn't get a mention.
The post-crisis twelfth edition of Robert Gordon's textbook does include a chapter on fiscal policy – entitled `The Government Budget, the Government Debt and the Limitations of Fiscal Policy'. While Gordon acknowledges that fiscal policy is an option during strongly deflationary periods when interest rates are at the zero lower bound, most of the chapter is concerned with the crowding out of private investment, the dangers of government debt and the conditions under which governments become insolvent. Of the textbooks I examined, only Blanchard's contained anything resembling a balanced discussion of fiscal policy.

So, in Duncan's words, governments are 'flying a two engined plane but choosing to use only one motor' not just because of media bias, an ill-informed public and misguided politicians – Simon's explanation – but because they are doing what the macro textbooks tell them to do.

The reason is that the standard New Keynesian model is not a Keynesian model at all – it is a monetarist model. Aside from the mathematical sophistication, it is all but indistinguishable from Milton Friedman's ideologically-driven description of the macroeconomy. In particular, Milton Friedman's prohibition of fiscal policy is retained with – in more recent years – a caveat about the zero-lower bound (Simon makes essentially the same point about fiscal policy here).

It's therefore odd that when Simon discusses the relationship between ideology and economics he chooses to draw a dividing line between those who use a sticky-price New Keynesian DSGE model and those who use a flexible-price New Classical version. The beliefs of the latter group are, Simon suggests, ideological, while those of the former group are based on ideology-free science. This strikes me as arbitrary. Simon's justification is that, despite the evidence, the RBC model denies the possibility of involuntary unemployment. But the sticky-price version – which denies any role for inequality, finance, money, banking, liquidity, default, long-run unemployment, the use of fiscal policy away from the ZLB, supply-side hysteresis effects and plenty else besides – is acceptable. He even goes so far as to say 'I have no problem seeing the RBC model as a flex-price NK model' – even the RBC model is non-ideological so long as the hierarchical framing is right.
Even Simon's key distinction – the New Keynesian model allows for involuntary unemployment – is open to question. Keynes' definition of involuntary unemployment is that there exist people willing and able to work at the going wage who are unable to find employment. On this definition the New Keynesian model falls short – in the face of a short-run demand shortage caused by sticky prices the representative agent simply selects a new optimal labour supply. Workers are never off their labour supply curve. In the Smets Wouters model – a very widely used New Keynesian DSGE model – the labour market is described as follows: 'household j chooses hours worked Lt(j)'. It is hard to reconcile involuntary unemployment with households choosing how much labour they supply.

What of the position taken by the profession in the wake of 2008? Reinhart and Rogoff's contribution is by now infamous. Ann also draws attention to the 2010 letter signed by 20 top-ranking economists – including Rogoff – demanding austerity in the UK. Simon argues that Ann overlooks the fact that '58 equally notable economists signed a response arguing the 20 were wrong'.
It is difficult to agree that the signatories to the response letter, organised by Lord Skidelsky, are 'equally notable'. Many are heterodox economists – critics of standard macroeconomics. Those mainstream economists on the list hold positions at lower-ranking institutions than the 20. I know many of the 58 personally – I know none of the 20. Simon notes:
Of course those that signed the first letter, and in particular Ken Rogoff, turned out to be a more prominent voice in the subsequent debate, but that is because he supported what policymakers were doing. He was mostly useful rather than influential.
For Simon, causality is unidirectional: policy-makers cherry-pick academic economics to fit their purpose but economists have no influence on policy. This seems implausible. It is undoubtedly true that pro-austerity economists provided useful cover for small-state ideologues like George Osborne. But the parallels between policy and academia are too strong for the causality to be unidirectional.

Osborne's small state ideology is a descendent of Thatcherism – the point when neoliberalism first replaced Keynesianism. Is it purely coincidence that the 1980s was also the high-point for extreme free market Chicago economics such as Real Business Cycle models?
The parallel between policy and academia continues with the emergence of the sticky-price New Keynesian version as the 'standard' model in the 90s alongside the shift to the third way of Blair and Clinton. Blairism represents a modified, less extreme, version of Thatcherism. The all-out assault on workers and the social safety net was replaced with 'workfare' and 'flexicurity'.

A similar story can be told for international trade, as laid out in this excellent piece by Martin Sandbu. In the 1990s, just as the 'heyday of global trade integration was getting underway', economists were busy making the case that globalisation had no negative implications for employment or inequality in rich nations. To do this, they came up with the 'skill-biased technological change' (SBTC) hypothesis. This states that as technology advances and the potential for automation grows, the demand for high-skilled labour increases. This introduces the hitch that higher educational standards are required before the gains from automation can be felt by those outside the top income percentiles. This leads to a `race between education and technology' – a race which technology was winning, leading to weaker demand for middle and low-skill workers and rising 'skill premiums' for high skilled workers as a result.
Writing in the Financial Times shortly before the financial crisis, Jagdish Bagwati argued that those who looked to globalisation as an explanation for increasing inequality were misguided:
The culprit is not globalization but labour-saving technical change that puts pressure on the wages of the unskilled. Technical change prompts continual economies in the use of unskilled labour. Much empirical argumentation and evidence exists on this. (FT, January 4, 2007, p. 11)
As Krugman put it:
The hypothesis that technological change, by raising the demand for skill, has led to growing inequality is so widespread that at conferences economists often use the abbreviation SBTC – skill-biased technical change – without explanation, assuming that their listeners know what they are talking about (p. 132)
Over the course of his 2007 book, Krugman sets out on a voyage of discovery – 'That, more or less, is the story I believed when I began working on this book' (p. 6). He arrives at the astonishing conclusion – '[i]t sounds like economic heresy' (p. 7) – that politics can influence inequality:
[I]nstitutions, norms and the political environment matter a lot more for the distribution of income – and impersonal market forces matter less – than Economics 101 might lead you to believe (p. 8)

The idea that rising pay at the top of the scale mainly reflect social and political change, strikes some people as too much at odds with Economics 101.
If a left-leaning Nobel prize-winning economist has trouble escaping from the confines of Economics 101, what hope for the less sophisticated mind?
As deindustrialisation rolled through the advanced economies, wiping out jobs and communities, economists continued to deny any role for globalisation. As Martin Sandbu argues,

The blithe unconcern displayed by the economics profession and the political elites about whether trade was causing deindustrialisation, social exclusion and rising inequality has begun to seem Pollyannish at best, malicious at worst. Kevin O'Rourke, the Irish economist, and before him Lawrence Summers, former US Treasury Secretary, have called this "the Davos lie."

For mainstream macroeconomists, inequality was not a subject of any real interest. While the explanation for inequality lay in the microeconomics – the technical forms of production functions – and would be solved by increasing educational attainment, in macroeconomic terms, the use of a representative agent and an aggregate production function simply assumed the problem away. As Stiglitz puts it:
[I]f the distribution of income (say between labor and capital) matters, for example, for aggregate demand and therefore for employment and output, then using an aggregate Cobb-Douglas production function which, with competition, implies that the share of labor is fixed, is not going to be helpful. (p.596)
Robert Lucas summed up his position as follows: 'Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution.' It is hard to view this statement as more strongly informed by science than ideology.
But while economists were busy assuming away inequality in their models, incomes continued to diverge in most advanced economies. It was only with the publication of Piketty's book that the economics profession belatedly began to turn its back on Lucas.

The extent to which economic insecurity in the US and the UK is driven by globalisation versus policy is still under discussion – my answer would be that it is a combination of both – but the skill-biased technical change hypothesis looks to be a dead end – and a costly one at that.
Similar stories can be told about the role of household debt, finance, monetary theory and labour bargaining power and monopoly – why so much academic focus on 'structural reform' in the labour market but none on anti-trust policy? Heterodox economists were warning about the connections between finance, globalisation, current account imbalances, inequality, household debt and economic insecurity in the decades before the crisis. These warnings were dismissed as unscientific – in favour of a model which excluded all of these things by design.
Are economic factors – and economic policy – partly to blame for the Brexit and Trump votes? And are academic economists, at least in part, to blame for these polices? The answer to both questions is yes. To argue otherwise is to deny Keynes' dictum that 'the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood.'
This quote, 'mounted and framed, takes pride of place in the entrance hall of the Institute for Economic Affairs' – the think-tank founded, with Hayek's encouragement, by Anthony Fisher, as a way to promote and promulgate the ideas of the Mont Pelerin Society. The Institute was a success. Fisher was, in the words of Milton Friedman, 'the single most important person in the development of Thatcherism'.
The rest, it seems, is history.

https://criticalfinance.org/2016/11/15/economics-ideology-and-trump/

ilsm : , November 17, 2016 at 01:13 PM
A feat Goebbels could hardly pull off.

Obomber's new conference with Ms. Merkel. The peace prize winner who ordered 25000 bombing sorties in 2015 against places US is not warring against.

Per Obomber Assad caused all that suffering in Syria, despite US arming al Qaeda since 2010 to replace him with the kind of guys who rammed a bayonet through Qaddafi's rectum, and sending assassinated Qaddafi's weaponry through Benghazi at the time Clinton got her envoy killed there.

The greater threat to American democracy is the bizarre world of the US fighting for the Sunnis in the middle east. Also known as Obomber's Stalinist definitions of atrocities versus fictions about fascists.

Fred C. Dobbs -> ilsm... , November 17, 2016 at 02:22 PM
Why would one of Qadaffi's own
citizens do such a nasty deed on the
sadly misunderstood guy who brought down
Pan Am flight #103 over Lockerbie Scotland
killing 259 passenger & crew, previously
killing three people & injuring around
230 in La Belle discothčque in Berlin,
& why do you keep bringing this up?)
im1dc : , November 17, 2016 at 01:20 PM
Predictions for a Trump Presidency from a black Democrat woman activist

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/17/president-elect-donald-trump-gets-to-work-betraying-his-backers.html

"President-Elect Donald Trump Gets to Work Betraying His Backers"

'Millions of voters who thought they'd elected a populist hero will soon find out that men who live in golden penthouses are rarely heroes'

by Joy-Ann Reid...11.17.16...1:00 AM ET

"I should probably get out of the predictions business, having so misjudged the country before the recent election. But I will hazard two more. The first: Donald Trump will turn on his supporters. The second: The Democrats will turn on theirs, too.

Trump got a head start this week, floating the names of Iraq war supporters and promoters of a grand, global war with Islam like John Bolton and Rudy Giuliani for the job of secretary of state. Trump voters who claimed that Hillary Clinton would bring on World War III might be surprised by some of the views of Clinton and John Kerry's likely successor (and Giuliani is a vigorous neocon, too.)

Trump is now part of a global ring of ethno-nationalist leaders of far-right parties in thrall to Vladimir Putin's Russia. National security experts are shuddering at the demeanor of the people surrounding the next president who are busy mounting what Republican leakers are calling a "Stalinesque purge" of the insufficiently loyal. With the transition team in chaos, and experienced hands reluctant to join such an administration, who knows what kind of bizarre cabinet he'll wind up assembling.

Meanwhile, to the extent that he is doing something other than trying to figure out what a president does Trump-or rather the people around him who know how to take advantage of an opportunity-are preparing to stack his team with Wall Street and big-business friendly insiders and establishment cronies poised to raid the treasury on behalf of the one percent.

Working-class voters who thought they'd elected a populist hero will soon find out that men who live in golden penthouses are rarely populists, and even more rarely heroic. Trump, who in his own history as a developer preferred mob concrete and Chinese steel to the variety produced in the Rust Belt, cannot bring back the steel and manufacturing jobs lost in Lorain, Ohio or western Pennsylvania. No president can force shuttered mills to reopen, or companies who've left in search of cheaper labor to relocate to the United States (or those who have come back to choose expensive humans over cheaper robots.) Even if he manages to slap massive tariffs on Chinese-made goods, the only outcome will be much higher prices at Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, anyone still wondering why Paul Ryan quietly slipped on his MAGA cap during the election will soon understand. On the off chance Trump pulled off an improbable win, Ryan knew he would be on track to enact his life's dream: turning Medicare into a voucher program and forcing future of the most popular government program since Social Security into private insurance HMOs. According to Josh Marshall, who cites Ryan's own website, the "phasing out" of Medicare begins in March.

Trump's tax plan will sock it to single mothers, by ending the ability to file as head of household and thus raising taxes on unmarried filers. The tax hikes will be higher the more children you have. Anyone who doesn't itemize deductions will likely get a onetime check for a few hundred dollars, the way George W. Bush did his "middle class tax cut." Count that as bill money.

Trump's trade and immigration policies will deliver an economic shock to states like Texas where trade produces a substantial share of the jobs, and which depend on high oil prices. Trump's North Dakota pipeline (in which he is personally financially invested) will flood more oil onto an already glutted world market, further forcing down prices and putting both the Lone Star state in an unpleasant economic position.

But not to worry, Republicans have a fix, to ensure there is no voter backlash against them.

They are already preparing to reverse their opposition to earmarks, with three red state Senators (from Florida, Alabama and of course, Texas) pushing to revive the kind of spending that helps members go back to their districts with something to show for their time in Washington, and which long greased the skids of congress. You see, most in the GOP never really objected to government spending. They just objected to government spending that might make their constituents look more favorably on Barack Obama's tenure.

Also watch as the objections to raising the debt ceiling and to infrastructure spending-so vehement during the Obama years-vanish into thin air. This will be a big spending administration, with the full backing of congress. The small number of conservatives preparing to fight back are likely to cave, eventually, in the interests of party unity and maintaining total Republican control.

All the while, Trump fans can maintain their euphoria over taking America back from the multiculturalists, the politically correct, leftie Hollywood and Beyoncé, by purchasing clothing and jewelry from Ivanka Trump's retail line, which she'll dutifully model during television appearances, after which her staff will inform the media on where faithful followers can "shop the look." The Trump children, armed with security clearances and still in charge of the family business and the ephemeral "foundation" will be in a position to stuff the family coffers for four years, African dictator style, with the possible aid of information marked "secret" and thus unavailable to their competitors. And if you expect the fearsome House Republicans who hounded Hillary Clinton over her emails to lift a finger to investigate what already look to be spiraling conflicts of interest, you don't understand the Republican Party.

But it isn't just Trump who is poised to betray those who voted for him. Some Democrats and their allies are already rushing to get their Trump tattoos, knowing that the coming spending boom helps them too. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia excoriated Harry Reid, the out-going minority leader, who alone came out forthrightly to defend the black and brown women, men, children, businesses and even churches being brutalized by gleeful Trump supporters from the GOP's white supremacist wing, in cities around the country. Reid, whose Nevada Democratic Party operation was actually successful in the 2016 elections, including getting a Latina elected to his seat, has bravely called out the white nationalists and anti-Semites of the alt-right and stood against the normalization of people like soon-to-be Trump senior counselor Stephen Bannon. But Reid is a lonely voice standing athwart anti-history yelling, "stop," while his party and the mainstream media fall into a swoon of presidential succession pageantry.

Even Bernie Sanders couldn't rush fast enough to get on the Trump side of the line, declaring himself a member of the white working class (his and his wife's three homes and high six-figure income aside) and cautioning Democrats-who belong to a party of which he is still not a member-to start focusing on these voters too. Sanders ran a campaign that echoed Trump's in many ways; appealing to a majority white, populist audience that hated Hillary Clinton more than it disdained Republicans. A majority of Black Americans were unimpressed, which is why he didn't become the nominee, and they should be unsurprised that he is dropping them faster than he and his supporters wrote off "the South" as insignificant during the primary campaign.

Bernie is not alone. Think pieces are already being written admonishing Dems to throw black and brown, LGBT, Muslim and Hispanic voters and progressive women under the bus in favor of the never-ending chase for the Pabst Blue Ribbon vote. Democrats continue to practice "identity politics" at their peril, they say; demanding that issues around rape culture, Black Lives Matter and merciful immigration policy be scotched in favor of bucking up men, dialing back blunt talk on race, policing and DREAMers, and emphasizing things like border security. In other words, Democrats must learn to talk more like Republicans and marginalized groups must learn to be quiet. The party has been here before, and ironically, that kind of thinking is what produced Bill Clinton, whose surname, and wife, the very people hawking this prescription loathe.

The message to African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, LGBT people (well, mostly Trans folks, since Trump has declared his movement can live with "the gays") and women, who stand in the crosshairs of the coming "retail authoritarian" presidency, is that you're on your own. Your party will not come to your aid. They'll be too busy trying to ride the Trump train, or to least avoid being tied to the tracks and run over by it in the next election.

There are small green shoots of hope. The coming battle for DNC chair, which could come down to two black candidates: Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison and South Carolina Democratic Party chair Jamie Harrison, is a proxy for whether the party will push a message of Sandersian working class populism or press forward on the ongoing fight for racial justice, voting rights and the rights of the poor. Perhaps one of these men can help the party find a way to do both.

And despite her immediate statement of conciliation to Trump, one can only hope Elizabeth Warren will hold strong on issues concerning Wall Street, once Republicans begin the process of dismantling restrictions on bankers' worst practices, restoring the robber baron era in lower Manhattan and on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where the "tea party movement" was born amid furious presumptions that Obama would dare to help struggling homeowners instead of their mortgage note holders. We'll just have to wait and see.

In the end, the lessons of American history, from Reconstruction to the Fusion movement of the late 19th century; that an openness to the aspirations of racial, ethnic and religious minorities will always produce a fierce backlash among the country's majority population and cost the party dearly, have proven thrice true in the modern era-in the bloody political aftermath of Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama. All three marched the country forward on race, culture and economics, only to cede federal and state governmental power for years to the Republican right, which quickly proceeded, each time, to reward the rich and the powerful on the backs of their working class supporters who just wanted to feel like winners again.

In a sense, who can blame the Democrats for running away? But run they will. Count on it."

im1dc -> im1dc... , November 17, 2016 at 01:22 PM
I very much like the idea of bringing back "earmarks", for the record.

I did not know that Paul Ryan's website is proclaiming the end of Medicare as we know it to begin March 2017. That is ominous indeed.

Fred C. Dobbs -> im1dc... , November 17, 2016 at 02:10 PM
Trump pledges to earmark $20B for school choice
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/295034-trump-to-earmark-20b-for-school-choice
The Hill = Sep 8

(Personally, I'll take a block
grant over an earmark any day.)

Fred C. Dobbs : , November 17, 2016 at 01:23 PM
(Premium members only.)

McDonald's gets fancy, says table
service coming to US locations

NEW YORK - McDonald's says it plans to offer table service across its U.S. stores to make the ordering process less stressful, but did not say when the overhaul will be complete.

The world's biggest burger chain says about 500 of its more than 14,000 domestic stores have been testing table service and ordering kiosks for people who do not want to wait for the cashier. People in those stores order at the counter or kiosks, then sit and wait for an employee to bring them their food.

Early next year, McDonald's says it will expand the offering in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. ...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/11/17/mcdonald-gets-fancy-says-table-service-coming-locations/xVHddwT9ZcZc1B24lzDYtL/story.html

Fred C. Dobbs : , November 17, 2016 at 01:23 PM
(Premium members only.)

McDonald's gets fancy, says table
service coming to US locations

NEW YORK - McDonald's says it plans to offer table service across its U.S. stores to make the ordering process less stressful, but did not say when the overhaul will be complete.

The world's biggest burger chain says about 500 of its more than 14,000 domestic stores have been testing table service and ordering kiosks for people who do not want to wait for the cashier. People in those stores order at the counter or kiosks, then sit and wait for an employee to bring them their food.

Early next year, McDonald's says it will expand the offering in Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. ...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/11/17/mcdonald-gets-fancy-says-table-service-coming-locations/xVHddwT9ZcZc1B24lzDYtL/story.html

im1dc : , November 17, 2016 at 01:44 PM
This goes together with RGC's post above whether it is time to "Break up the Democratic Party"

This article suggests changing its message as well as its messengers would work better to seat Democrats in Elected Office

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/17/democrats-dig-deep-after-being-trump-d.html

"Democrats Dig Deep After Being Trump'd"

'Democrats on the Hill began soul searching this week-but the process appears to be longer for some than others'

by Matt Laslo...11.17.16...1:00 AM ET

"The Democratic Party is at a crossroads, but everyone on Capitol Hill seems to have a different roadmap.

Democrats, still in shock over Hillary Clinton's surprise loss to president-elect Donald Trump, are faced with a stark new reality: they are not only the minority party in all corners of Capitol Hill and across the nation-but there are cracks in places where their foundation was thought to be very strong.

The party is debating how it got here and whether it's time to tack left, in the Bernie Sanders' vein of populism, or to go back to the middle, which is how they won in the nineties and regained control of the House in 2006.

The change didn't come overnight. The party has been devastated in the past three election cycles, losing more than 900 state legislative seats and 11 governorships since President Barack Obama took office.

But it was Clinton's string of losses in the Rust Belt-Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio-that caused the soul searching in the party.

"So you can't conclude anything else but that our message is wrong. Our values aren't wrong, but our message is wrong," Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) told The Daily Beast. "The one thing we must commit to is that whatever our message is going forward must be different than what we had in the past because that one has failed."...

im1dc : , November 17, 2016 at 01:51 PM
re Paul Ryan's fast track changes to Medicare

Rep Price, Chairman of House Budget Committee is on it

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/tom-price-reveals-republicans-eyeing-medicare-overhaul-in-2017

"Rep. Tom Price Reveals Republicans Eyeing Medicare Overhaul In 2017"

By Lauren Fox...November 17, 2016...12:13 PM EDT

"Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), the chairman of the budget committee, told reporters on Thursday that Republicans are eyeing major changes to Medicare in 2017.

Price, who is being floated as a possible Health and Human Services Secretary in the next administration, said that he expects Republican in the House to move on Medicare reforms "six to eight months" into the Trump administration.

Privatization of Medicare has been a central feature of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan's budget proposal for years, and the House GOP has voted in favor of it multiple times. Ryan himself said last week that Medicare would be on the table in the new Congress, signaling it could be taken up early in the new year. Price's comments suggest privatization won't be part of the first round of legislative initiatives rolled out by the Trump administration and GOP-controlled Congress.

Price also noted that Republicans are eyeing using a tactic known as budget reconciliation to make the change. That process allows Republicans to pass bills with a simple majority in the U.S. Senate.

When asked by TPM about timing for changes to Medicare, Price said "I think that is probably in the second phase of reconciliation, which would have to be in the FY 18 budget resolution in the first 6-8 months."

Republicans plan to tackle the Affordable Care Act in the first budget reconciliation process, which could take place as early as January. Tackling Medicare reform and Obamacare repeal at the same time could prove too high a risk for Republicans who have yet to reveal a clear plan to replace Obamacare with.

During his weekly press conference House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) remained vague about the timing for such reforms, saying only that those discussions are still underway."

im1dc -> im1dc... , November 17, 2016 at 01:56 PM
Why should the Democrat Party change now that the Republicans have begun over reaching by believing they have a mandate from the voters?

Change Medicare? Was that on the ballot?

Seriously was that what the Electorate wants from Donald Trump and the Republicans?

Am I alone in seeing a huge opportunity for Democrats politically here?

ilsm -> im1dc... , November 17, 2016 at 03:51 PM
I saw the idea of a Trump presidency as the best thing that could happen to progressive since Hoover.
im1dc -> ilsm... , November 17, 2016 at 05:24 PM
we still need an electable candidate to emerge from the ferment.
Pinkybum -> im1dc... , November 17, 2016 at 05:02 PM
Privatizing Medicare will be a disaster it can only end in the service being worse. I'm sure they have plans to go after Social Security too. Getting rid of Obamacare won't hurt the white middle class too bad but even there too most people will know someone with a preexisting condition who can't get medical insurance. Good luck with all that Republicans!!
anne : , -1
https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/list#/mutual-funds/asset-class/month-end-returns

November 17, 2016

The 3 month Treasury interest rate is at 0.43%, the 2 year Treasury rate is 1.03%, the 5 year rate is 1.72%, while the 10 year is 2.29%.

The Vanguard Aa rated short-term investment grade bond fund, with a maturity of 3.2 years and a duration of 2.6 years, has a yield of 1.63%. The Vanguard Aa rated intermediate-term investment grade bond fund, with a maturity of 6.4 years and a duration of 5.5 years, is yielding 2.37%. The Vanguard Aa rated long-term investment grade bond fund, with a maturity of 23.0 years and a duration of 13.6 years, is yielding 3.75%. *

The Vanguard Ba rated high yield corporate bond fund, with a maturity of 5.6 years and a duration of 4.4 years, is yielding 5.40%.

The Vanguard unrated convertible corporate bond fund, with an indefinite maturity and a duration of 4.1 years, is yielding 2.04%.

The Vanguard A rated high yield tax exempt bond fund, with a maturity of 6.8 years and a duration of 6.4 years, is yielding 2.66%.

The Vanguard Aa rated intermediate-term tax exempt bond fund, with a maturity of 5.4 years and a duration of 4.8 years, is yielding 1.59%.

The Vanguard Government National Mortgage Association bond fund, with a maturity of 5.7 years and a duration of 3.4 years, is yielding 2.05%.

The Vanguard inflation protected Treasury bond fund, with a maturity of 8.8 years and a duration of 8.3 years, is yielding - 0.21%.

* Vanguard yields are after cost. Federal Funds rates are no more than 0.50%.

anne : , November 17, 2016 at 02:53 PM
http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/

Ten Year Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings Ratio, 1881-2016

(Standard and Poors Composite Stock Index)

November 17, 2016 PE Ratio ( 27.08)

Annual Mean ( 16.70)
Annual Median ( 16.05)

-- Robert Shiller

anne : , November 17, 2016 at 02:53 PM
http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-dividend-yield/

Dividend Yield, 1881-2016

(Standard and Poors Composite Stock Index)

November 17, 2016 Div Yield ( 2.06)

Annual Mean ( 4.38)
Annual Median ( 4.33)

-- Robert Shiller

im1dc : , November 17, 2016 at 03:26 PM
"Consumer prices show big increase on rising gasoline costs and rents"

Looks like a go for the FedRes to raise rates in December

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/consumer-prices-show-big-increase-on-rising-gasoline-costs-and-rents/2016/11/17/9cad99d2-accd-11e6-a31b-4b6397e625d0_story.html

"Consumer prices show big increase on rising gasoline costs and rents"

Reuters...November 17, 2016...5:27 PM

'Consumer prices show big increase'

"Consumer prices recorded their biggest increase in six months in October on rising gasoline costs and rents, suggesting a pickup in inflation that potentially clears the way for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in December.

Prospects for a rate hike next month also got a boost from other data on Thursday showing first-time applications for unemployment benefits tumbling to a 43-year low last week and housing starts surging to a nine-year high in October.

The reports painted an upbeat picture of the economy early in the fourth quarter and came as Fed Chair Janet L. Yellen told lawmakers that the U.S. central bank could lift borrowing costs "relatively soon."

The Labor Department said its consumer price index increased 0.4 percent last month after rising 0.3 percent in September. In the 12 months through October, the CPI advanced 1.6 percent, the biggest year-on-year increase since October 2014. The CPI increased 1.5 percent in the year to September.

Underlying inflation continued to slow last month as health-care costs moderated after recent hefty gains. But with rents pushing higher, that trend is unlikely to be sustained.

The so-called core CPI, which strips out food and energy costs, climbed 0.1 percent last month after a similar gain in September. That slowed the year-on-year increase in the core CPI to 2.1 percent from a 2.2 percent rise in September.

The Fed has a 2 percent inflation target and tracks an inflation measure that is now at 1.7 percent.

In another report, the Labor Department said initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 235,000 for the week ended Nov. 12, the lowest level since November 1973.

Claims have now been below 300,000, a threshold associated with a healthy labor market, for 89 straight weeks. That is the longest run since 1970, when the labor market was much smaller.

With the labor market firming and rents rising, housing is getting a lift. In a third report, the Commerce Department said housing starts jumped 25.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 1.32 million units last month, the highest level since August 2007."

Reuters

im1dc : , November 17, 2016 at 03:36 PM
This is what Chairman Yellen told Congress today

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/17/502480053/federal-reserve-chair-throws-cold-water-on-trump-economic-plan

"Federal Reserve Chair Throws Cold Water On Trump's Economic Plan"

by Chris Arnold...November 17, 2016...5:25 PM ET

"President-elect Donald Trump has pledged a $1 trillion infrastructure spending program to help jump-start an economy that he said during the campaign was in terrible shape.

Speaking on Capitol Hill Thursday, Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen warned lawmakers that as they consider such spending, they should keep an eye on the national debt. Yellen also said that while the economy needed a big boost with fiscal stimulus after the financial crisis, that's not the case now.

"The economy is operating relatively close to full employment at this point," she said, "so in contrast to where the economy was after the financial crisis when a large demand boost was needed to lower unemployment, we're no longer in that state."

Yellen cautioned lawmakers that if they spend a lot on infrastructure and run up the debt, and then down the road the economy gets into trouble, "there is not a lot of fiscal space should a shock to the economy occur, an adverse shock, that should require fiscal stimulus."

In other words, lawmakers should consider keeping their powder dry so they have more options whenever the next economic downturn comes along.

Trump was harshly critical of Yellen during his campaign. But testifying before the Joint Economic Committee, Yellen said she is not going to quit just because Trump won the election. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., asked Yellen, "Can you envision any circumstances where you would not serve out your term as chair of the Federal Reserve?" "No, I cannot," answered Yellen, "It is fully my intention to serve out that term." Yellen's appointment goes through January 2018.

Another target of Trump's during the campaign came up at the hearing: the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, cited Trump's criticism that the Dodd-Frank banking rules were stifling lending and stunting the economy. But Yellen gave her support to Dodd-Frank, saying:

"We lived through a devastating financial crisis, and a high priority for all Americans should be that we want to see put in place safeguards through supervision and regulation that result in a safer and sounder financial system, and I think we have been doing that and our financial system as a consequence is safer and sounder and many of the appropriate reforms are embodied in Dodd-Frank."

Yellen added, "We wouldn't want to go back to the mortgage lending standards that led to the financial crisis."

She also said she thought banks were actually willing to lend to small businesses, but that sales haven't been growing sufficiently fast to justify borrowing, suggesting the demand for loans was the real problem.

As far as the ever-present question about when the Fed will raise interest rates, Yellen signaled that she didn't see any reason to alter the Fed's prior guidance now that Trump has been elected as the next president."

ilsm -> im1dc... , November 17, 2016 at 03:52 PM
What Humpty Dumpty : ......
im1dc : , November 17, 2016 at 04:45 PM
"What do the Amish lobby, gay wedding vans and the ban of the national anthem have in common?"

http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/technology/ct-facebook-fake-news-donald-trump-wp-bsi-20161117-story.html

"Facebook fake-news writer: 'I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me'"

by Caitlin Dewey...The Washington Post

"What do the Amish lobby, gay wedding vans and the ban of the national anthem have in common? For starters, they're all make-believe - and invented by the same man.

Paul Horner, the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire, has made his living off viral news hoaxes for several years. He has twice convinced the Internet that he's British graffiti artist Banksy; he also published the very viral, very fake news of a Yelp vs. "South Park" lawsuit last year.

But in recent months, Horner has found the fake-news ecosystem growing more crowded, more political and vastly more influential: In March, Donald Trump's son Eric and his then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, even tweeted links to one of Horner's faux-articles. His stories have also appeared as news on Google.

In light of concerns that stories like Horner's may have affected the presidential election, and in the wake of announcements that both Google and Facebook would take action against deceptive outlets, The Washington Post called Horner to discuss his perspective on fake news.

Q: You've been writing fake news for a while now - you're kind of like the OG Facebook news hoaxer. Well, I'd call it hoaxing or fake news. You'd call it parody or satire. How is that scene different now than it was three or five years ago? Why did something like your story about Obama invalidating the election results (almost 250,000 Facebook shares, as of this writing) go so viral?

A: Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore - I mean, that's how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn't care because they'd already accepted it. It's real scary. I've never seen anything like it.

Q: You mentioned Trump, and you've probably heard the argument, or the concern, that fake news somehow helped him get elected. What do you make of that?

A: My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don't fact-check anything - they'll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.

Q: Why? I mean - why would you even write that?

A: Just 'cause his supporters were under the belief that people were getting paid to protest at their rallies, and that's just insane. I've gone to Trump protests - trust me, no one needs to get paid to protest Trump. I just wanted to make fun of that insane belief, but it took off. They actually believed it.

I thought they'd fact-check it, and it'd make them look worse. I mean that's how this always works: Someone posts something I write, then they find out it's false, then they look like idiots. But Trump supporters - they just keep running with it! They never fact-check anything! Now he's in the White House. Looking back, instead of hurting the campaign, I think I helped it. And that feels (bad).

Q: You think you personally helped elect Trump?

A: I don't know. I don't know if I did or not. I don't know. I don't know.

Q: I guess I'm curious, if you believed you might be having an unfair impact on the election - especially if that impact went against your own political beliefs - why didn't you stop? Why keep writing?

A: I didn't think it was possible for him to get elected president. I thought I was messing with the campaign, maybe I wasn't messing them up as much as I wanted - but I never thought he'd actually get elected. I didn't even think about it. In hindsight, everyone should've seen this coming - everyone assumed Hillary (Clinton) would just get in. But she didn't, and Trump is president.

Q: Speaking of Clinton - did you target fake news at her supporters? Or Gary Johnson's, for that matter? (Horner's Facebook picture shows him at a rally for Johnson.)

A: No. I hate Trump.

Q: Is that it? You posted on Facebook a couple weeks ago that you had a lot of ideas for satirizing Clinton and other figures, but that "no joke in doing this for six years, the people who clicked ads the most, like it's the cure for cancer, is right-wing Republicans." That makes it sound like you've found targeting conservatives is more profitable.

A: Yeah, it is. They don't fact-check.

Q: But a Trump presidency is good for you from a business perspective, right?

A: It's great for anybody who does anything with satire - there's nothing you can't write about now that people won't believe. I can write the craziest thing about Trump, and people will believe it. I wrote a lot of crazy anti-Muslim stuff - like about Trump wanting to put badges on Muslims, or not allowing them in the airport, or making them stand in their own line - and people went along with it!

Q: Facebook and Google recently announced that they'd no longer let fake-news sites use their advertising platforms. I know you basically make your living from those services. How worried are you about this?

A: This whole Google AdSense thing is pretty scary. And all this Facebook stuff. I make most of my money from AdSense - like, you wouldn't believe how much money I make from it. Right now I make like $10,000 a month from AdSense.

I know ways of getting hooked up under different names and sites. So probably if they cracked down, I would try different things. I have at least 10 sites right now. If they crack down on a couple, I'll just use others. They could shut down advertising on all my sites, and I think I'd be OK. Plus, Facebook and AdSense make a lot of money from (advertising on fake news sites) for them to just get rid of it. They'd lose a lot of money.

But if it did really go away, that would suck. I don't know what I would do.

Q: Thinking about this less selfishly, though - it might be good if Facebook and Google took action, right? Because the effects you're describing are pretty scary.

A: Yeah, I mean - a lot of the sites people are talking about, they're just total BS sites. There's no creativity or purpose behind them. I'm glad they're getting rid of them. I don't like getting lumped in with Huzlers. I like getting lumped in with the Onion. The stuff I do - I spend more time on it. There's purpose and meaning behind it. I don't just write fake news just to write it.

So, yeah, I see a lot of the sites they're listing, and I'm like - good. There are so many horrible sites out there. I'm glad they're getting rid of those sites.

I just hope they don't get rid of mine, too."

im1dc -> im1dc... , November 17, 2016 at 04:46 PM
The takeaway: "Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore"

[Nov 18, 2016] Ellison is a dud, Bernie tweets support for Schumer theres nobody I know better prepared and more capable of leading our caucus than Chuck Schumer -- Well theres a good

Nov 18, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
chunder maker in that statement eh? Hope dashed! jo6pac November 17, 2016 at 3:13 pm

Lambert you were on to something when you mention his twitter account.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/17/the-skeletons-in-keith-ellisons-display-case/

I know my Muslim friends would never want to hurt anyone but this guy is as crazy as hillabillie.

cocomaan November 17, 2016 at 7:44 pm

Support for Syria and Libya interventions? Gross. No thanks.

Who else do we got? Wait this is it? WHAT?!!

uncle tungsten November 18, 2016 at 7:25 am

Ellison is a dud, Bernie tweets support for Schumer "there's nobody I know better prepared and more capable of leading our caucus than Chuck Schumer"!
Well there's a good chunder maker in that statement eh? Hope dashed!

There are no doubt many who are better informed, more progressive and principled, more remote from Wall Street and oligarchic capture than Chuck Schumer and Ellison. So there you have it – this is reform in the Democrats after a crushing defeat.

Vale democrats, and now the journey becomes arduous with these voices to smother hope. A new party is urgently needed (I know how difficult that is) and these voices of the old machine need to be ignored for the sake of sanity.

[Nov 18, 2016] The statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes by Bruce Wilder

Notable quotes:
"... The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable their dominance. ..."
"... It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. ..."
"... When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup. ..."
"... Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. ..."
"... It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened, in a meteorological economics. ..."
"... This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints. ..."
"... No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or coherence. ..."
"... If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying. ..."
"... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
Nov 18, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:07 pm 30

At the center of Great Depression politics was a political struggle over the distribution of income, a struggle that was only decisively resolved during the War, by the Great Compression. It was at center of farm policy where policymakers struggled to find ways to support farm incomes. It was at the center of industrial relations politics, where rapidly expanding unions were seeking higher industrial wages. It was at the center of banking policy, where predatory financial practices were under attack. It was at the center of efforts to regulate electric utility rates and establish public power projects. And, everywhere, the clear subtext was a struggle between rich and poor, the economic royalists as FDR once called them and everyone else.

FDR, an unmistakeable patrician in manner and pedigree, was leading a not-quite-revolutionary politics, which was nevertheless hostile to and suspicious of business elites, as a source of economic pathology. The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable their dominance.

It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle.

In retrospect, though the New Deal did use direct employment as a means of relief to good effect economically and politically, it never undertook anything like a Keynesian stimulus on a Keynesian scale - at least until the War.

Where the New Deal witnessed the institution of an elaborate system of financial repression, accomplished in large part by imposing on the financial sector an explicitly mandated structure, with types of firms and effective limits on firm size and scope, a series of regulatory reforms and financial crises beginning with Carter and Reagan served to wipe this structure away.

When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup.

I don't know what considerations guided Obama in choosing the size of the stimulus or its composition (as spending and tax cuts). Larry Summers was identified at the time as a voice of caution, not "gambling", but not much is known about his detailed reasoning in severely trimming Christina Romer's entirely conventional calculations. (One consideration might well have been worldwide resource shortages, which had made themselves felt in 2007-8 as an inflationary spike in commodity prices.) I do not see a case for connecting stimulus size policy to the health care reform. At the time the stimulus was proposed, the Administration had also been considering whether various big banks and other financial institutions should be nationalized, forced to insolvency or otherwise restructured as part of a regulatory reform.

Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. Accelerating the financialization of the economy from 1999 on made New York and Washington rich, but the same economic policies and process were devastating the Rust Belt as de-industrialization. They were two aspects of the same complex of economic trends and policies. The rise of China as a manufacturing center was, in critical respects, a financial operation within the context of globalized trade that made investment in new manufacturing plant in China, as part of globalized supply chains and global brand management, (arguably artificially) low-risk and high-profit, while reinvestment in manufacturing in the American mid-west became unattractive, except as a game of extracting tax subsidies or ripping off workers.

It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened, in a meteorological economics.

It is conceding too many good intentions to the Obama Administration to tie an inadequate stimulus to a Rube Goldberg health care reform as the origin story for the final debacle of Democratic neoliberal politics. There was a delicate balancing act going on, but they were not balancing the recovery of the economy in general so much as they were balancing the recovery from insolvency of a highly inefficient and arguably predatory financial sector, which was also not incidentally financing the institutional core of the Democratic Party and staffing many key positions in the Administration and in the regulatory apparatus.

This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints.

No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or coherence.

bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:33 pm ( 31 )

The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying.

Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.

likbez 11.18.16 at 4:48 pm 121

bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:07 pm 30

Great comment. Simply great. Hat tip to the author !

Notable quotes:

"… The New Deal did not seek to overthrow the plutocracy, but it did seek to side-step and disable their dominance. …"

"… It seems to me that while neoliberalism on the right was much the same old same old, the neoliberal turn on the left was marked by a measured abandonment of this struggle over the distribution of income between the classes. In the U.S., the Democrats gradually abandoned their populist commitments. In Europe, the labour and socialist parties gradually abandoned class struggle. …"

"… When Obama came in, in 2008 amid the unfolding GFC, one of the most remarkable features of his economic team was the extent to which it conceded control of policy entirely to the leading money center banks. Geithner and Bernanke continued in power with Geithner moving from the New York Federal Reserve (where he served as I recall under a Chair from Goldman Sachs) to Treasury in the Obama Administration, but Geithner's Treasury was staffed from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citibank. The crisis served to concentrate banking assets in the hands of the top five banks, but it seemed also to transfer political power entirely into their hands as well. Simon Johnson called it a coup. … "

"… Here's the thing: the globalization and financialization of the economy from roughly 1980 drove both increasingly extreme distribution of income and de-industrialization. …"

"… It was characteristic of neoliberalism that the policy, policy intention and policy consequences were hidden behind a rhetoric of markets and technological inevitability. Matt Stoller has identified this as the statecraft of neoliberalism: the elimination of political agency and responsibility for economic performance and outcomes. Globalization and financialization were just "forces" that just happened, in a meteorological economics. …"

"… This was not your grandfather's Democratic Party and it was a Democratic Party that could aid the working class and the Rust Belt only within fairly severe and sometimes sharply conflicting constraints. …"

"… No one in the Democratic Party had much institutional incentive to connect the dots, and draw attention to the acute conflicts over the distribution of income and wealth involved in financialization of the economy (including financialization as a driver of health care costs). And, that makes the political problem that much harder, because there are no resources for rhetorical and informational clarity or coherence. …"

"… If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying. …"

"… Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. …"

[Nov 16, 2016] The New Red Scare: Reviving the art of threat inflation

Notable quotes:
"... Reviving the art of threat inflation ..."
"... "Welcome to the world of strategic analysis," Ivan Selin used to tell his team during the Sixties, "where we program weapons that don't work to meet threats that don't exist." Selin, who would spend the following decades as a powerful behind-the-scenes player in the Washington mandarinate, was then the director of the Strategic Forces Division in the Pentagon's Office of Systems Analysis. "I was a twenty-eight-year-old wiseass when I started saying that," he told me, reminiscing about those days. "I thought the issues we were dealing with were so serious, they could use a little levity." ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | marknesop.wordpress.com
et Al , November 16, 2016 at 2:51 am
Harpers Magazine via Antiwar.com: The New Red Scare
http://harpers.org/archive/2016/12/the-new-red-scare/?single=1

Reviving the art of threat inflation

By Andrew Cockburn

"Welcome to the world of strategic analysis," Ivan Selin used to tell his team during the Sixties, "where we program weapons that don't work to meet threats that don't exist." Selin, who would spend the following decades as a powerful behind-the-scenes player in the Washington mandarinate, was then the director of the Strategic Forces Division in the Pentagon's Office of Systems Analysis. "I was a twenty-eight-year-old wiseass when I started saying that," he told me, reminiscing about those days. "I thought the issues we were dealing with were so serious, they could use a little levity."

####

While I do have some quibbles with the piece (RuAF pilots are getting much more than 90 hours a year flight time & equipment is overrated and unaffordable in any decent numbers), it is pretty solid.

[Nov 16, 2016] Being now a party of Wall street, neolibral democrats did not learn the lesson and do not want to: they attempt to double down on the identity politics, keep telling the pulverized middle class how great the economy is

Notable quotes:
"... I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. ..."
"... I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell my daughter that I didn't know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil ..."
"... Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years after the Great Recession, Americans' finances remain precarious as ever. ..."
"... These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill. ..."
"... Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent - households making more than $100,000 a year - 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000 ..."
"... Chronicle for Higher Education: ..."
"... Meanwhile, 91% of all the profits generated by the U.S. economy from 2009 through 2012 went to the top 1%. As just one example, the annual bonuses (not salaries, just the bonuses) of all Wall Street financial traders last year amounted to 28 billion dollars while the total income of all minimum wage workers in America came to 14 billion dollars. ..."
"... "Between 2009 and 2012, according to updated data from Emmanuel Saez, overall income per family grew 6.9 percent. The gains weren't shared evenly, however. The top 1 percent saw their real income grow by 34.7 percent while the bottom 99 percent only saw a 0.8 percent gain, meaning that the 1 percent captured 91 percent of all real income. ..."
"... Adjusting for inflation and excluding anything made from capital gains investments like stocks, however, shows that even that small gains for all but the richest disappears. According to Justin Wolfers, adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100 to $968,000 in that time period. For everyone else, average income actually fell from $44,000 to $43,900. Calculated this way, the 1 percent has captured all of the income gains." ..."
"... There actually is a logic at work in the Rust Belt voters for voted for Trump. I don't think it's good logic, but it makes sense in its own warped way. The calculation the Trump voters seem to be making in the Rust Belt is that it's better to have a job and no health insurance and no medicare and no social security, than no job but the ACA (with $7,000 deductibles you can't afford to pay for anyway) plus medicare (since most of these voters are healthy, they figure they'll never get sick) plus social security (most of these voters are not 65 or older, and probably think they'll never age - or perhaps don't believe that social security will be solvent when they do need it). ..."
"... It's the same twisted logic that goes on with protectionism. Rust Belt workers figure that it's better to have a job and not be able to afford a Chinese-made laptop than not to have a job but plenty of cheap foreign-made widgets you could buy if you had any money (which you don't). That logic doesn't parse if you run through the economics (because protectionism will destroy the very jobs they think they're saving), but it can be sold as a tweet in a political campaign. ..."
"... The claim "Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism" is incomplete. Trump's coalition actually consists of 3 parts and it's highly unstable: [1] racists, [2] plutocrats, [3] working class people slammed hard by globalization for whom Democrats have done little or nothing. ..."
"... The good news is that Trump's coalition is unstable. The plutocrats and Rust Belters are natural enemies. ..."
"... Listen to Steve Bannon, a classic stormfront type - he says he wants to blow up both the Democratic and the Republican party. He calls himself a "Leninist" in a recent interview and vows to wreck all elite U.S. institutions (universities, giant multinationals), not just the Democratic party. ..."
"... Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference. ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

mclaren 11.16.16 at 9:52 am 7

Eric places the blame for this loss squarely on economics, which, it seems to me, gets the analysis exactly right. And the statistics back up his analysis, I believe.

It's disturbing and saddening to watch other left-wing websites ignore those statistics and charge off the cliff into the abyss, screaming that this election was all about racism/misogyny/homophobia/[fill in the blank with identity politics demonology of your choice]. First, the "it's all racism" analysis conveniently lets the current Democratic leadership off the hook. They didn't do anything wrong, it was those "deplorables" (half the country!) who are to blame. Second, the identity politics blame-shifting completely overlooks and short-circuits any real action to fix the economy by Democratic policymakers or Democratic politicians or the Democratic party leadership. That's particularly convenient for the Democratic leadership because these top-four-percenter professionals "promise anything and change nothing" while jetting between Davos and Martha's Vineyard, ignoring the peons who don't make $100,000 or more a year because the peons all live in flyover country.

"Trump supporters were on average affluent, but they are always Republican and aren't numerous enough to deliver the presidency (538 has changed their view in the wake of the election result). Some point out that looking at support by income doesn't show much distinctive support for Trump among the "poor", but that's beside the point too, as it submerges a regional phenomenon in a national average, just as exit polls do. (..)
"When commentators like Michael Moore and Thomas Frank pointed out that there was possibility for Trump in the Rust Belt they were mostly ignored or, even more improbably, accused of being apologists for racism and misogyny. But that is what Trump did, and he won. Moreover, he won with an amateurish campaign against a well-funded and politically sophisticated opponent simply because he planted his flag where others wouldn't.

"Because of the obsession with exit polls, post-election analysis has not come to grips with the regional nature of the Trump phenomenon. Exit polls divide the general electorate based on individual attributes: race, gender, income, education, and so on, making regional distinctions invisible. Moreover, America doesn't decide the presidential election that way. It decides it based on the electoral college, which potentially makes the characteristics of individual states decisive. We should be looking at maps, not exit polls for the explanation. Low black turnout in California or high Latino turnout in Texas do not matter in the slightest in determining the election, but exit polls don't help us see that. Exit polls deliver a bunch of non-explanatory facts, in this election more than other recent ones."
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2016/11/11/23174/

"Donald Trump performed best on Tuesday in places where the economy is in worse shape, and especially in places where jobs are most at risk in the future.

"Trump, who in his campaign pledged to be a voice for `forgotten Americans,' beat Hillary Clinton in counties with slower job growth and lower wages. And he far outperformed her in counties where more jobs are threatened by automation or offshoring, a sign that he found support not just among workers who are struggling now but among those concerned for their economic future."

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where-the-economy-is-weaker/

Meanwhile, the neoliberal Democrats made claims about the economy that at best wildly oversold the non-recovery from the 2009 global financial meltdown, and at worst flat-out misrepresented the state of the U.S. economy. For example, president Obama in his June 1 2016 speech in Elkhart Indiana, said:

"Now, one of the reasons we're told this has been an unusual election year is because people are anxious and uncertain about the economy. And our politics are a natural place to channel that frustration. So I wanted to come to the heartland, to the Midwest, back to close to my hometown to talk about that anxiety, that economic anxiety, and what I think it means. (..) America's economy is not just better than it was eight years ago - it is the strongest, most durable economy in the world. (..) Unemployment in Elkhart has fallen to around 4 percent. (Applause.) At the peak of the crisis, nearly one in 10 homeowners in the state of Indiana were either behind on their mortgages or in foreclosure; today, it's one in 30. Back then, only 75 percent of your kids graduated from high school; tomorrow, 90 percent of them will. (Applause.) The auto industry just had its best year ever. (..) So that's progress.(..) We decided to invest in job training so that folks who lost their jobs could retool. We decided to invest in things like high-tech manufacturing and clean energy and infrastructure, so that entrepreneurs wouldn't just bring back the jobs that we had lost, but create new and better jobs By almost every economic measure, America is better off than when I came here at the beginning of my presidency. That's the truth. That's true. (Applause.) It's true. (Applause.) Over the past six years, our businesses have created more than 14 million new jobs - that's the longest stretch of consecutive private sector job growth in our history. We've seen the first sustained manufacturing growth since the 1990s."

None of this is true. Not is a substantive sense, not in the sense of being accurate, not in the sense of reflecting the facts on the ground for real working people who don't fly their private jets to Davos.

The claim that "America's economy is the strongest and most durable economy in the world" is just plain false. China has a much higher growth rate, at 6.9% nearly triple the U.S.'s - and America's GDP growth is trending to historic long-term lows, and still falling. Take a look at this chart of the Federal Reserve board's projections of U.S. GDP growth since 2009 compared with the real GDP growth rate:

http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/2015-03-2.png

"[In the survey] [t]he Fed asked respondents how they would pay for a $400 emergency. The answer: 47 percent of respondents said that either they would cover the expense by borrowing or selling something, or they would not be able to come up with the $400 at all. Four hundred dollars! Who knew?

"Well, I knew. I knew because I am in that 47 percent.

" I know what it is like to have to juggle creditors to make it through a week. I know what it is like to have to swallow my pride and constantly dun people to pay me so that I can pay others. I know what it is like to have liens slapped on me and to have my bank account levied by creditors. I know what it is like to be down to my last $5-literally-while I wait for a paycheck to arrive, and I know what it is like to subsist for days on a diet of eggs.

I know what it is like to dread going to the mailbox, because there will always be new bills to pay but seldom a check with which to pay them. I know what it is like to have to tell my daughter that I didn't know if I would be able to pay for her wedding; it all depended on whether something good happened. And I know what it is like to have to borrow money from my adult daughters because my wife and I ran out of heating oil ."

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame/476415/

" Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive poll released Thursday, a signal that despite years after the Great Recession, Americans' finances remain precarious as ever.

" These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill.

" Even for the country's wealthiest 20 percent - households making more than $100,000 a year - 38 percent say they would have at least some difficulty coming up with $1,000 .

"`The more we learn about the balance sheets of Americans, it becomes quite alarming,' said Caroline Ratcliffe, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute focusing on poverty and emergency savings issues."

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/965e48ed609245539ed315f83e01b6a2

The rest of Obama's statistics are deceptive to the point of being dissimulations - unemployment has dropped to 4 percent because so many people have stopped looking for work and moved into their parents' basements that the Bureau of Labor Statistics no longer counts them as unemployed. Meanwhile, the fraction of working-age adults who are not in the workforce has skyrocketed to an all-time high. Few homeowners are now being foreclosed in 2016 compared to 2009 because the people in 2009 who were in financial trouble all lost their homes. Only rich people and well-off professionals were able to keep their homes through the 2009 financial collapse. Since 2009, businesses did indeed create 14 million new jobs - mostly low-wage junk jobs, part-time minimum-wage jobs that don't pay a living wage.

"The deep recession wiped out primarily high-wage and middle-wage jobs. Yet the strongest employment growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work, at places like strip malls and fast-food restaurants.

"In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business/economy/recovery-has-created-far-more-low-wage-jobs-than-better-paid-ones.html

And the jobs market isn't much better for highly-educated workers:

New research released Monday says nearly half of the nation's recent college graduates work jobs that don't require a degree.

The report, from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, concludes that while college-educated Americans are less likely to collect unemployment, many of the jobs they do have aren't worth the price of their diplomas.

The data calls into question a national education platform that says higher education is better in an economy that favors college graduates.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/underemployed-overeducated_n_2568203.html

Don't believe it? Then try this article, from the Chronicle for Higher Education:

Approximately 60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 worked in jobs that the BLS considers relatively low skilled-occupations where many participants have only high school diplomas and often even less. Only a minority of the increment in our nation's stock of college graduates is filling jobs historically considered as requiring a bachelor's degree or more.

http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-great-college-degree-scam/28067

As for manufacturing, U.S. manufacturing lost 35,000 jobs in 2016, and manufacturing employment remains 2.2% below what it was when Obama took office.

Meanwhile, 91% of all the profits generated by the U.S. economy from 2009 through 2012 went to the top 1%. As just one example, the annual bonuses (not salaries, just the bonuses) of all Wall Street financial traders last year amounted to 28 billion dollars while the total income of all minimum wage workers in America came to 14 billion dollars.

"Between 2009 and 2012, according to updated data from Emmanuel Saez, overall income per family grew 6.9 percent. The gains weren't shared evenly, however. The top 1 percent saw their real income grow by 34.7 percent while the bottom 99 percent only saw a 0.8 percent gain, meaning that the 1 percent captured 91 percent of all real income.

Adjusting for inflation and excluding anything made from capital gains investments like stocks, however, shows that even that small gains for all but the richest disappears. According to Justin Wolfers, adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100 to $968,000 in that time period. For everyone else, average income actually fell from $44,000 to $43,900. Calculated this way, the 1 percent has captured all of the income gains."

https://thinkprogress.org/the-1-percent-have-gotten-all-the-income-gains-from-the-recovery-6bee14aab1#.1frn3lu8y

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/upshot/wall-street-bonuses-vs-total-earnings-of-full-time-minimum-wage-workers.html

Does any of this sound like "the strongest, most durable economy in the world"? Does any of this square with the claims by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that "By almost every economic measure, America is better off "? The U.S. economy is only better off in 2016 by disingenuous comparison with the stygian depths of the 2009 economic collapse.

Hillary Clinton tied herself to Barack Obama's economic legacy, and the brutal reality for working class people remains that the economy today has barely improved for most workers to what it was in 2009, and is in many ways worse. Since 2009, automation + outsourcing/offshoring has destroyed whole classes of jobs, from taxi drivers (wiped out by Uber and Lyft) to warehoues stock clerks (getting wiped out by robots) to paralegals and associates at law firms (replaced by databases and legal search algorithms) to high-end programmers (wiped out by an ever-increasing flood of H1B via workers from India and China).

Yet vox.com continues to run article after article proclaiming "the 2016 election was all about racism." And we have a non-stop stream of this stuff from people like Anne Laurie over at balloon-juice.com:

"While the more-Leftist-than-thou "progressives" - including their latest high-profile figurehead - are high-fiving each other in happy anticipation of potential public-outrage gigs over the next four years, at least some people are beginning to push back on the BUT WHITE WORKING CLASS HAS ALL THE SADS!!! meme so beloved of Very Serious Pundits."

That's the ticket, Democrats double down on the identity politics, keep telling the pulverized middle class how great the economy is. Because that worked so well for you this election.

Cranky Observer 11.16.16 at 12:34 pm ( 11 )

= = = mclaren@9:52 am: The rest of Obama's statistics are deceptive to the point of being dissimulations -[ ] Only rich people and well-off professionals were able to keep their homes through the 2009 financial collapse. = = =

Some food for thought in your post, but you don't help your argument with statements such as this one. Rich people and well-off professionals make up at most 10% of the population. US homeownership rate in 2005 was 68.8%, in 2015 is 63.7. That's a big drop and unquestionably represents a lot of people losing their houses involuntarily. Still, even assuming no "well-off professionals" lost their houses in the recession that still leaves the vast majority of the houses owned by the middle class. Which is consistent with foreclosure and sales stats in middle class areas from 2008-2014. Remember that even with 20% unemployment 80% of the population still has a job.

Similarly, I agree that the recession and job situation was qualitatively worse than the quantitative stats depicted. Once you start adding in hidden factors not captured by the official stats, though, where do you stop? How do you know the underground economy isn't doing far better than it was in the boom years of the oughts, thus reducing actual unemployment? Etc.

Finally, you need to address the fundamental question: assuming all you say is true (arguendo), how does destroying the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare help those in the economically depressed areas? I got hit bad by the recession myself. Know what helped from 2010 forward? Knowing that I could change jobs, keep my college-age children on my spouse's heath plan, not get hit with pre-existing condition fraud, and that if worse came to worse in a couple years I would have the plan exchange to fall back on. Kansas has tried the Ryan/Walker approach, seen it fail, doubled down, and seen that fail 4x as badly. Now we're going to make it up on unit sales by trying the Ryan plan nationally? How do you expect that to "work out for you"?

WLGR 11.16.16 at 4:11 pm

mclaren @ 7: "high-end programmers (wiped out by an ever-increasing flood of H1B via workers from India and China)"

I'm on board with the general thrust of what you're saying, but this is way, way over the line separating socialism from barbarism. The fact that it's not even true is beside the point, as is the (quite frankly) fascist metaphor of "flood" to describe human fucking beings traveling in search of economic security, at least as long as you show some self-awareness and contrition about your language. Some awareness about the insidious administrative structure of the H1-B program would also be nice - the way it works is, an individual's visa status more or less completely depends on remaining in the good graces of their employer, meaning that by design these employees have no conceivable leverage in any negotiation over pay or working conditions, and a program of unconditional residency without USCIS as a de facto strikebreaker would have much less downward pressure on wages - but anti-immigration rhetoric remaining oblivious to actual immigration law is par for the course.

No, the real point of departure here from what deserves to be called "socialism" is in the very act of blithely combining effects of automation (i.e. traditional capitalist competition for productive efficiency at the expense of workers' economic security) and effects of offshoring/outsourcing/immigration (i.e. racialized fragmentation of the global working class by accident of birth into those who "deserve" greater economic security and those who don't) into one and the same depiction of developed-world economic crisis. In so many words, you're walking right down neoliberal capitalism's ideological garden path: the idea that it's not possible to be anticapitalist without being an economic nationalist, and that every conceivable alternative to some form of Hillary Clinton is ultimately reducible to some form of Donald Trump. On the contrary, those of us on the socialism side of "socialism or barbarism" don't object to capitalism because it's exploiting American workers , we object because it's exploiting workers , and insisting on this crucial point against all chauvinist pressure ("workers of all lands , unite!") is what fundamentally separates our anticapitalism from the pseudo-anticapitalism of fascists.

marku52 11.16.16 at 5:01 pm 16

Maclaren: I'm with you. I well remember Obama and his "pivot to deficit reduction" and "green shoots" while I was screaming at the TV 'No!! Not Now!"

And then he tried for a "grand bargain" with the Reps over chained CPI adjustment for SS, and he became my active enemy. I was a Democrat. Where did my party go?

politicalfootball 11.16.16 at 5:27 pm ( 17 )

Just chiming in here: The implicit deal between the elites and the hoi polloi was that the economy would be run with minimal competence. Throughout the west, those elites have broken faith with the masses on that issue, and are being punished for it.

I'm less inclined to attach responsibility to Obama, Clinton or the Democratic Party than some. If Democrats had their way, the economy would have been managed considerably more competently.

Always remember that the rejection of the elites wasn't just a rejection of Democrats. The Republican elite also took it in the neck.

I'll also dissent from the view that race wasn't decisive in this election. Under different circumstances, we might have had Bernie's revolution rather than Trump's, but Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism.

engels 11.16.16 at 7:12 pm 18

I find the discussions over identity politics so intensely frustrating. A lot of people on the left have gone all-in on self-righteous anger

Identity politics (and to some extent probably the rhetorical style that goes with it) isn't a 'left' thing, it's a liberal thing. It's a bęte noire for many on the left-see eg. Nancy Fraser's work.

The Anglo/online genus what you get when you subtract class, socialism and real-world organisation from politics and add in a lot of bored students and professionals with internet connections in the context of a political culture (America's) that already valorises individual aggression to a unique degree.

Omega Centauri 11.16.16 at 7:15 pm ( 19 )

As polticalfoorball @15 says. The Democrats just didn't have the political muscle to deliver on those things. There really is a dynamic thats been playing out: Democrats don't get enough governing capacity because they did poorly in the election, which means their projects to improve the economy are neutered or allowed through only in a very weakened form. Then the next election cycle the neuterers use that failure as a weapon to take even more governing capacity away. Its not a failure of will, its a failure to get on top of the political feedback loop.

Manta 11.16.16 at 7:32 pm 20

@15 politicalfootball 11.16.16 at 5:27 pm
"Throughout the west, those elites have broken faith with the masses on that issue, and are being punished for it."

Could you specify some "elite" that has been punished?

nastywoman 11.16.16 at 7:36 pm ( 21 )

@13
'I'm not sure what the thinking is here.'

The definition of 'Keynesianism' is:

'the economic theories and programs ascribed to John M. Keynes and his followers; specifically : the advocacy of monetary and fiscal programs by government to increase employment and spending'

– and if it is done wisely – like in most European countries before 2000 it is one of the least 'braindead' things.

But with the introduction of the Euro – some governmental programs – lead (especially in Spain) to horrendous self-destructive housing and building bubbles – which lead to the conclusion that such programs – which allow 'gambling with houses' are pretty much 'braindead'.

Or shorter: The quality of Keynesianism depends on NOT doing it 'braindead'.

mclaren 11.16.16 at 8:28 pm ( 25 )

Cranky Observer in #11 makes some excellent points. Crucially, he asks: "Finally, you need to address the fundamental question: assuming all you say is true (arguendo), how does destroying the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare help those in the economically depressed areas?"

There actually is a logic at work in the Rust Belt voters for voted for Trump. I don't think it's good logic, but it makes sense in its own warped way. The calculation the Trump voters seem to be making in the Rust Belt is that it's better to have a job and no health insurance and no medicare and no social security, than no job but the ACA (with $7,000 deductibles you can't afford to pay for anyway) plus medicare (since most of these voters are healthy, they figure they'll never get sick) plus social security (most of these voters are not 65 or older, and probably think they'll never age - or perhaps don't believe that social security will be solvent when they do need it).

It's the same twisted logic that goes on with protectionism. Rust Belt workers figure that it's better to have a job and not be able to afford a Chinese-made laptop than not to have a job but plenty of cheap foreign-made widgets you could buy if you had any money (which you don't). That logic doesn't parse if you run through the economics (because protectionism will destroy the very jobs they think they're saving), but it can be sold as a tweet in a political campaign.

As for 63.7% home ownership stats in 2016, vast numbers of those "owned" homes were snapped up by giant banks and other financial entities like hedge funds which then rented those homes out. So the home ownership stats in 2016 are extremely deceptive. Much of the home-buying since the 2009 crash has been investment purchases. Foreclosure home purchases for rent is now a huge thriving business, and it's fueling a second housing bubble. Particularly because in many ways it repeats the financially frothy aspects of the early 2000s housing bubble - banks and investment firms are issuing junks bonds based on rosy estimates of ever-escalating rents and housing prices, they use those junk financial instruments (and others like CDOs) to buy houses which then get rented out at inflated prices, the rental income gets used to fund more tranches of investment which fuels more buy-to-rent home buying. Rents have already skyrocketed far beyond incomes on the East and West Coast, so this can't continue. But home prices and rents keep rising. There is no city in the United States today where a worker making minimum wage can afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment and have money left over to eat and pay for a car, health insurance, etc. If home ownership were really so robust, this couldn't possibly be the case. The fact that rents keep skyrocketing even as undocumented hispanics return to Mexico in record numbers while post-9/11 ICE restrictions have hammered legal immigration numbers way, way down suggests that home ownership is not nearly as robust as the deceptive numbers indicate.

Political football in #15 remarks: "I'll also dissent from the view that race wasn't decisive in this election. Under different circumstances, we might have had Bernie's revolution rather than Trump's, but Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism."

Race was important, but not the root cause of the Trump victory. How do we know this? Tump himself is telling us. Look at Trump's first announced actions - deport 3 million undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, ram through vast tax cuts for the rich, and end the inheritance tax.

If Trump's motivation (and his base's motivation) was pure racism, Trump's first announced action would be something like passing laws that made it illegal to marry undocumented workers. His first act would be to roll back the legalization of black/white marriage and re-instate segregation. Trump isn't promising any of that.

Instead Trump's (bad) policies are based around enriching billionaires and shutting down immigration. Bear in mind that 43% of all new jobs created since 2009 went to immigrants and you start to realize that Trump's base is reacting to economic pressure by scapegoating immigrants, not racism by itself. If it were pure racism we'd have Trump and Ryan proposing a bunch of new Nuremberg laws. Make it illegal to have sex with muslims, federally fund segregated black schools and pass laws to force black kids to get bussed to them, create apartheid-style zones where only blacks can live, that sort of thing. Trump's first announced actions involve enriching the fantastically wealthy and enacting dumb self-destructive protectionism via punitive immigration control. That's protectionism + class war of the rich against everyone else, not racism. The protectionist immigration-control + deportation part of Trump's program is sweet sweet music to the working class people in the Rust Belt. They think the 43% of jobs taken by immigrants will come back. They don't realize that those are mostly jobs no one wants to do anyway, and that most of those jobs are already in the process of getting automated out of existence.

The claim "Trump's coalition is composed of overt racists and people who are indifferent to overt racism" is incomplete. Trump's coalition actually consists of 3 parts and it's highly unstable: [1] racists, [2] plutocrats, [3] working class people slammed hard by globalization for whom Democrats have done little or nothing.

Here's an argument that may resonate: the first two groups in Trump's coalition are unreachable. Liberal Democrats can't sweet-talk racists out of being racist and we certainly have nothing to offer the plutocrats. So the only part of Trump's coalition that is really reachable by liberal Democrats is the third group. Shouldn't we be concentrating on that third group, then?

The good news is that Trump's coalition is unstable. The plutocrats and Rust Belters are natural enemies. Since the plutocrats are perceived as running giant corporations that import large numbers of non-white immigrants to lower wages, the racists are not big fans of that group either.

Listen to Steve Bannon, a classic stormfront type - he says he wants to blow up both the Democratic and the Republican party. He calls himself a "Leninist" in a recent interview and vows to wreck all elite U.S. institutions (universities, giant multinationals), not just the Democratic party.

Why? Because the stormfront types consider elite U.S. institutions like CitiBank as equally culpable with Democrats in supposedly destroying white people in the U.S. According to Bannon's twisted skinhead logic, Democrats are allegedly race traitors for cultural reasons, but big U.S. corporations and elite institutions are supposedly equally guilty of economic race treason by importing vast numbers of non-white immigrants via H1B visas, by offshoring jobs from mostly caucasian-populated red states to non-white countries like India, Africa, China, and by using elite U.S. universities to trawl the world for the best (often non-white) students, etc. Bannon's "great day of the rope" includes the plutocrats as well as people of color.

These natural fractures in the Trump coalition are real, and Democrats can exploit them to weaken and destroy Republicans. But we have to get away from condemning all Republicans as racists because if we go down that route, we won't realize how fractured and unstable the Trump coalition really is.

bruce wilder 11.16.16 at 10:33 pm 31 ( 31 )

The short version of my thinking on the Obama stimulus is this: Keynesian stimulus spending is a free lunch; it doesn't really matter what you spend money on up to a very generous point, so it seems ready-made for legislative log-rolling. If Obama could not get a very big stimulus indeed thru a Democratic Congress long out of power, Obama wasn't really trying. And, well-chosen spending on pork barrel projects is popular and gets Congressional critters re-elected. So, again, if the stimulus is small and the Democratic Congress doesn't get re-elected, Obama isn't really trying.

Again, it comes down to: by 2008, the Democratic Party is not a fit vehicle for populism, because it has become a neoliberal vehicle for giant banks. Turns out that makes a policy difference.

engels 11.16.16 at 10:33 pm 32

Ps. Should prob add that identity politics isn't the same thing as feminism, anti-racism, LGBT politics, etc. They're all needed now more than ever.

What we don't need more of imo is a particular liberal/middle-class form of those things with particular assumptions (meritocratic and individualist), epistemology (strongly subjectivist) and rhetorical style (which often aims humiliating opponents from a position of relative knowledge/status rather than verbal engagement).

Helen 11.16.16 at 10:35 pm ( 33 )

I don't know why I'm even having to say this, as it's so obvious. The "leftists" (for want of a better word) and feminists who I know are also against neoliberalism. They are against the selloff of public assets to enterprises for private profit. They want to see a solution to the rapidly shrinking job market as technology replaces jobs (no, it's not enough for the Heroic Workers to Seize the Means of Production – the means of production are different now and the solution is going to have to be more complex than just "bring back manufacturing" or "introduce tariffs".) They want to roll back the tax cuts for the rich which have whittled down our revenue base this century. They want corporations and the top 10% to pay their fair share, and concomitantly they want pensioners, the unemployed and people caring for children to have a proper living wage.

They support a universal "single payer" health care system, which we social democratic squishy types managed to actually introduce in the 1970s, but now we have to fight against right wing governments trying to roll it back They support a better system of public education. They support a science-based approach to climate change where it is taken seriously for the threat it is and given priority in Government policy. They support spending less on the Military and getting out of international disputes which we (Western nations) only seem to exacerbate.

This is not an exhaustive list.

Yet just because the same people say that the dominant Western countries (and my own) still suffer from institutionalised racism and sexism, which is not some kind of cake icing but actually ruin lives and kill people, we are "all about identity politics" and cannot possibly have enough brain cells to think about the issues I described in para 1.

I don't find it instructive or useful.

Main Street Muse 11.16.16 at 10:54 pm 34

The slow recovery was only one factor. Wages have been stagnant since Reagan. And honestly, if a white Republican president had stabilized the economy, killed Osama Bin Laden and got rid of pre-existing condition issue with healthcare, the GOP would be BRAGGING all over it. Let's remember that we have ONE party that has been devoted to racist appeals, lying and putting party over country for decades.

Obama entered office as the economy crashed over a cliff. Instead of reforming the banks and punishing the bankers who engaged in fraudulent activities, he waded into healthcare reform. Banks are bigger today than they were in 2008. And tell me again, which bankers were punished for the fraud? Not a one All that Repo 105 maneuvering, stuffing the retirement funds with toxic assets – etc. and so on – all of that was perfectly legal? And if legal, all of that was totally bonusable? Yes! In America, such failure is gifted with huge bonuses, thanks to the American taxpayer.

Meanwhile, homeowners saw huge drops the value of their homes. Some are still underwater with the mortgage. It's a shame that politicians and reporters in DC don't get out much.

Concurrently, right before the election, ACA premiums skyrocketed. If you are self-insured, ACA is NOT affordable. It doesn't matter that prior to ACA, premiums increased astronomically. Obama promised AFFORDABLE healthcare. In my state, we have essentially a monopoly on health insurance, and the costs are absurd. But that's in part because the state Republicans refused to expand Medicaid.

Don't underestimate HRC's serious issues. HRC had one speech for the bankers and another for everyone else. Why didn't she release the GS transcripts? When did the Democrats become the party of Wall Street?

She also made the same idiotic mistake that Romney did – disparage a large swathe of American voters (basket of deplorables is this year's 47%.)

And then we had a nation of voters intent on the outsider. Bernie Sanders had an improbable run at it – the Wikileaks emails showed that the DNC did what they could to get rid of him as a threat.

Well America has done and gone elected themselves an outsider. Lucky us.

[Nov 16, 2016] Strong woman and her gay minion DESTROY mansplaining stale pale male

Notable quotes:
"... 'A big part of Bill's anger toward Hillary was that he was sidelined during the entire campaign by her advisers,' said the source. 'He can't be effective if he sees himself as just another hired hand. He wasn't listened to and that infuriated him. After all, he knows something about campaigns, and he told me in early October that Hillary and her advisers were blowing it. ..."
"... 'Hillary wouldn't listen. She told Bill that his ideas were old and that he was out of touch. In the end, there was nothing he could do about it because Hillary and her people weren't listening to anything he said.' ..."
www.unz.com

'Bill always campaigned as a guy who felt your pain, but Hillary came across as someone who was pissed off at her enemy [Trump], not someone who was reaching out and trying to make life better for the white working class.'

'Bill also said that many African Americans were deeply disappointed with the results of eight years of Obama,' the source continued.

'Despite more and more government assistance, black weren't economically any better off, and black-on-black crime was destroying their communities. He said Hillary should have gone into the South Side of Chicago and condemned the out-of-control violence.'

'A big part of Bill's anger toward Hillary was that he was sidelined during the entire campaign by her advisers,' said the source. 'He can't be effective if he sees himself as just another hired hand. He wasn't listened to and that infuriated him. After all, he knows something about campaigns, and he told me in early October that Hillary and her advisers were blowing it.

'Hillary wouldn't listen. She told Bill that his ideas were old and that he was out of touch. In the end, there was nothing he could do about it because Hillary and her people weren't listening to anything he said.'

[Nov 16, 2016] This is evidence that the elites in the Democrat Party would rather lose with their candidate than win with an outsider

Notable quotes:
"... Of course, the DNC was too busy trying to blow the Sanders campaign to smithereens and Hillary decided that comforting the Democrat Party's donor base was more important than attracting working class voters in the Rust Belt. ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Greg T November 16, 2016 at 2:05 pm

I read all of these points and conclude that Bernie Sanders would have defeated Trump in the general election. Sanders would have held all of the Democratic strongholds, and he would have beaten Trump in the Midwest.

Of course, the DNC was too busy trying to blow the Sanders campaign to smithereens and Hillary decided that comforting the Democrat Party's donor base was more important than attracting working class voters in the Rust Belt.

This is evidence that the elites in the Democrat Party would rather lose with a ' made ' candidate than win with an outsider.

[Nov 16, 2016] Two More Myths About Clintons Defeat in Election 2016 Debunked

Notable quotes:
"... "It's not a question of what happens in the last week. The question is that she should have won this election by 10 percentage points. ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
Talking Point: The Clinton Campaign Was Well-Managed

Here are two examples of the talking point. From the Washington Post (November 10, 2016):

At Brooklyn headquarters on Wednesday, Podesta expressed his gratitude and support for the team, and for Mook. "We have the No. 1 campaign manager," he said, in a staffwide gathering in the afternoon. "I've been doing this since 1968, and I've never seen a culture and a spirit like we created in this campaign." On the conference call with thousands of staff across the country, Clinton also called in [how kind] and thanked her team for their dedication.

Mook tried to end the campaign on a high note.

"What you've created is going to live on," he told his troops. "Leaders all over this country, local networks around the nation, future candidates who are going to step forward. Someone in this room is going to manage a presidential campaign one day."

Talking Point: The Clinton Defeat Had Nothing To Do With Economics

Here's an example of the talking point. From, naturally, Amanda Marcotte (November 11, 2016):

Because this anger is so real and so palpable, there's been an unfortunate tendency in much of the media to assume that this anger must also be valid . The entire election cycle was a clusterfuck of articles demanding empathy for Trump voters , insisting that their rage must have some rational roots - perhaps economic insecurity ?

The persistence of the "economic insecurity" angle in the face of overwhelming evidence against it was a testament to the power of hope over reason.

(The subtext here is usually that if you don't retweet approvingly, you're a racist yourself, and possibly a racist Trump supporter.) There are four reasons why this talking point is false.

... .... ...

To be fair, Clinton is correct that "there are lots of reasons," in an election this close. However, to me, blaming Comey is like blaming the last pebble in an avalanche of #FAIL. Sanders asks the right question. Talking about the Comey letters , Sanders said:

"It's not a question of what happens in the last week. The question is that she should have won this election by 10 percentage points.

[Nov 16, 2016] The my way or the highway rhetoric from Clinton supporters on the campaign was sickening

Notable quotes:
"... The "my way" or the highway rhetoric from Clinton supporters on the campaign was sickening. When Bush was called a warmonger for Iraq, that was fine. When Clinton was called a warmonger for Iraq and Libya, the Clintonites went on the offensive, often throwing around crap like "if she was a man, she wouldn't be a warmonger!" ..."
"... On racism: "what I can say, from personal experience, is that the racism of my youth was always one step removed. I never saw a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black people we had in town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when they passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city, winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned alive. Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine as long as they acted exactly like us." ..."
"... I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive. And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!" Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit, at least politicians act like they care about the inner cities." ..."
"... And the rural folk are called a "basket of deplorables" and other names. If you want to fight racism, a battle that is Noble and Honorable, you have to understand the nuances between racism and hopelessness. The wizard-wannabe idiots are a tiny fringe. The "deplorables" are a huge part of rural America. If you alienate them, you're helping the idiots mentioned above. ..."
Nov 16, 2016 | marknesop.wordpress.com
ucgsblog, November 14, 2016 at 3:50 pm
Erm, atheist groups are known to target smaller Christian groups with lawsuits. A baker was sued for refusing to bake a cake for a Gay Wedding. She was perfectly willing to serve the couple, just not at the wedding. In California we had a lawsuit over a cross in a park. Atheists threatened a lawsuit over a seal. Look, I get that there are people with no life out there, but why are they bringing the rest of us into their insanity, with constant lawsuits. There's actually a concept known as "Freedom from Religion" – what the heck? Can you imagine someone arguing about "Freedom from Speech" in America? But it's ok to do it to religious folk! And yes, that includes Muslims, who had to fight to build a Mosque in New York. They should've just said it was a Scientology Center

The "my way" or the highway rhetoric from Clinton supporters on the campaign was sickening. When Bush was called a warmonger for Iraq, that was fine. When Clinton was called a warmonger for Iraq and Libya, the Clintonites went on the offensive, often throwing around crap like "if she was a man, she wouldn't be a warmonger!"

The problem with healthcare in the US deserves its own thread, but Obamacare did not fix it; Obamacare made it worse, especially in the rural communities. The laws in schools are fundamentally retarded. A kid was suspended for giving a friend Advil. Another kid suspended for bringing in a paper gun. I could go on and on. A girl was expelled from college for trying to look gangsta in a L'Oreal mask. How many examples do you need? Look at all of the new "child safety laws" which force kids to leave in a bubble. And when they enter the Real World, they're fucked, so they pick up the drugs. In cities it's crack, in farmvilles it's meth.

Hillary didn't win jack shit. She got a plurality of the popular vote. She didn't win it, since winning implies getting the majority. How many Johnson votes would've gone to Trump if it was based on popular vote, in a safe state? Of course the biggest issue is the attack on the way of life, which is all too real. I encourage you to read this, in order to understand where they're coming from: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/

"Nothing that happens outside the city matters!" they say at their cocktail parties, blissfully unaware of where their food is grown. Hey, remember when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? Kind of weird that a big hurricane hundreds of miles across managed to snipe one specific city and avoid everything else. To watch the news (or the multiple movies and TV shows about it), you'd barely hear about how the storm utterly steamrolled rural Mississippi, killing 238 people and doing an astounding $125 billion in damage. But who cares about those people, right? What's newsworthy about a bunch of toothless hillbillies crying over a flattened trailer? New Orleans is culturally important. It matters. To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of the elites. "Are you assholes listening now?"

On racism: "what I can say, from personal experience, is that the racism of my youth was always one step removed. I never saw a family member, friend, or classmate be mean to the actual black people we had in town. We worked with them, played video games with them, waved to them when they passed. What I did hear was several million comments about how if you ever ventured into the city, winding up in the "wrong neighborhood" meant you'd get dragged from your car, raped, and burned alive. Looking back, I think the idea was that the local minorities were fine as long as they acted exactly like us."

"They're getting the shit kicked out of them. I know, I was there. Step outside of the city, and the suicide rate among young people fucking doubles. The recession pounded rural communities, but all the recovery went to the cities. The rate of new businesses opening in rural areas has utterly collapsed."

^ That, I'd say, is known as destroying their lives. Also this:

"In a city, you can plausibly aspire to start a band, or become an actor, or get a medical degree. You can actually have dreams. In a small town, there may be no venues for performing arts aside from country music bars and churches. There may only be two doctors in town - aspiring to that job means waiting for one of them to retire or die. You open the classifieds and all of the job listings will be for fast food or convenience stores. The "downtown" is just the corpses of mom and pop stores left shattered in Walmart's blast crater, the "suburbs" are trailer parks. There are parts of these towns that look post-apocalyptic.

I'm telling you, the hopelessness eats you alive. And if you dare complain, some liberal elite will pull out their iPad and type up a rant about your racist white privilege. Already, someone has replied to this with a comment saying, "You should try living in a ghetto as a minority!" Exactly. To them, it seems like the plight of poor minorities is only used as a club to bat away white cries for help. Meanwhile, the rate of rural white suicides and overdoses skyrockets. Shit, at least politicians act like they care about the inner cities."

And the rural folk are called a "basket of deplorables" and other names. If you want to fight racism, a battle that is Noble and Honorable, you have to understand the nuances between racism and hopelessness. The wizard-wannabe idiots are a tiny fringe. The "deplorables" are a huge part of rural America. If you alienate them, you're helping the idiots mentioned above.

[Nov 16, 2016] What Was the Election All About

Nov 12, 2016 | www.independent.org

...In fact, the entire Democratic Party has mainly ceased to campaign on issues-choosing instead to invest heavily in identity politics. The message to black voters is: vote for us because you are black, not because of anything we are going to do. Ditto for Hispanics. And women. And the LGBT community. And others. Hillary does have an agenda. More on that in a future post. But she didn't campaign on it.

As for the mainstream media, I have never seen an election in which the media was so biased. And not just biased. The media's entire view of the election was Hillary Clinton's view. Even on Fox News, the entire focus on election night and in the days that followed was on identity politics. How many blacks were voting? How many Hispanics? How many women?

As if demography were destiny.

Now, as it turns out, a greater percentage of blacks voted for Trump than voted for Romney. The same thing is true of Hispanics. In fact, Trump did better among minorities than any Republican since Ronald Reagan. He even got a majority of white female votes.

Why were all these people doing something they weren't supposed to do? On network television and even on cable television, no one had an answer.

Putting the media aside for the moment, do you know what Hillary's position is on trade deals with other countries? Of course, you don't. And neither does anyone else. When she spoke about the issue at all, she said one thing behind closed doors and another in public. The reason this doesn't matter on Wall Street (or to the editors of the New York Times ) is that they assume she has no real convictions and that money and special interest influence will always win out.

What about Hillary's solution to the problem of illegal immigration? Do you know what that is? How about her position on corporate tax reform? Or school choice? Or Obamacare? Or opportunities for blacks in inner cities?

I bet you don't know her positions on any of these topics. But I bet you do know Donald Trump's. Not in detail, of course. But I bet you know the general way in which he differs from Obama administration policies.

[Nov 16, 2016] Ultimately the Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one

Notable quotes:
"... Judging by the volume of complaints from Clinton sycophants insisting that people did not get behind Clinton or that it was purely her gender, they won't. Why would anyone get behind Clinton save the 1%? Her policies were pro-war, pro-Wall Street, and at odds with what the American people needed. Also, we should judge based on policy, not gender and Clinton comes way short of Sanders in that regard – in many regards, she is the antithesis of Sanders. ..."
"... "Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The only question is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility" I disagree. In my view, it is not a question at all. They have never taken responsibility for anything, and they never will. ..."
"... What would make Democrats focus on the working class? Nothing. They have lost and brought about destruction of the the Unions, which was the Democratic Base, and have become beholden to the money. The have noting in common with the working class, and no sympathy for their situation, either. ..."
"... What does Bill Clinton, who drive much of the policy in the '90s, and spent his early years running away form the rural poor in Arkansas (Law School, Rhodes Scholarship), have in common with working class people anywhere? ..."
"... Iron law of institutions applies. Position in the D apparatus is more important than political power – because with power come blame. ..."
"... I notice Obama worked hard to lose majorities in the house and Senate so he could point to the Republicans and say "it was their fault" except when he actually wanted something, and made it happen (such as TPP). ..."
"... Agreed with the first but not the second. It's typical liberal identity politics guilt tripping. That won't get you too far on the "white side" of Youngstown Ohio. ..."
"... Also suspect that the working-class, Rust-Belt Trump supporters will soon be thrown under the bus by their Standard Bearer, if the Transition Team appointments are any indicator: e.g. Privateers at SSA. ..."
"... My wife teaches primary grades in an inner city school. She has made it clear to me over the years that the challenges her children are facing are related to poverty, not race. She sees a big correlation between the financial status of a family and its family structure (one or more parents not present or on drugs) and the kids' success in school. Race is a minor factor. ..."
"... The problem with running on a class based platform in America is, well, it's America; and in good ol' America, we are taught that anyone can become a successful squillionare – ya know, hard work, nose-to-the-grindstone, blah, blah, blah. ..."
"... The rags to riches American success fable is so ingrained that ideas like taxing the rich a bit more fall flat because everyone thinks "that could be me someday. Just a few house flips, a clever new app, that ten-bagger (or winning lottery ticket) and I'm there" ("there" being part of the 1%). ..."
"... The idea that anyone can be successful (i.e. rich) is constantly promoted. ..."
"... I think this fantasy is beginning to fade a bit but the "wealth = success" idea is so deeply rooted in the American psyche I don't think it will ever fade completely away. ..."
"... If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy - which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog - you will come to an awful realization. It wasn't Beijing. It wasn't even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn't immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn't any of that. ..."
"... Nothing happened to them. There wasn't some awful disaster. There wasn't a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence - and the incomprehensible malice - of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain't what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down. ..."
"... The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump's speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. ..."
"... White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America ..."
"... Poor or Poorer whites have been demonised since the founding of the original Colonies, and were continuously pushed west to the frontiers by the ruling elites of New England and the South as a way of ridding themselves of "undesirables", who were then left to their own resources, and clung together for mutual assistance. ..."
"... White trash is a central, if disturbing, thread in our national narrative. The very existence of such people – both in their visibility and invisibility – is proof that American society obsesses over the mutable labels we give to the neighbors we wish not to notice. "They are not who we are". But they are who we are and have been a fundamental part of our history, whether we like it or not". ..."
"... "To be sure, Donald Trump did make a strong appeal to racists, homophobes, and misogynists " ..."
"... working class white women ..."
"... Obama is personally likeable ..."
"... History tells us the party establishment will move further right after election losses. And among the activist class there are identity purity battles going on. ..."
"... Watch as this happens yet again: "In most elections, U.S. politicians of both parties pretend to be concerned about their issues, then conveniently ignore them when they reach power and implement policies from the same Washington Consensus that has dominated the past 40 years." That is why we need a strong third party, a reformed election system with public support of campaigns and no private money, and free and fair media coverage. But it ain't gonna happen. ..."
"... Obviously, if the Democrats nominate yet another Clintonite Obamacrat all over again, I may have to vote for Trump all over again . . . to stop the next Clintonite before it kills again. ..."
www.nakedcapitalism.com
Altandmain November 15, 2016 at 10:08 am

Ultimately the Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The only question is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility for what happened.

Judging by the volume of complaints from Clinton sycophants insisting that people did not get behind Clinton or that it was purely her gender, they won't. Why would anyone get behind Clinton save the 1%? Her policies were pro-war, pro-Wall Street, and at odds with what the American people needed. Also, we should judge based on policy, not gender and Clinton comes way short of Sanders in that regard – in many regards, she is the antithesis of Sanders.

Class trumps race, to make a pun. If the left doesn't take the Democratic Party back and clean house, I expect that there is a high probability that 2020's election will look at lot like the 2004 elections.

I'd recommend someone like Sanders to run. Amongst the current crop, maybe Tulsi Gabbard or Nina Turner seem like the best candidates.

Carla November 15, 2016 at 10:42 am

"Establishment Democrats have nobody but themselves to blame for this one. The only question is whether or not they are willing to take responsibility" I disagree. In my view, it is not a question at all. They have never taken responsibility for anything, and they never will.

Synoia November 15, 2016 at 10:13 am

What would make Democrats focus on the working class? Nothing. They have lost and brought about destruction of the the Unions, which was the Democratic Base, and have become beholden to the money. The have noting in common with the working class, and no sympathy for their situation, either.

What does Bill Clinton, who drive much of the policy in the '90s, and spent his early years running away form the rural poor in Arkansas (Law School, Rhodes Scholarship), have in common with working class people anywhere?

The same question applies to Hillary, to Trump and the remainder of our "representatives" in Congress.

Without Unions, how are US Representatives from the working class elected?

What we are seeing is a shift in the US for the Republicans to become the populist party. They already have the churches, and with Trump they can gain the working class – although I do not underestimate the contempt help by our elected leaders for the Working Class and poor.

The have forgotten, if they ever believed: "There, but for the grace of God, go I".

Lambert Strether November 15, 2016 at 2:22 pm

> What would make Democrats focus on the working class?

The quest for political power.

Synoia November 15, 2016 at 11:19 pm

Iron law of institutions applies. Position in the D apparatus is more important than political power – because with power come blame.

I notice Obama worked hard to lose majorities in the house and Senate so he could point to the Republicans and say "it was their fault" except when he actually wanted something, and made it happen (such as TPP).

James Dodd November 15, 2016 at 10:46 am

What So Many People Don't Get About the U.S. Working Class – Harvard Business Review

anonymouse November 15, 2016 at 11:07 am

We know that class and economic insecurity drove many white people to vote for Trump. That's understandable. And now we are seeing a rise in hate incidents inspired by his victory. So obviously there is a race component in his support as well. So, if you, white person, didn't vote for Trump out of white supremacy, would you consider making a statement that disavows the acts of extremist whites? Do you vow to stand up and help if you see people being victimized? Do you vow not to stay silent when you encounter Trump supporters who ARE obviously in thrall to the white supremacist siren call?

Brad November 15, 2016 at 11:45 am

Agreed with the first but not the second. It's typical liberal identity politics guilt tripping. That won't get you too far on the "white side" of Youngstown Ohio.

And I wouldn't worry about it. When I worked at the at the USX Fairless works in Levittown PA in 1988, I was befriended by one steelworker who was a clear raving white supremacist racist. (Actually rather nonchalant about about it). However he was the only one I encountered who was like this, and eventually I figured out that he befriended a "newbie" like me because he had no friends among the other workers, including the whites. He was not popular at all.

Harold November 15, 2016 at 11:14 am

Left-wing populism unites people of all classes and all identities by emphasizing policies. That was what Bernie Sanders meant to me, at least.

Citizen Sissy November 15, 2016 at 11:38 am

I've always thought that Class, not Race, was the Third Rail of American Politics, and that the US was fast-tracking to a more shiny, happy feudalism.

Also suspect that the working-class, Rust-Belt Trump supporters will soon be thrown under the bus by their Standard Bearer, if the Transition Team appointments are any indicator: e.g. Privateers at SSA.

Gonna get interesting very quickly.

rd November 15, 2016 at 11:47 am

My wife teaches primary grades in an inner city school. She has made it clear to me over the years that the challenges her children are facing are related to poverty, not race. She sees a big correlation between the financial status of a family and its family structure (one or more parents not present or on drugs) and the kids' success in school. Race is a minor factor.

She also makes it clear to me that the Somali/Syrian/Iraqi etc. immigrant kids are going to do very well even though they come in without a word of English because they are working their butts off and they have the full support of their parents and community. These people left bad places and came to their future and they are determined to grab it with both hands. 40% of her class this year is ENL (English as a non-native language). Since it is an inner city school, they don't have teacher's aides in the class, so it is just one teacher in a class of 26-28 kids, of which a dozen struggle to understand English. Surprisingly, the class typically falls short of the "standards" that the state sets for the standardized exams. Yet many of the immigrant kids end up going to university after high school through sheer effort.

Bullying and extreme misbehavior (teachers are actually getting injured by violent elementary kids) is largely done by kids born in the US. The immigrant kids tend to be fairly well-behaved.

On a side note, the CSA at our local farmer's market said they couldn't find people to pick the last of their fall crops (it is in a rural community so a car is needed to get there). So the food bank was going out this week to pick produce like squash, onions etc. and we were told we could come out and pick what we wanted. Full employment?

Dave November 15, 2016 at 11:55 am

"Women and minorities encouraged to apply" is a Class issue?

shinola November 15, 2016 at 12:13 pm

The problem with running on a class based platform in America is, well, it's America; and in good ol' America, we are taught that anyone can become a successful squillionare – ya know, hard work, nose-to-the-grindstone, blah, blah, blah.

The rags to riches American success fable is so ingrained that ideas like taxing the rich a bit more fall flat because everyone thinks "that could be me someday. Just a few house flips, a clever new app, that ten-bagger (or winning lottery ticket) and I'm there" ("there" being part of the 1%).

The idea that anyone can be successful (i.e. rich) is constantly promoted.

I think this fantasy is beginning to fade a bit but the "wealth = success" idea is so deeply rooted in the American psyche I don't think it will ever fade completely away.

Lambert Strether November 15, 2016 at 2:15 pm

I'm recalling (too lazy to find the link) a poll a couple years ago that showed the number of American's identifying as "working class" increased, and the number as "middle class" decreased.

Vatch November 15, 2016 at 2:19 pm

Here ya go!

http://www.gallup.com/poll/182918/fewer-americans-identify-middle-class-recent-years.aspx

jrs November 15, 2016 at 6:11 pm

even working class is a total equivocation. A lot of them are service workers period.

TarheelDem November 15, 2016 at 12:24 pm

It is both. And it is a deliberate mechanism of class division to preserve power. Bill Cecil-Fronsman,

Common Whites: Class and Culture in Antebellum North Carolina identifies nine classes in the class structure of a state that mixed modern capitalist practice (plantations), agrarian YOYO independence (the non-slaveowning subsistence farms), town economies, and subsistence (farm labor). Those classes were typed racially and had certain economic, power, and social relations associated with them. For both credit and wages, few escaped the plantation economy and being subservient to the planter capitalists locally.

Moreover, ethnic identity was embedded in the law as a class marker. This system was developed independently or exported through imitation in various ways to the states outside North Carolina and the slave-owning states. The abolition of slavery meant free labor in multiple senses and the capitalist use of ethnic minorities and immigrants as scabs integrated them into an ethnic-class system, where it was broad ethnicity and not just skin-color that defined classes. Other ethnic groups, except Latinos and Muslim adherents, now have earned their "whiteness".

One suspects that every settler colonial society develops this combined ethnic-class structure in which the indigenous ("Indians" in colonial law) occupy one group of classes and imported laborers or slaves or intermixtures ("Indian", "Cape Colored" in South Africa) occupy another group of classes available for employment in production. Once employed, the relationship is exactly that of the slaveowner to the slave no matter how nicely the harsh labor management techniques of 17th century Barbados and Jamaica have been made kinder and gentler. But outside the workplace (and often still inside) the broader class structure applies even contrary to the laws trying to restrict the relationship to boss and worker.

Blacks are not singling themselves out to police; police are shooting unarmed black people without punishment. The race of the cop does not matter, but the institution of impunity makes it open season on a certain class of victims.

It is complicated because every legal and often managerial attempt has been made to reduce the class structure of previous economies to the pure capitalism demanded by current politics.

So when in a post Joe McCarthy, post-Cold War propaganda society, someone wants to protest the domination of capitalism, attacking who they perceive as de facto scabs to their higher incomes (true or not) is the chosen mode of political attack. Not standing up for the political rights of the victims of ethnically-marked violence and discrimination allows the future depression of wages and salaries by their selective use as a threat in firms. And at the individual firm and interpersonal level even this gets complicated because in spite of the pressure to just be businesslike, people do still care for each other.

This is a perennial mistake. In the 1930s Southern Textile Strike, some organizing was of both black and white workers; the unions outside the South rarely stood in solidarity with those efforts because they were excluding ethnic minorities from their unions; indeed, some locals were organized by ethnicity. That attitude also carried over to solidarity with white workers in the textile mills. And those white workers who went out on a limb to organize a union never forgot that failure in their labor struggle. It is the former textile areas of the South that are most into Trump's politics and not so much the now minority-majority plantation areas.

It still is race in the inner ring suburbs of ethnically diverse cities like St. Louis that hold the political lock on a lot of states. Because Ferguson to them seems like an invasion of the lower class. Class politics, of cultural status, based on ethnicity. Still called by that 19h century scientific racism terminology that now has been debunked - race - Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid. Indigenous, at least in the Americas, got stuck under Mongoloid.

You go organize the black, Latino, and white working class to form unions and gain power, and it will happen. It is why Smithfield Foods in North Carolina had to negotiate a contract. Race can be transcended in action.

Pretending the ethnic discrimination and even segregation does not exist and have its own problems is political suicide in the emerging demographics. Might not be a majority, but it is an important segment of the vote. Which is why the GOP suppressed minority voters through a variety of legal and shady electoral techniques. Why Trump wants to deport up to 12 million potential US citizens and some millions of already birthright minor citizens. And why we are likely to see the National Labor Review Board gutted of what little power it retains from 70 years of attack. Interesting what the now celebrated white working class was not offered in this election, likely because they would vote it down quicker because, you know, socialism.

armchair November 15, 2016 at 2:50 pm

Your comment reminded me of an episode in Seattle's history. Link . The unions realized they were getting beat in their strikes, by scabs, who were black. The trick was for the unions to bring the blacks into the union. This was a breakthrough, and it worked in Seattle, in 1934. There is a cool mural the union commissioned by, Pablo O'Higgins , to celebrate the accomplishment.

barrisj November 15, 2016 at 12:49 pm

Speaking of class, and class contempt , one must recall the infamous screed published by National Review columnist Kevin Williamson early this year, writing about marginalised white people here is a choice excerpt:

If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy - which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog - you will come to an awful realization. It wasn't Beijing. It wasn't even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn't immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn't any of that.

Nothing happened to them. There wasn't some awful disaster. There wasn't a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence - and the incomprehensible malice - of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain't what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump's speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.

http://crasstalk.com/2016/03/poor-white-america-deserves-to-die-says-national-review/

Now it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination to state that Williamson's animus can be replicated amongst many of the moneyed elite currently pushing and shoving their way into a position within the incoming Trump Administration. The Trump campaign has openly and cynically courted and won the votes of white people similar to those mentioned in Williamson's article, and who – doubtlessly – will be stiffed by policies vigourously opposed to their welfare that will be enacted during the Trump years. The truly intriguing aspect of the Trump election is: what will be the consequences of further degradation of the "lower orders' " quality of life by such actions? Wholesale retreat from electoral politics? Further embitterment and anger NOT toward those in Washington responsible for their lot but directed against ethnic and racial minorities "stealing their jawbs" and "getting welfare while we scrounge for a living"? I sincerely doubt whether the current or a reconstructed Democratic Party can at all rally this large chunk of white America by posing as their "champions" the class divide in the US is as profound as the racial chasm, and neither major party – because of internal contradictions – can offer a credible answer.

Waldenpond November 15, 2016 at 1:25 pm

[In addition to the growing inequality and concomitant wage stagnation for the middle and working classes, 9/11 and its aftermath has certainly has contributed to it as well, as, making PEOPLE LONG FOR the the Golden Age of Managerial Capitalism of the post-WWII era,]

Oh yeah, I noticed a big ol' hankerin' for that from the electorate. What definition could the author be using for Managerial Capitalism that could make it the opposite of inequality? The fight for power between administration and shareholders does not lead to equality for workers.

[So this gave force to the idea that the government was nothing but a viper's nest full of crony capitalist enablers,]

I don't think it's an 'idea' that the govt is crony capitalists and enablers. Ds need to get away from emotive descriptions. Being under/unemployed, houseless, homeless, unable to pay for rent, utilities, food . aren't feelings/ideas. When that type of language is used, it comes across as hand waving. There needs to be a shift of talking to rather than talking about.

If crony capitalism is an idea, it's simply a matter for Ds to identify a group (workers), create a hierarchy (elite!) and come up with a propaganda campaign (celebrities and musicians spending time in flyover country-think hanging out in coffee shops in a flannel shirt) to get votes. Promise to toss them a couple of crumbs with transfer payments (retraining!) or a couple of regulations (mandatory 3 week severance!) and bring out the obligatory D fall back- it would be better than the Rs would give them. On the other hand, if it's factual, the cronies need to be stripped of power and kicked out or the nature of the capitalist structure needs to be changed. It's laughable to imagine liberals or progressives would be open to changing the power and nature of the corporate charter (it makes me smile to think of the gasps).

The author admits that politicians lie and continue the march to the right yet uses the ACA, a march to the right, as a connection to Obama's (bombing, spying, shrinking middle class) likability.

[[But emphasizing class-based policies, rather than gender or race-based solutions, will achieve more for the broad swathe of voters, who comprehensively rejected the "neo-liberal lite" identity politics]

Oops. I got a little lost with the neo-liberal lite identity politics. Financialized identity politics? Privatized identity politics?

I believe women and poc have lost ground (economic and rights) so I would like examples of successful gender and race-based (liberal identity politics) solutions that would demonstrate that identity politics targeting is going to work on the working class.

If workers have lost power, to balance that structure, you give workers more power (I predict that will fail as unions fall under the generic definition of corporatist and the power does not rest with the members but with the CEOs of the unions – an example is a union that block the members from voting to endorse a candidate, go against the member preference and endorse the corporatist candidate), or you remove power from the corporation. Libs/progs can't merely propose something like vesting more power with shareholders to remove executives as an ameliorating maneuver which fails to address the power imbalance.

[This is likely only to accelerate the disintegration of the political system and economic system until the elephant in the room – class – is honestly and comprehensively addressed.]

barrisj November 15, 2016 at 1:41 pm

For a thorough exposition of lower-class white America from the inception of the Republic to today, a must-read is Nancy Isenberg's White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America . Poor or Poorer whites have been demonised since the founding of the original Colonies, and were continuously pushed west to the frontiers by the ruling elites of New England and the South as a way of ridding themselves of "undesirables", who were then left to their own resources, and clung together for mutual assistance.

Thus became the economic and cultural subset of "crackers", "hillbillies", "rednecks", and later, "Okies", a source of contempt and scorn by more economically and culturally endowed whites. The anti-bellum white Southern aristocracy cynically used poor whites as cheap tenant farming, all the while laying down race-based distinctions between them and black slaves – there is always someone lower on the totem pole, and that distinction remains in place today. Post-Reconstruction, the South maintained the cult of white superiority, all the while preserving the status of upper-class whites, and, by race-based public policies, assured lower-class whites that such "superiority" would be maintained by denying the black populations access to education, commerce, the vote, etc. And today, "white trash", or "trailer trash", or poorer whites in general are ubiquitous and as American as apple pie, in the North, the Midwest, and the West, not just the South. Let me quote Isenberg's final paragraph of her book:

White trash is a central, if disturbing, thread in our national narrative. The very existence of such people – both in their visibility and invisibility – is proof that American society obsesses over the mutable labels we give to the neighbors we wish not to notice. "They are not who we are". But they are who we are and have been a fundamental part of our history, whether we like it or not".

Enquiring Mind November 15, 2016 at 5:56 pm

Also read Albion's Seed for interesting discussion about the waves of immigration and how those went on to impact subsequent generations.

vegeholic November 15, 2016 at 2:04 pm

Presenting a plan for the future, which has a chance to be supported by the electorate, must start with scrupulous, unwavering honesty and a willingness to acknowledge inconvenient facts. The missing topic from the 2016 campaigns was declining energy surpluses and their pervasive, negative impact on the prosperity to which we feel entitled. Because of the energy cost of producing oil, a barrel today represents a declining fraction of a barrel in terms of net energy. This is the major factor in sluggish economic performance. Failing to make this case and, at the same time, offering glib and vacuous promises of growth and economic revival, are just cynical exercises in pandering.

Our only option is to mange the coming decline in a way that does not descend into chaos and anarchy. This can only be done with a clear vision of causes and effects and the wisdom and courage to accept facts. The alternative is yet more delusions and wishful thinking, whose shelf life is getting shorter.

ChrisAtRU November 15, 2016 at 2:26 pm

Marshall is awesome.

To be fair to the article, Marshall did in fact say:

"To be sure, Donald Trump did make a strong appeal to racists, homophobes, and misogynists "

IMO the point Marshall is making that race was not the primary reason #DJT won. And I concur.

This is borne out by the vote tallies which show that the number of R voters from 2012 to 2016 was pretty much on the level (final counts pending):
2016 R Vote: 60,925,616
2012 R Vote: 60,934,407
(Source: US Election Atlas )

Stop and think about this for a minute. Every hard core racist had their guy this time around; and yet, the R's could barely muster the same amount of votes as Mittens in 2012. This is huge, and supports the case that other things contributed far more than just race.

Class played in several ways:
Indifference/apathy/fatigue: Lambert posted some data from Carl Beijer on this yesterday in his Clinton Myths piece yesterday.
Anger: #HRC could not convince many people who voted for Bernie that she was interested in his outreach to the working class. More importantly, #HRC could not convince working class white women that she had anything other than her gender and Trump's boorishness as a counterpoint to offer.
Outsider v Insider: Working class people skeptical of political insiders rejected #HRC.

TG November 15, 2016 at 3:00 pm

Kudos. Well said.

If black workers were losing ground and white workers were gaining, one could indeed claim that racism is a problem. However, both black and white workers are losing ground – racism simply cannot be the major issue here. It's not racism, it's class war.

The fixation on race, the corporate funding of screaming 'black lives matter' agitators, the crude attempts to tie Donald Trump to the KKK (really? really?) are just divide and conquer, all over again.

Whatever his other faults, Donald Trump has been vigorous in trying to reach out to working class blacks, even though he knew he wouldn't get much of their vote and he knew that the media mostly would not cover it. Last I heard, he was continuing to try and reach out, despite the black 'leadership' class demanding that he is a racist. Because as was so well pointed out here, the one thing the super-rich fear is a united working class.

Divide and conquer. It's an old trick, but a powerful one.

Suggestion: if (and it's a big if) Trump really does enact policies that help working class blacks, and the Republicans peel away a significant fraction of the black vote, that would set the elites' hair on fire. Because it would mean that the black vote would be in play, and the Neoliberal Democrats couldn't just take their votes for granted. And wouldn't that be a thing.

pretzelattack November 16, 2016 at 3:09 am

that was good for 2016. I will look to see if he has stats for other years. i certainly agree that poor whites are more likely to be shot; executions of homeless people by police are one example. the kind of system that was imposed on the people of ferguson has often been imposed on poor whites, too. i do object to the characterization of black lives matter protestors as "screaming agitators"; that's all too reminiscent of the meme of "outside agitators" riling up the local peaceful black people to stand up for their rights that was characteristically used to smear the civil rights movement in the 60's.

tongorad November 15, 2016 at 3:18 pm

I might not have much in common at all with certain minorities, but it's highly likely that we share class status.
That's why the status quo allows identity politics and suppresses class politics.

Sound of the Suburbs November 15, 2016 at 5:02 pm

Having been around for sometime, I often wonder what The Guardian is going on about in the UK as it is supposed to be our left wing broadsheet.

It isn't a left I even recognised, what was it?

I do read it to try and find out what nonsense it is these people think.

Having been confused for many a year, I think I have just understood this identity based politics as it is about to disappear.

I now think it was a cunning ploy to split the electorate in a different way, to leave the UK working class with no political outlet.

Being more traditional left I often commented on our privately educated elite and private schools but the Guardian readership were firmly in favour of them.

How is this left?

Thank god this is now failing, get back to the old left, the working class and those lower down the scale.

It was clever while it lasted in enabling neoliberalism and a neglect of the working class, but clever in a cunning, nasty and underhand way.

Sound of the Suburbs November 15, 2016 at 5:33 pm

Thinking about it, so many of these recent elections have been nearly 50% / 50% splits, has there been a careful analysis of who neoliberalism disadvantages and what minorities need to be bought into the fold to make it work in a democracy.

Women are not a minority, but obviously that is a big chunk if you can get them under your wing. The black vote is another big group when split away and so on.

Brexit nearly 50/50; Austria nearly 50/50; US election nearly 50/50.

giovanni zibordi November 15, 2016 at 5:56 pm

So, 85% of Blacks vote Hillary against Sanders (left) and 92% vote Hillary against Trump (right), but is no race. It's the class issue that sends them to the Clintons. Kindly explain how.

dk November 15, 2016 at 7:54 pm

Obama is personally likeable

Funny think about likeability, likeable people can be real sh*ts. So I started looking into hanging out with less likeable people. I found that they can be considerably more appreciative of friendship and loyalty, maybe because they don't have such easy access to it.

Entertainment media has cautiously explored some aspect so fthis, but in politics, "nice" is still disproportionately values, and not appreciated as a possible flag.

Erelis November 15, 2016 at 10:59 pm

Watch out buddy. They are onto you. I have seen some comments on democratic party sites claiming the use of class to explain Hillary's loss is racist. The democratic party is a goner. History tells us the party establishment will move further right after election losses. And among the activist class there are identity purity battles going on.

Gaylord November 15, 2016 at 11:24 pm

Watch as this happens yet again: "In most elections, U.S. politicians of both parties pretend to be concerned about their issues, then conveniently ignore them when they reach power and implement policies from the same Washington Consensus that has dominated the past 40 years." That is why we need a strong third party, a reformed election system with public support of campaigns and no private money, and free and fair media coverage. But it ain't gonna happen.

different clue November 16, 2016 at 3:47 am

Well it certainly won't happen by itself. People are going to have to make it happen. Here in Michigan we have a tiny new party called Working Class Party running 3 people here and there. I voted for two of them. If the Democrats run somebody no worse than Trump next time, I will be free to vote Working Class Party to see what happens.

Obviously, if the Democrats nominate yet another Clintonite Obamacrat all over again, I may have to vote for Trump all over again . . . to stop the next Clintonite before it kills again.

[Nov 15, 2016] Thomas Frank Clintons Led the Democratic Betrayal of the Average Working American For Big Money

Notable quotes:
"... We so easily forget. Once the cry of so-called prosperity is heard in the land, we all become so stampeded by the spirit of the god Mammon, that we cannot serve the dictates of social conscience. . . . We are here to serve notice that the economic order is the invention of man; and that it cannot dominate certain eternal principles of justice and of God... ..."
"... The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." ..."
"... You can fool all of the people, some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time- but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. ..."
Nov 14, 2016 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
"There are two theories of prosperity and of well-being: The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory - and I suppose this goes back to the days of Noah - I won't say Adam and Eve, because they had a less complicated situation - but, at least, back in the days of the flood, there was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward, just as yeast rises up, through the ranks...

We so easily forget. Once the cry of so-called prosperity is heard in the land, we all become so stampeded by the spirit of the god Mammon, that we cannot serve the dictates of social conscience. . . . We are here to serve notice that the economic order is the invention of man; and that it cannot dominate certain eternal principles of justice and of God...

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

You can fool all of the people, some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time- but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Here is Youtube video ( Nov 2, 2016 )

[Nov 15, 2016] The Trump Ploy

Notable quotes:
"... Knowing how angry the working class has become, the deep state could not install Hillary, for that would have been a tiresome rehash of another Clinton presidency. With NAFTA, Bill launched the job offshoring that has wrecked this country, and those most affected by it, working class whites, know damn well who's responsible. The Clinton brand has become anathema to middle America. ..."
"... On the foreign front, America's belligerence will not ease up under a Trump presidency, for without a hyper kinetic military to browbeat and bomb, the world will stop lending us money. The US doesn't just wage wars to fatten the military banking complex, but to prop up the US Dollar and prevent our economy from collapsing. The empire yields tangible benefits for even the lowliest Americans. ..."
Nov 15, 2016 | www.unz.com
Michele Paccione / Shutterstock.com Universally, Trump was depicted as an anti-establishment candidate. Washington and Wall Street hated him, and the media were deployed to vilify him endlessly. If they could not discredit Trump enough, surely they would steal the election from him. Some even suggested Trump would be assassinated.

Acting the part, Trump charged repeatedly that the election was rigged, and he was right, of course. During the primaries, Hillary Clinton received debate questions in advance from CNN. More seriously, 30 states used voting machines that could easily be hacked.

A leaked tape of Trump making obscene comments about groping women became further proof that the establishment was out to get him. In spite of all this, Trump managed to win by a landslide, so what happened?

To steal an American election, one only needs to tamper with votes in two or three critical states, and since Hillary didn't win, we must conclude that she was never the establishment's chosen puppet. As Trump claimed, the fix was in, all right, except that it was rigged in his favor, as born out by the fact.

While everybody else yelped that Trump would never be allowed to win, I begged to differ. After the Orlando false flag shooting on June 12th, 2016, I wrote:

In 2008, Obama was touted as a political outsider who will hose away all of the rot and bloody criminality of the Bush years. He turned out to be a deft move by our ruling class. Though fools still refuse to see it, Obama is a perfect servant of our military banking complex. Now, Trump is being trumpeted as another political outsider.

A Trump presidency will temporarily appease restless, lower class whites, while serving as a magnet for liberal anger. This will buy our ruling class time as they continue to wage war abroad while impoverishing Americans back home. Like Obama, Trump won't fulfill any of his election promises, and this, too, will be blamed on bipartisan politics.

On September 24th, I doubled down:

Mind-fucked, most Americans can't even see that an American president's only task is to disguise the deep state's intentions. Chosen by the deep state to explain away its crimes, our president's pronouncements are nearly always contradicted by the deep state's actions. While the president talks of peace, democracy, racial harmony, prosperity for Main Street and going after banksters, etc., the deep state wages endless war, stages meaningless elections, stokes racial hatred, bankrupts nearly all Americans and enables massive Wall Street crimes, etc.

Only the infantile will imagine the president as any kind of savior or, even more hilariously, anti-establishment. Since the deep state won't even tolerate a renegade reporter at, say, the San Jose Mercury News, how can you expect a deep state's enemy to land in the White House?! It cannot happen.

A presidential candidate will promise to fix all that's wrong with our government, and this stance, this appearance, is actually very useful for the deep state, for it gives Americans hope. Promising everything, Obama delivered nothing. So who do you think is being primed by the deep state to be our next false savior?

Who benefits from false flag terrorist attacks blamed on Muslims? Who gains when blacks riot? Why is the Democratic Party propping up a deeply-despised and terminally ill war criminal? More personable Bernie Sanders was nixed by the deep state since it had another jester in mind.

The first presidential debate is Monday. Under stress, Hillary's eyes will dart in separate directions. Coughing nonstop for 90 minutes, her highness will hack up a gazillion unsecured emails. Her head will jerk spasmodically, plop onto the floor and, though decapitated, continue to gush platitudes and lies. "A Very Impressive Performance," CNBC and CNN will announce. Come November, though, Trump will be installed because his constituency needs to be temporarily pacified. The deep state knows that white people are pissed.

The media were out to get Trump, pundits from across the political spectrum kept repeating, but the truth is that the media made Trump. Long before the election, Trump became a household name, thanks to the media.

Your average American can't name any other real estate developer, casino owner or even his own senators, but he has known Trump since forever. For more than a decade, Trump was a reality TV star, with two of his children also featured regularly on The Apprentice. Trump's "You're fired" and his hair became iconic. Trump appeared on talk shows, had cameo roles in movies and owned the Miss Universe pageant. In 2011, Obama joked that Trump as president would deck out the White House in garish fashion, with his own name huge on the façade. The suave, slick prez roasted Trump again in 2016. Trump has constantly been in the limelight.

It's true that during the presidential campaign, Trump received mostly negative press, but this only ramped up support among his core constituency. Joe Sixpacks had long seen the media as not just against everything they cherished, but against them as people, so the more the media attacked Trump, the more popular he became among the white working class.

Like politicians, casinos specialize in empty promises. Trump, then, is a master hustler, just like Obama, and with help from the media, this New York billionaire became a darling of the flyover states. Before his sudden transformation, Trump was certainly an insider. He donated $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, and Bill and Hillary attended his third wedding. Golf buddies, The Donald and Bill were also friends with one Jeffrey Epstein, owner of the infamous Lolita Express and a sex orgy, sex slave island in the Caribbean.

In 2002, New York Magazine published "Jeffrey Epstein: International Money of Mystery." This asskissing piece begins, "He comes with cash to burn, a fleet of airplanes, and a keen eye for the ladies-to say nothing of a relentless brain that challenges Nobel Prize-winning scientists across the country-and for financial markets around the world."

Trump is quoted, "I've known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it-Jeffrey enjoys his social life."

Bill Clinton shouts out, "Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of twenty-first-century science. I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service, and combating HIV/AIDS."

Epstein gushes back, "If you were a boxer at the downtown gymnasium at 14th Street and Mike Tyson walked in, your face would have the same look as these foreign leaders had when Clinton entered the room. He is the world's greatest politician."

Even during a very nasty election campaign, Trump stayed clear of Clinton's association with Epstein because he himself had been chummy with the convicted pervert. Trump also never brought up the Clintons' drug running in Mena or the many mysterious deaths of those whose existence inconvenienced their hold on power.

With eight years in the White House, plus stints as a senator then secretary of state, Clinton is considered the ultimate insider. Though a novice politician, Trump is also an insider, and it's a grand joke of the establishment that they've managed to convince Joe Sixpacks everywhere that Trump will save them.

Knowing how angry the working class has become, the deep state could not install Hillary, for that would have been a tiresome rehash of another Clinton presidency. With NAFTA, Bill launched the job offshoring that has wrecked this country, and those most affected by it, working class whites, know damn well who's responsible. The Clinton brand has become anathema to middle America.

While Clinton says America is already great, Trump promises to make America great again, but the decline of the US will only accelerate. Our manufacturing base is handicapped because American workers will not put up with Chinese wages, insanely long hours or living in cramped factory dormitories. In a global economy, those who can suck it up best get the jobs.

On the foreign front, America's belligerence will not ease up under a Trump presidency, for without a hyper kinetic military to browbeat and bomb, the world will stop lending us money. The US doesn't just wage wars to fatten the military banking complex, but to prop up the US Dollar and prevent our economy from collapsing. The empire yields tangible benefits for even the lowliest Americans.

With his livelihood vaporized, the poor man does not care for LGBT rights, the glass ceiling or climate change. Supplementing his wretched income with frequent treks to the church pantry, if not blood bank, he needs immediate relief. It's a shame he's staking his hopes on an imposter.

The deep state ushered in Trump because he's clearly their most useful decoy. As the country hopes in vain, the crooked men behind the curtain will go on with business as usual. Trump is simply an Obama for a different demographic. Nothing will change for the better.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate . He's tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, Postcards from the End of America .

[Nov 15, 2016] Break Up the Democratic Party Its Time for the Clintons and Rubin to Go – and Soros Too by Michael Hudson

Notable quotes:
"... Democrats still seem amazed that voters are more concerned about economic conditions and resentment against Wall Street (no bankers jailed, few junk mortgages written down). It is a sign of their wrong path that party strategists are holding onto the same identity politics they have used since the 1960s to divide Americans into hyphenated special-interest groups. ..."
"... Obviously, the bottom 95 Percent realize that their incomes and net worth have declined, not recovered. ..."
"... On the bright side, these "trade" agreements to enable corporations to block public laws protecting the environment, consumers and society at large are now presumably dead. ..."
"... Instead of a love fest within the Democratic Party's ranks, the blame game is burning. The Democrats raised a reported $182 million dollars running up to the election. But when democratic candidates from Russ Feingold in Wisconsin and other candidates in Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania asked for help. Hillary monopolized it all for TV ads, leaving these candidates in the lurch. The election seemed to be all about her, about personality and identity politics, not about the economic issues paramount in most voters' minds. ..."
"... Six months ago the polls showed her $1 billion spent on data polling, TV ads and immense staff of sycophants to have been a vast exercise in GIGO. ..."
"... If the party is to be recaptured, now is the moment to move. The 2016 election sounded the death knell for the identity politics. Its aim was to persuade voters not to think of their identity in economic terms, but to think of themselves as women or as racial and ethnic groups first and foremost, not as having common economic interests. This strategy to distract voters from economic policies has obviously failed. ..."
"... It did not work with women. In Florida, only 51 percent of white women are estimated to have voted for Hillary. It didn't even work very well in ethnic Hispanic precincts. They too were more concerned about their own job opportunities. ..."
"... The ethnic card did work with many black voters (although not so strongly; fewer blacks voted for Hillary than had showed up for Obama). Under the Obama administration for the past eight years, blacks have done worse in terms of income and net worth than any other grouping, according to the Federal Reserve Board's statistics. But black voters were distracted from their economic interests by the Democrats' ethnic-identity politics. ..."
"... This election showed that voters have a sense of when they're being lied to. After eight years of Obama's demagogy, pretending to support the people but delivering his constituency to his financial backers on Wall Street. "Identity politics" has given way to the stronger force of economic distress. Mobilizing identity politics behind a Wall Street program will no longer work. ..."
"... The Rust Belt swing states that shifted away from backing Obama for the last two terms are not racist states. They voted for Obama twice, after all. But seeing his support Wall Street, they had lost faith in her credibility – and were won by Bernie in his primaries against Hillary. ..."
"... Most of all, it was Hillary's asking voters to ignore her economic loyalty to Wall Street simply to elect a woman, and her McCarthy-like accusations that Trump was "Putin's candidate" (duly echoed by Paul Krugman). ..."
"... The anti-Trump rallies mobilized by George Soros and MoveOn look like a preemptive attempt to capture the potential socialist left for the old Clinton divide-and-conquer strategy. ..."
Nov 15, 2016 | www.counterpunch.org
In the week leading up to last Tuesday's election the press was busy writing obituaries for the Republican Party. This continued even after Donald Trump's "surprising" victory – which, like the 2008 bank-fraud crash, "nobody could have expected." The pretense is that Trump saw what no other politician saw: that the economy has not recovered since 2008.

Democrats still seem amazed that voters are more concerned about economic conditions and resentment against Wall Street (no bankers jailed, few junk mortgages written down). It is a sign of their wrong path that party strategists are holding onto the same identity politics they have used since the 1960s to divide Americans into hyphenated special-interest groups.

Obviously, the bottom 95 Percent realize that their incomes and net worth have declined, not recovered. National Income and Federal Reserve statistics show that all growth has accrued to just 5 percent of the population. Hillary is said to have spent $1 billion on polling, TV advertising and high-salaried staff members, but managed not to foresee the political reaction to this polarization. She and her coterie ignored economic policy as soon as Bernie was shoved out of the way and his followers all but told to join a third party. Her campaign speech tried to convince voters that they were better off than they were eight years ago. They knew better!

So the question now is whether Donald Trump will really a maverick and shake up the Republican Party. There seems to be a fight going on for Donald's soul – or at least the personnel he appoints to his cabinet. Thursday and Friday saw corporate lobbyists in the Republican leadership love-bombing him like the Moonies or Hari Krishna cults welcoming a new potential recruit. Will he simply surrender now and pass on the real work of government to the Republican apparatchiks?

The stock market thinks so! On Wednesday it soared almost by 300 points, and repeated this gain on Thursday, setting a DJIA record! Pharmaceuticals are way up, as higher drug prices loom for Medicaid and Medicare. Stocks of the pipelines and major environmental polluters are soaring, from oil and gas to coal, mining and forestry, expecting U.S. environmental leadership to be as dead under Trump as it was under Obama and his push for the TPP and TTIP (with its fines for any government daring to impose standards that cost these companies money). On the bright side, these "trade" agreements to enable corporations to block public laws protecting the environment, consumers and society at large are now presumably dead.

For now, personalities are policy. A problem with this is that anyone who runs for president is in it partly for applause. That was Carter's weak point, leading him to cave into Democratic apparatchiks in 1974. It looks like Trump may be a similar susceptibility. He wants to be loved, and the Republican lobbyists are offering plenty of applause if only he will turn to them and break his campaign promises in the way that Obama did in 2008. It would undo his hope to be a great president and champion of the working class that was his image leading up to November 8.

The fight for the Democratic Party's future (dare I say "soul"?)

In her Wednesday morning post mortem speech, Hillary made a bizarre request for young people (especially young women) to become politically active as Democrats after her own model. What made this so strange is that the Democratic National Committee has done everything it can to discourage millennials from running. There are few young candidates – except for corporate and Wall Street Republicans running as Blue Dog Democrats. The left has not been welcome in the party for a decade – unless it confines itself only to rhetoric and demagogy, not actual content. For Hillary's DNC coterie the problem with millennials is that they are not shills for Wall Street. The treatment of Bernie Sanders is exemplary. The DNC threw down the gauntlet.

Instead of a love fest within the Democratic Party's ranks, the blame game is burning. The Democrats raised a reported $182 million dollars running up to the election. But when democratic candidates from Russ Feingold in Wisconsin and other candidates in Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania asked for help. Hillary monopolized it all for TV ads, leaving these candidates in the lurch. The election seemed to be all about her, about personality and identity politics, not about the economic issues paramount in most voters' minds.

Six months ago the polls showed her $1 billion spent on data polling, TV ads and immense staff of sycophants to have been a vast exercise in GIGO. From May to June the Democratic National Committee (DNC) saw polls showing Bernie Sanders beating Trump, but Hillary losing. Did the Democratic leadership really prefer to lose with Hillary than win behind him and his social democratic reformers.

Hillary doesn't learn. Over the weekend she claimed that her analysis showed that FBI director Comey's reports "rais[ing] doubts that were groundless, baseless," stopped her momentum. This was on a par with the New York Times analysis that had showed her with an 84 percent probability of winning last Tuesday. She still hasn't admitted that here analysis was inaccurate.

What is the Democratic Party's former constituency of labor and progressive reformers to do? Are they to stand by and let the party be captured in Hillary's wake by Robert Rubin's Goldman Sachs-Citigroup gang that backed her and Obama?

If the party is to be recaptured, now is the moment to move. The 2016 election sounded the death knell for the identity politics. Its aim was to persuade voters not to think of their identity in economic terms, but to think of themselves as women or as racial and ethnic groups first and foremost, not as having common economic interests. This strategy to distract voters from economic policies has obviously failed.

It did not work with women. In Florida, only 51 percent of white women are estimated to have voted for Hillary. It didn't even work very well in ethnic Hispanic precincts. They too were more concerned about their own job opportunities.

The ethnic card did work with many black voters (although not so strongly; fewer blacks voted for Hillary than had showed up for Obama). Under the Obama administration for the past eight years, blacks have done worse in terms of income and net worth than any other grouping, according to the Federal Reserve Board's statistics. But black voters were distracted from their economic interests by the Democrats' ethnic-identity politics.

This election showed that voters have a sense of when they're being lied to. After eight years of Obama's demagogy, pretending to support the people but delivering his constituency to his financial backers on Wall Street. "Identity politics" has given way to the stronger force of economic distress. Mobilizing identity politics behind a Wall Street program will no longer work.

If we are indeed experiencing a revival of economic class consciousness, who should lead the fight to clean up the Democratic Party Wall Street leadership? Will it be the Wall Street wing, or can Bernie and perhaps Elizabeth Warren make their move?

There is only one way to rescue the Democrats from the Clintons and Rubin's gang. That is to save the Democratic Party from being tarred irreversibly as the party of Wall Street and neocon brinkmanship. It is necessary to tell the Clintons and the Rubin gang from Wall Street to leave now . And take Evan Bayh with them.

The danger of not taking this opportunity to clean out the party now

The Democratic Party can save itself only by focusing on economic issues – in a way that reverses its neoliberal stance under Obama, and indeed going back to Bill Clinton's pro-Wall Street administration. The Democrats need to do what Britain's Labour Party did by cleaning out Tony Blair's Thatcherites. As Paul Craig Roberts wrote over the weekend: "Change cannot occur if the displaced ruling class is left intact after a revolution against them. We have proof of this throughout South America. Every revolution by the indigenous people has left unmolested the Spanish ruling class, and every revolution has been overthrown by collusion between the ruling class and Washington." [1] Otherwise the Democrats will be left as an empty shell.

Now is the time for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the few other progressives who have not been kept out of office by the DNC to make their move and appointing their own nominees to the DNC. If they fail, the Democratic Party is dead.

An indication of how hard the present Democratic Party leadership will fight against this change of allegiance is reflected in their long fight against Bernie Sanders and other progressives going back to Dennis Kucinich. The past five days of MoveOn demonstrations sponsored by Hillary's backer George Soros may be an attempt to preempt the expected push by Bernie's supporters, by backing Howard Dean for head of the DNC while organizing groups to be called on for what may be an American "Maidan Spring."

Perhaps some leading Democrats preferred to lose with their Wall Street candidate Hillary than win with a reformer who would have edged them out of their right-wing positions. But the main problem was hubris. Hillary's coterie thought they could make their own reality. They believed that hundreds of millions of dollars of TV and other advertising could sway voters. But eight years of Obama's rescue of Wall Street instead of the economy was enough for most voters to see how deceptive his promises had been. And they distrusted Hillary's pretended embrace of Bernie's opposition to TPP.

The Rust Belt swing states that shifted away from backing Obama for the last two terms are not racist states. They voted for Obama twice, after all. But seeing his support Wall Street, they had lost faith in her credibility – and were won by Bernie in his primaries against Hillary.

Donald Trump is thus Obama's legacy. Last week's vote was a backlash. Hillary thought that getting Barack and Michelle Obama to campaign as her surrogates would help, but it turned out to be the kiss of death. Obama egged her on by urging voters to "save his legacy" by supporting her as his Third Term. But voters did not want his legacy of giveaways to the banks, the pharmaceutical and health-insurance monopolies.

Most of all, it was Hillary's asking voters to ignore her economic loyalty to Wall Street simply to elect a woman, and her McCarthy-like accusations that Trump was "Putin's candidate" (duly echoed by Paul Krugman). On Wednesday, Obama's former Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul tweeted that "Putin intervened in our elections and succeeded." It was as if the Republicans and even the FBI were a kind of fifth column for the KGB. Her receptiveness to cutting back Social Security and steering wage withholding into the stock market did not help – especially her hedge fund campaign contributors. Compulsory health-insurance fees continue to rise for healthy young people rise as the main profit center that Obamacare has offered the health-insurance monopoly.

The anti-Trump rallies mobilized by George Soros and MoveOn look like a preemptive attempt to capture the potential socialist left for the old Clinton divide-and-conquer strategy. The group was defeated five years ago when it tried to capture Occupy Wall Street to make it part of the Democratic Party. It's attempt to make a comeback right now should be heard as an urgent call to Bernie's supporters and other "real" Democrats that they need to create an alternative pretty quickly so as not to let "socialism" be captured by the Soros and his apparatchiks carried over from the Clinton campaign.

Notes.

[1] Paul Craig Roberts, "The Anti-Trump Protesters Are Tools of the Oligarchy," November 11, 2016.

Michael Hudson's new book, Killing the Host is published in e-format by CounterPunch Books and in print by Islet . He can be reached via his website, [email protected]

[Nov 15, 2016] End of outsourcing of the USA elite illiberal tendencies to the areas of the imperial domination and subjugation of foreigners and hit of the USA population produced the current backlash and secured the election of Trump

Nov 15, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

likbez 11.15.16 at 6:09 pm 124

@115

Liberal democracy has always depended on its relationships with an illiberal Other of one sort or another, and all too often "liberal progressivism" merely means responding to such relationships in one's own society, the capitalist exploitation of a domestic proletariat, by "outsourcing" our illiberal tendencies to consist largely of the imperial domination and subjugation of foreigners.

(Which can even happen inside one's own borders, as long as it remains suitably "illegal"; notice how much less ideologically problematic it is to document the presence and labor of the most brutally exploited migrant workers in e.g. China or the Gulf Arab states than in more liberal societies like the US or EU.)

It's the height of either hypocrisy or obliviousness for those who consider themselves liberal progressives to then act surprised when the people charged with carrying out this domination and subjugation on our behalf - our Colonel Jessups, if you will - demand that we stop hiding our society's illiberal underbelly and acknowledge/celebrate it for what it is , a demand that may be the single most authentic marker of the transition from liberalism to fascism.

In Pareto "elite rotation" terms, the election of Trump definitely means rotation of the US neoliberal elite. "Status quo" faction of the elite was defeated due to backlash over globalization and disappearance of meaningful well-paid jobs, with mass replacement of them by McJobs and temps/contractors.

Whether openness about domination and subjugation is an "authentic marker of the transition from [neo]liberalism to fascism" remains to be seen, unless we assume that this transition (to the National Security State) already happened long ego.

In a way illegal immigrants in the USA already represented stable and growing "new slaves" class for decades. Their existence and contribution to the US economy was never denied or suppressed. And even Greenspan acknowledged that Iraq war was about oil. So Trump put nothing new on the table other then being slightly more blunt.

likbez 11.15.16 at 7:19 pm 125

@120

bob mcmanus 11.15.16 at 4:31 pm

Neoliberalism and neo-imperialism show pretty much the contradictions of the older globalist orders (late 19th c), they are just now distributed so as re-intensify the differences, the combined etc, and concentrate the accumulation.

And elites are fighting over the spoils.

Yes, neoliberalism and neo-imperialism are much better and more precise terms, then fuzzy notions like "liberal progressivism" . May be we should use Occam razor and discard the term "[neo]liberal progressivism". The term "soft neoliberals" is IMHO good enough description of the same.

As for contradictions of the "older globalist orders (late 19th c)" the key difference is that under neoliberalism armies play the role of "can opener" and after then the direct occupation were by-and-large replaced with financial institutions and with indirect "debt slavery". In many cases neoliberal subjugation is achieved via color revolution mechanism, without direct military force involved.

Neo-colonialism creates higher level of concentration of risks due to the greed of financial elite which was demonstrated in full glory in 2008. As such it looks less stable then old colonialism. And it generates stronger backlash, which typically has elements of anti-Americanism, as we see in Philippines now. Merkel days might also be numbered.

Also TBTF banks are now above the law as imposing judgments on them after the crisis can have disastrous economic externalities. At the same time the corruption of regulators via revolving door mechanisms blocks implementing meaningful preventive regulatory reforms.

In other words, like with Soviet nomenklatura, with the neoliberal elite we see the impossibility of basic change, either toward taming the TBTF or toward modification of an aggressive neocolonial foreign policy with its rampant militarism.

[Nov 14, 2016] Clintons electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation

Notable quotes:
"... The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by 11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent. ..."
"... Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation ..."
"... Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the working class, regardless of race or gender. ..."
Nov 14, 2016 | www.wsws.org
The elections saw a massive shift in party support among the poorest and wealthiest voters. The share of votes for the Republicans amongst the most impoverished section of workers, those with family incomes under $30,000, increased by 10 percentage points from 2012. In several key Midwestern states, the swing of the poorest voters toward Trump was even larger: Wisconsin (17-point swing), Iowa (20 points), Indiana (19 points) and Pennsylvania (18 points).

The swing to Republicans among the $30,000 to $50,000 family income range was 6 percentage points. Those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 swung away from the Republicans compared to 2012 by 2 points.

The affluent and rich voted for Clinton by a much broader margin than they had voted for the Democratic candidate in 2012. Among those with incomes between $100,000 and $200,000, Clinton benefited from a 9-point Democratic swing. Voters with family incomes above $250,000 swung toward Clinton by 11 percentage points. The number of Democratic voters amongst the wealthiest voting block increased from 2.16 million in 2012 to 3.46 million in 2016-a jump of 60 percent.

Clinton was unable to make up for the vote decline among women (2.1 million), African Americans (3.2 million), and youth (1.2 million), who came overwhelmingly from the poor and working class, with the increase among the rich (1.3 million).

Clinton's electoral defeat is bound up with the nature of the Democratic Party, an alliance of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus with privileged sections of the upper-middle class based on the politics of race, gender and sexual orientation.

Over the course of the last forty years, the Democratic Party has abandoned all pretenses of social reform, a process escalated under Obama. Working with the Republican Party and the trade unions, it is responsible for enacting social policies that have impoverished vast sections of the working class, regardless of race or gender.

[Nov 14, 2016] Note on the signs of decline of the US neoliberal empire

crookedtimber.org

likbez 11.15.16 at 1:19 am 93

Salazar 11.14.16 at 12:11 am #18

> How is the American Empire in decline? And how do we measure its decline?
We can only speculate about signs of decline. From WaTimes ( http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/29/cal-thomas-america-shows-decline-signs-of-empires-/ )
British diplomat John Glubb wrote a book called "The Fate of Empires and Search For Survival." Glubb noted that the average age of empires since the time of ancient Assyria (859-612 B.C.) is 250 years. Only the Mameluke Empire in Egypt and the Levant (1250-1517) made it as far as 267 years. America is 238 years old and is exhibiting signs of decline. All empires begin, writes Glubb, with the age of pioneers, followed by ages of conquest, commerce, affluence, intellect and decadence. America appears to have reached the age of decadence, which Glubb defines as marked by "defensiveness, pessimism, materialism, frivolity, an influx of foreigners, the welfare state, [and] a weakening of religion."

The most important is probably the fact that the ideology of the current US empire -- neoliberalism (called here "liberal progressivism") -- became discredited after 2008. What happened after the collapse of the Marxist ideology with the USSR is well known. It took 46 years (if we assume that the collapse started in 1945 as the result of victory in WWII, when the Soviet army has a chance to see the standard of living in Western countries). Why the USA should be different ? Decline of empires is very slow and can well take a half a century. Let's say it might take 50 years from 9/11 or October 2008.

One telling sign is the end of "American hegemony" in the global political sphere. One telling sign is the end of "American hegemony" in the global political sphere. As Lupita hypothesized here Trump might be the last desperate attempt to reverse this process.

Another, the deterioration of the standard of living of the USA population and declining infrastructure, both typically are connected with the overextension of empire. In Fortune ( http://fortune.com/2015/07/20/united-states-decline-statistics-economic/ ) Jill Coplan lists 12 signs of the decline.

Trump election is another sign of turmoil. The key message of his election is "The institutions we once trusted deceived us" That includes the Democratic Party and all neoliberal MSM. Like was the case with the USSR, the loss of influence of neoliberal propaganda machine is a definite sign of the decline of empire.

Degeneration of the neoliberal political elite that is also clearly visible in the current set of presidential candidates might be another sign. Hillary Clinton dragged to the car on 9/11 commemorative event vividly reminds the state of health of a couple of members of Soviet Politburo .

See also:

[Nov 14, 2016] Three Myths About Clintons Defeat in Election 2016 Debunked

Notable quotes:
"... Because the following talking points prevent a (vulgar) identity politics -dominated Democrat Party from owning its loss, debunking them is then important beyond winning your Twitter wars. I'm trying to spike the Blame Cannons! ..."
"... Remember, Trump won Wisconsin by a whisker. So for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that black voters stayed home because they were racist, costing Clinton Wisconsin. ..."
"... These 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 . ..."
"... The Obama-Trump counties were critical in delivering electoral victories for Trump. Many of them fall in states that supported Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016. In all, these flipped states accounted for 83 electoral votes. (Michigan and New Hampshire could add to this total, but their results were not finalized as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.) ..."
"... And so, for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that counties who voted for the black man in 2012 were racist because they didn't vote for the white women in 2016. Bringing me, I suppose, to sexism. ..."
"... These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs, for whom boorish men are an occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat. They rolled their eyes over Trump's unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his spiel that he'd be the greatest job producer who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bill's. ..."
"... pink slips have hit entire neighbourhoods, and towns. The angry white working class men who voted in such strength for Trump do not live in an emotional vacuum. They are loved by white working class women – their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers, who participate in their remaindered pain. I t is everywhere in the interviews. "My dad lost his business", "My husband hasn't been the same since his job at the factory went away" . ..."
"... So, for this talking point to be true, you have to believe that sexism simultaneously increased the male vote for Trump, yet did not increase the female vote for Clinton. Shouldn't they move in opposite directions? ..."
"... First, even assuming that the author's happy but unconscious conflation of credentials with education is correct, it wasn't the "dunces" who lost two wars, butchered the health care system, caused the financial system to collapse through accounting control fraud, or invented the neoliberal ideology that was kept real wages flat for forty years and turned the industrial heartland into a wasteland. That is solely, solely down to - only some , to be fair - college-educated voters. It is totally and 100% not down to the "dunces"; they didn't have the political or financial power to achieve debacles on the grand scale. ..."
"... Second, the "dunces" were an important part of Obama's victories ..."
"... Not only has polling repeatedly underplayed the importance of white voters without college degrees, it's underplayed their importance to the Obama coalition: They were one-third of Obama votes in 2012. They filled the gap between upper-class whites and working-class nonwhites. Trump gained roughly 15 percentage points with them compared to Romney in 2012. ..."
"... "No, you are ignorant! You threw away the vote and put Trump in charge." Please, it will be important to know what derogatory camp you belong in when the blame game swings into full gear. *snark ..."
"... 'Stupid' was the word I got very tired of in my social net. Two variant targets: ..."
"... 1) Blacks for not voting their interests. The responses included 'we know who our enemies are' and 'don't tell me what to think.' ..."
"... Mostly it was vs rural, non-college educated. iirc, it was the Secretary of Agriculture, pleading for funds, who said the rural areas were where military recruits came from. A young fella I know, elite football player on elite non-urban HS team, said most of his teammates had enlisted. So they are the ones getting shot at, having relatives and friends come back missing pieces of body and self. ..."
"... My guy in the Reserves said the consensus was that if HRC got elected, they were going to war with Russia. Not enthused. Infantry IQ is supposedly average-80, but they know who Yossarian says the enemy is, e'en if they hant read the book. ..."
Nov 14, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
by Lambert Strether By Lambert Strether of Corrente .

This post is not an explainer about why and how Clinton lost (and Trump won). I think we're going to be sorting that out for awhile. Rather, it's a simple debunking of common talking points by Clinton loyalists and Democrat Establishment operatives; the sort of talking point you might hear on Twitter, entirely shorn of caveats and context. For each of the three talking points, I'll present an especially egregious version of the myth, followed by a rebuttals.

Realize that Trump's margin of victory was incredibly small. From the Washington Post :

How Trump won the presidency with razor-thin margins in swing states

Of the more than 120 million votes cast in the 2016 election, 107,000 votes in three states [Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania] effectively decided the election.

Of course, America's first-past-the-post system and the electoral college amplify small margins into decisive results. And it was the job of the Clinton campaign to find those 107,000 votes and win them; the Clinton operation turned out to be weaker than anyone would have imagined when it counted . However, because Trump has what might be called an institutional mandate - both the executive and legislative branches and soon, perhaps, the judicial - the narrowness of his margin means he doesn't have a popular mandate. Trump has captured the state, but by no means civil society; therefore, the opposition that seeks to delegitimize him is in a stronger position than it may realize.

Hence the necessity for reflection; seeking truth from facts, as the saying goes. Because the following talking points prevent a (vulgar) identity politics -dominated Democrat Party from owning its loss, debunking them is then important beyond winning your Twitter wars. I'm trying to spike the Blame Cannons!

Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Racism

Here's a headline showing the talking point from a Vox explainer :

Trump's win is a reminder of the incredible, unbeatable power of racism

The subtext here is usually that if you don't chime in with vehement agreement, you're a racist yourself, and possibly a racist Trump supporter. There are two reasons this talking point is false.

First, voter caring levels dropped from 2012 to 2016, especially among black Democrats . Carl Beijer :

From 2012 to 2016, both men and women went from caring about the outcome to not caring. Among Democratic men and women, as well as Republican women, care levels dropped about 3-4 points; Republican men cared a little less too, but only by one point. Across the board, in any case, the plurality of voters simply didn't care.

Beijer includes the following chart (based on Edison exit polling cross-referenced with total population numbers from the US Census):

Beijer interprets:

White voters cared even less in 2016 then in 2012, when they also didn't care; most of that apathy came from white Republicans compared to white Democrats, who dropped off a little less. Voters of color, in contrast, continued to care – but their care levels dropped even more, by 8 points (compared to the 6 point drop-off among white voters). Incredibly, that drop was driven entirely by a 9 point drop among Democratic voters of color which left Democrats with only slim majority 51% support; Republicans, meanwhile, actually gained support among people of color.

Beijer's data is born out by anecdote from Milwaukee, Wisconsin :

Urban areas, where black and Hispanic voters are concentrated along with college-educated voters, already leaned toward the Democrats, but Clinton did not get the turnout from these groups that she needed. For instance, black voters did not show up in the same numbers they did for Barack Obama, the first black president, in 2008 and 2012.

Remember, Trump won Wisconsin by a whisker. So for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that black voters stayed home because they were racist, costing Clinton Wisconsin.

Second, counties that voted for Obama in 2012 voted for Trump in 2016 . The Washington Post :

These 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 .

The Obama-Trump counties were critical in delivering electoral victories for Trump. Many of them fall in states that supported Obama in 2012, but Trump in 2016. In all, these flipped states accounted for 83 electoral votes. (Michigan and New Hampshire could add to this total, but their results were not finalized as of 4 p.m. Wednesday.)

Here's the chart:

And so, for this talking point to be true, we have to believe that counties who voted for the black man in 2012 were racist because they didn't vote for the white women in 2016. Bringing me, I suppose, to sexism.

Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Sexism

Here's an article showing the talking point from Newsweek :

This often vitriolic campaign was a national referendum on women and power.

(The subtext here is usually that if you don't join the consensus cluster, you're a sexist yourself, and possibly a sexist Trump supporter). And if you only look at the averages this claim might seem true :

On Election Day, women responded accordingly, as Clinton beat Trump among women 54 percent to 42 percent. They were voting not so much for her as against him and what he brought to the surface during his campaign: quotidian misogyny.

There are two reasons this talking point is not true. First, averages conceal, and what they conceal is class . As you read further into the article, you can see it fall apart:

In fact, Trump beat Clinton among white women 53 percent to 43 percent, with white women without college degrees going for [Trump] two to one .

So, taking lack of a college degree as a proxy for being working class, for Newsweek's claim to be true, you have to believe that working class women don't get a vote in their referendum, and for the talking point to be true, you have to believe that working class women are sexist. Which leads me to ask: Who died and left the bourgeois feminists in Clinton's base in charge of the definition of sexism, or feminism? Class traitor Tina Brown is worth repeating:

Here's my own beef. Liberal feminists, young and old, need to question the role they played in Hillary's demise. The two weeks of media hyperventilation over grab-her-by-the-pussygate, when the airwaves were saturated with aghast liberal women equating Trump's gross comments with sexual assault, had the opposite effect on multiple women voters in the Heartland.

These are resilient women, often working two or three jobs, for whom boorish men are an occasional occupational hazard, not an existential threat. They rolled their eyes over Trump's unmitigated coarseness, but still bought into his spiel that he'd be the greatest job producer who ever lived. Oh, and they wondered why his behaviour was any worse than Bill's.

Missing this pragmatic response by so many women was another mistake of Robbie Mook's campaign data nerds. They computed that America's women would all be as outraged as the ones they came home to at night. But pink slips have hit entire neighbourhoods, and towns. The angry white working class men who voted in such strength for Trump do not live in an emotional vacuum. They are loved by white working class women – their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers, who participate in their remaindered pain. I t is everywhere in the interviews. "My dad lost his business", "My husband hasn't been the same since his job at the factory went away" .

Second, Clinton in 2016 did no better than Obama in 2008 with women (although she did better than Obama in 2012). From the New York Times analysis of the exit polls, this chart...

So, for this talking point to be true, you have to believe that sexism simultaneously increased the male vote for Trump, yet did not increase the female vote for Clinton. Shouldn't they move in opposite directions?

Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Stupidity

Here's an example of this talking point from Foreign Policy , the heart of The Blob. The headline:

Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally

And the lead:

OK, so that just happened. Donald Trump always enjoyed massive support from uneducated, low-information white people. As Bloomberg Politics reported back in August, Hillary Clinton was enjoying a giant 25 percentage-point lead among college-educated voters going into the election. (Whether that trend held up remains to be seen.) In contrast, in the 2012 election, college-educated voters just barely favored Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. Last night we saw something historic: the dance of the dunces. Never have educated voters so uniformly rejected a candidate. But never before have the lesser-educated so uniformly supported a candidate.

The subtext here is usually that if you don't accept nod your head vigorously, you're stupid, and possibly a stupid Trump supporter. There are two reasons this talking point is not true.

First, even assuming that the author's happy but unconscious conflation of credentials with education is correct, it wasn't the "dunces" who lost two wars, butchered the health care system, caused the financial system to collapse through accounting control fraud, or invented the neoliberal ideology that was kept real wages flat for forty years and turned the industrial heartland into a wasteland. That is solely, solely down to - only some , to be fair - college-educated voters. It is totally and 100% not down to the "dunces"; they didn't have the political or financial power to achieve debacles on the grand scale.

Second, the "dunces" were an important part of Obama's victories . From The Week :

Not only has polling repeatedly underplayed the importance of white voters without college degrees, it's underplayed their importance to the Obama coalition: They were one-third of Obama votes in 2012. They filled the gap between upper-class whites and working-class nonwhites. Trump gained roughly 15 percentage points with them compared to Romney in 2012.

So, to believe this talking point, you have to believe that voters who were smart when they voted for Obama suddenly became stupid when it came time to vote for Clinton. You also have to believe that credentialed policy makers have an unblemished record of success, and that only they are worth paying attention to.

Conclusion

Of course, Clinton ran a miserable campaign, too, which didn't help. Carl Beijer has a bill of particulars :

By just about every metric imaginable, Hillary Clinton led one of the worst presidential campaigns in modern history. It was a profoundly reactionary campaign, built entirely on rolling back the horizons of the politically possible, fracturing left solidarity, undermining longstanding left priorities like universal healthcare, pandering to Wall Street oligarchs, fomenting nationalism against Denmark and Russia, and rehabilitating some of history's greatest monsters – from Bush I to Kissinger. It was a grossly unprincipled campaign that belligerently violated FEC Super PAC coordination rules and conspired with party officials on everything from political attacks to debate questions. It was an obscenely stupid campaign that all but ignored Wisconsin during the general election, that pitched Clinton to Latino voters as their abuela, that centered an entire high-profile speech over the national menace of a few thousand anime nazis on Twitter, and that repeatedly deployed Lena Dunham as a media surrogate.

Which is rather like running a David Letterman ad in a Pennsylvania steel town. It must have seemed like a good idea in Brooklyn. After all, they had so many celebrities to choose from.

* * *

All three talking points oversimplify. I'm not saying racism is not powerful; of course it is. I'm not saying that sexism is not powerful; of course it is. But monocausal explanations in an election this close - and in a country this vast - are foolish. And narratives that ignore economics and erase class are worse than foolish; buying into them will cause us to make the same mistakes over and over and over again.[1] The trick will be to integrate multiple causes, and that's down to the left; identity politics liberals don't merely not want to do this; they actively oppose it. Ditto their opposite numbers in America's neoliberal fun house mirror, the conservatives.

NOTES

[1] For some, that's not a bug. It's a feature.

NOTE

You will have noticed that I haven't covered economics (class), or election fraud at all. More myths are coming.

Lambert Strether has been blogging, managing online communities, and doing system administration 24/7 since 2003, in Drupal and WordPress. Besides political economy and the political scene, he blogs about rhetoric, software engineering, permaculture, history, literature, local politics, international travel, food, and fixing stuff around the house. The nom de plume "Lambert Strether" comes from Henry James's The Ambassadors: "Live all you can. It's a mistake not to." You can follow him on Twitter at @lambertstrether. http://www.correntewire.com

TK421 November 14, 2016 at 1:03 pm

Yes, I'm a sexist because I voted for Jill Stein instead of Hillary Clinton.

Knot Galt November 14, 2016 at 1:23 pm

"No, you are ignorant! You threw away the vote and put Trump in charge." Please, it will be important to know what derogatory camp you belong in when the blame game swings into full gear. *snark

IdahoSpud November 14, 2016 at 1:07 pm

Is it sexist, racist, and/or stupid to conclude that one awful candidate is less likely to betray you than a different awful candidate?

rwv November 14, 2016 at 1:21 pm

Didn't feel the Bern, and if you burn your ass you'll have to sit on the blisters

Steve H. November 14, 2016 at 1:26 pm

Talking Point: Clinton was Defeated by Stupidity

'Stupid' was the word I got very tired of in my social net. Two variant targets:

1) Blacks for not voting their interests. The responses included 'we know who our enemies are' and 'don't tell me what to think.'

2) Mostly it was vs rural, non-college educated. iirc, it was the Secretary of Agriculture, pleading for funds, who said the rural areas were where military recruits came from. A young fella I know, elite football player on elite non-urban HS team, said most of his teammates had enlisted. So they are the ones getting shot at, having relatives and friends come back missing pieces of body and self.

My guy in the Reserves said the consensus was that if HRC got elected, they were going to war with Russia. Not enthused. Infantry IQ is supposedly average-80, but they know who Yossarian says the enemy is, e'en if they hant read the book.

Maybe not so stupid after all.

Jason Boxman November 14, 2016 at 1:26 pm

Thanks so much for this!

[Nov 14, 2016] Thomas Frank Clintons Led the Democratic Betrayal of the Average Working American For Big Money

jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
"There are two theories of prosperity and of well-being: The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory - and I suppose this goes back to the days of Noah - I won't say Adam and Eve, because they had a less complicated situation - but, at least, back in the days of the flood, there was the theory that if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward, just as yeast rises up, through the ranks...

We so easily forget. Once the cry of so-called prosperity is heard in the land, we all become so stampeded by the spirit of the god Mammon, that we cannot serve the dictates of social conscience. . . . We are here to serve notice that the economic order is the invention of man; and that it cannot dominate certain eternal principles of justice and of God...

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

You can fool all of the people, some of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time- but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Here is Youtube video

watch-v=L4VxmAIzKCM

[Nov 14, 2016] Sanders Democrats Lost Elections Because They Focused On Liberal Elite, Not Working Class - Breitbart

Notable quotes:
"... "Democrats have focused too much with a liberal elite" while ignoring the working class. ..."
"... How does it happen that they win elections and Democrats lose? I think what the conclusion is, is that that is raising incredible sums of money from wealthy people … but has ignored to a very significant degree, working class, middle class, and low income people in this country. ..."
Nov 14, 2016 | www.breitbart.com
Sunday on CBS's "Face The Nation," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said President-elect Donald Trump won because "Democrats have focused too much with a liberal elite" while ignoring the working class.

Sanders said, " How does it happen that they win elections and Democrats lose? I think what the conclusion is, is that that is raising incredible sums of money from wealthy people … but has ignored to a very significant degree, working class, middle class, and low income people in this country. "

[Nov 14, 2016] Clinton betrayal and the future of Democratic Party

Nov 14, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com
weejonnie Intheround 11h ago ...In the last 8 years the Democrat party.

Lost control of the Senate
Lost control of the House of Representatives
Lost control of dozens of state legislatures and Governorships.
The Republicans control 36 States of America - One more and they could in theory amend the Constitution.

In Wisconsin (notionally Democrat) the Legislature and Governor are both Republican controlled. And Clinton didn't even campaign there when it was pretty obvious the State was not trending towards her.

[Nov 14, 2016] No Soul-Searching by "Liberals" After Clinton's Defeat. Their Candidate Was the Embodiment of a Totally Corrupt Political System

Notable quotes:
"... So-called [neo]liberals and leftists in the US and around the world, are now wailing and gnashing their teeth in reaction to Hillary Clinton's crushing defeat. They are, however, the first to blame for the outcome of the US presidential elections. Their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was the embodiment of a totally corrupt political system. She is a hypocrite par excellence, talking to the bankiers of Wall Street behind closed doors differently than to the American people. Her rhetoric for the rights of women and blacks and other minorities sounded disingenuous. ..."
"... The Clinton Foundation received large donations from Saudi-Arabia and Qatar, countries rewarded in return by huge arms transfers overseen by her as Secretary of State. Her involvement in this corruption was no theme for the media. ..."
"... According to emails published by WikiLeaks, her campaign manager John Podesta was or is on the payroll of the Saudis. ..."
"... the Clinton team stole the primary elections to prevent the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, the media demonized Donald Trump. ..."
"... An American President is not a free and politically independent person. From day one, a President-elect can't anymore go around the corner and grab a hot dog or a hamburger. He is reigned in by a military and security establishment that holds the President fit for public consumption. Trump, as any other president, can be expected to follow their rule and political suggestions. ..."
"... I doubt very much that Trump will keep the promises of his election campaign, such as building a wall along the American-Mexican border, deport all illegal immigrants or ban Muslims from immigrating into the US. I even doubt that he will go after Hillary Clinton and her husband's dubious foundation. There exists a code of honor among thieves. ..."
"... Trump won precisely because of the shrill one-sided media propaganda and because of his rhetoric against the Washington establishment , including his own Republican Party. Now, this Republican establishment dominates both houses of Congress. Trump belongs also, however, to the US establishment but of another sort. Nobody should believe that the Washington establishment will follow Trump's lead. ..."
"... Whether Trump will stop American adventurism in the Middle East remains to be seen. His close ties with Netanyahu do not bode well for the Palestinians ..."
"... And while he has promised to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I doubt that he will carry out this provocation against international law and the entire Muslim world. ..."
"... Chancellor Angela Merke l sent the President-Elect Trump a warning in the guise of a congratulation. Her political impudence was garbed within obsequious blabber about the allegedly honorable nature of German-American ties ..."
"... Germany's Foreign Minister Steinmeier called Trump a "preacher of hate" ..."
"... During the election campaign, Trump called Merkel's mass-immigration policy "insane" and "what Merkel did to Germany" a "sad shame". ..."
"... The media and the political class should at this point stop pontificating. Their double morals and unprofessional coverage of the US elections should prompt them to more humility. They should rather blame themselves for their biased reporting, which led directly to Clinton's defeat. ..."
Nov 11, 2016 | www.globalresearch.ca

So-called [neo]liberals and leftists in the US and around the world, are now wailing and gnashing their teeth in reaction to Hillary Clinton's crushing defeat. They are, however, the first to blame for the outcome of the US presidential elections. Their candidate, Hillary Clinton, was the embodiment of a totally corrupt political system. She is a hypocrite par excellence, talking to the bankiers of Wall Street behind closed doors differently than to the American people. Her rhetoric for the rights of women and blacks and other minorities sounded disingenuous.

The Clinton Foundation received large donations from Saudi-Arabia and Qatar, countries rewarded in return by huge arms transfers overseen by her as Secretary of State. Her involvement in this corruption was no theme for the media.

According to emails published by WikiLeaks, her campaign manager John Podesta was or is on the payroll of the Saudis. All of this was not considered worth reporting by the media. Virtually all national media in the United States supported Clinton's candidacy. Instead of reporting how the machinery of the Democratic Party and the Clinton team stole the primary elections to prevent the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, the media demonized Donald Trump.

I do not wish here to defend Donald Trump. He made numerous stupid, racist, sexist, and anti-Islamic statements that were rightly criticized. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, was treated with kid gloves while her huge criminal political record was glossed over. Instead of coming to grips with their abject failures, the liberals and their media continue in slandering Donald Trump. Trump's first declarations show already that he has conquered new frontiers.

An American President is not a free and politically independent person. From day one, a President-elect can't anymore go around the corner and grab a hot dog or a hamburger. He is reigned in by a military and security establishment that holds the President fit for public consumption. Trump, as any other president, can be expected to follow their rule and political suggestions.

I doubt very much that Trump will keep the promises of his election campaign, such as building a wall along the American-Mexican border, deport all illegal immigrants or ban Muslims from immigrating into the US. I even doubt that he will go after Hillary Clinton and her husband's dubious foundation. There exists a code of honor among thieves.

Trump won precisely because of the shrill one-sided media propaganda and because of his rhetoric against the Washington establishment , including his own Republican Party. Now, this Republican establishment dominates both houses of Congress. Trump belongs also, however, to the US establishment but of another sort. Nobody should believe that the Washington establishment will follow Trump's lead. Even his positive statements about Vladimir Putin or his suggestion to discard NATO, will probably vanish. But what I do hope is that he stands to his rejection of TPP and TTIP and his pragmatic view of Vladimir Putin.

Whether Trump will stop American adventurism in the Middle East remains to be seen. His close ties with Netanyahu do not bode well for the Palestinians. He sees Zionist colonization of the rest of Palestine as no hindrance to peace. And while he has promised to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I doubt that he will carry out this provocation against international law and the entire Muslim world.

The German political and media class was not only surprised by the results of the US elections, but did not even try to hide its revulsion against the choice of the American people. The entire political class in Germany perceived and presented the Trump campaign in the same one-sided manner as American media did. Chancellor Angela Merke l sent the President-Elect Trump a warning in the guise of a congratulation. Her political impudence was garbed within obsequious blabber about the allegedly honorable nature of German-American ties:

"Germany and America are bound by common values - democracy, freedom, as well as respect for the rule of law and the dignity of each and every person, regardless of their origin, skin color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or political views. It is based on these values that I wish to offer close cooperation, both with me personally and between our countries' governments."

Other German politicians did not even attempt to hide their disdain for American voters by diplomatic language. Germany's Foreign Minister Steinmeier called Trump a "preacher of hate", and Deputy Chancellor Gabriel cartooned Trump as a

"trailblazer of a new authoritarian and chauvinist international movement… [who wants] a rollback to the bad old times in which women belonged by the stove or in bed, gays in jail and unions at best at the side table."

During the election campaign, Trump called Merkel's mass-immigration policy "insane" and "what Merkel did to Germany" a "sad shame".

The media and the political class should at this point stop pontificating. Their double morals and unprofessional coverage of the US elections should prompt them to more humility. They should rather blame themselves for their biased reporting, which led directly to Clinton's defeat. Ordinary Americans are not as stupid as the Establishment wants us to believe. Established parties and media would be well advised to give the new US President a chance to prove his worth. There will be, without doubt, many occasions in the future for fact-based criticism.

The original source of this article is Global Research Copyright © Dr. Ludwig Watzal , Global Research, 2016

[Nov 13, 2016] The Democratic Party establishment has beclowned itself and is finished MSM neoliberal pressitutes with thier unbearable smugness are shamed

Notable quotes:
"... Understand something, the caricature of Trump and his supporters is all fiction! It was the wallpaper inside the bubble of the elites that kept them from having to face the fact they are being rejected by the people of this country. ..."
"... It is not racist to want to control our borders and stem the influx – for a period – of people from other lands. It is not racist to note that Islam has a violent element willing to kill innocents at any time and any place. Just like one bad cop can give all cops a bad rap, so can a handful of bloody insane Muslims. It is not racist or nativist to deport immigrants who have committed serious felonies. ..."
Nov 13, 2016 | strata-sphere.com
First, this from Slate :

The Democratic Party establishment has beclowned itself and is finished.

The party establishment made a grievous mistake rallying around Hillary Clinton. It wasn't just a lack of recent political seasoning. She was a bad candidate, with no message beyond heckling the opposite sideline. She was a total misfit for both the politics of 2016 and the energy of the Democratic Party as currently constituted. She could not escape her baggage, and she must own that failure herself.

Theoretically smart people in the Democratic Party should have known that. And yet they worked giddily to clear the field for her. Every power-hungry young Democrat fresh out of law school, every rising lawmaker, every old friend of the Clintons wanted a piece of the action. This was their ride up the power chain. The whole edifice was hollow, built atop the same unearned sense of inevitability that surrounded Clinton in 2008, and it collapsed, just as it collapsed in 2008, only a little later in the calendar. The voters of the party got taken for a ride by the people who controlled it, the ones who promised they had everything figured out and sneeringly dismissed anyone who suggested otherwise. They promised that Hillary Clinton had a lock on the Electoral College. These people didn't know what they were talking about, and too many of us in the media thought they did.

This is a grueling but necessarily treatise on how the Political Elite played God and got burned. The essence here is wake up and fix the Democrat Party.

And here is another good assessment :

The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak, and deservedly so.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump's victory. More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story , after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.

This is all symptomatic of modern journalism's great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness . Had Hillary Clinton won, there's be a winking "we did it" feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic.

So much for that. The audience for our glib analysis and contempt for much of the electorate, it turned out, was rather limited. This was particularly true when it came to voters, the ones who turned out by the millions to deliver not only a rebuke to the political system but also the people who cover it. Trump knew what he was doing when he invited his crowds to jeer and hiss the reporters covering him. They hate us, and have for some time.

And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid.

Understand something, the caricature of Trump and his supporters is all fiction! It was the wallpaper inside the bubble of the elites that kept them from having to face the fact they are being rejected by the people of this country.

It is not racist to want to control our borders and stem the influx – for a period – of people from other lands. It is not racist to note that Islam has a violent element willing to kill innocents at any time and any place. Just like one bad cop can give all cops a bad rap, so can a handful of bloody insane Muslims. It is not racist or nativist to deport immigrants who have committed serious felonies.

The media over stated the drivers behind these views to propel their candidate to victory. They were not reporting facts.

The last good perspective was from the Morning Joe show:

[Nov 13, 2016] Why Polls Fail

Notable quotes:
"... he Clinton camp, the media and the pollsters missed what we had anticipated as "not Clinton". A basic setting in a part of the "left" electorate that remember who she is and what she has done and would under no circumstances vote for her. Clinton herself pushed the "bernie bros" and "deplorables" into that camp. This was a structural change that was solely based in the personality of the candidate. ..."
"... Even then polls and their interpretation will always only capture a part of the story. Often a sound grasp of human and cultural behavior will allow for better prediction as all polls. As my friend the statistician say: "The best prognostic instrument I have even today is my gut." ..."
"... NeverHillary turned out to be bigger than NeverTrump. Hillary got less than 6 million votes compared to Obama. Trump got nearly as much as Romney. ..."
"... A good indicator was the size of the crowds each candidate drew to their rallies. Clinton tended to show more "bought" TV-ready extras. Bernie blew the walls out at his rallies, as did Trump. You can't look at that and say the polls are even close to accurate. ..."
"... When the Democrats unleashed thugs on Trump supporters while the media studiously looked away, it was not sensible to openly identify with Trump. ..."
"... On Wednesday after the election, I heard an interview with a woman reporter who worked with the 538 polling group. She said that it was impossible for most reporters to really investigate how voters in certain areas of the country were feeling about the election bcz newspapers and other news organizations, including the Big Broadcasters, did not have the ability to pay for enough reporters to actually talk to people. ..."
"... the Los Angeles Times polls were correct (although the paper was pro-Clinton); can't get the link now, but they explained how they weighted their polls on the basis of the enthusiasm displayed for the preferred candidate, and Trump supporters were more "charged" ..."
"... I read many stories about how the polls were fixed for Clinton for months before the election. ..."
"... The pollsters took the % of voters from the Obama election but they also added more Democrats than were representative in the 2012 election, thereby skewing the polls for Clinton. Many believed that the reason they did this was to try to manipulate the voting machines in Clinton's favour and have the polls match the result. ..."
"... i go back to what my sociology of the media instructor said.. polls are for massaging people's brains.. unless one knows who pays for them and what goes into them, they are just another propaganda tool for use.. ..."
"... It has been known for a long time in the polling world that polling numbers are getting more and more unreliable because fewer and fewer people are willing to complete polls. ..."
"... theory would also explain the newspaper polls largely rigged to correspond to the planned vote theft, as well as the idiotic magnitude of overconfidence seen in the Pol-Est/MS Media/Wall Street complex. ..."
"... 1. IBD/TIPP (A collaboration of Investors Business Daily and TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence). TechnoMetrica was consistent throughout – final poll for election day had Trump leading by 2%. Also predicted the last presidential elections back to 2004. ..."
"... This election candidates' crowd draw was a good indicator. It was very difficult to pre-program the Diebold machines. MSM polls were in the bag for Hillary, had her ahead. It backfired. ..."
"... A bit about polling methodology explains the bias we've seen this election cycle. Typically, the polling samples are not big enough to be representative, so the results are corrected (weighted) based on the participant responses. The polls assume certain turnout percentages for different groups (Democrats, Republicans, Independents, rural, urban, ethnicity, gender etc.). A lot of the polls were weighting the polls with turnouts similar to 2012, corrected for the expected demographic changes over the last 4 years. ..."
"... Poll weighing is a tricky business. This is why most polling has a 4% error margin, so it does not produce as accurate picture as is typically presented by the media. The error is not randomly distributed, it is closely related to the poll weighting. The weighting error was favouring Clinton in the polls as it assumed higher Democratic turnout, which ended up not being the case, she underperformed 2012 significantly and lost the election. ..."
"... Are the polls done to discover "what's up", or are they done to project the view that one side is winning? ..."
"... I go with the second view. That's what the 'corrections' are all about. The 'corrections' need to be dropped completely ..."
"... This. There was a Wikiliks Podesta email in whdich Clinton operatives discussed oversampling certain groups to inflate the poll in her favor. ..."
"... Hmm ... what can I say that no-one else has already said except to observe that the polling and the corporate media reporting the polling statistics were in another parallel universe and the people supposedly being polled (and not some over-sampled group in Peoria, Iowa, who could predict exactly what questions would be asked and knew what answers to give) live on planet Earth? ..."
"... I most certainly did not predict Trump would win. But I did question the polls. What I questioned a few weeks ago was the margin of victory for Hillary. ..."
"... This is because most of the polls were weighting more Democratic (based on the 2012 election), which overestimated Clinton's support. ..."
"... So the difference between the poll and the actual result is 1.2% in favour of Trump (1.7% lead to Clinton in poll vs. 0.5% in the election). All are well within the error of the poll, so 1.2% difference between the election and the poll is well within the stated 3% error margin of the poll. ..."
"... You assume public polls are conducted by impartial actors who wish to inform and illuminate..... your assumption is incorrect. ..."
"... The New York Times recent admission that it writes the narrative first, then builds the story to suit says about everything for me regarding polls. ..."
"... According to reports, the first leader Trump spoke to on the phone after his election victory was the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Sisi congratulated him on the election victory, a spokesman for the Egyptian leader said. ..."
"... It may be unfortunate, but I can see Trump & Erdogan getting along very well. Although, if they bring Putin into that triumvirate that could actually be very beneficial for the Middle East. ..."
Nov 13, 2016 | www.moonofalabama.org

Today I discussed the U.S. election with a friend who studied and practices statistics. I asked about the failure of the polls in this years presidential election. Her explanation: The polls are looking at future events but are biased by the past. The various companies and institutions adjust the polls they do by looking at their past prognoses and the real results of the past event. They then develop correcting factors, measured from the past, and apply it to new polls. If that correcting factor is wrong, possibly because of structural changes in the electorate, then the new polls will be corrected with a wrong factor and thus miss the real results.

Polls predicting the last presidential election were probably off by 3 or 5 points towards the Republican side. The pollsters then corrected the new polls for the Clinton-Trump race in favor of the Democratic side by giving that side an additional 3-5 points. They thereby corrected the new polls by the bias that was poll inherent during the last race.

But structural changes, which we seem to have had during this election, messed up the result. Many people who usually vote for the Democratic ticket did not vote for Clinton. The "not Clinton" progressives, the "bernie bros" and "deplorables" who voted Obama in the last election stayed home, voted for a third party candidate or even for Trump. The pollsters did not anticipate such a deep change. Thus their correction factor was wrong. Thus the Clinton side turned out to be favored in polls but not in the relevant votes.

Real polling, which requires in depth-in person interviews with the participants, does not really happen anymore. It is simply to expensive. Polling today is largely done by telephone with participants selected by some database algorithm. It is skewed by many factors which require many corrections. All these corrections have some biases that do miss structural changes in the underlying population.

The Clinton camp, the media and the pollsters missed what we had anticipated as "not Clinton". A basic setting in a part of the "left" electorate that remember who she is and what she has done and would under no circumstances vote for her. Clinton herself pushed the "bernie bros" and "deplorables" into that camp. This was a structural change that was solely based in the personality of the candidate.

If Sanders would have been the candidate the now wrong poll correction factor in favor of Democrats would likely have been a correct one. The deep antipathy against Hillary Clinton in a decisive part of the electorate was a factor that the pseudo-science of cheap telephone polls could not catch. More expensive in depth interviews of the base population used by a pollster would probably have caught this factor and adjusted appropriately.

There were some twenty to thirty different entities doing polls during this election cycle. Five to ten polling entities, with better budgets and preparations, would probably have led to better prognoses. Some media companies could probably join their poll budgets, split over multiple companies today, to have a common one with a better analysis of its base population.One that would have anticipated "not Hillary".

Unless that happens all polls will have to be read with a lot of doubt. What past bias is captured in these predictions of the future? What are their structural assumptions and are these still correct? What structural change might have happened?

Even then polls and their interpretation will always only capture a part of the story. Often a sound grasp of human and cultural behavior will allow for better prediction as all polls. As my friend the statistician say: "The best prognostic instrument I have even today is my gut."

Oscar Romero | Nov 13, 2016 3:23:53 PM | 1

An equally interesting question about polls: what about the exit polls? If Greg Palast and others are right, exit polls indicate that the voting was rigged. What does your statistics friend think about that?
Andrea | Nov 13, 2016 3:28:21 PM | 2
After the 1948 election, statisticians started to get rid of the quota sampling for electoral polls. After this election, it's time to reassess Statistics.

https://www.math.upenn.edu/~deturck/m170/wk4/lecture/case2.html

ab initio | Nov 13, 2016 3:30:01 PM | 3
NeverHillary turned out to be bigger than NeverTrump. Hillary got less than 6 million votes compared to Obama. Trump got nearly as much as Romney.
stumpy | Nov 13, 2016 3:45:38 PM | 4
A good indicator was the size of the crowds each candidate drew to their rallies. Clinton tended to show more "bought" TV-ready extras. Bernie blew the walls out at his rallies, as did Trump. You can't look at that and say the polls are even close to accurate.
Hoarsewhisperer | Nov 13, 2016 4:00:50 PM | 5
I suspect that the future of polling isn't as dire as you're painting it, b. There was huge anti-Trump bias in the Jew-controlled Christian-West Media from the beginning of the campaign. You drew attention to negative MSM bias yourself in the post which pointed out how consistently wrong the Punditocracy had been in predicting the imminent failure of the Trump campaign - thereby rubbing their noses in their own ineptitude and tomfoolery.

One factor which seemed important to me was occasionally hilighted at regular intervals by commenters here at MoA... The (apparent) fact that Trump addressed more, and bigger, crowds than Mrs Clinton. I accepted those claims as fact, and didn't bother to check their veracity. But nevertheless crowd size and frequency seems to have played a pivotal role in the outcome (as one would expect in a political campaign).

Mudduck | Nov 13, 2016 4:01:15 PM | 6
Exit polls have provided checks on the accuracy of the vote count -- but are liable to the same problem as the opinion pols, people who don't admit to their real position.
Steve | Nov 13, 2016 4:03:18 PM | 7
I'm not surprised that the polls fail badly in this presidential election. When the Democrats unleashed thugs on Trump supporters while the media studiously looked away, it was not sensible to openly identify with Trump. Even Trump was saying so through out the campaign.The Democrats together with their media partners truly believed that Donald Trump's alleged character flaws would be enough to win the election. Despite the fact that it was obvious to anyone without a blinker on that the momentum was on the side of Trump all along. Obama's phenomenon of 08 was nothing compared to Trump's phenomenon of this year, but because neither the MSM nor the Pollsters liked him they transferred their biases to their jobs. In any case I'm sure happy that the result of the election turned out different from the skewed prognosis.
jawbone | Nov 13, 2016 4:08:45 PM | 8
On Wednesday after the election, I heard an interview with a woman reporter who worked with the 538 polling group. She said that it was impossible for most reporters to really investigate how voters in certain areas of the country were feeling about the election bcz newspapers and other news organizations, including the Big Broadcasters, did not have the ability to pay for enough reporters to actually talk to people.

Since statistics had worked so well, and were cheaper to deal with, they won the day. And lost the battle.

Now, most people at this site seemed to base their decisions of whom to vote for based on stands on issues and known actions of the various candidates. But, even so, we probably paid attention to the polling results. I know I took into consideration that Hillary would win big in NJ, leaving me free to vote for Jill Stein. Based on known actions of Trump I could not vote for him, even tho' I hoped he would kill TPP and have better relations with Russia. I feared and still do fear his nominations to the Supreme Court. (I am not religious, but if I were I would pray daily, perhaps hourly, for the continued good health of the Justices Kennedy, GInsburg, and Breyer. I would hope the other Dem appointed justices would take care to avoid, oh, small airplanes....

Would Hillary have adjusted her campaign if she could have seen the rising disappointment of the working class Dems (even middle class to higher income Dems)? I don't know. I do know that her husband ran his first campaign on the famous "It's the economy, stupid" reminder.

Somehow, I don't think it would have registered enough.

And Obama ran on Hope and Change, but was always the Corporatist Dem Wall Street wanted. What a waste. And now we have four more years of doing essentially nothing aboug climate change. It was have been a strategy to put off even regulatory actions to lessen CO2 emissions until near the end of his second term, but, dang, it makes it easier for Trump to negate those efforts.

Again, what a waste. But I didn't vote for Obama for either term bcz I saw that his actions as IL state senator and as US senator were always looking out for the Big Money, Big Corporations, and seldom worked for anyone below the middle class, more the top of the middle class.

virgile | Nov 13, 2016 4:12:32 PM | 9
This Wasn't A Vote, It Was An Uprising
Paul Craig Roberts • November 12, 2016 >

Polls mean nothing when there is an uprising

virgile | Nov 13, 2016 4:15:15 PM | 10
No need of polls...say PBS

How to (accurately) predict a presidential election

joey | Nov 13, 2016 4:19:53 PM | 11
A long explanatory report which signifies nothing critical. "The polls were wrong??" No. The polls reported by MSM were wrong.

Big time, including from those from Clinton loving CBC here in Canada, which for an extended time was reporting Hillary with an 11% lead. That number was far beyond any minor adjustments, for sure.

There were polls, such as Rasmussen, itself suspected of fiddling, which were reporting ups and downs of 2%, and ended up tied election day.

So, please schemers, please do not try to cover up the MSM's deliberate attempt to influence results by using garbage numbers. Figures can lie, and liars can sure figure.

claudio | Nov 13, 2016 4:23:05 PM | 13
the Los Angeles Times polls were correct (although the paper was pro-Clinton); can't get the link now, but they explained how they weighted their polls on the basis of the enthusiasm displayed for the preferred candidate, and Trump supporters were more "charged"
mischi | Nov 13, 2016 4:25:01 PM | 14
I disagree with your friend, b. I read many stories about how the polls were fixed for Clinton for months before the election.

The pollsters took the % of voters from the Obama election but they also added more Democrats than were representative in the 2012 election, thereby skewing the polls for Clinton. Many believed that the reason they did this was to try to manipulate the voting machines in Clinton's favour and have the polls match the result. I think that Trump crying foul so early got them worried that they might be caught. Remember, voting machines in 14 states are run by companies affiliated with Soros.

james | Nov 13, 2016 4:26:58 PM | 15
i go back to what my sociology of the media instructor said.. polls are for massaging people's brains.. unless one knows who pays for them and what goes into them, they are just another propaganda tool for use..
Hoarsewhisperer | Nov 13, 2016 4:34:08 PM | 16
...
Polls mean nothing when there is an uprising
Posted by: virgile | Nov 13, 2016 4:12:32 PM | 9

Well, the Clinton-ista's and Soro-fuls certainly wasted no time when they switched from Anticipated Gloat to Full Spectrum Panic Mode, did they?

BraveNewWorld | Nov 13, 2016 4:35:07 PM | 17
It has been known for a long time in the polling world that polling numbers are getting more and more unreliable because fewer and fewer people are willing to complete polls.
Quadriad | Nov 13, 2016 4:41:10 PM | 18
I have a weird conspiracy hypothesis that I mainly made up on my own;

The last FBI "reopening" and the quick subsequent "close-down" felt all too counter-intuitive and silly, when examined solely based on their face value.

However, what if there was more to this? What if this was a final threat from FBI to the Soros-Clinton mafia to "quickly unrig the voting machines" OR we will arrest the lot of you? Which, once the promises were made by "allow fair play", required FBI to pull back as their part of the deal?

Just an idea...

Quadriad | Nov 13, 2016 4:43:54 PM | 19
This - admittedly conspiracy - theory would also explain the newspaper polls largely rigged to correspond to the planned vote theft, as well as the idiotic magnitude of overconfidence seen in the Pol-Est/MS Media/Wall Street complex.

Sorry on the split-think and double-post.

psychohistorian | Nov 13, 2016 5:02:02 PM | 20
I find it interesting b that you and your friend didn't seem to talk at all about the polling questions....at least that you shared with us. It is my experience and education that even with a "beauty contest" that we just had, that the structure of the polling questions make all the difference in how people being polled respond.

Polls are funded by parties with agendas and the questions, assumptions and biases are baked in to the result......IMO, they are all worthless or worse than that because folks see them, like the media as being something of an authority figure and therefore believable which we know is total BS.

Polls are just another propaganda tool of those rich enough to use them in their quiver of control.

Laguerre | Nov 13, 2016 5:15:19 PM | 21
Timid Trumpists is the major factor, I would think. A factor already well known in UK. People who are going to vote for a non-PC solution hesitate to admit it to poll questions.

somebody | Nov 13, 2016 5:15:50 PM | 22
All of the above is true, but - in addition - polls are used to manipulate campaigns.

People sympathize with someone who is considered a winner and when someone is considered likely to lose people lose interest.

To get the vote out polls have to be tight. In addition to that polls are used to motivate donors. In the end there has to be a reason pollsters get paid.

But even if polls would be done for purely scientific reasons, this election was impossible to poll. The correct question would have been "Do you hate/fear candidate x enough to motivate you to queue for voting for canditate y, or are you too disgusted to bother at all"

In the end, it was not the wrong polls that sank Clinton but the strategy to leave the anti-elitist populist stuff to Trump and - unsuccessfully concentrate on winning the elitist Republican anti Trump vote. That way she lost more of the Democrat Sanders vote than she could gain right wing.

The other factor was her reliance on television ads and media ties (they all backed her), a reluctance to talk to large audiences and an inability to communicate via social media.

It is possible though she never had a chance against a well established reality show brand.

The good news is that after this election campaigns will be done mainly low cost social media. The bad news is that these campaigns will be more fact free than ever and that the age of independent quality newspapers is over.

Quadriad | Nov 13, 2016 5:29:03 PM | 23
#22 somebody

So, you're saying that the age of independent quality newspapers has just ended, like about now. Interesting pov...

Somehow, the last few years of the MSM coverage of the NATO-Salafist War on Syria have had me convinced that the "independent quality newspapers" have become a*rse-wipe material a long time ago. Instead, we get the Sorosoid ZioTakfirism.

But, yeah, maybe it's all Trump's fault. Hey I also blame Hezbollah for kicking Yisrael's arse north of Litani in 2006. If they didn't piss of the Yivrim this much, maybe they wouldn't have punitively collapsed the faith in the Western Society from the inside.

Ultimately, it's all Putin's fault. He started it all by beating the pro-Saudi Chechens into a pulp back in 1999, and started the NATOQAEDA self-destruction.

likklemore | Nov 13, 2016 5:35:21 PM | 24
In this election, Pollsters got it wrong.

Two Exceptions:

1. IBD/TIPP (A collaboration of Investors Business Daily and TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence). TechnoMetrica was consistent throughout – final poll for election day had Trump leading by 2%. Also predicted the last presidential elections back to 2004.

Methodology

"Traditional Telephone method" includes cell –live interviews by Region; Age; Gender; Race; Income; Education; Party; Ideology; Investor; Area Type; Parental Status; White – men, women; Black/Hispanic; Women-single, married; Household description –Upper/Middle-Middle, Working, Lower; Religion; Union Household; Intensity of Support.

http://www.investors.com/politics/ibd-tipp-presidential-election-poll/

and
2. LATimes


This election candidates' crowd draw was a good indicator. It was very difficult to pre-program the Diebold machines. MSM polls were in the bag for Hillary, had her ahead. It backfired.

Is Newsweek embarrassed yet? They forgot some history. Truman-Dewey. Madam President! How appropriate.

Jackrabbit | Nov 13, 2016 5:44:28 PM | 25
Some of b's posts regarding US politics seems naive but I chalk that up to his not being American. But this technocratic excuse for the polling is just wrong. b, what happened to your skeptical view of Western media????

ben | Nov 13, 2016 5:46:27 PM | 26
virgile @ 9: An excerpt: " It was about the union men who refused to sell out their futures and vote for a Democrat who is an agent of the One Percent."

And now, I fear, they still have no future.

James @ 15 said.." polls are for massaging people's brains.. unless one knows who pays for them and what goes into them, they are just another propaganda tool for use..

How true..

Trumps choices for his cabinet don't leave much room for positive change, for the millions of disaffected voters who put him in office. We'll see!

voislav | Nov 13, 2016 6:13:07 PM | 27
A bit about polling methodology explains the bias we've seen this election cycle. Typically, the polling samples are not big enough to be representative, so the results are corrected (weighted) based on the participant responses. The polls assume certain turnout percentages for different groups (Democrats, Republicans, Independents, rural, urban, ethnicity, gender etc.). A lot of the polls were weighting the polls with turnouts similar to 2012, corrected for the expected demographic changes over the last 4 years.

Poll weighing is a tricky business. This is why most polling has a 4% error margin, so it does not produce as accurate picture as is typically presented by the media. The error is not randomly distributed, it is closely related to the poll weighting. The weighting error was favouring Clinton in the polls as it assumed higher Democratic turnout, which ended up not being the case, she underperformed 2012 significantly and lost the election.

It is important to stress that the election results ended up within the margin of error (+-4%). The polls were not wrong, it is the media and the analyst who over-interpreted the data and gave Clinton the win where she did not have a statistically significant (<4%) lead. This is why if Nate Silver at 538 was consistently writing that the polls in many of the swing states were within the error margin, although favouring Clinton, and their election prediction still gave Trump a ~30% chance of victory. Other analysts were more careless (hello Huffington Post) and even made fun of 538 for giving Trump any chance of victory.

There is no way to make more accurate polling for the future elections as the accuracy of the poll is tied in to poll weighing, which is guesswork (although somewhat educated by the historical data). Short of forcing everyone to vote, election-to-election turnout will change and affect the accuracy of the polls.

jo6pac | Nov 13, 2016 6:18:04 PM | 28
Some fun but sadly true.

#8 this for you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-5Y74FrDCc&index=25&list=WL

#25 Yep

Quadriad | Nov 13, 2016 6:18:19 PM | 29
#27 voio

Instead of interpreting every single of those Polls as plausibly biased on one side, why don't you take the entire population of Western MSM Polls, and see if their median predicted outcome vs actual final outcome difference is statistically significant?

I'd say you'd find their entire population to be likely biased at least to six-sigma level.

(I have no time to show this myself, just proposing someone's hypothesis, as a research idea for someone's M Sci thesis for example)

lysias | Nov 13, 2016 6:18:32 PM | 30
I have lived in the D.C. area for the past 22 years with a land line phone and am listed in the White Pages. I have never been called by a pollster, although I am often called by political campaigns. I do not know anyone who has been called by a pollster.
jdmckay | Nov 13, 2016 6:35:22 PM | 32
Palast puts up good information that difference was good 'ole GOP voter purges.
jfl | Nov 13, 2016 6:40:08 PM | 33
Are the polls done to discover "what's up", or are they done to project the view that one side is winning?

I go with the second view. That's what the 'corrections' are all about. The 'corrections' need to be dropped completely.


Unless that happens all polls will have to be read with a lot of doubt.

Mike Whitney posted a link to a guy who got it right ... Patrick Caddell; The Pollster Who 'Got it Right' . His methods were not those of the captive pollsters.


More expensive in depth interviews of the base population used by a pollster would probably have caught this factor and adjusted appropriately.

No more 'adjustments' allowed. A desire to actually discover the lay of the land and to publish it is what's required. Good luck on getting that from the political class and/or their captive msm. Everything they do is a lie, calculated to keep themselves in power.

chipnik | Nov 13, 2016 6:42:19 PM | 34

The polls were obviously blatantly skewed towards urban Blue zones, and did not include working adults in Red zones, then were 'massaged' by reporting media in clearly a Rodham-paid PAC marketing campaign to brand the sheeples 'Wear Rodham!'

Only Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight even came close, but he had to rely on those same skewed polls. After all, since 1990, you can buy a CD set of American voting records by street address, it's not rocket science to be able to 'algo' that into a 'poll' that skews whichever way the highest bidder's (Rodham) quants tell you to.
https://www.facebook.com/viralthread/videos/598130190359668/

ben | Nov 13, 2016 6:42:20 PM | 35
jo6pak @28: Thanks for the videos.

On Tuesday a democratic site was taken down. This video was put up in it's place.

Strange and troubling. Seig heil anyone?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIgsHZSqy_g

Adalbrand | Nov 13, 2016 6:53:27 PM | 36
@likklemore #24:

Glad you said that, and much better than I would have.

@somebody #22:

polls are used to manipulate campaigns.

This. There was a Wikiliks Podesta email in whdich Clinton operatives discussed oversampling certain groups to inflate the poll in her favor.

Demian is now known as Adalbrand .

Adalbrand | Nov 13, 2016 7:08:31 PM | 37
Oh Lookie – "Media Polls" Show Trump Back On Top, Go Figure…
As if on cue, or something. All of a sudden, S.U.R.P.R.I.S.E,… a litany of polls released today show Donald Trump ahead in key battleground states (Ohio and Florida), and tied –or closer than the margin of error– in new national polls…. […]

Remember what we stated on October 20th: […]

The real battle is the battle for your mind. The peak U.S. media false polling cycle is thankfully in the rear-view mirror.

It was because I followed that right-wing blog that I ignored all polls other than the LA Times tracking poll. (I didn't know about the IBD/TIPP poll until after the election.)
Jen | Nov 13, 2016 7:12:20 PM | 38
Hmm ... what can I say that no-one else has already said except to observe that the polling and the corporate media reporting the polling statistics were in another parallel universe and the people supposedly being polled (and not some over-sampled group in Peoria, Iowa, who could predict exactly what questions would be asked and knew what answers to give) live on planet Earth?
ToivoS | Nov 13, 2016 7:18:03 PM | 39
I most certainly did not predict Trump would win. But I did question the polls. What I questioned a few weeks ago was the margin of victory for Hillary.

There were two big variables that the pollsters had to guess at. One was the voter turnout numbers for those precincts that had many working class people with a high school or less education level. As it turns out those people came out in higher numbers than they have in elections over the past two decades. The other was voter turnout for many precincts that supported Obama in 2008 and 2012. What happened here was many of those voters who did turn out voted for Trump, instead of the Democrat. There was a third uncertainty here that no on has yet figured out. That was those people who would never admit to a stranger that they were going to vote for Trump and simply lied to the pollster.

In any case those three uncertainties worked in directions that none of the pollsters really picked up on.

voislav | Nov 13, 2016 7:23:32 PM | 40
#29 Quadriad

This is because most of the polls were weighting more Democratic (based on the 2012 election), which overestimated Clinton's support. For example, the Rasmussen poll, which traditionally weights more Republican, gave Clinton 1.7% lead, 44.8% to 43.1% (3% margin of error), so fairly close to the election results (47.3% to 47.8%).

So the difference between the poll and the actual result is 1.2% in favour of Trump (1.7% lead to Clinton in poll vs. 0.5% in the election). All are well within the error of the poll, so 1.2% difference between the election and the poll is well within the stated 3% error margin of the poll.

When you mention 6 sigma, you really don't really know what you are talking about. Typical polling error is 3 - 4% and the election result was within this error for most polls in all of the states. Standard deviation (sigma) that you mention is a random uncertainty associated with a measurement and it does not apply here. As I tried to convey, the errors in polling tend to be systematic, not random, because they are tied to weighting of the polls, not to the sample of the population as this is mostly corrected by the weighting. So because most of the MSM polls use similar weighting methodology based on the same historical data, they will all be off, there will be no random distribution of some for Trump, some for Clinton. Weighing based on different historical data skews the whole picture one way, it's not a random error. This is why pollster slap a relatively large 3 - 4% error on their polls, it is meant to cover any systematic bias of the weighting as well as random errors.

bigmango | Nov 13, 2016 7:23:48 PM | 41
You assume public polls are conducted by impartial actors who wish to inform and illuminate..... your assumption is incorrect.
Adalbrand | Nov 13, 2016 7:31:27 PM | 42
@ToivoS #39:

those three uncertainties worked in directions that none of the pollsters really picked up on.

Have a loook at the LA Times tracking poll . It had Trump ahead by 3.2% on election day, which is close to the margin of error. The graph there is interesting, because dates of various events, such as the debates are marked. The poll figures moved in response to those events as one would expect.

Before the election, the people who do that poll said that they did best at predicting the 2012 election. Oh, in a post about the election's outcome, Alexander Dugin singled out that poll for praise.

Bill Hicks | Nov 13, 2016 7:44:37 PM | 43
I have a better idea--how about we stop the stupid polling altogether since there is only one poll that really matters? Then the media would have to focus on the issues rather than the horserace. Oh, the humanity!

Quadriad | Nov 13, 2016 8:08:16 PM | 44
I know exactly what I am talking about.

Hypothesis A - that it's all explainable by random distribution of their samples.

If you use Hypotethesis A, and then disprove it in it's own game (be it 3, or 6 sigma), then you have to suggest an alternative.

I don't know what the alternative is. I don't even claim I do. But you can more easily disprove the veracity that the polls could have mostly been non-biased by showing that hypothesis is unlikely to be RIGHT. That's where sigmas make absolute sense.

Nice try though, Voislave.

Quadriad | Nov 13, 2016 8:12:56 PM | 45
Furthermore, what you are proving here is that the POPULATION of ALL COMBINED polls has a mean that must be different from the POPULATION of all actual voters, not of disproving the polls one by one.

I think you've totally ignored my point, you keep looking at individual polls as trees, I am looking at the poll forest and saying the entire forest is buggered if almost all polls erred on one side, regardless of their individual margins of error.

MadMax2 | Nov 13, 2016 8:14:16 PM | 46
The New York Times recent admission that it writes the narrative first, then builds the story to suit says about everything for me regarding polls. 'Hey, my editor needs someone to come out and say something, can you say this...?' <-- Now, if that is standard practice in journalism at 'the paper of record', then skewing polls to suit a common agenda is a given, again in my opinion. This of course is great news for sites like MofA.

Also impossible to capture The Don's campaign playing the electoral college system like an old mandolin, as it turns out. 306 Trump bts 232 Hillary it looks like in the wash up. That's old school work rate doing the job. Fair play. Great to see all the student debt laden brainwashed libtards out there doing there nut. They don't even know what a bullet they dodged + shite like the TPP is now dead. Some gratitude.

Hopefully in 2020 there are some more scientific polls like the USC Dornslife/LA Times poll, each having their own differing methodologies preferably. This should give the punters a better 'feel' for the electorate.

In other news...

Assange is being interviewed tomorrow by Swedush police (for the 2nd time I should add). There are and were no charges laid. I suspect their will be no charges brought tomorrow.

...so what happened...? Did The Rule of Law just...magically appear...?

Penelope | Nov 13, 2016 8:16:37 PM | 47
The most extraordinary thing I learned about polls is that exit polls are altered as soon as the official election or primary vote is in-- to match it.

https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/tag/mathematical-proof-of-election-fraud/

Penelope | Nov 13, 2016 8:42:14 PM | 49
2 heartstopping items:
-- http://phibetaiota.net/2016/11/robert-steele-the-accidental-president-will-he-resign-the-closed-system-is-still-rigged-and-likely-to-remain-so/ Challenging Trumps legitimacy.
-- http://usdefensewatch.com/2016/11/putin-issues-international-arrest-warrant-for-george-soros-dead-or-alive/ This last-- like most overly dramatic news-- appears to be a scm but is widely dispersed across the web. Kind of curious. Of course I guess everybody knows that he's behind the protests in the US.

Julian | Nov 13, 2016 8:54:34 PM | 50
Who is Trump speaking to?
According to reports, the first leader Trump spoke to on the phone after his election victory was the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Sisi congratulated him on the election victory, a spokesman for the Egyptian leader said.

Ireland's government said the taoiseach, Enda Kenny, had a 10-minute call with Trump, and was invited to visit the White House on St Patrick's Day.

Mexico's president, Enrique Peńa Nieto, has said he and Trump agreed in their call to meet before Trump takes office, while Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was invited to the White House.

Other leaders to have a chat with Trump so far include the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe – they reportedly talked for 20 minutes and agreed to meet soon in New York – and South Korea's president, Park Geun-hye.

Australia's prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, was reported to have chatted with Trump about security and trade in their call.

No surprises there.

It may be unfortunate, but I can see Trump & Erdogan getting along very well. Although, if they bring Putin into that triumvirate that could actually be very beneficial for the Middle East.

Notably absent

Adalbrand | Nov 13, 2016 8:55:25 PM | 51
@MadMax2 #46:

Concur with all your points. And yes, the timing of the Swedes finally deciding to interview Assange is funny.

I never thought that Hillary would become president, btw., from the moment she declared for 2016. Which is not to say that I was not concerned that the demonization of Trump might throw the election. We'll never know, but it is possible that Trump wouldn't have won without Wikileaks. And the two sets of leaks were very well timed.

To return to polls. It's not just most media polls that were off. The Clinton campaign's internal polls were off, too. They didn't have much doubt that they would win. (The same thing happened with Romney of course, but in their case, their internal polls differed from the media polls.) Apparently, they really did believe they have a firewall, with redundancies no less.

Clinton staffers: Arrogance from the DNC leadership cost Clinton the election

[Nov 13, 2016] Comey did it hypothesys

Nov 13, 2016 | nypost.com

But Democrats had a simpler answer for why Clinton lost. As one Democratic strategist close to Clinton told The Post, it all came down to "one word: Comey." Too bad for Democrats there are zero electoral votes in the State of Denial. FBI Director James Comey didn't use a private e-mail server to conduct official State Department business and put 110 classified e-mails on that unsecured server. Comey didn't fail to turn over some 14,900 e-mails to the FBI after assuring Americans that "I turned over everything I was obligated to turn over."

Comey didn't lie to the American people about Benghazi, publicly blaming the attacks on "inflammatory material posted on the Internet." Comey didn't tell Democratic voters he was against free-trade deals, but then tell Brazilian bankers that his dream was for "hemispheric . . . open trade and open borders."

Comey didn't have a foundation that accepted millions of dollars in donations from foreign governments during his tenure as secretary of state. He didn't give, as I wrote last month, "special treatment to Clinton Foundation donors after the Haiti quake, asking for them to be identified as 'FOBs' (friends of Bill Clinton) or 'WJC VIPs' (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs)."

Why did Hillary Clinton lose? Not because of Comey. She lost because exit polls showed that 54 percent of voters believe she is "corrupt."

To the elites in Washington, her corruption was apparently no big deal, at least not compared with their horror at the prospect of a Trump presidency. But Americans correctly saw her corruption as corrosive to our democracy.

This election was a popular repudiation of Clinton's corruption and deceit - and she owns that. But there is one person besides herself whom she can blame: President Obama. Because while Clinton may have lost to Donald Trump, it was Obama who created him.

[Nov 13, 2016] Martin Armstrong Exposes The Real Clinton Conspiracy Which Backfired Dramatically

Notable quotes:
"... Hillary lost not merely because she misread the "real" people, she decided to run a very divisive and nasty negative campaign, which has fueled the violence ever since. According to WikiLeaks emails from campaign John Podesta, Clinton colluded with the DNC and the media to raise what they thought would be the extreme right among Republicans to then make her the middle of the road to hide her agenda. ..."
"... Clinton called this her "pied piper" strategy, that intentionally cultivated extreme right-wing presidential candidates and that would turn the Republicans away from their more moderate candidates. ..."
"... The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee along with mainstream media all called for using far-right candidates "as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right." Clinton's camp insisted that Trump should be "elevated" to "leaders of the pack" and media outlets should be told to "take them seriously." ..."
"... The Clinton strategy was all about manipulating the Republicans to nominate the worst candidate Clinton called for forcing "all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election." ..."
"... It was not Putin trying to rig the elections, it was Hillary. Clinton saw the Republican field as crowded and she viewed as "positive" for her. "Many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right." Clinton then took the strategic position saying "we don't want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more 'Pied Piper' candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party." ..."
"... "We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them seriously." ..."
"... This is by far the WORST campaign in history and it was all orchestrated by Hillary to be intentionally divisive for the nation all to win the presidency at all costs. She has torched the constitution and the country. ..."
"... Any Democrat who is not angry at this is clearly just a biased fool. Wake up and smell the roses. You just got what you deserve. ..."
"... It's one thing to be ruthless & evil. It's another to be ruthless, evil and stupid. Brexit should have been a huge eye-opener for the elites that they should seek to field two establishment candidates as usual at any cost rather than risk elevating an outsider. ..."
"... It's incredibly fortunate they were too dumb to realise that the former middle class and independents cognisant of NWO would create huge momentum for exactly those type of candidates & that this was absolutely the worst time in history to attempt that strategy. Lack of competition at the top of the food chain has made her ilk slow and out of touch. Evolution is a bitch. ..."
"... Personally, I find this hilarious. She schemes and connives to push forward the most "unelectable" republican, and that republican wins mostly because she vastly underestimates the dislike of Americans for her. ..."
"... Excellent article. Truly, the definition of "hubris" was Hillary during this election. ..."
"... What she underestimated was the ability for most to see thru her true contempt of people. That's the bottom line of Hillary- she just sees herself as royalty, and we just got tired of seeing it again and again. ..."
"... from the tone of the leaked emails it is clear they realized she was the worst candidate ever. ..."
"... This mirrors her naive approach to foreign policy of "create a controlled burn (Arab spring) and get rid of your enemy". Without realizing someone would move in to the void left afterwards. (I need to drink more - In whiskey, veritas). Or as in this case, the wind changes direction. ..."
"... It is interesting that there is no mention of any strategy to promote her ideas or positive qualities. In fact the "muddy the waters" statement shows they knew scandals would come up and they'd have to play defense. ..."
"... Remember how Hitlery called US working white men just a deplorable POS. Furthermore, her allies could easily falsify the voter counting process but again they were so arrogant and self confident that they fucked up themselves. ..."
"... People, stop be so naive and stupid. The life is not fair to losers since only winners always write the history! ..."
"... Finally, if Trump will follow an advice to be good to everybody being a unifier then he will be destroyed. This is why he must continue the strategy that brought his the victory. One never can win follow a defensive strategy! ..."
"... unfortunately, the MSM is continuing without a break in cadence their lock-step call for bipartisan! compromise! and let's be "REASONABLE" . DAMMIT. The time for reasonable is past. ..."
"... If Trump puts in a lot of NEOCON insiders in his cabinet I say we need to hammer it again home that this is our last chance. If trump doesn't deliver the JOBS and Economic turnaround then the conservatives are GONE. We won't get another chance. ..."
www.zerohedge.com

Meanwhile, Hillary lost not merely because she misread the "real" people, she decided to run a very divisive and nasty negative campaign, which has fueled the violence ever since. According to WikiLeaks emails from campaign John Podesta, Clinton colluded with the DNC and the media to raise what they thought would be the extreme right among Republicans to then make her the middle of the road to hide her agenda.

... ... ...

Clinton called this her "pied piper" strategy, that intentionally cultivated extreme right-wing presidential candidates and that would turn the Republicans away from their more moderate candidates. This enlisted mainstream media who then focused to Trump and raise him above all others assuming that would help Hillary for who would vote for Trump. This was a deliberate strategy all designed to propel Hillary to the White House.

The Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee along with mainstream media all called for using far-right candidates "as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right." Clinton's camp insisted that Trump should be "elevated" to "leaders of the pack" and media outlets should be told to "take them seriously."

If we look back on April 23, 2015, just two weeks after Hillary Clinton officially declared her presidential campaign, her staff sent out a message on straregy to manipulate the Republicans into selecting the worse candidate. They included this attachment a "memo for the DNC discussion."

The memo was addressed to the Democratic National Committee and stated bluntly, "the strategy and goals a potential Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would have regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field." Here we find that the real conspiracy was Clinton manipulating the Republicans. "Clearly most of what is contained in this memo is work the DNC is already doing. This exercise is intended to put those ideas to paper."

"Our hope is that the goal of a potential HRC campaign and the DNC would be one-in-the-same: to make whomever the Republicans nominate unpalatable to a majority of the electorate."

The Clinton strategy was all about manipulating the Republicans to nominate the worst candidate Clinton called for forcing "all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election."

It was not Putin trying to rig the elections, it was Hillary. Clinton saw the Republican field as crowded and she viewed as "positive" for her. "Many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right." Clinton then took the strategic position saying "we don't want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more 'Pied Piper' candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party."

Her manipulative strategy was to have the press build up Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. "We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to them seriously."

This conspiracy has emerged from the Podesta emails. It was Clinton conspiring with mainstream media to elevate Trump and then tear him down. We have to now look at all the media who endorsed Hillary as simply corrupt. Simultaneously, Hillary said that Bernie had to be ground down to the pulp. Further leaked emails showed how the Democratic National Committee sabotaged Sanders' presidential campaign. It was Hillary manipulating the entire media for her personal gain. She obviously did not want a fair election because she was too corrupt.

What is very clear putting all the emails together, the rise of Donald Trump was orchestrated by Hillary herself conspiring with mainstream media, and they they sought to burn him to the ground. Their strategy backfired and now this is why she has not come out to to speak against the violence she has manipulated and inspired.

This is by far the WORST campaign in history and it was all orchestrated by Hillary to be intentionally divisive for the nation all to win the presidency at all costs. She has torched the constitution and the country. No wonder Hillary could not go to the stage to thank her supporters. She never counted on them and saw the people as fools. The entire strategy was to take the White House with a manipulation of the entire election process. Just unbelievable. Any Democrat who is not angry at this is clearly just a biased fool. Wake up and smell the roses. You just got what you deserve.

Notveryamused -> Charles Wilson •Nov 12, 2016 9:12 PM

It's one thing to be ruthless & evil. It's another to be ruthless, evil and stupid. Brexit should have been a huge eye-opener for the elites that they should seek to field two establishment candidates as usual at any cost rather than risk elevating an outsider.

It's incredibly fortunate they were too dumb to realise that the former middle class and independents cognisant of NWO would create huge momentum for exactly those type of candidates & that this was absolutely the worst time in history to attempt that strategy. Lack of competition at the top of the food chain has made her ilk slow and out of touch. Evolution is a bitch.

847328_3527 -> nmewn •Nov 12, 2016 9:33 PM

That yootoob video of "When people laughed at the idea..." is excellent...a Must watch for all! Here is the yootoob link again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT0Rjc6jKCg

Automatic Choke -> 847328_3527 •Nov 12, 2016 9:34 PM

Personally, I find this hilarious. She schemes and connives to push forward the most "unelectable" republican, and that republican wins mostly because she vastly underestimates the dislike of Americans for her.

Could there be a more fitting slap in the face to someone of such enormous hubris and arrogance?

jcaz -> Automatic Choke •Nov 12, 2016 9:47 PM

Excellent article. Truly, the definition of "hubris" was Hillary during this election.

What she underestimated was the ability for most to see thru her true contempt of people. That's the bottom line of Hillary- she just sees herself as royalty, and we just got tired of seeing it again and again.

MalteseFalcon -> espirit •Nov 12, 2016 10:47 PM

Hillary Rodent fashions herself as some kind of leader who is a Christian (Methodist) and loves America ("Need to unify!!"). So let the Rodent get on TV and tell these bought and paid for rioters to stop. "Not in my name" should be the Rodent's plea.

<crickets>

She's a fraud.

Joe Davola -> MalteseFalcon •Nov 12, 2016 11:44 PM

It truly was the worst campaign in history (topping Mondale 84). If only they'd put half the effort into their campaign that they put into dirty tricks. Then again, from the tone of the leaked emails it is clear they realized she was the worst candidate ever.

They were so busy playing it like a parlor game, they forgot to actually provide real reasons to vote for her - beyond it was her turn.

This mirrors her naive approach to foreign policy of "create a controlled burn (Arab spring) and get rid of your enemy". Without realizing someone would move in to the void left afterwards. (I need to drink more - In whiskey, veritas). Or as in this case, the wind changes direction.

FreedomGuy -> Joe Davola •Nov 13, 2016 12:44 AM

It is interesting that there is no mention of any strategy to promote her ideas or positive qualities. In fact the "muddy the waters" statement shows they knew scandals would come up and they'd have to play defense.

It is never about how good they are. It is about how bad you/the other side is.

caconhma -> jcaz •Nov 12, 2016 10:31 PM

War is war. The goal is to win by destroying an opponent. Therefore, any actions and any strategy leading to a victory are totally justified!

Consequently, one cannot blame Hitlery for her actions. Hitlery has done the right things but Jewish arrogance that guided and executed her election campaign negated and destroyed all advantages she had. Remember how Hitlery called US working white men just a deplorable POS. Furthermore, her allies could easily falsify the voter counting process but again they were so arrogant and self confident that they fucked up themselves.

People, stop be so naive and stupid. The life is not fair to losers since only winners always write the history!

Finally, if Trump will follow an advice to be good to everybody being a unifier then he will be destroyed. This is why he must continue the strategy that brought his the victory. One never can win follow a defensive strategy!

hardmedicine -> caconhma •Nov 13, 2016 3:46 AM

unfortunately, the MSM is continuing without a break in cadence their lock-step call for bipartisan! compromise! and let's be "REASONABLE" . DAMMIT. The time for reasonable is past.

If Trump puts in a lot of NEOCON insiders in his cabinet I say we need to hammer it again home that this is our last chance. If trump doesn't deliver the JOBS and Economic turnaround then the conservatives are GONE. We won't get another chance.

Grosvenor Pkwy -> Chris Dakota •Nov 13, 2016 6:29 AM

Long-term drug and alcohol abuse slowly destroys the brain. She was definitely smarter 20 years ago. "first we have to bring them to heel..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FnjXkHvYSY

VinceFostersGhost -> Chris Dakota •Nov 13, 2016 8:23 AM

for years the talk is that Hillary is a drunk.

Heard the same thing.......Benghazi......she was knocked out.


[Nov 13, 2016] Liberal Media Turns On Itself As NYT Promises To Rededicate Itself To Honest Reporting

Notable quotes:
"... Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably. ..."
"... Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." ..."
"... let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin. ..."
"... Everyone must stop saying they are "stunned" and "shocked". What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. ..."
"... You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. ..."
"... Finally, speaking of Saturday Night Live sketches, we can't wait to see how the liberal "comedy" show - which just like the NYT existed in a world of its own throughout the presidential campaign - spins the election results tonight. ..."
Nov 13, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com
* * *

Then there was ultraliberal Michael Moore, who in a facebook post urged to "Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off."

Morning After To-Do List:

1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.

2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.

3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn't wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin.

4. Everyone must stop saying they are "stunned" and "shocked". What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all "You're fired!" Trump's victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.

5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: "HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!" The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don't. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he's president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we'll continue to have presidents we didn't elect and didn't want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the "liberal" position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above).

* * *

There were countless more such examples of prominent liberals accusing the press of bias and propaganda long after the fact, even as the press itself refuses to admit any guilt, while itself blaming others, and so the circle continues to turn, and nothing changes in a world in which nobody knows what happens next now that the status quo has been crushed by the people.

Finally, speaking of Saturday Night Live sketches, we can't wait to see how the liberal "comedy" show - which just like the NYT existed in a world of its own throughout the presidential campaign - spins the election results tonight.

[Nov 12, 2016] Donald Trump is moving to the White House, and liberals put him there

Notable quotes:
"... The party elites--the superdelegates--committed to Clinton from the beginning. They decided it was her turn. And despite all the evidence showing they were supporting a weak, vulnerable, and heavily disliked candidate, they stuck with it anyway. This Trump presidency, and the Republican sweep in the House and Senate, is entirely on the shoulders of 300 insider Democrats. ..."
"... Clinton's supporters among the media didn't help much, either. It always struck me as strange that such an unpopular candidate enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from the editorial and opinion pages of the nation's papers, but it was the quality of the media's enthusiasm that really harmed her. With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. ..."
"... But she was exactly the wrong candidate for this angry, populist moment. An insider when the country was screaming for an outsider. A technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine. ..."
www.theguardian.com

thetowncrier -> NathAldridge 4d ago

No shit, Sherlock. Sanders would have beaten Trump. We are living in extreme times, and in extreme times centrism and political 'triangulation' doesn't work.

This result will be repeated next year in France with the National Front. Mark my words. And when it does, France will vote to leave the EU and the house of cards will come crashing down.

You can thank the Democrats, a party that used to represent working people, for at least part of that. Their billionaire backers picked Clinton because she'd ensure their wealth would remain untouched. I wonder what they're feeling now?

Aaron Jackson -> NathAldridge 4d ago

How do you figure? Clinton won the Democratic primary by less than the margin of superdelegates. She had a MASSIVE lead in funding, institutional support, and (at the least) insider bias--though it was likely more than that, given that nearly every single election anomaly in that primary bounced her way.

The DNC intentionally limited the debates and scheduled those they did have for off times to try to limit the damage Sanders could do to Clinton, and big media refused to cover Bernie Sanders except in the context of Clinton.

And even with all of that, Sanders pulled within 300 delegates of winning the Democratic Nomination by working through a grassroots, positive campaign. The momentum was entirely on his side, too! And national polls showed him performing MUCH better against Trump than Clinton. And, of course, he had no scandals (real or imagined) to leverage.

The party elites--the superdelegates--committed to Clinton from the beginning. They decided it was her turn. And despite all the evidence showing they were supporting a weak, vulnerable, and heavily disliked candidate, they stuck with it anyway. This Trump presidency, and the Republican sweep in the House and Senate, is entirely on the shoulders of 300 insider Democrats.


NathAldridge 4d ago

The Guardian in a nutshell!

Clinton's supporters among the media didn't help much, either. It always struck me as strange that such an unpopular candidate enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from the editorial and opinion pages of the nation's papers, but it was the quality of the media's enthusiasm that really harmed her. With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. Here's what it consisted of:

  • Hillary was virtually without flaws. She was a peerless leader clad in saintly white, a super-lawyer, a caring benefactor of women and children, a warrior for social justice.
  • Her scandals weren't real.
  • The economy was doing well / America was already great.
  • Working-class people weren't supporting Trump. And if they were, it was only because they were botched humans. Racism was the only conceivable reason for lining up with the Republican candidate.

dynamic22 4d ago

"But she was exactly the wrong candidate for this angry, populist moment. An insider when the country was screaming for an outsider. A technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine."

You said everything really.

Watchman80 -> dynamic22 4d ago

Yup.

Also, see this. Note the date (and the imagined Trump speech)

http://static.currentaffairs.org/2016/02/unless-the-democrats-nominate-sanders-a-trump-nomination-means-a-trump-presidency


Choller21 4d ago

Maybe it's time to consider whether there's something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away.

I couldn't have put it better. I could have put it with more swear words in though.

BigBlue80 4d ago

Maybe there is a bright side to a Trump victory. After all, there was a reason that tens of millions of good people voted for him yesterday, and maybe he will live up to their high regard for him.

If you assume that election victory (not even a majority as apparently Clinton will win the popular vote) legitmises everything, you are right. But if you believe that there are western values that should not be sacrificed than you are wrong. Eventually, this will be the end of democracy - it will kill itself by electing a fascist. I happened before and it looks ever more likely. The you US with ist overbearing nationalism, its leader-orientation and glorification of the military was always close to fascism, but now it might have taken the final leap into the abyss.

atuocool 4d ago

"[Neo]Liberals" are a type of conservative who never convince me of the sincerity of their "progressive" values. What was progressive about Hillary? What would she have actually done for the poor? How would she have moved America away from being a corporate plutocracy? We all know the answer is nothing. Trump is a nightmare, but he represents a bizarre, retrograde change while Clinton represented a vacuous status quo.

John Hunter 4d ago

with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station


Correct, it is censorship and suppression of contrary opinion and enormously biased towards "The Chosen One"

Once again it proves that the Guardian is against the tide of History.

It is not bad to be contrarian or representing an alternative opinion or "voice" however provided you still maintain some sense of integrity and journalistic professionalism, providing content, news and information that is fair, balanced without indulging in gratuitous character assassination, presenting controversial issues of public importance in a manner that is honest, equitable, and balanced.

The Guardian during the American election as with Brexit and many other controversial issues has consistently aligned itself with policies and opinion that many would consider left-wing or liberal yet is neither as the viewpoints they support betrays the liberty and freedom of the ordinary citizen.

As I said before the election regardless who win or lose the media has already lost by showing its hand and exposed itself as not a true independent source of news and information, but pursuing definite agendas and siding with corporate news media's opinions and politics.

According to the Guardian's own view liberalism will have to be remade in a post-liberal age. It is their own peculiar set of values they believe that is important and not the very principles the left originally defended. Pursuing a certain "metropolitan liberal creed".

An metropolitan liberal elite who believe they are more educated, more intelligent and talented, more enlightened, more able to comprehend what society needs than the slow, slobs, the wasters and good for nothings with their prejudices, that do not know what is good for them.

Their brand of Liberalism has been the complete antithesis of allowing people to take control of their lives. It has been a dictatorial imposition of the beliefs of the least liberal nature.

Equating the tendencies of so-called "social justice warriors" and so-called "identity politics" and equating them somehow with liberalism you're a long way from the truth have little to do with liberalism and no, that's not "left" either.

The establishment in the mainstream media believe they are economically liberals - though privately they look more kindly on monopolies than old school liberals would have. Yet these "liberals" want to happily embrace Brussels' legalistic regime of rules that range from the petty and impractical to a punitive and autocratic dictatorship.

Classical liberalism is a political ideology and a branch of liberalism which advocates civil liberties and political freedom with representative democracy under the rule of law and emphasizes economic freedom.

It is no secret what the problem is, lack of jobs, lack of opportunities, people who feel they have no future or rights in their own country anymore.

Ask yourself is what you identify with or support contributing towards a more peaceful, harmonious society where all have a sense of having a place and a future in their own country where they feel they fit in and contribute towards a more safe, secure and prosperous society?

Jerome Fryer John Hunter 4d ago 14 15

An metropolitan liberal elite who believe they are more educated, more intelligent and talented, more enlightened, more able to comprehend what society needs than the slow, slobs, the wasters and good for nothings with their prejudices, that do not know what is good for them.

This is not a new problem. The social elites (self-appointed) of all political persuasions are always bemoaning the stupidity of the plebs in not bowing to their superior understanding of all things. That this unfounded hubris is an amazing exemplar of denial of reality (who just won this election, for example) doesn't seem able to take root in the bubble of acceptable thought in their minds. How could they possibly be talking out of their bottom when it comes to damn near everything? (All evidence aside.)

We need the voice of the 'common people' to be heard, without being filtered by the elites. Fake democracy is not going to work -- we'll end up with a bigger fiasco, such as Jamie Dimon vs Kim Kardashian in the next US Presidential contest. Way past time for those in power to wake up to the fact that they're not in control, and real change that involves the great unwashed in the process is necessary. Trump is one dumb guy, but he has managed to figure out how to use this frustration to get his misogynist, racist, backside into the chair in the Oval Office.

Wise up, 'smart people'. Reply Share Share on Facebook Facebook Share on Twitter Twitter | Pick Report _jhfta_ Jerome Fryer 4d ago 10 11

We need the voice of the 'common people' to be heard, without being filtered by the elites.

I give you: Boaty McBoatface. trp981 , 9 Nov 2016 11:2>
Concluding Unscientific Postscripts (*)

- Election of Trump is not just another routine changing of the guards in the US two-party system (although it is that too). This is a significant deviation in the business-as-usual model of politics, and there will be substantial repercussions that will explicitly manifest themselves somewhere down the line.

- The Founding Dudes and the Framers of the US Constitution had set up the system so as to preclude the possibility of ascendance of someone like Trump.

- The Founding Dudes and the Framers of the US Constitution had set up the system so as to eventually make possible the ascendance of someone like Trump.

- Sanders was right. That having had had been said, he would have still lost to Drumpf if he were the D's nominee instead of HRC.

- That is because RealAmerica_a spoke more vocally this time around, overwhelming the voice of RealAmerica_b.

- Judging by geographical size alone, RealAmerica_a is Real America.

- It is simply unimaginable that the enlightened citizenry will elect someone as destructive and unqualified as Reagan in 1980. Such a possibility is not conceivable in any logical space, and even fiction writers are wary to contemplate such an impossibility.

- Election of Reagan is not just another routine changing of the guards in the US two-party system (although it is that too). This is a significant deviation in the business-as-usual model of politics, and there will be substantial repercussions that will explicitly manifest themselves somewhere down the line.

- Trump's victory is a repeat of the interplay of the socioeconomic forces that made Dubya's presidency possible in 2000. Eight more years of this worldview and we will have another Obama-type candidacy afterwards to clean up the mess and make the world safe again for the staggering-but-still-dominant neoliberal order.

- People will be just too exhausted after eight years of Trump's presidency, and they will be so relieved after the election of the next Obama-type president as to retreat to their homes and let the new savior continue cuddling the big economic players and attempting to reach a Grand Bargain with the Republicans to further erode the threadbare social safety net holding up the people, of course for the good of the people themselves and in the name of Serious Politics.

-The dominant position in our society will continue to be the generalization of Alan Grayson's observation: Don't fall down, if you do disappear quickly.

- Setting aside the status quo status of Clinton's policy prescriptions (she a competent steward of the Washington Consensus), Trump's victory also signals the provisional victory of the manly men of RealAmerica_a (and the women who love them) over women (and minorities, and the LGBT, and immigrants, and etc).

- The same way that most people don't know or care about the wavelengths associated with colors, they don't know or care about the underlying forces affecting their lives as long as the politicians put on a good Reality TV show and pull effectively at their heartstrings.

- In other words, F science, F reality.

- In other words, long live Realty TV, the rule of Kardashians, the Apprentice, WWE/WWF , etc. Constant exposure to these things matter.


- Constant exposure to these things don't matter.

- Tomorrow the Sun will come up as before, and the Earth will go around it at a steady pace as before, and the already enfeebled welfare state will continue to fray as before, and millions of US citizens will continue their steady fall into precariousness as before (especially Trump supporters in RealAmerica_a), and millions will continue to lose steady jobs and be pushed into the the gig economy, and the 1% will continue raking in the loot as before under the benevolent gaze of their new leader.

- If HRC had won, all above would still occur, but probably at a lower rate (except for the Sun and Earth thing).

- Drumpf was the Smoker to HRC's Atoller .

(*) Yesyes, I know.

rasnip , 9 Nov 2016 11:2>
I feel lots of parallels can be drawn with brexit, particularly the points made at the end. amazingly people dont like being insulted and talked down to by party elites, the gop base has been totally transformed by trumps campaign.

that said has anyone else noticed that trump supporters only ever say 'hes going to do so much for us' and trump says we are going to reopen the mines/factories/get a better deal but never said how. he has promised unicorns and rainbows to people dealt a shit hand by the economic changes of the last 30 years.

spotthelemon usini , 9 Nov 2016 11:4>
The political class amongst US liberals are neo-liberals

Neoliberalism from Reagan to [Bill] Clinton .
written in 1998 the review of this book ends with
" Michael Meeropol's damning indictment of the economic direction of the Clinton presidency demonstrates that nowhere is the need for a new movement more pressing than in the United States".

Well Bush & Obama & Hillary, had she been elected, were continuations of that economic direction. If America has needed a new movement to win since 1999 then I guess they got really desperate which is why they voted for something as bad as Trump. Yes , the liberals or more specifically neo-liberals an be held responsible

Musicismath usini , 9 Nov 2016 11:5>
Frank has been making exactly this point since 1997. Others worth reading on this issue include Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph L. Reed, Jr.

Unfortunately, in a lot of fora where this message sorely needs to be heard right now, this article would be summarily dismissed on the basis that Frank used the word "shrill," which is out of bounds in liberal discourse. Which of course just illustrates Frank's point.

Aboutface , 9 Nov 2016 11:3>
The DNC put President Trump into the White House. The DNC, fixated on the anointed, untouchable HRC, lost its moral compass and the good work of Bernie and Warren, now amounts to a big fat ZERO.
Laughable, how out of touch - meaningless motherhood cliches cannot pay the bills.
Pinback71 , 9 Nov 2016 11:3>
It is a case in point that the MSM have completely lost touch with a population that often relies on the internet for its news. In the old days, the newspaper that was closest to your political viewpoint was delivered to your door as your primary source of information, now every news outlet, blog and forum in the world is delivered directly to your tablet.
The media, like the Government has considerably less influence than a decade or two ago.
Ummmmm , 9 Nov 2016 11:3>
Good article and, as one poster put it, encapsulates the Guardian's editorial line in a nutshell.

The FT seems to be to the left of this paper these days, forced to be more hard nosed about the world. This from its columnist Wolfgang Munchenau some days ago:

"What led the centre-left on to such a self-destructive path? The answer is a combination of the following: a false belief that elections are won from the centre; the lure of ministerial limousines; an inferiority complex about not being able to run "responsible fiscal policies"; and a belief that voters of the left have nowhere else to go. .. The main issue is not whether a Keynesian policy response would be economically correct. The more important point is that if the centre-left does not offer it, the populists will. Unless the centre-left returns to its Keynesian roots, I think there is a good chance that the politics of insurrection will succeed."


https://www.ft.com/content/dba252f8-a29c-11e6-82c3-4351ce86813f

Same trends at play in UK, US and Europe. Any lessons to learn?

Omoikani , 9 Nov 2016 11:3>
Excellent article. Perhaps the Guardian needs to do a whole lot of soul-searching.

The one thing left out of the article is what Michael Moore said, which is really worth reading in full , but the nub of which is the following:

You live here in Ohio, you know what I'm talking about. Whether Trump means it or not, is kind of irrelevant because he's saying the things to people who are hurting, and that's why every beaten-down, nameless, forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump. He is the human molotov cocktail that they've been waiting for. The human hand grande that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them.

Persianwar , 9 Nov 2016 11:3>

the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station.

That's a very accurate summary. The first step to winning next time is to understand why you lost this time. The establishment view was that people were going to get Hillary Clinton whether they liked it or not. Next time try listening to people who are angry that their pay has fallen in real terms for 10 years. Try listening to people whose views you disagree with rather than 'no platform' them lest your delicate sensibilities be offended.

MacWolf , 9 Nov 2016 11:3>
The list of celebrities and pundits and surrogates taking his side on the campaign trail was extremely short.

I often wonder is having a celebrity endourse you counter productive. I saw many celebs appear on TV and social media telling people they shouldn't vote for Trump. Some went as far as to call people who might vote for Trump idiots. How many people got fed up with rich, famous people telling them how they should vote? If you're someone sitting in America's rust belt, no job or low paid crap job, being told by someone you think probably owns a Hollywood mansion and does very little work, would you not feel a little resentful being told by them how to vote? Wouldn't you take a dislike to a candidate who appears on stage with these celebs and yet you feel ignores you? Just a thought.

dizzyalien MacWolf , 9 Nov 2016 11:4>
Rights come with responsibilities.

If you have the right to vote, the responsibility is to think through the implications of using that vote for X or Y candidate, to work out for yourself what will happen to you, your family, your community and your country if you vote for X or Y.

If you vote for Y because you feel "resentful" that someone is using their freedom of speech to urge voting for X rather than Y - perhaps you shouldn't really be voting at all. Just a thought.

SqueakEMouse MacWolf , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
More than just an odd thought my friend. The sight of a procession of wealthy, smug and self entitled celebs, often utter hypocrites, expecting to deliver their Facebook followers to a politician is nauseating and angers more than a few. Few of these celebs are famous for their brains so being called an idiot by a halfwit with money hardly endears them. But still society is in thrall to the concept of celebrity following. It begs the question of what all these followers are actually following. Perhaps Lady Gaga et al have confused the pathological need for an entertainment fix with an adoration of their thoughts and outlook.
MatthewRendall 4d ago

Killing off the neo-liberal virus in the Democratic Party would be a start, but won't be enough, if the Democrats simply put the American equivalents of Jeremy Corbyn in its place. What's desperately needed here are fresh ideas--something analogous to the Keynesian ideas that gave intellectual underpinning to the New Deal.

eken92 , 9 Nov 2016 11:4>

The American white-collar class just spent the year rallying around a super-competent professional (who really wasn't all that competent) and either insulting or silencing everyone who didn't accept their assessment. And then they lost. Maybe it's time to consider whether there's something about shrill self-righteousness, shouted from a position of high social status, that turns people away.

I think this is a very succinct assessment and goes most of the way to explaining this result, and the Brexit result too. People don't want to be lectured, they want to be listened to (yes, even if you think they're wrong).

MaoriSideStep , 9 Nov 2016 11:4>
'Liberals' created the grounds for Brexit too.

You see, their sneering attitude to the British working class, their name-calling, their bogus judgements about the working class for not wanting any more of their rights and opportunities taken away from them.

The 'liberals' are hated as much as the toffs. Brexit was a great example of the bile and hatred the 'liberals' spew out at the disadvantaged working class.

It wasn't the 'liberals' housing and schools, communities and healthcare, employment rights and opportunities that was being eroded though was it? No. But that didn't stop the 'liberals' branding the working class as 'racists' and 'stupid' and 'blind' did it.

Maybe you now can see yourself, on this poxy 'liberal' website and see how YOU have created a situation where the working class want ANYTHING other than more of your poison.

Look at the people bleating about Brexit: the 'liberals', the politicians, the bankers, big business, the judges...my goodness, doesn't that tell a story of the haves and have nots. All the bleaters are the scum that have never had the working class' best interests in mind and yet you think we, the working class, should take heed of their fatuous, aquisitive, vile, whimpers? Really?

It's only just beginning. Toodle pip.

BayOfGiggs MaoriSideStep , 9 Nov 2016 11:4>

The 'liberals' are hated as much as the toffs.

Why you think you'll get a great deal from....

Multi-Billionaire Media Barons controlling the news on both sides of the Atlantic (the same Baron in the case of Murdoch) and they in turn backed by the Trillionaire old and true establishment who are the exact same families as a hundred years ago and hundreds of years before that in many cases.

....baffles me however.

Designcycle MaoriSideStep , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
Very well written and I agree to a large extent - the problem is.. are people like Trump and blood Boris Johnson going to be any more cognisant of the lives and problems of the working class than the liberals? And are they likely to do anything about those problems unless they simultaneously line their own pockets? If, and it's a very big if, the interests of the working class and the interests of Trump et al align somehow then there is a silver lining. If not, then the best we can hope for is that liberals start to reconnect with the people they purport to represent.
westcoaster Designcycle , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>

the problem is.. are people like Trump and blood Boris Johnson going to be any more cognisant of the lives and problems of the working class than the liberals?


No. But maybe, just maybe, the 'left-wing' parties will wake and remember what they are supposed to be for.
Omoikani , 9 Nov 2016 11:4>
Here's the other thing. Clinton and her mates at the New York Times and the Guardian are always lecturing us on the need to be compassionate and welcoming towards refugees from faraway places who would like to come and live among us, but there's never a moment of compassion for the people who are already here and suffering miserably on the margins of our already unequal societies - the unemployed and badly employed, the badly housed and homeless, those working sixty hours a week on the minimum wage for some crappy agency. So, guess what. That's why people are voting for stuff like Brexit and Trump.

If you lot in the metropolitan elite can't see this then you are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes.

Voltaire21 , 9 Nov 2016 11:4>
Just like Silvio Berlusconi, Trumps opponents were incapable to escape the trap of trying to sling shit at a candidate made out of teflon.

The Clinton camp tried to fight a war in the trenches...but Trump feeds of negativity, they should have learnt early that nothing was too outrageous or controversial to tarnish him.

The closest they got was the misogyny accusations and even they didn't stick. Just like Berlusconi, Trump the lover of pageantry and beautiful women was being portrayed as a woman hater but he cleverly made it sound like he was hater of feminists instead of women.

The problem with Clinton is that she tried to play the integrity card but that was easily debunked by Trump with email gate.

hashtagthat Voltaire21 , 9 Nov 2016 11:5>
"The Clinton camp tried to fight a war in the trenches.."

Very apt, considering she's a warmonger.

finnja , 9 Nov 2016 11:4>
The voice of sanity. Thank you, Mr. Frank.
The Democratic Establishment didn't give a hoot about what Bernie had to say, because his presidency would not have served their ambitions. They're more interested in getting nice jobs at Goldman Sachs than controlling the finance industry. And their sons and daughters will not fight in all the wars Clinton&Co see as great business opportunity.
The Dem establishment has failed the people, and now we all reep the whirlwind.
Geoff Conway , 9 Nov 2016 11:5>
I agree with Frank's analysis though not his use of the word 'liberal' which has confusingly different meanings. I think the same analysis could be used to explain Brexit.

The problem is a political class which wishes to maintain the status quo of a neo-liberal, globalised economy. For 35 years this economy has redistributed wealth from the poor to the rich and massively damaged the environment. It has thus disadvantaged the great majority of the people in the USA, the UK and indeed people across the world. People are quite reasonably fed up with the lies behind this 'trickle-down' economics. They are angry and want something different. The vacuum created by the failure of the left to recognise this, and come up with a new solution, has resulted in Trump, UKIP, Marine LePen etc.

shooglebunny forkintheroad , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
No. I really think liberals have been their own worst enemies during this election.

They have treated ordinary white Americans as if they are shit, spoken about them in ways that should make them hang their heads in shame and behaved as if they are living in a oligarchy where they can call the shots instead of a democracy and now they are paying the price.

You can only kick a dog so many times before it turns around and bites you.

I would also question the term"liberals" to describe people who are happy seeing jobs moved offshore, causing unemployment at home and slave labour conditions abroad; encouraging mass immigration to bring wages down and create a powerless and easily exploitable servant class and globalisation that provides them with a luxury lifestyle on the cheap while making it harder for just about everyone else.

The only "liberal" thing about these people is their attitudes towards trivial personal issues like sexuality and lifestyle choices.

NathAldridge , 9 Nov 2016 11:5>
Wise words from Frank - I hope the Guardian opinionators are made to read it

Clinton's supporters among the media didn't help much, either. It always struck me as strange that such an unpopular candidate enjoyed such robust and unanimous endorsements from the editorial and opinion pages of the nation's papers, but it was the quality of the media's enthusiasm that really harmed her. With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. Here's what it consisted of:

Hillary was virtually without flaws. She was a peerless leader clad in saintly white, a super-lawyer, a caring benefactor of women and children, a warrior for social justice.
Her scandals weren't real.
The economy was doing well / America was already great.
Working-class people weren't supporting Trump.
And if they were, it was only because they were botched humans. Racism was the only conceivable reason for lining up with the Republican candidate.

Craig Ross , 9 Nov 2016 11:5>
I hope all the Democratic Party insiders who rigged the primary elections are happy now.
SixHeads 4d ago

Absolutely right. And I'm willing to wager the liberal response to this will be to double down on the identity politics, double down on the victimhood narratives, double down on the march toward globalism, and double down on the cries for open borders and ever-increasing levels of immigration. They simply never learn.

It's very clear what happened this morning. Trump won because he picked up the white working class vote in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Ohio, all of which had previously voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012. The people in these states didn't magically become racist over the past four years. They saw a candidate (Clinton) who represented "business as usual", and they rejected her.

mrsmiow , 9 Nov 2016 11:5>

Excellent article. Summarises both Brexit as well as Trump's victory.

The stats are showing that Trump polled higher amongst African and Hispanic Americans. I am not surprised. The Democrats, like the UK Labour party, like to think they OWN ethnic voters and they are merely another 'special interest' group alongside women, gays, etc. They don't and us ethnic voters have the same concerns as any other working or middle class voters. And NO ONE appreciates being told they are wrong, racist and unintelligent.

This shows Social liberialism is dead and rotten. Well past its used by date, time to chuck it out. It went off when supposed social justice warriors got into business with big business and fickle finance.

The elites may be well educated but that they couldn't even bare to bring themselves to understand the perspectives of another reveals how broadminded they really are - the journalists, academics etc. They believed in democracy where only one way of thinking and the status quo could be permitted to flourish. This is the most intelligent article to capture the social change that far too many liberals are denying. How are they going deal with reality, ie. Are the majority of Americans and British really racists? The greatest irony is this article is published within the vanguard of what ordinary people are democratically retaliating against.

Dustbowler , 9 Nov 2016 11:5>
When you reach rock bottom the only way is to look up. The problem for the Liberalism of the Democratic Party of the last three decades is that it has become a social scientific morality of the well connected and completely unable to deal with the naked populism of Trump let alone the half baked morass of crony capitalism of George Bush.
Lets be opportunistic. This gives it a chance to wipe the slate clean and at the very least rid themselves of the influence of the Clintons who from the removal of Glass-Steagal Act demonstrated their only concerns were with the needs of the Super Rich rather than the majority of the population. Unfortunately you have that feeling that they are not even capable of doing that.
George Pratt , 9 Nov 2016 11:5>
"Trump... a folly so bewildering, an incompetence so profound ..."

Har, har, har, the foolish and incompetent Trump is now president elect and you are a wise and competent journalist who foresaw the future clearly.

Maybe you're the foolish incompetent, not Trump. Maybe you should examine the foolish certainty which made you write your Guardian article headlined "With Trump certain to lose, you can forget about a progressive Clinton" and many others based on foolish and incompetent assumptions, reasoning and conclusions

Maybe you and all the rest of the useful idiots on the left should examine all of your convictions about the world. You might discover how often you have been hoodwinked by your own folly into believing trash like Trump will lose to Hillary, AGW is a real problem which can be corrected by funneling trillions to crony capitalist alternative energy companies, fracking is dangerous and the unlimited immigration of millions of young, able bodied, violent, low IQ men is a good thing.

babyboomer1957 , 9 Nov 2016 11:5>
Hillary can console herself with a new job at Goldman Sachs, rather like Barosso, Global ambassador sounds nice.
notacarboncopy babyboomer1957 , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
And that is precisely a big part of why she lost.

People are sick of that merry-go-round, proof of the cabal that rules over us.

jennyjl90 , 9 Nov 2016 11:5>
Trump will achieve nothing of what he's said he wants to do. Reversing the 'reverse colonisation' of the white western world will fail, especially in the USA where, after all, the Afro-black population didn't ask to move to in the first place (though I'll bet tend dollars dollars not a single Afro-black American would opt for emigrating back to Africa, however much they complain about racial prejudice in the USA - the financial advantages of living in the developed world are FAR too valuable for that!).

As for the Hispanics, I doubt even a wall would stop them. The mass population of Central and South America is far, far greater than that of 'white western America' and their third world economics keep the USA and the developed world a desperate magnet for them (and I can't blame them - I'd fight tooth and nail to get in to the rich west as well!)

Nope, the Trump victory is a sad, hopeless rearguard action against the triumph of twenty-first century 'reverse colonisation' and that is that. The white western world is finished - the only question is, can it 'westernise' the immigrant population in time to save the developed world, or are we doomed to another Dark Ages of Global Third Worldism? (Maybe China will take over as Islam did post Roman Empire, while Europe went savage...)

White Western World - it's game over. Accept it.

queequeg7 , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
When you separate identity politics - race and gender - from inequality and class, which is what Obama and Clinton both did, you end up with Donald Trump moving into the White House ......
queequeg7 Joelee73 , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
The liberal argument has always been about the equality to exploit not an end to exploitation. It was at the heart of New Labour as well as Obama/Clinton Democrats ...
tedthetopcat queequeg7 , 9 Nov 2016 12:2>
For the last 30 odd years the liberal left have claimed class no longer mattered. Now the "white" working class have twice given them a kicking in 2016. When you're at the bottom class really matters!
MereMortal , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>

And so Democratic leaders made Hillary their candidate even though they knew about her closeness to the banks, her fondness for war, and her unique vulnerability on the trade issue – each of which Trump exploited to the fullest.

I really like Thomas Frank, but I wish in this diatribe that he wouldn't cheapen the countless (because the Americans don't count them) who have paid the price for Hillary's 'fondness for war' by referring to it like that, in passing, as if it was a fondness for muffins.
I wish that he had a bit more righteous fury about how the crazed neocon warmongers who effectively rule America and for whom Hillary was the latest acceptable face, with her almost total sense of entitlement, based on the fact that she was a woman, acted like she was heading for a coronation.
Yes it would be great if a woman had been elected president, I can think of at least two others one running, and one not, but doesn't even the most basic tenet of critical thinking require us to ask searching questions, about the specific woman ?

callaspodeaspode , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
He has run one of the lousiest presidential campaigns ever. In saying so I am not referring to his much-criticized business practices or his vulgar remarks about women. I mean this in a purely technical sense: this man fractured his own party.

But did he really 'fracture' his own party? From the superficial point of view, one might have thought so. Many Democrats hope so.
But I'll suggest this. Anybody who is holding out the faint hope that he will work badly with the GOP in Congress is going to be very disappointed. He's going to put his signature to virtually everything they want. They're going to have a lot of fun together.
Even stuff which directly contradicts what he ran on and which upset many in the Republican establishment. I'm thinking foreign policy and trade agreements.

And those in movement conservatism who didn't like him, like Glenn Beck and Erick Erickson? Watch them do a 180 over the next six months.

I'll bet on it.

Designcycle , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
Excellent article, about six months late, but hopefully not too late for liberals everywhere to wake up to the idea that if you claim to want to help improve the lives of the working class you better listen to them first, and connect with them second. I always thought laughing and sneering at Trump and particularly his supporters was never going to work. And sure enough it didn't. Nobody likes being patronised.
fragglerokk , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
Sanders would have breezed it.

The Democrats ultimatey feared change

The Republicans didn't.

Sometimes you've got to have the courage to move beyond a rotting status quo and into a brave new world. If you don't you leave the door open for something potentially much much worse to take that opportunity.

How about doing a piece on how the press keep getting it wrong all the time, how you keep misjudging the mood of the people, the zeitgeist, how afraid you are of change and how as a result you keep siding with the establishment when the vast majority of people are fed up with its incessant inaction and bullshit?
Youre letting the fascists in through the open door because youre too afraid to give up your priviledges and go towards healthy change. You deserve what youre going to get because you spent too much time on here waffling bullshit and not enough time on the streets listening to what people want. Total cognitive dissonance. Social media is no good for assessing the mood of the people, its for pussy cat photos and selfies.

Franz Habsburg fragglerokk , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
Would have? He could not even beat Clinton in the primaries! Americans overthrow democratic socialist governments, they don't elect them.
edhemingway fragglerokk , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
The republicans feared change, but winning was more important to them. As incongruous as it may seem, a billionaire businessman reached out to voters disenfranchised by some 30 years of partisan parlour games. Maybe it'll dawn on the Democrats who they should be reaching out to and maybe it'll dawn on the Republicans that there's more to being a politician than banging on about God and being against abortion.

I don't like the guy and find some of his views abhorrent and would even have preferred HC, but... but... this may be a wake up call for politics in America. Not sure it will be because after Brexit, the finger was pointed at the London middle classes and older voters whereas the strength of the vote came from the post-industrial heartland destroyed by Thatcher and virtually ignored by both parties ever since. Still, we'll see.

Steve Giess , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
"With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station. "

Spot on analysis.
Let the soul-searching amongst the mainstream journalistic elites begin.

People have rspecially started to notice the "with nuance and all contrary views deleted" part. That is part of the problem and part of the reason Trump got elected as a sort of collective middle finger to the establishment by ordinary people who are sick of being told what to think and how to think by unelected elites whose job it is supposed to be to report the FACTS, and not to dictate what people are allowed to say or think. Because as a great person once said "Facts are sacred." And as JS Mill said in his famous essay 'On Liberty' - we should not censor unpopular views because even though the unpopular view may be incorrect we may come to a better understanding of why our own view is correct by seeing its collision with error. (Quite apart from the fact that the unpopular view is not always correct and by suppressing it we may never know the truth.)

I hope the mainstream media learn from this disaster and start living up to the ideals of the intellectual founders of our liberal democracies such as JS Mill who would no doubt be appalled at the lerhaps well intentioned but counterproductive censorsgip of views which run counter to that of the prevailing orthodoxy.

MustaphaMondeo Steve Giess , 9 Nov 2016 12:2>
It's because they believe we are stupid. The intellectual snobbery of the oxbridge set, think they are better than us. Little suspecting that most of us can't be arsed with that shite.

I blame education. It's turned their heads.

AlpineJoe 4d ago

The thing that keeps coming back to me with this election, as with Brexit, was the established candidates ignoring what people were saying. In Brexit, the remain side utterly ignored immigration, whilst the leave side focused on it. I don't think the remain side realised that immigration wasn't just conjured up by Daily Mail headlines but was a genuine issue for many people.

In the US, Trump spoke openly about jobs; bringing them back and preventing outsourcing. Looking again at trade deals to make sure American jobs were protected. Clinton's team ignored this.

Take heed for the future, politicians. Listen to what people actually say, not just the bits they say that you agree with.

Stillgrizzly AlpineJoe , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>

Indeed, that's the problem, a narrow political elite expecting the population to vote as they think, rather than as the population think. The disconnect between the consensus and the politicians is wide, the left in particular withdraws to the safety of it's narrow agenda when threatened leaving the centre wide open.
Louis Raine , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
"Cold War propaganda station. Here's what it consisted of:

- Hillary was virtually without flaws.
- She was a peerless leader clad in saintly white, a super-lawyer, a caring benefactor of women and children, a warrior for social justice.
- Her scandals weren't real.
- The economy was doing well / America was already great.
- Working-class people weren't supporting Trump.
- If they were, it was only because they were botched humans. Racism was the only
conceivable reason for lining up with the Republican candidate."

Funny how all of these points were constantly touted in the Guardian... oh the ironny

SlumVictim , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
The neoliberals weren't listening and probably still aren't listening. They will be blaming the white working class rednecks but there isn't enough of white working class rednecks to cause this upset. Professional neoliberal policians have neither the insight nor the intelligence to figure out they are the problem, they alienated the people they ignored while looking after the rich.

We see the same problem in the Labour Party here. The neoliberal Blairites spent 13 years using identity politics as a way to pretend to be radical while showing utter contempt for the white (and black) working class. When they lost two elections and Scotland, they blamed the left, as though no one could reject neoliberalism. Sorry professional neoliberal politicians, your days of your front trotters in the trough are almost up, you are being rejected and anyone but you seems to be the preference.

Inversnaid SlumVictim , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
You, Sir or Madam, are a genius. Your analysis - like the analysis of the article - is spot on and your prose is punchy, concise and grammatically correct. You should be pick of the day.
SlumVictim , 9 Nov 2016 12:0>
The neoliberals weren't listening and probably still aren't listening. They will be blaming the white working class rednecks but there isn't enough of white working class rednecks to cause this upset. Professional neoliberal policians have neither the insight nor the intelligence to figure out they are the problem, they alienated the people they ignored while looking after the rich.

We see the same problem in the Labour Party here. The neoliberal Blairites spent 13 years using identity politics as a way to pretend to be radical while showing utter contempt for the white (and black) working class. When they lost two elections and Scotland, they blamed the left, as though no one could reject neoliberalism. Sorry professional neoliberal politicians, your days of your front trotters in the trough are almost up, you are being rejected and anyone but you seems to be the preference.

Inversnaid SlumVictim , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
You, Sir or Madam, are a genius. Your analysis - like the analysis of the article - is spot on and your prose is punchy, concise and grammatically correct. You should be pick of the day.
Spacebanj0 , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
Very interesting, and striking, parallels with Brexit. A disaffected majority, who don't believe they are listened to, rally round people who speak their language, engage with their fears and concerns and give them easy solutions to difficult problems.

Both decisions are tragically wrong, in my view, but its clear there is a huge disconnect between those on the left (notional or otherwise) and their usual target voters.

catherine Spacebanj0 , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
The description of the Democrats is reminding me of New Labour...
iruka , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
Absolutely spot on. And broadly applicable right across the western world. It wasn't Hillary the personality, or Hillary the crook, or Hillary the incompetent who lost the election.

It was the Hillary the archetypal representative of the smug 'n' shabby liberal stitch-up that's done us all over, basking in its meritocratic delusions, and raising all the ladders (and greasing the sides) to the lifeboats in which those delusions were acted out to delusional acclaim...

...even as it was busy handing the world over first (greedily) to transnational capitalism and now (stupidly) to the marauding squads of pinhead fascists that'll be everywhere in the US within weeks, maybe days. A couple of million George fucking pinhead Zimmermans.

"Socialism or Barbarism" (rings truer and truer!) is a choice that excludes liberalism only because liberalism is too morally and aesthetically insubstantial to make the cut. Imagine the choice in the form of a movie, and liberalism would be the twitching little grass who betrays the hero for the price of a bottle of White Lighting.

(In real life it's not a bottle of cider, of course: it's more likely a nice old house in a gentrified area that still holds on to the charming character of the people it displaced, some of whom spend 5 hours a day on the bus to come back and work in the charming shops and eateries, or as nannies and cleaners....).

Musicismath , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
This is a very good piece (as you'd expect from a cultural critic as smart as Frank is), but it really needs to be read alongside Adolph L. Reed's excoriating article in Harper's from 2014, "Nothing Left: The Slow Surrender of American Liberals":

The left has no particular place it wants to go. And, to rehash an old quip, if you have no destination, any direction can seem as good as any other. The left careens from this oppressed group or crisis moment to that one, from one magical or morally pristine constituency or source of political agency (youth/students; undocumented immigrants; the Iraqi labor movement; the Zapatistas; the urban "precariat"; green whatever; the black/Latino/LGBT "community"; the grassroots, the netroots, and the blogosphere; this season's worthless Democrat; Occupy; a "Trotskyist" software engineer elected to the Seattle City Council) to another. It lacks focus and stability; its métier is bearing witness, demonstrating solidarity, and the event or the gesture. Its reflex is to "send messages" to those in power, to make statements, and to stand with or for the oppressed.


We are in a very bad place right now, in terms of ideas and arguments. The opposition, in pretty much every western hemisphere country, has been colonised by the same people: professional politicians, upper-middle-class in social background, educated at the same small group of elite universities, reflexively committed to meritocratic ideology. They're very good at expressing sympathy for the marginalised, at saying the right words, at, as Reed says, "sending messages" and engaging in representational politics. But all those gestures do nothing for the constituencies they supposedly represent. They're ultimately selfish -- focussed on their own career advancement and the narrow class interests of the meritocratic-professional elite itself. The opposition, as Frank himself once said, "has ceased to oppose" in any economically meaningful sense. (Although they're very good at symbolic forms of opposition on cultural and historical issues.)

And now their constituencies have noticed and have withdrawn their votes.

sarahsmith232 , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
according to exit polls every section of white America, old, young, affluent, low-income, educated/not voted Trump, all bar 'young college educated white females', older college educated white females also voted Trump.
Same here with Brexit, voting patterns show the all white groups voted out, nothing to do with education levels, income or age.
The pundits write about 'the crisis of liberalism',, hhmmm, I think it should more be 'the rejection of illiberal openess'. When we say 'immigration needs to be reduced' the 'elites' reach for the favourite fall back 'you're a white that's racist/fascist/backward/uneducated' etc etc etc response. Well, turns out, the white part is right, the rest is just class based ignorance. Clinton was the absolute embodiment of this type of ignorance and arrogance. That basket of deplorables thing was disgusting, I felt personally insulted by it myself (i'm in the UK). Absolute standard 'elite' arrogance and hatred of those that don't agree with you. She's just paid for that hate by alienating absolutely EVERY SINGLE section of white America.
Trump's politics is a rejection of a globalism that has damaged the interests of so many, we're all far far too open to the forces of the world coming in at us from all directions, Catholics in Eastern Europe are not allowed their Christian values, are smeared as backward and ordered by foreign 'elites' in Brussels to drop all that they hold dear or face fines. We've all watched as the Remoaners showed to the world just exactly how 'tolerant' and 'accepting' they are of those they don't agree with, erupting into a torrent of class based ignorance and venomous hatred.
Well, they've all been at all this for far too long, and we're all pushing back against it. Spew race based hate at those that don't agree with you, BBC journalists shouting 'Nazi, fascist, racist' at any slight tightening up of immigration, Hilary Clinton labelling most white working-class a basket of fascist deployarables and hey presto, you lose to a repulsive cartoon like Trump.
They need to start thinking on about just exactly who it is in reality that's the race haters. Most are on the Left.
alanredangel , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>

A technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine.

Good writing.

Mr Baker , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
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hflashman , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
Given that Republicans have been opposed to intervention by Big Government at least since the Great Depression if Trump gets the go ahead for some of his ideas it will be a case of 4 legs good 2 legs better.
Omoikani , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>

With the same arguments repeated over and over, two or three times a day, with nuance and contrary views all deleted, the act of opening the newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station.

Quite so. And now the elitist corporate media which got everything wrong, including their highly confident predictions about the result, will now tell you in a highly confident manner all the things that are going to happen as a result of the thing they said wouldn't happen. First to dash off a thousand words of hyperventilating predictions? Jonathan Freedland , so top marks to him for speed, if nothing else.

gipsymermaid , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
Interesting article, and in a way I sensed it coming unfortunately, at least in the meaning that I have always felt that certain liberal and "progressive" thoughts are just too alien from basic human nature, and are being forced to enter the mainstream a bit too fast, and that this is a huge risk in the sense that when people decide they are not ready for these and it's time to reject them properly, then all the valuable, truly liberating and forward-thinking ideas will be drained along with them and that means dark times ahead indeed.

I am from Eastern-Europe, and, while I don't have a lot of personal memories of the communist times myself, most of the liberal bits of my cultural heritage comes from the counter-culture, a lot of the things we value today in my country were, albeit not necessarily all illegal as such, certainly more of the taboo sort, than they would have been in the West. Now it looks like that with all this Brexit and America, the West will have to learn to use the liberal thinking to serve as meaningful criticism of the system that will be built in the future by these new people. It's the Westerner's turn now, to learn to read between the lines and produce culture with purpose other than entertainment (if there is any positive side to this, then it should be the rise of new, creative movies and the end of the high-budget superhero era, and the birth of music with lyrics worth listening to lol, that's what I keep telling myself as my silver lining for now at least.)

It's obviously difficult to compare, nothing, in the entire world at the time was this commercialised and business and technology and life and everything was obviously very different. And, crucially, whilst the commies declared themselves to be ruling in the name of the common working people, they had their own breed of intellectuals, at least in my country, there was an approved bunch of scientists, artists etc, who could stretch it and provide some sense. So, worryingly enough, from this point of view I wouldn't say they were comparable to the type of anti-intellectualist mob rule seemingly putting these people into power, and that is my real fear, that these new rulers will not even have their own bunch of approved scientists who might not approve the views of atheists or feminists or whatever, but would at least be ready to provide these new governments with sound advice on the environment, education, health, etc.

I'm not sure how avoidable this could have been in reality, but it should have been, because we have no time for such ideological bullsh*t games (excuse my words), the damage we are doing to our own, living planet is becoming irreparable, and we really, absolutely, from all backgrounds and cultures must work together to basically stay alive.

bobkolker , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
The arrogance and snotty mindedness of the progressive liberal establishment has be dealt a righteous slap in the face which they have been asking for, for decades. The Revolt of the Deplorables. This was the winter of our discontent. Now it is our turn.

Time will tell whether this upset is the beginning of a much better era in the U.S.

I voted for Trump not because I like him (personally I find him repulsive) but because he was a wrecking ball and a sledge hammer to be used against the liberal progressives that have been running the U.S. into the ground for decades.

This the Moment of the Ticked Off Deplorables.

This is also a surprise. This is the most exciting time since Truman defeated Dewey.

Jamozki , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
Except it was the Republicans (not the "white collar liberals") who deregulated the Wall Street banks. It was the Republicans who gave tax breaks to the wealthy 1% and it was the Republicans who got rid of welfare. The biggest con of all? That the majority of uneducated Americans who just voted Republican, think that the GOP represent thier interests and it's all the fault of the "liberals". We are without doubt witnessing the beginning of the end of the American empire...
Down2dirt Jamozki , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>
Clinton kept all Bush Senior's 'experts' , loonies like Greenspan. Obama's candidate?

Wake up! They are two cheeks of the same arse.

grauniadreader101 Jamozki , 9 Nov 2016 12:2>

We are without doubt witnessing the beginning of the end of the American empire...

And about time, too! That said, you are right about the GOP being the party of deregulation, tax-breaks for the rich etc. but since in the 35 years since Reagan, when bank deregulation began in earnest (I know, Nixon repealed the Gold Standard), we have had 16 years of Democratic rule, and NOTHING has been done to reverse it; in fact, quite the opposite. Most of the damage was done between Clinton (who repealed Glass-Steigel) and his chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan.

Thomas Fr

grauniadreader101 Jamozki , 9 Nov 2016 12:2>

We are without doubt witnessing the beginning of the end of the American empire...

And about time, too! That said, you are right about the GOP being the party of deregulation, tax-breaks for the rich etc. but since in the 35 years since Reagan, when bank deregulation began in earnest (I know, Nixon repealed the Gold Standard), we have had 16 years of Democratic rule, and NOTHING has been done to reverse it; in fact, quite the opposite. Most of the damage was done between Clinton (who repealed Glass-Steigel) and his chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan.

Thomas Frank is right on the money. People voted for Trump precisely because both parties represent business as usual and people are sick of it. Same with Brexit.

ank is right on the money. People voted for Trump precisely because both parties represent business as usual and people are sick of it. Same with Brexit.

ProperEnglishman 4d ago

The silent majority,the ones who go to work pay their taxes and quietly get on with life have spoken. Don't underestimate us. We're intelligent, humble and caring. We're entitled to a view. We've had enough, we don't have to bully scream and shout to get our way, we go down to the polling station and we put a cross in the box we feel passionately about and we go home back to our quiet lives-job done.Well done the people of America,you have had the equivalent to our Brexit and now let's get the world back to how it should be. One of the most satisfying parts is listening to the Lefties,Luvvies and BBC crying their eyes out. The times they are a changing.

mouchefisher , 9 Nov 2016 12:1>

It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability. Enough with these comfortable Democrats and their cozy Washington system. Enough with Clintonism and its prideful air of professional-class virtue. Enough!

Amen to that. Thank you, Thomas Frank, for articles such as this one. A lone voice of progressive reason at the Guardian (neo)liberal circus.

We need to overhaul the DNC, as well as the Guardian and NYT editorial boards.

HenryGeorgeFan , 9 Nov 2016 12:2>

She was the Democratic candidate because it was her turn and because a Clinton victory would have moved every Democrat in Washington up a notch.

Spot on. And this is exactly the misery that infects both wings of the Labour Party.

People in politics jostling for power and status, like it's a hobby for them, a kind of shoot-em up where the consequences of policy affect only other people.

Cameron and Johnson and all the slime of the Tory party suffer from the same disease.

Why do you want to be prime minister, you spam faced Tefal foreheaded dilettante?

"Well, I think I'd be rather good at it."

Well, you weren't. You were awful at it, because you had no basic guiding principles, just like all the other dilettantes from Eton and all the other posh boy Petri dishes where hubris is cultivated.

Buggin's turn.

Well, bug off.

[Nov 12, 2016] It was establishment versus the rest...... It did not help the establishment that their candidate was crooked. 5 states turned red overnight!

Nov 11, 2016 | /economistsview.typepad.com
ilsm -> John San Vant... November 09, 2016 at 01:51 PM
It was establishment versus the rest...... It did not help the establishment that their candidate was crooked. 5 states turned red overnight!

mhd28 -> ilsm... November 10, 2016 at 09:34 AM

It's hard to state that MI and WI turned Republican. Trump reviled R's as much as D's. They went for Trump, which is separate from Republicans.

JF -> JF... November 08, 2016 at 10:54 PM

Trump took what should have been democrats' issues. Clinton should simply have tried to take all of Sanders positions, working with Sanders, and then position Trump as the faker who was taking the dems positions. Alas, she did not.

Many saw this possibility. Brexit.

sglover -> JF... November 08, 2016 at 11:11 PM

Clinton made her usual lame, transparent attempts to co-opt Sanders' positions, but being Clinton, few people **believe** her.

Sanders backers always said that Clinton was almost uniquely capable of losing to a fraud like Trump, and here, apparently -- tragically -- we are.

And believing Dems will learn not one goddam thing. Expect the special pleading and blame-shifting to amp up to jet engine levels. Already Saint Krugman has smeared the Greens for Clinton's loss in Florida, which seems to mathematically impossible by an order of magnitude.

Clinton lost **Pennsylvania**, for Christ's sake! She seems to have lost Philly!! How does an even semi-competent candidate pull that off?!?!?

Adamski -> mulp... November 09, 2016 at 02:24 AM

...And Clintonians spent decades claiming neoliberalism was necessary to get moderate voters who went for Reagan, and that liberalism is too unpopular to win an election. They stuck to that script in post-Great Recession America, which is not post-Reagan America.

And they stuck with a candidate who has zero ability to get independent voters. Her leftward moves in response to Sanders on college tuition and more funding for health clinics (which Sanders said would achieve free primary care in the US) would have got out the vote, but she preferred to talk in infuriating platitudes and smear Trump as a Russian puppet to get the patriotic vote.

srbarbour -> Adamski... November 09, 2016 at 04:45 AM

"... but she preferred to talk in infuriating platitudes and smear Trump as a Russian puppet to get the patriotic vote."

This, I think, is a valid criticism. Hillary and the older Dems were truly out of touch on this issue and failed to understand how poorly it played with the electorate (which is sad, because there are some real serious issues with Russia right now). Likewise, they failed to grasp how desperate Millennials / Rural whites have gotten and thus how important fixing the economy was for them.

ilsm -> Mathew... November 09, 2016 at 04:04 PM

Clinton morals....

Fix that on "we came, we saw, he died......" with a post up his you know where! Or the no fly zone thing to give another country to the foundation donors' terrorists. You all missed the point!

All the people don't see what you want us to! You could fool enough of the people when you needed to!

sglover -> Billy Joe... November 09, 2016 at 12:11 AM

The Russia nonsense was always overblown, typical Dem tactical ineptitude. I wouldn't be surprised if it backfired to Trump's advantage.

Dems never stopped to consider that

  1. Any mention of foreign data leakage had to remind people of Clinton's FOIA-avoiding server escapades, and
  2. You can find lots of Dem "consultants" and "strategists" who themselves have lucrative histories with sleazy overseas characters (Podesta, Biden's son, etc.).

srbarbour -> sglover... November 09, 2016 at 05:22 AM

"The Russia nonsense was always overblown, typical Dem tactical ineptitude. I wouldn't be surprised if it backfired to Trump's advantage."

From a campaign prospective, right conclusion. Wrong reason. Pushing the Russia connection damaged Hillary because it played up her "War Hawk" and "Military Industrial complex" ties for the public, which in turn strengthened the corporocrat accusation.

Worse, to the informed it smelled like W's push for war, and thus reminded everyone of Hillary's vote on Iraq. And those things hurt.

ilsm -> srbarbour... November 09, 2016 at 01:57 PM

Clinton is with Bill unmitigated war mongering neoliberalNeocon/ The Clinton Iraq vote was purely animus! Stepping away is prevarication. What went into Qaddafi was pure evil sent by Obama and his SecState.

ilsm -> Billy Joe... November 09, 2016 at 01:54 PM

Clinton was more into Sunni/GCC money and influence peddling. The Russian/Putin thing was fantasy! The main stream media [Stalinist] propaganda did not sell in the 5 key states that went red from blue.

ilsm -> RC AKA Darryl, Ron... November 09, 2016 at 02:30 PM

No, the point is the dems are crooked, Clinton was selected by the DNC (calling it crooked is repeating myself). I am convinced the US dodged a very severe mistake by electing Trump!

[Nov 12, 2016] Chris Matthews stuns the neoliberal crowd with a takedown of HRCs campaign.

Nov 12, 2016 | www.zerohedge.com
Oliver Klozoff -> Oliver Klozoff Nov 12, 2016 9:26 AM ,
I forgot to add a development, Chris Matthews stuns the liberal crowd with a takedown of hrc's campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXxGPDBRUzs

Anybody but the brain dead could see HRC ran a lazy campaign focused on a non-issue. It's clear she expected certain quarters of the population's loyalty in voting but offered them nothing. One hopes these libs begin to wake up.

[Nov 12, 2016] Battle brewing for DNC leadership

DemoRats lost working class votes. may be forever (or as long as they stay neoliberal DemoRats). This is an important defeats of Bill Clinton, who sold the party to wall Street.
Notable quotes:
"... On Thursday night, People for Bernie, a tech-savvy progressive group with ties to Sanders, told CNN it was backing Ellison as a first step in displacing Clinton loyalists with "a leadership untainted by cozy relationships to Wall St. moneymen, corporate behemoths, dictators, or monarchs." ..."
"... In a jab at Dean, People for Bernie co-founder Charles Lenchner added, "Any 50-state strategy must begin with a 50-state accountability project; we reject any effort to unite the party behind the agents of a failed leadership." ..."
www.cnn.com

As Democrats reel in the wake of Donald Trump's stunning victory, a new storm is brewing inside the party as competing factions begin to grapple for its leadership.

Howard Dean, who ran the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009, announced on Thursday he would again seek its top role. Soon after he announced, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and his top allies began pushing Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison for the role.

But other politicos expressed interest in the job Friday. Former presidential candidate Martin O'Malley announced that he is throwing his hat in the ring.

"Since the election, I have been approached by many Democrats who believe our party needs new leadership," said the former Maryland Governor. "I'm taking a hard look at DNC Chair because I know how badly we need to reform our nominating process, articulate a bold progressive vision, recommit ourselves to higher wages and a stronger middle class, and return to our roots as a nationwide, grassroots party."

New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman and DNC Vice Chair Ray Buckley is exploring a run, according to the Boston Globe.

... ... ...

Sanders -- a registered independent who caucuses with Democrats and fought a lengthy primary battle for the party's nomination this year -- and top allies are touting Ellison for the job. The Muslim-American congressman currently co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

... ... ...

On Thursday night, People for Bernie, a tech-savvy progressive group with ties to Sanders, told CNN it was backing Ellison as a first step in displacing Clinton loyalists with "a leadership untainted by cozy relationships to Wall St. moneymen, corporate behemoths, dictators, or monarchs."

In a jab at Dean, People for Bernie co-founder Charles Lenchner added, "Any 50-state strategy must begin with a 50-state accountability project; we reject any effort to unite the party behind the agents of a failed leadership."

The current head of the DNC is Donna Brazile, a longtime Democratic operative and former CNN contributor, who is leading in an interim capacity after Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned on the eve of the convention. Hacked emails appeared to show Wasserman Schultz and other since-departed DNC officials discussing ways to undermine Sanders' effort to oust Clinton in the primary.

[Nov 12, 2016] Inside the Clinton loss Whos to blame

DemoRats lost working class votes. may be forever (or as long as they stay neoliberal DemoRats). This is an important defeats of Bill Clinton, who sold the party to wall Street.
Notable quotes:
"... But aides said the Clinton campaign's top strategists largely ignored the former president, instead focusing on consolidating the base of voters that helped elect President Barack Obama to the White House. In the closing days of the campaign, Clinton targeted young people, Hispanics and African-Americans with laser like focus, casting Trump as a racist who only sought the presidency to benefit himself. ..."
www.cnn.com

The campaign communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, said in a statement Friday that "no one anticipated" losing. She said many factors were at work, but she listed Comey as chief among them.

"We didn't blame everyone but ourselves," Palmieri said. "We acknowledged a lot of challenges we faced, plenty of mistakes made along the way, some challenges we weren't able to overcome."

She added: "What changed in the last week that made his turn out go up and our's go down? The only thing apparent was Comey. It was one thing too many. Could not overcome it."

Democrats close to Bill Clinton said Thursday that one mistake Clinton's top aides made was not listening to the former president more when he urged the campaign to spend more time focusing on disaffected white, working class voters.

Many in Clinton's campaign viewed these voters as Trump's base, people so committed to the Republican nominee that no amount of visits or messaging could sway them. Clinton made no visits to Wisconsin as the Democratic nominee, and only pushed a late charge in Michigan once internal polling showed the race tightening.

Bill Clinton, advisers said, pushed the campaign early on to focus on these voters, many of whom helped elected him twice to the White House. The former president, a Clinton aide said, would regularly call Robby Mook to talk about strategy and offer advice.

But aides said the Clinton campaign's top strategists largely ignored the former president, instead focusing on consolidating the base of voters that helped elect President Barack Obama to the White House. In the closing days of the campaign, Clinton targeted young people, Hispanics and African-Americans with laser like focus, casting Trump as a racist who only sought the presidency to benefit himself.

[Nov 12, 2016] Neocon bottomfeeders now are having the second thoughts

Notable quotes:
"... Some of those applications are coming from the #NeverTrump crowd, the source said, and include former national security officials who signed one or more of the letters opposing Trump. ..."
"... Fifty GOP national security experts signed an August letter saying Trump "would put at risk our country's national security and well-being" because he "lacks the character, values and experience" to occupy the Oval Office, making him "the most reckless president in American history." ..."
"... Another bipartisan letter cited concern about potential foreign conflicts of interest Trump might encounter as president, and called on him to disclose them by releasing his tax returns. Trump has refused to do so, saying he is under audit and will make the returns public only once that is done. ..."
www.cnn.com

The extraordinary repudiation -- partly based on Trump's rejection of basic US foreign policy tenets, including support for close allies -- helped spark the hashtag #NeverTrump. Now, a source familiar with transition planning says that hard wall of resistance is crumbling fast.

There are "boxes" of applications, the source said. "There are many more than people realize."

Some of those applications are coming from the #NeverTrump crowd, the source said, and include former national security officials who signed one or more of the letters opposing Trump. "Mea culpas" are being considered -- and in some cases being granted, the source said -- for people who did not go a step further in attacking Trump personally.

... ... ...

Fifty GOP national security experts signed an August letter saying Trump "would put at risk our country's national security and well-being" because he "lacks the character, values and experience" to occupy the Oval Office, making him "the most reckless president in American history."

Another bipartisan letter cited concern about potential foreign conflicts of interest Trump might encounter as president, and called on him to disclose them by releasing his tax returns. Trump has refused to do so, saying he is under audit and will make the returns public only once that is done.

It remains to be seen what kind of team Trump will pull together, how many "NeverTrumpers" will apply for positions and to what degree the President-elect will be willing to accept them.

There's a fight underway within the Trump transition team about whether to consider "never Trumpers" for jobs, one official tells CNN. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is leading the transition team, has been working to persuade Trump and other top officials to consider Republicans who openly opposed his campaign. That has caused some friction with those who see no place for people who didn't support their candidate.

[Nov 11, 2016] Carma proved to be bitch for Hillary

Nov 11, 2016 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

mcdee November 10, 2016 at 5:52 pm

The savaging of the Rust Belt by NAFTA costs Clinton MI, OH, IN, WI and PA and Haitian refugees cost her FL. How fitting. Karma IS real.

ProNewerDeal November 10, 2016 at 5:54 pm

HClinton outspent (campaign + SuperPACs) Trump by 45% ($534M to $367M per the election Wiki page, given preliminary FEC reports currently available) in the election, yet lost. Perhaps the most clear sign as to what a horrible candidate HClinton was, both in policies & campaign tactics.

When was the last Pres election the top fundraiser did NOT win? How many times has this happen, say since the 1980 Reagan election or since the 1948 post-WW2 election? IIRC, Thomas Ferguson with his Investment Theory of Politics shows that in the vast majority (90%+ ?) of US elections (Fed/State/Local), the biggest fundraiser wins.

TK421 November 10, 2016 at 7:03 pm

I don't think s happened in a presidential election since WWII.

[Nov 11, 2016] In one of Trump last speeches before the election he said, Tomorrow, the working class takes back this country. I was struck. No contemporary Democratic politician would (or could, credibly) say those words. Afraid of scaring off their donors or being red-baited, most Democrats wont even utter the phrase working class -preferring the capacious and increasingly meaningless middle class or, at best, working families.

Nov 11, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

engels 11.11.16 at 1:43 am 243

I watched one of Trump's last speeches before the election. In it, he said, "Tomorrow, the working class takes back this country." I was struck. No contemporary Democratic politician would (or could, credibly) say those words. Afraid of scaring off their donors or being red-baited, most Democrats won't even utter the phrase "working class"-preferring the capacious and increasingly meaningless "middle class" or, at best, "working families."

But Trump said it. His rural and exurban white supporters have a class consciousness of sorts. They despise elites. They feel that the system is rigged. But that antipathy is entirely entangled with their fear of a black president, of eroding racial and gender hierarchies, and their perception that multi-cultural elites are helping minorities at their expense. Trump can say "working class" because everyone in his audience hears the unsaid word "white" preceding it. It is, as it has ever been, the left's task to build a mass political movement where there are no words silently preceding the term "working class." It's not hyperbole to say that everything depends on it.

http://samadlerbell.com/trump-and-the-working-class/

[Nov 11, 2016] Low black turn-out numbers in key states, such as Michigan, NC, and Florida came as no surprise to me because I watched Leslie Wimes one week before the election explain that it was already over for Hillary in Florida

Nov 11, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

kidneystones 11.11.16 at 10:19 am 265 ( 265 )

I'm going to be as diplomatic as I can about the lack of gravitas clearly displayed in the comments here as I can, whilst at the same timing reviewing some of the data that many clearly missed.

One of the key reasons I remained confident that Hillary would lose irrespective of what the FBI did, or did not do, if you're interested, is that I was keenly interested in the attitudes of African-American voters from the outset of this election. As I've said throughout, I do not regard Trump as a 'Republican' in anything like the conventional sense of the word, but rather see him as a New York celebrity vulgarian with liberal inclinations. Trump from the outset had a clear plan to appeal to African-American voters, even it was far from fleshed-out. And given the 'of course, African-American voters will support the Democrat' attitude of practically every white supporter of Hillary, I was confident Trump wouldn't need much of a plan beyond saying: 'vote for me, what have you got to lose?' to do fairly well no matter how badly he was smeared.

Turns out I was right. Low black turn-out numbers in key states, such as Michigan, NC, and Florida came as no surprise to me because I watched Leslie Wimes one week before the election explain that it was 'already over' for Hillary in Florida.

Not one to mince words, Ms. Wimes, who voted early for Clinton, reports that she warned the Clinton campaign and the DNC as early as September that black voters in Florida were not, repeat not, going to be turning out in sufficient numbers to permit Hillary to carry this critical state. But nobody wanted to hear. Funny, that.

Maybe some would like to listen to Ms. Wimes now.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/11/01/dem_strategist_clinton_should_be_in_panic_mode_over_enthusiasm_gap_with_black_voters_nothing_she_can_do_now.html

Layman 11.11.16 at 11:13 am 266 mclaren: "No, what I was pointing out is that the two candidates who set the electorate on fire were the two populist candidates, Trump and Sanders."

You're abusing the term 'the electorate'. 'The electorate' in a primary (or a caucus!) is a different thing than 'the electorate' in a general election, and results in one don't translate into results in another. The point of the Obama Idaho 2008 example is this: Obama beat Clinton by 60 points in that caucus, but this did not mean he was going to win Idaho in a general election, and in fact he got trounced there in the general election. This is because, again, 'the electorate' is a different thing in those two contests. No one knows if Sanders would have done better in this general election, and primary results don't provide an answer to that question.

[Nov 11, 2016] Hillary extreme militarism and jingoism as well as attempt to make Russophobia a part of the platform of the Democratic Party, effectively positioning it as yet another War Party were part of her downfall

Nov 11, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

likbez 11.12.16 at 3:01 am 288

Sorry, but I do not see in this thread any attempt to discuss Hillary extreme militarism and jingoism as well as attempt to make Russophobia a part of the platform of the Democratic Party, effectively positioning it as yet another War Party.

In some areas of foreign policy Hillary looks like John McCain in the pantsuit. There is no military intervention that she did not like, and she was always prone to the most hawkish positions on any war related issues, trying to outdid her male counterparts in jingoism, as if overcompensating her hidden sense of inferiority.

That might be another negative factor affecting the elections results. Few people outside military industrial complex lobbyists are exited about the possibility of unleashing WWIII (for example via enforcing "no fly zone" in Syria) even with conventional weapons. And a lot of people, especially among more educated part of electorate, still remember her role in the destruction of Iraq, Libya and Syria. Especially the latter ( moonofalabama.org)

The people loyal to the Syrian government are happy with Donald Trump winning the U.S. election:

At the passport counter, a Syrian officer's face lit up when he saw an American traveler.

"Congratulations on your new president!" he exclaimed, giving an energetic thumbs up. Mr. Trump, he said, would be "good for Syria."

The first significant step of the new administration comes while Trump is not even in offices. Obama, selfishly concerned with his historic legacy, suddenly makes a 180 degree turn and starts to implement Trump polices. Lets consider the initial position:

Asked about Aleppo in an October debate with Clinton, Trump said it was a humanitarian disaster but the city had "basically" fallen. Clinton, he said, was talking in favor of rebels without knowing who they were.

The rebels fighting Assad in western Syria include nationalists fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner, some of them trained in a CIA-backed program, and jihadists such as the group formerly known as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

The Obama administration, through the CIA led by Saudi asset John Brennan, fed weapons, training and billions of dollars to "moderate rebels". These then turned around (vid) and either gave the CIA gifts to al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al Nusra) or joined it themselves.

The scheme was no secret at all and Russia as well as Syria pointed this out several times. The Russian foreign Minister Lavrov negotiated with the U.S. secretary of State Kerry who promised to separate the "moderate rebels" from al-Qaeda. But Kerry never delivered. Instead he falsely accuse Russia of committing atrocities that never happened. The CIA kept the upper hand within the Obama administration and continued its nefarious plans.

continued its nefarious plans.

likbez 11.12.16 at 3:20 am 289 Another interesting question that needs to be discussed is the "cleansing" of DNC from Clinton loyalists (the word "super delegate" smells of corruption) and thus weakening the dominant neoliberal wing of the party:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/11/10/liberal-democrats-lash-out-at-dnc-say-overhaul-needed-to-woo-back-working-class-voters/

"You can't tell working people you're on their side while at the same time you're raising money from Wall Street and the billionaire class," Sanders said. "The Democratic Party has to be focused on grass-roots America and not wealthy people attending cocktail parties."

Sanders acknowledged the need for the party to continue its function as a fundraising vehicle but suggested a model akin to his presidential campaign, which raised much of its money from small-dollar donors.
… … …
Leaders of several progressive groups, who had been courting Clinton as a potential ally on many of their causes, have expressed anger in the aftermath of the election, arguing that the result was a repudiation of a campaign driven by the Democratic establishment.

"The Democratic establishment had their chance with this election," said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "It's time for new leadership of the Democratic Party - younger, more diverse and more ideological - that is hungry to do things differently, like leading a movement instead of dragging people to the polls."
… … …
Neil Sroka, a spokesman for the liberal group Democracy for America, said Ellison would be "a potentially phenomenal choice" as DNC chairman, but said the organization was open to other choices, provided they weren't part of the party establishment.

"I think Tuesday night was a tremendous loss that must sit at the feet of the political establishment of a Democratic Party that preordained the primary process from the very beginning," said Sroka, whose group backed Sanders in the primaries. "The folks that enabled the loss need to step back and let the grass roots lead it."

In a sign of tension at the DNC, a staff meeting there was interrupted Thursday by a staff member who stood up and blamed Trump's win on Brazile, the Huffington Post reported.

One telling comment:
PackersFanWisconsin

The Democrats abandoned Midwestern working voters and now they want us back??? Dream on! My town voted Dem for years, they used to care about us, then they want all bonkers social justice white people are all bad and sent all our jobs overseas. We will never vote Democrat again, Democrats betrayed us and they had the nerve to think we wouldn't notice!

[Nov 11, 2016] Clintons defeat can also be seen as a partial rejection of Obama, since traditionally putting the heir in power has been a marker for a popular presidency

Nov 11, 2016 | crookedtimber.org

Suzanne 11.11.16 at 4:24 pm 284 Agreeing with everything said by LFC in#280. Certainly many people are still not in a good place after eight years of slow recovery; in this respect Clinton's defeat can also be seen as a partial rejection of her boss, since traditionally putting the heir in power has been a marker for a popular presidency.

Also, @246, don't forget that some of us where also whingeing about sexism.

@239: Clinton is a decent Democrat who ran to the left of Obama. She is not and never has been the superstar he was. The Democratic Party has a perennial issue with getting portions of their base out when it's an off-year election and also when the presidential candidate is okay but doesn't send a thrill up their leg.

[Nov 11, 2016] Okay….post election discussion

Nov 11, 2016 | angrybearblog.com

Dan Crawford | November 9, 2016 7:23 am

Journalism Politics US/Global Economics Via Bill Black at Naked Capitalism and Thomas Frank at the Guardian .

What we need to focus on now is the obvious question: what the hell went wrong? What species of cluelessness guided our Democratic leaders as they went about losing what they told us was the most important election of our lifetimes?

[Nov 11, 2016] Trump Is Making the Same Mistake that Clinton Did: Hes Already Ignoring Working-Class Rust Belt Whites. Progressives Need to Start Illustrating This by Highlighting His Planned Court and Cabinet Nominees. Now.

Nov 10, 2016 | angrybearblog.com
There are several excerpts from the news media since Tuesday night that help drive home the point I make in that title about Trump and the Democrats in the immediate future. But the excerpts are about Clinton, not Trump:

There are several excerpts from the news media since Tuesday night that help drive home the point I make in that title about Trump and the Democrats in the immediate future. But the excerpts are about Clinton, not Trump:

There are vast rural, small-town or post-industrial areas of the country where Barack Hussein Obama will have greatly outperformed Clinton

– twitter.com/AlecMacGillis of Pro Publica, Nov. 8, late evening

The left-behind places are making themselves heard, bigly

– twitter.com/AlecMacGillis of Pro Publica, Nov. 8, late evening

From Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, industrial towns once full of union voters who for decades offered their votes to Democratic presidential candidates, even in the party's lean years, shifted to Mr. Trump's Republican Party. One county in the Mahoning Valley of Ohio, Trumbull, went to Mr. Trump by a six-­point margin. Four years ago, Mr. Obama won there by 22 points.

Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment , Matt Flegenheimer and Michael Barbaro, New York Times, yesterday

Clinton and her operatives went into the race predicting her biggest problems would be inevitability and her age, trying to succeed a two-term president of her own party. But the mood of the country surprised them. They recognized that Sanders and Trump had correctly defined the problem-addressing anger about a rigged economy and government-and that Clinton already never authentically could. Worse still, her continuing email saga and extended revelations about the Clinton Foundation connections made any anti-establishment strategy completely impossible.

So instead of answering the question of how Clinton represented change, they tried to change the question to temperament, what kind of change people wanted, what kind of America they wanted to live in. It wasn't enough.

Using Trump as a foil and a focus, she hit on a voice and an argument for why she should actually be president that perhaps only she could have, and that she'd struggled for so long to find on her own. That wasn't enough either.

Meanwhile, her staff harnessed all the money and support they could to out organize, first in the primaries and then in the general, grinding out victories while her opponents had movements.

None of it was enough, though all of it should have been, and likely would have been for another candidate. She couldn't escape being the wrong candidate for the political moment.

Interviews over the closing weeks of the 2016 campaign with members of Clinton's innermost circle, close advisers and other aides reveal a deep frustration with their failure to make a dent, a consuming sense that their candidate's persecution paranoia might actually be right, and a devastating belief that they might never persuade Americans to vote for her.

"There was no way to generate momentum," one top adviser said.

Any positive storyline from Clinton "was always fragile," admitted that adviser, and issues related to the emails inevitably stripped away any uptick in Clinton's favorable ratings.

Inside the Loss Clinton Saw Coming: Publicly they seemed confident, but in private her team admitted her chances were 'always fragile.' , Edward-Isaac Dovere, Politico, yesterday

To several top aides, the best day of this whole campaign was a year ago, before the Sanders headache or the Trump threat really materialized, when the House of Representatives hauled Clinton and her emails in with the single aim of destroying her candidacy over Benghazi. …

She delivered tirelessly [that day], knocking back the Republicans one by one, complete with facial expressions that have launched GIFs that have been all over Democrats' Facebook and Twitter feeds ever since. She renewed her shaken team's faith that she was the leader they wanted to follow into what was already shaping up to be a dejecting primary battle.

"It reminded people of everything they like about her," said one of her senior advisers. "It's toughness, but also a calm, adult presence of someone you can actually see being president of the United States."

Inside the Loss Clinton Saw Coming: Publicly they seemed confident, but in private her team admitted her chances were 'always fragile.'

Bill Clinton had his own problems, but never that one [his gender], and neither did Trump, who openly disparaged women throughout his campaign and still prevailed. The result was at once unfathomably difficult for the Clintons and yet not entirely surprising to Bill. He saw the signs all along the way of this campaign. He knew the people who were voting for Trump, and also the people who during the primaries were voting not for his wife but for Bernie Sanders. He saw the anger and the feelings of disconnection, but he did not know how he, or his wife's campaign, could connect to it effectively without resorting to demagoguery or false populism, something Hillary was not good at even if she was disposed to try.

The Clintons were undone by the middle-American voters they once knew so well , David Maraniss, Washington Post, today

Last year, a prominent group of supporters asked Hillary Clinton to address a prestigious St. Patrick's Day gathering at the University of Notre Dame, an invitation that previous presidential candidates had jumped on. Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. had each addressed the group, and former President Bill Clinton was eager for his wife to attend. But Mrs. Clinton's campaign refused, explaining to the organizers that white Catholics were not the audience she needed to spend time reaching out to.

As it became clear on Tuesday night that Mrs. Clinton would lose to Donald J. Trump, supporters cast blame on everything from the news media to the F.B.I. director's dogged pursuit of Mrs. Clinton over her personal emails, and to a deep discomfort with electing a woman as president.

But as the dust settled, Democrats recognized two central problems of Mrs. Clinton's flawed candidacy: Her decades in Washington and the paid speeches she delivered to financial institutions left her unable to tap into the anti­establishment and anti­-Wall Street rage. And she ceded the white working­-class voters who backed Mr. Clinton in 1992.

Though she would never have won this demographic, her husband insisted that her campaign aides do more to try to cut into Mr. Trump's support with these voters. They declined, reasoning that she was better off targeting college­-educated suburban voters by hitting Mr. Trump on his temperament.

Instead, they targeted the emerging electorate of young, Latino and African-American voters who catapulted Mr. Obama to victory twice, expecting, mistakenly, that this coalition would support her in nearly the same numbers. They did not.

Hillary Clinton's Expectations, and Her Ultimate Campaign Missteps , Amy Chozick, New York Times, yesterday

And then there is this:

Clinton picked Mook, instead of promoting a campaign manager out of loyalty from her own inner circle. She persuaded Podesta, who had kept his distance in 2008 because he didn't get along with polarizing top strategist Mark Penn, to join as the guiding hand and the buffer for all the "friends of" who streamed in with advice and second-guessing.

But that didn't mean there weren't serious problems. Bill Clinton complained throughout that Mook was too focused on the ground game and not enough on driving a message-based campaign. Without a chief strategist in the mold of Penn or David Axelrod, the campaign was run by a committee of strong-willed aides struggling to assert themselves in the same space. Longtime consultant Mandy Grunwald and Palmieri grappled at points over message control as Palmieri worked her way into the inner circle. Mook and strategist Joel Benenson barely spoke to each other for the month of April, battling over their roles.

Inside the Loss Clinton Saw Coming: Publicly they seemed confident, but in private her team admitted her chances were 'always fragile.'

And here it is, in summation of all of the above:

Whoever takes over what's left of the Democratic Party is going to have to find a way to appeal to a broader cross section of the country. It may still be true that in the long term, Republicans can't win with their demographics, but we found out Tuesday that the long term is still pretty far away. Democrats have to win more white voters. They have to do so in a way that doesn't erode the anti-racist or anti-sexist planks of the modern party, which are non-negotiable. If only there were a model for this. [Link in original. Do click it.]

The few Democratic leaders who remain are going to say that it was just a bad note struck here or there, or the lazy Bernie voters who didn't show up, or Jim Comey, or unfair media coverage of Clinton's emails, to blame for this loss. I am already seeing Democrats blaming the Electoral College, which until a few hours ago was hailed as the great protector of Democratic virtue for decades to come, and Republicans were silly for not understanding how to crack the blue "wall." They will say, just wait for Republicans to overreach. Then we'll be fine.

Don't listen to any of this. Everything is not OK. This is not OK.

The Democratic Party Establishment Is Finished , Jim Newell, Slate, yesterday

Among all the email exchanges leaked from Podesta's hacked email account-the ones I read; I read a couple of articles quoting from each group of releases-the most revealing, in my opinion, were two sets of exchanges released about a week before the Comey outrage. Both were from early 2015, a few weeks before Clinton was scheduled, finally, to announce her candidacy in mid-April.

One shows newly hired campaign manager Robby Mook asking for John Podesta's and Huma Abedin's help in persuading Clinton to ask her husband to cancel a $225,000 speech to Morgan Stanley scheduled for a few days after her announcement and while she was scheduled to be in Iowa on her inaugural campaign trip.

The difficulty wasn't resistance from Bill; it was resistance from Hillary, at whose instance the speech had been arranged. The email exchanges indicate that Hillary could not be persuaded to all the cancellation, because it had been arranged personally by her and Tom Nides, a top aide to Clinton at the State Dept. and by then a top executive at Morgan Stanley.

Finally it was decided that Abedin would get Bill to agree to cancel the speech, and she would tell Hillary that Bill (who apparently did have qualms about the speech) was the one who decided to cancel it. Abedin reported back to Podesta and Mook that Clinton was angry about it for a couple of days but then moved on.

The other one is from about the same time and is somewhat similar. This series of exchanges was among Mook, Abedin, Podesta and Neera Tanden, and concerned Hillary's appearance in early May, shortly after her campaign announcement, at a massive Clinton Global Initiative gala in Morocco paid for by the king of Morocco, a friend of Clinton's, who all told would donate $12 million to the foundation. This, too, had been arranged by Hillary, and was not strongly supported by Bill or anyone else at the foundation.

Abedin's emails suggest (without saying outright) that she and perhaps others had tried to dissuade Clinton from arranging this, and then, once Clinton had set the date of mid-April for her campaign announcement, tried to persuade Clinton to cancel it. But by the time of this email exchange with Mook and Podesta, Abedin said it was so late and Clinton had had earlier opportunities to cancel but instead had assured her presence there, that it will break a lot of glass" (or some such phrase) for Clinton to cancel. Mook did manage to get Clinton's agreement to have Bill attend instead of her.

These instances illustrate what was a constant throughout: Mook and two or three others, including Podesta, having to put on a full court press to stop Clinton from acting as though she weren't a candidate for president. Or a candidate for anything. Both Podesta and Tanden complained about Clinton's "instincts," a euphemism for "I'm completely unaware of the overarching mood of the public in this election cycle. Or, I don't give a damn about the overarching mood of the public in this election cycle. And I certainly don't give a damn about down-ballot Dems. Or about Dems. Or about anything other than what I want to do."

Clinton arranged to clear the Democratic field of anyone thought in early 2015 to have chance against her in the primaries. She just wasn't willing to swear off anything else she wanted, besides the presidency, in order to reduce the chance that she would lose the general election.

This wasn't Lent, after all. And anyway, Clinton isn't Catholic.

Had Mook not killed that $225,000 speech to Morgan Stanley by Bill Clinton in April 2015, Bernie Sanders-whom Clinton could not clear the field of until June 6, 2016-would have won the nomination and would be president-elect now, accompanied by a newly elected Senate, and maybe House, Democratic majority. That fee would have been identified in the Clintons' tax returns, filed presumably in last April and (presumably) released shortly afterward.

In early 2015, when Hillary was arranging for Bill to give that speech-undoubtedly arrangements made shortly after Elizabeth Warren removed any doubt that she would run-Clinton looked to be free of any challenge from the left. So it didn't bother her one whit that this would be revealed during the primary season.

Nor, since she expected her general election opponent to be Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, did it concern her that this would be known during the general election campaign. It wasn't as if Bush wasn't a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street. Or Rubio owned by other highly unpretty financial interests.

And even if it did, well, it was worth the risk. After all, after the general election, the gravy train for both her and her husband would stop. And it wasn't blue collar workers in the Rust Belt who were her target votes, so it wasn't all that big a risk anyway.

So we were saddled with a Democratic presidential nominee whose decades in Washington and the paid speeches she delivered to financial institutions left her unable to tap into the anti­establishment and anti­-Wall Street rage. Someone who had to cede the white working­-class voters who backed Barack Obama in 2008 and again in 2012, because the only way someone who'd taken so very much money from Wall Street as personal income for doing so very little-someone who was selling her anticipated presidency to Wall Street-had no avenue with which to connect effectively with working class Rust Belters without resorting to demagoguery or false populism, something she was not good at even if she was disposed to try.

The answer then was to highlight her high status and the importance she placed on connections with celebrities and the pillars of the establishment in various venues, by campaigning hardly at all, by spending August secluded in the Hamptons, by parading with entertainment celebrities at the few rallies she had.

And by incessantly rolling out ever more names of the most elite establishment people to endorse her or at least make clear that they, too, recognized that her opponent is unfit to hold the office of the presidency. Because even though the targeted audience has access to the same information on that the elite establishment did, and were reminded by Clinton and her ad campaign of these lowlights so often that they lost their resonance, there might be a few people whose decision would turn on the opinion of these elites.

They just weren't the people the blue collar Rust Belters who, it seemed clear all along would play an outsize role in the outcome of the election. As they had in 2008 and 2012.

Nor, apparently, did she have any avenue to point out whom Trump's financial campaign backers actually were, who was writing his budget and regulatory proposals, who was selecting his court and agency-head nominees, his SEC, FTC and NLRB member nominees, and why. They're not people with labor union backing, nor do they have the interests of blue collar folks at heart. Their interests are diametrically opposite those of blue collar workers. And Trump wasted not so much as a day in handing over to them the entire panoply of powers of the federal government.

But having sold her avenue for informing people of this, to Wall Street and any other huge-money interest waiving a mega-check around in exchange for a 45-minute-long speech by or question-and-answer session with, the likely president she was limited to reminding voters of what they themselves saw, and assuring them that elites viewed him just as they did. Which may be why her campaign manager, Mook, wasn't as focused on messaging as Bill Clinton wished. Normally, a candidate has one. This candidate had foreclosed to herself the message she needed to have, and had nothing much filling in for it. That wasn't Mook's fault.

Trump wasn't going to co-opt Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were going to co-opt Trump. All the indications were that that is what would happen. And that, Trump has made unabashedly clear now, is what will happen. Our nominee couldn't-or at least wouldn't campaign on this anything resembling consistency.

The way to contain this is for high-profile Democrats to make clear to the public what is happening. And to threaten massive campaigns on this in none other than the Rust Belt, in the 2018 election cycle. And to start very, very soon. People who supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 aren't Donald Trump's base. Most of them would have flocked to Sanders or to Elizabeth Warren in this election.

The latter should be shoved in anyone's face who starts blathering about sexism hurting Clinton among the hoi polloi . The former should answer the question about whether racism was part of the appeal to the voters who put Trump over the top, by one per cent, in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and came within barely more than a point of doing son in New Hampshire and, of all states, Minnesota. All states went comfortably for Obama, and all except Pennsylvania went for Sanders in the primary, as did Indiana. And had Warren instead of Sanders been Clinton's primary challenger, she like Sanders would have voted for her.

People who claim otherwise on either point don't know the region. It is not the South and it is not the Southwest. Trump's racism and xenophobia did not win those states for Trump. Nor did Clinton's gender.

The first step is to appoint a strong Sanders backer in charge of the DNC. Jeff Weaver, maybe. Or Jim Dean. No war for the soul of the party. That ship sailed on Tuesday.

Recognize that.

And join me in wishing Hillary and Bill Clinton a happy jaunt in their retirement as they luxuriate in the massive wealth that, while possibly still not quite enough to sate them, we are about to pay very dearly for.

Links to be added later today.

[Nov 11, 2016] It was the Democrats embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump by Naomi Klein

Nov 11, 2016 | www.theguardian.com
People have lost their sense of security, status and even identity. This result is the scream of an America desperate for radical change

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?

Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.

At the same time, they have witnessed the rise of the Davos class, a hyper-connected network of banking and tech billionaires, elected leaders who are awfully cosy with those interests, and Hollywood celebrities who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous. Success is a party to which they were not invited, and they know in their hearts that this rising wealth and power is somehow directly connected to their growing debts and powerlessness.

For the people who saw security and status as their birthright – and that means white men most of all – these losses are unbearable.

Donald Trump speaks directly to that pain. The Brexit campaign spoke to that pain. So do all of the rising far-right parties in Europe. They answer it with nostalgic nationalism and anger at remote economic bureaucracies – whether Washington, the North American free trade agreement the World Trade Organisation or the EU. And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women. Elite neoliberalism has nothing to offer that pain, because neoliberalism unleashed the Davos class. People such as Hillary and Bill Clinton are the toast of the Davos party. In truth, they threw the party.

Trump's message was: "All is hell." Clinton answered: "All is well." But it's not well – far from it.

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. Such a plan could create a tidal wave of well-paying unionised jobs, bring badly needed resources and opportunities to communities of colour, and insist that polluters should pay for workers to be retrained and fully included in this future.

It could fashion policies that fight institutionalised racism, economic inequality and climate change at the same time. It could take on bad trade deals and police violence, and honour indigenous people as the original protectors of the land, water and air.

People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger where it belongs, while fighting for holistic solutions that will bring a frayed society together.

Such a coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner of a people's agenda called The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions.

Bernie Sanders' amazing campaign went a long way towards building this sort of coalition, and demonstrated that the appetite for democratic socialism is out there. But early on, there was a failure in the campaign to connect with older black and Latino voters who are the demographic most abused by our current economic model. That failure prevented the campaign from reaching its full potential. Those mistakes can be corrected and a bold, transformative coalition is there to be built on.

That is the task ahead. The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned. From Elizabeth Warren to Nina Turner, to the Occupy alumni who took the Bernie campaign supernova, there is a stronger field of coalition-inspiring progressive leaders out there than at any point in my lifetime. We are "leaderful", as many in the Movement for Black Lives say.

So let's get out of shock as fast as we can and build the kind of radical movement that has a genuine answer to the hate and fear represented by the Trumps of this world. Let's set aside whatever is keeping us apart and start right now.

xpxpxp , 11 Nov 2016 14:5>

Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously.

You forgot to mention identity politics. Neoliberalism and identity politics go hand in hand. I don't think it's a surprise that after the 50's and the Second Red Scare, HUAC, McCarthyism and the John Birch Society the socialist, communist and other left-wingers were gone from the US and identity politics became ascendant.

We don't see SJW being dragged in front of Congress and them losing their jobs, nor do we see the National Guard coming in to break up Slut Walks. Instead, we see them in the highest positions of power and with governments and corporations embracing their ideas. The reason is simple; identity politics and SJWs are no threat to people in power.

Keep people divided into ever smaller identities and they can't fight back. Keep demonizing people for objecting, calling them sexist and racist for speaking up, and you muzzle the opposition. If someone wants to take on neoliberalism then they need to abandon identity politics.


ngonyama , 11 Nov 2016 12:5>
Glass-Steagal was repealed, Wall St. stole itself rich, people wanted change (Yes we can!). But not a single bankster megathief was even investigated and in the rust belt and elsewhere millions suffered. They were told that they needed to shut up because they were evil privileged white males who needed to be HRC's blue wall because she owned them. Refusal to comply meant they were racist misogynists.

So now they are racist misogynists and proud of it.

And why all this? Because Hillary's ego is so large that it bumps into the edges of the universe. She calls that her class ceiling.

Thanks Hillary. You brought us Trump. You and that bunch of privileged DNC-ers that are in bed with Wall Street.

Mark Linley , 11 Nov 2016 12:3>
The left's reflections are getting closer, but we're still not quite there it seems.

... ... ...

The visible, real-life consequences of globalisation and modern capitalism are those targets picked out (hardly by coincidence) by Trump and Farage. The most obvious sign of globalisation is not a billionaire's yacht, but that when you call to sort out being overcharged or crappy service, you finally get through to an outsourced offshored call centre. And when the right attacks them and the left inevitably and correctly defends them - that immigrants do contribute to the economy, but are still disadvantaged economically, that women are paid less for the same work, that muslims face discrimination every day - we're infact subliminally reinforcing Trump/Farage's blunter message: that the left's priority constituents are immigrants, people of colour, muslims and women.

And then we criticise a 50 year old white unemployed or zero-hour-contract man for being "selfish" and "stupid" when he votes for the only candidate who *appears* to put him first, when we seem to ask him to put everyone else first.

The left is losing the argument because our answers to modern problems are removed from everyday experience. Correct, but complex. Trump and Farage understand KISS. If we think the solution is to just keep saying the same thing louder, like an English tourist abroad, we'll carry on losing.

Quistal , 11 Nov 2016 11:5>
"It was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump"

Yes indeed, I have seen this coming since the mid nineties, when the -fairly high tech- Company, where I worked for at the time, became a victim of globalization, 120 people got fired, a.o. me.

Gladly I was able to still find a job at 50, a hell of a lot of others did not.

Besides, I have been active in International business since the early 1960's until recently, so I know what I am talking about.

We are spoiling 200 years of social economic improvement to the short term interests of capital at supersonic speed. (modern communication and transport, the free movement of capital)

Both the republicans and the democrats made that happen (as their followers did in Europe)

The Globalizing, Outsourcing, Monetary, Laissez-Faire, Supply side economy.

That is the one thing that I was in agreement with, with Trump, for the rest, by the way he is talking now, it looks very much as if we will be having to deal with a liar. (and a cheat?)

After all he did say a lot of different things while selling himself in the campaign from the image that he seems to depict now..

The worst things are in my opinion his wish to destroy the livelyhood of lots of people world wide by not accepting the human influences on the climate, this besides lots of others things is in my opinion extremely selfish, especially seen the fact that a green economy can be -at least- as profitable (in work and money) as the fossil one was.

And of course the repeal of Obamacare, one of the few successes that Obama could materialize in his mainly obstructed time in office.

wariquari MarkAWilliams , 11 Nov 2016 10:5>

What is 'Neoliberalism'
Neoliberalism is a policy model of social studies and economics that transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector. It takes from the basic principles of neoclassical economics, suggesting that governments must limit subsidies, make reforms to tax law in order to expand the tax base, reduce deficit spending, limit protectionism, and open markets up to trade. It also seeks to abolish fixed exchange rates, back deregulation, permit private property, and privatize businesses run by the state.

Liberalism, in economics, refers to a freeing of the economy by eliminating regulations and barriers that restrict what actors can do. Neoliberal policies aim for a laissez-faire approach to economic development.

Investopedia

Also: Steve Keen

"It's a belief that the human social system works best if there's almost no government, and almost everything is done through markets... and also it says there should be no trade unions, no tariffs, remove all the controls and the economy will work better.

Now that's only true of a system if it is inherently stabilizing, it's like saying 'this ship will go a lot faster if you take off all the stuff that's there to stabilize it.' Yeah it will but it'll go upside down at some point and sink."

Jim987 , 11 Nov 2016 08:4>
From the British perspective this is true here as well. After a number of high powered meetings over a fifteen year period, the Labour Party embraced NeoLiberalism and paid when it failed. Those meetings where pretty big and millions turned up. Those meetings took place in 19779, 983, 1987 and the final one was in 1992. The general public announced that no one would elect anyone who did not support wholesale privatisation, free markets at every turn with a special emphasis on labour market laws. Any devience, under any circumstances from Tory ideology was punished at the ballot box. Labour was forced to drop clause four as a sop to get elected.

And when this neo liberal wet dream started to crumble in the form of crippling PFI schemes, light touch banking, zero hour agency work and possibly bigger than the light touch banking collapse, the free movement of Labour for the biggest companies in the UK. Who did the public blame for these Tory driven Liberalism? The Tories? Themselves for forcing the Labour Party to adopt these flawed policies? The Newspapers who condemned anything other than free market ideology? Nope, the blamed the very people who had been campaigning against Tory policies all along. The people who got blamed for the banking collapse was not the people who DEMANDEDbanks be deregulated, not the Party who carried out the deregulation, but the poor saps in power when it blew up.

Who gets blamed for the importing of labour? The political ideology that people had supported for thirty years? Nope, again the Party that bent over backwards to accommodate the Tesco, ASDA and sports direct et al.

And guess what? After punishing anything to the Left of Reagan or questioning free trade at the ballot box, and dismissing it as 'Socailism' it turns out they voted for a protectionist who is opposed to free trade and multi Nationals. The Party who are opposed to free trade, multinationals and 'What is good for GM is good for America'? The protector of jobs and regulated labour markets? Why the GOP of course. The Party whose DNA has all this time been at the heart of protecting jobs who shun free trade agreements and are at the very heart of the socialist movement are the Republican movement. And nobody even said anything. We all just moved into a parallel universe where the Republican movement have been campaigning against free trade for two hundred years.

Jeff Miller , 11 Nov 2016 08:0>
"The indisputable fact is that prevailing institutions of authority in the West, for decades, have relentlessly and with complete indifference stomped on the economic welfare and social security of hundreds of millions of people. 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."

- Glenn Greenwald

Lily Ng , 11 Nov 2016 07:1>
"Neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade..." Are you sure those are neoliberal policies? They sound exactly like conservative Republican mainstays to me. Didn't Trump run on these very things?
phil100a Lily Ng , 11 Nov 2016 07:4>
Exactly, they are virtually the same, with the difference being that the GOP adds "nostalgic nationalism and anger at remote economic bureaucracies – whether Washington, the North American free trade agreement the World Trade Organisation or the EU. And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women".

In difficult times, people want relief as fast as possible and they want to blame *anyone* for their plight. This is what a demagogue offers; it's why Trump is in the White House. Prepare yourselves, and never give in to Trump's cynicism.

epidavros Lily Ng , 11 Nov 2016 07:5>
They sound like EU policy to me. And that is because they are EU policy, all backed by EU directives.
reidlou , 11 Nov 2016 07:0>
Warren sold Sanders out. Sanders sold his supporters out for Debbie Wasserman Shultz, who incidentally was reelected. Hillary was forced on the ticket by the oligarchy. Change will not come from Trudeau, or Obama, or Trump, or Sanders or Warren. These people have betrayed what they said. Where do we go from here? Which is the way that's clear? Dunno, but all of the above have shown to be frauds. Whose next?
bernique , 11 Nov 2016 06:2>
In this election, Donald Trump was the lesser evil, so I am glad that he won. There won't be nu clear war on Iran or wherever, and better relations with Russia, China, and hopefully, the rest of the world.

As for domestic politics, we'll take care of those issues ourselves, forcefully protesting against, if necessary. It'll be few and far between, I project.

bernique , 11 Nov 2016 06:2>
In this election, Donald Trump was the lesser evil, so I am glad that he won. There won't be nu clear war on Iran or wherever, and better relations with Russia, China, and hopefully, the rest of the world.

As for domestic politics, we'll take care of those issues ourselves, forcefully protesting against, if necessary. It'll be few and far between, I project.

AnneGlenEden , 11 Nov 2016 05:1>
"...a green new deal. Such a plan could create a tidal wave of well-paying unionised jobs, bring badly needed resources and opportunities to communities ... and insist that polluters should pay for workers to be retrained and fully included in this future."

That is, at least, the only positive suggestion that's been made. I think it's a good one the needs to be developed. I'm far from an economist but perhaps we need also to start thinking about blended economic systems rather than just one type as well.

What I don't agree with is the continuation of identity politics. It's suffering badly from overuse and also from its juxtaposition with the application of economic pain to those who are also consistently abused with every vile epithet known to man. In brief, people have been operant conditioned to either worship at its feet or loathe it with most or all of their being. It's past its use-by date and needs to grow into the real expression of its stated aims.

As an example, Merkel is quoted as saying, ""Germany and America are connected by values of democracy, freedom, and respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or political views."

The words are just positive framing. We all know now that 'democracy' (defined by the UN as extreme terrorism to be fought and eliminated when iit involves public voting) refers to voting by an elite group. For the rest of it, Junckers right hand man was quoted this week as saying it's to be achieved by 'elimination of all national, cultural, ethnic, and faith identity'.

There is a unbridgable gulf between those two concepts, and the first one is simply dishonest. But journalists never explain that.

The way forward is to treat all people with dignity and respect, as long as they're not harassing or killing each other, and stop trying to brainwash them. If someone is a racist and content to keep that to themselves, leave them alone. Likewise with all the other -isms and -obias. The law and institutions need to treat people equally indeed. No negative and no positive discrimination. 'Indigenous peoples' could have a special role- but not to dispossess, sponge off, or lord it over others. Religious holidays need to be observed for all religions, not for none. I can hear the business howls now but the reality is we need to be decreasing industrial pollution and having less 'stuff', not increasing it.

I wanted Trump to win but if I saw someone(including him) harassing someone else racially, homophobically, or any other -ism or -obia, I would defend the victim to the death as long as they were in my presence. That includes male victims of domestic violence. Everything has its day and identity politics is in that category.

We need a new way and it needs to honour the reality described in the fraudelent rhetoric of the recent past globalist, multiculturalsit, and liberalist concepts. We need a completely new economic system or blend of the old which serves the needs of all the people, al the time. And we need democratic systems which empower constant feedback from those people on how far its succeeding.

AhBrightWings , 11 Nov 2016 02:4>

Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.

Agree 100% with this, but am at an utter loss to grasp why this is chalked up to the hip new lingo of "neoliberalism." Bullshit. It's as pure a distillation of conservatism as has ever been penned.

This obsession with renaming things for the sake of confusion serves no one well. This is prime Trickle Down and the Conservative Manifesto through and through.

Woodenarrow123 AhBrightWings , 11 Nov 2016 03:1>
I am afraid the author is correct in describing the problem as Neo Liberalism - It is not Conservatism or Capitalism.

This is Neo Liberalism - You are the CEO of a plant employs 5,000 people that makes widgets. You don't know how to make a better widget but you want to increase profits so you decide to close down your plant and outsource 4,000 of the jobs to a low wage economy where workers don't have the same rights (remember China doesn't have democracy or freedom of speech).

Now your making widgets cheaper but you still aren't making enough money so you offshore the tax liability to a tax haven - There goes schools, roads, hospitals.

Now your making so much more money for the company what do you do? You give yourself a pay rise. Not any old pay rise. You pay yourself five or ten times as much.

And then you buy shares because the share price goes way up.

And then you donate to politicians and they tell the great unwashed (that's you and me) this wheeze is FREE TRADE, or conservatism or capitalism or trickle down.

It isn't its Neo Liberalism and both left and right in most of Europe and the USA has embraced it to the detriment of its citizens.

HolyInsurgent , 11 Nov 2016 02:4>

Naomi Klein: The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned.

It starts by having the DNC follow its own rules. The superdelegates were dutifully counted as Hillary supporters from Day One of the primaries. Something like 507 to begin with! When Sanders won successive states, more and more superdelegates mysteriously appeared supporting Hillary. People understand what a rigged game means. This was Thumb-On-The-Scale tactics and people saw through it. The Party chose Hillary and that was that. That's not democracy. The Democratic Party needs a complete transformation from root to branch.

But yes, the bigger picture must be a focus on institutional reform. Not just for America but everywhere.

Excellent article.

aulusmagnus , 10 Nov 2016 23:3>
I agree with Klein's take on neoliberalism, its Panglossian economic model, as a cause of much angst in the world, but the remedy is simple in the US -- regulation. Break up the big banks, end monopolies based on third-party payments, licensing and credentialing (health care, the universities, etc.), and levy higher taxes on the wealthy. I truly believe that race relations among Americans have never been better, and that most "problems" have largely been manufactured. What America is crying out for is good, pragmatic government.
Debra Smith , 10 Nov 2016 22:5>
Naomi is spot on. She is speaking a truth that too many have no wish to hear because it tampers with their idealize status quo. They have theirs and to hell with everyone else. That time has past and the groaning of the privileged- people who do not CARE (which does not include many people with means- that is stupid to relegate the carers to hell with the criminals) is so LOUD right now. They are spinning bank reports and market doom and gloom.

It has been said that HALF of the USA is a 'basket of deplorables' - WOW that is reductionist logic and it explains nothing.

I am not American and yet, what I know is that PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE- human beings- so please- what a bullshit argument- that you have tried all too often with Brexit (its not working for you so who is the insane one? Wasn't it Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result?

RESEARCH says that people are usually very informed about the issues of their own lives. All they have left is their lives and the lives of their children. A LITTLE respect would be nice.

Many creatures can only see things that are moving. Maybe some people are like that once they trust. WE ALL trusted government, police, agencies because we wanted to believe in a common good. That trust was ABUSED. The last grasping woke people up. They saw that grab very clearly.
And this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCWNqMV4Bgs (I was married to a cop at that time and the interviewee is one of the most staid journalists in Canada with a program on public television.
Someone has to OWN those facts before casting aspersions on mankind. The voters are not stupid ESPECIALLY when it comes to SURVIVAL and it is brink time.

You expect them to DIE QUIETLY? Dream on in your precious nightmare.

colddebtmountain , 10 Nov 2016 22:0>

People have a right to be angry

And people have been saying that for decades but no one has been listening, least of all the trendy neoliberals who thought they had found the final economic solution.

You cannot strip away a person's identity, life and loves, without them losing their dignity -totally. You must prepare and assist every one of them for change over realistic time scales dealing with every consequence as it happened. None of that was done because all of what has happened is the product of opportunism - cash today think about it tomorrow.

These trendy neoliberals have cheated us all, not once, not twice, but all the time, and they show no guild, no guilt at all. They will continue to pay the price until they listen to us and change.

Debra Smith , 10 Nov 2016 22:5>
Naomi is spot on. She is speaking a truth that too many have no wish to hear because it tampers with their idealize status quo. They have theirs and to hell with everyone else. That time has past and the groaning of the privileged- people who do not CARE (which does not include many people with means- that is stupid to relegate the carers to hell with the criminals) is so LOUD right now. They are spinning bank reports and market doom and gloom.

It has been said that HALF of the USA is a 'basket of deplorables' - WOW that is reductionist logic and it explains nothing.

I am not American and yet, what I know is that PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE- human beings- so please- what a bullshit argument- that you have tried all too often with Brexit (its not working for you so who is the insane one? Wasn't it Einstein who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result?

RESEARCH says that people are usually very informed about the issues of their own lives. All they have left is their lives and the lives of their children. A LITTLE respect would be nice.

Many creatures can only see things that are moving. Maybe some people are like that once they trust. WE ALL trusted government, police, agencies because we wanted to believe in a common good. That trust was ABUSED. The last grasping woke people up. They saw that grab very clearly.
And this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCWNqMV4Bgs (I was married to a cop at that time and the interviewee is one of the most staid journalists in Canada with a program on public television.
Someone has to OWN those facts before casting aspersions on mankind. The voters are not stupid ESPECIALLY when it comes to SURVIVAL and it is brink time.

You expect them to DIE QUIETLY? Dream on in your precious nightmare.

Azul66 , 10 Nov 2016 21:0>
Perfect. Thank you, Naomi, for the best column on the 2016 election. Democrats are proving to be sore losers but they can come around if they all or most read your take on the outcome of our presidential election. Neoliberal has been our downfall but still most Americans are not aware of even the word. Times to get explanation of the ideology and the negative effect on the world. It has been so cruel and so horrible since Jimmy Carter who started this whole thing but the Clintons were the cruelest of all. I am so glad Hillary did not win. I could not vote for Trump so voted for Jill Stein.
ViewFromTheUSA , 10 Nov 2016 19:5>
It was also their (and the left in general's) embrace of identity politics. Welcoming the whiny 'social justice warrior' attitude that puts everyone into little groups and puts those groups into little lanes, and no one can ever leave their group or lane. Calling people racist or bigoted, not for actual racism or bigotry, but for merely expressing a different opinion. White privilege- trying to shut down the opinions of white people. Cultural appropriation- witch-hunting people for wearing a certain hairstyle or costume. Safe spaces- creating echo chambers and segregating people from even hearing opposing opinions or ideas. Microagressions- claiming offense over perceived slights and insults in harmless remarks. not to mention trying to police, ban, and control speech.

I'm a liberal, I lean left, my ideals and values and principles and what I stand for are more in line with left-wing ideology, but if they want to be taken seriously and have a chance at winning again, the left needs to let identity politics die.

RobMorganAU Hubert Hammack , 10 Nov 2016 20:5>
Yeah, you need to slow down a bit there, Hubert.

Neoliberalism.

An ideology that believes that if you give rich people absolutely unfettered ability to make even more money, they'll magically look after everyone else.

American_Sniper , 10 Nov 2016 19:4>
Davosland where Bill Clinton gets to hang out with Rupert Murdoch.
Dominique2 , 10 Nov 2016 19:3>
Not only the Democrats.

The center left's shameful, braindead acceptance of Thatcher-Reaga, Dumbonomics has been a worldwide plague.

The EU, supposedly a bulwark of common sense, is still officially austerian and neoliberal, even though some hard thinking is going on.

Anger-fuelled adoption of far right policies and economics is a further lurch in the same direction: deregulation, unchecked corporate power, quashing of workers' rights.

A bad time for the disenfranchised all over the world, now being used as electoral cannon fodder by their owners.

AnnHodson , 10 Nov 2016 19:1>
As an English woman who lived in America for some years, it was perfectly clear to me that voters there have a choice between cuddly-right and hard-right.

There is no "left" in America, and there is none in the UK either in any meaningful, workable sense. All we have is the soft-right and an unreconstructed 70s Trot. Brilliant.

Nice as it might seem, " The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions" sounds like yet another loose coalition of pressure groups with no cohesive platform or plan. Same old, same old.

ilwudumass , 10 Nov 2016 18:4>
Absolutely spot on. I remember, as a rare liberal working at a GOP-run Enron, how disheartened I was watching Bill Clinton pander to the GOP elites and shove NAFTA through a GOP-run Congress while the majority of Democrats voted against it. He also sought, for political expediency, many neoliberal solutions that doomed the working class to subsistence. The GOP crowed that Reagan won the Cold War when actually it was the shift of wealth from the West to the 3rd world as a bribe that ultimately brought us to the globalized mess we find ourselves in. This was during Clinton's presidency. Unfortunately Obama did a u-turn and continued GW's disastrous tenure in what really matters: wars, globalization, abandonment of the working class. Why didn't the Democratic elite not remind voters that the GOP was behind globalization and the shift of wealth from the middle class to overseas?
JohnBinxBolling , 10 Nov 2016 18:3>
A Message from the Rust Belt: It's the NAFTA, Stupid

The road to President Trump began with the enactment of NAFTA, a heinous betrayal by the Democratic Party of its blue collar base and of it's most basic principles, taking it from the party of the New Deal to the party of the Brave New Global World Order Deal, screwing it's most loyal constituents in favor of Wall Street.

The next step on the road to the Trump House was the Clinton's reckless deregulation, culminating in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, yet again in the name of a bigger, more profitable, more powerful Wall Street at the peril of Main Street.

But perhaps the most decisive factor in sending blue collar rust belt America into the arms of an orange-haired demon is what happened when they put their faith, heart and souls into electing Barack Obama, a man who ran as a progressive, promising hope and change, but who then immediately governed as a neo-lib.

I know what some of you are saying right now, that given the fierce opposition he was up against, he accomplished what he could; but that's a bunch of bull, as we say in the Midwest.

No one forced him to appoint, immediately upon taking office, Wall Street insiders to his cabinet and make Larry Summers (the architect of deregulation, neo-lib style) his chief economic adviser.

No one forced him to appoint corporate toady, Common Core loving, privatization loving (through charter schools) Arne "teach to the test" Duncan to Secretary of Education.

No one forced him to immediately abandon, in the fight for Obamacare, the public option.

No one forced him to ultimately come up with a health care plan, that at its base, is of by and big Pharma and the insurance industry, one that lowers costs not by controlling them but by rationing care (that's what those huge deductibles and co-pays are for and they're working--working Americans, even while insured, don't dare visit the doctor, except when at death's door, for fear the doctor will order tests they can't afford to pay.)

Most now use their insurance as catastrophic policies to be used only in emergencies. This is why Obamacare is so hated in America--not because it's socialist, but because it isn't. (Remember, they voted for hope and change)

No Republican cabal forced Obama to embrace TPP, NAFTA on steroids and so univerally hated here in the heartland.

Ah, but you say, Hillary has come out against it. But only after praising it and only in cagey language, about not approving it in its present form (and she has yet to comment on the viscerally hated NAFTA forever linked to the Clintons and the Democrats).

Much is made (and rightly so) of Trump's threats to constitutionality and the rule of law. Yet Democrats seem blissfully unaware of their own full-frontal assaults on the Constitution.

For elected officials who have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, supporting NAFTA and TPP, which sign over US sovereignty to unelected, unaccountable (corporate controlled) international tribunals, giving them the power to, in essence, overturn any US, state or federal, is nothing less than an act of treason. You might as well just take the Constitution, rip it to shreds, and throw it up in the air like confetti.

(It's so easy to see Trump's threats to the Constitution, so difficult for Democratic elites to see their own obliteration of it.)

Why is the hatred of NAFTA, of TPP (and of the Clintons) so visceral in rust-belt America?

I know people who watched the plants they worked in dismantled piece by piece and shipped off to Mexico. I've spoken to people who've had the humiliating experience of going to Mexico to train their replacements. I've talked to union members who've reported that employers, at the bargaining table, have demanded huge cuts in pay and benefits, saying that unless they concede, they're moving to Mexico.

It's personal.

It's not like blue collar, rust-belt America hasn't given the Democrats chance after chance. They've been voting Democratic since 1992.

They gave Obama two chances, believing his promises of hope and change, only to witness his championing of TPP.

Time and again, the Clintonian Democrats have deceived and betrayed their blue collar, rust-belt base. Time and again rust-belt blue collar America has supported them, nonetheless, hoping, like Charlie Brown, that this time they wouldn't have the football pulled away.

But the accumulating decay, the devastation of the great recession (and the feeble, corporate oriented Democratic response) have left them with no hope left. The vote for Donald is a howl of rage and desperation. He was the only way left for them to vent their rage (after the Democratic elites dispensed with Bernie Sanders).

The next four years are going to be hell. But for heartland rust-belt America, the last thirty-five years have been hell (and they have nothing left to lose).

Welcome to their world.

Tzctguar JohnBinxBolling , 10 Nov 2016 21:5>
Some USians , trumpeters mostly, are very funny.

On the one hand you don't want immigrants in your mist because they undercut local workers.

And in the other hand you don't want those same people to get good jobs in their own country, because they undercut your own workers.

You think you have a God given right to jobs for which you aren't productive enough.

In other words you don't want to compete.

You want to sell us your stuff allright ( NAFTA slaughtered the Mexican farming sector, specially subsistence farming) but you would rather don't buy Mexican stuff, unless it is raw materials so you can add value and sell it back to us.

NAFTA has made countless articles cheaper to all of you, and has slowed down illegal immigration which has been in the decline for a while.

But you want it all, no matter how unrealistic.

Having you cake and eat it. While riding an unicorn please.

Emma Rosenthal , 10 Nov 2016 18:1>
Why Klein doesn't mention Jews in her list of targets of this right wing hate and reaction is surprising. In defining the reason neo-liberalism failed so many people, she states "At the same time, they have witnessed the rise of the Davos class, a hyper-connected network of banking and tech billionaires, elected leaders who are awfully cosy with those interests, and Hollywood celebrities who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous. Success is a party to which they were not invited, and they know in their hearts that this rising wealth and power is somehow directly connected to their growing debts and powerlessness." And this paragraph directly applies to how the Trumpettes, the KKK, who endorsed him, the Alt-right who he played a major role of normalizing, sees JEWS. Central to the ideology of the extreme right is their hatred of Jews. How Klein missed that is really baffling.
ID4352889 rubagreta , 10 Nov 2016 18:2>
Naive comment. The "lefts" criticism of Israel is largely unrelated to the growing right's hostility to Jews. It's the latter you need to be concerned about.
rubagreta ID4352889 , 10 Nov 2016 18:3>
What right's hostility in the US? Where are they. There isn't a single Republican member of Congress who is hostile to Israel. David Duke ran for senate in Lousiana and got 3% of the vote.
WTIngle , 10 Nov 2016 18:0>
Naomi: "But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism."

Is this completely correct, leaving out as it does something that has grown since at least the last days of WWII and throughout the Cold War, something that some call the "Deep State?"

Here's one view of it, written by a former Republican congressional staffer but in an essay found on the Bill Moyers and Company's website (Bill Moyers is definitely neither a Republican nor a conservative):

http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/ .

"Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day."

Lofgren's description is not exhaustive, not really focusing on the darkest heart within the "military industrial complex" that is intimately associated with the deep state, namely the covert, classified areas of the intelligence and security components. (I find the fact that the present president recently renewed the illegal and unconstitutional 9/11 State of Emergency Act for the eighth year in a row, just as his predecessor did every year he was in office after the Act was first signed in September, 2001, telling.)

Still, it's good starting point.

It looks to me that this huge beast is more about empire than Neoliberalism (or even NeoConservatism -- it encompasses both; it's not necessarily "left" or "right" as most use the terms, not truly Democrat or Republican).

bananakingdom , 10 Nov 2016 16:3>
Hillary has promised to be a president for everyone…that is, everyone who contributes to 'The Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation'.
According to the Foundation's website, it is a 'non-profit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.'
The easiest way to make an organisation non-profit is to pay out all earnings - seven-figure director fees, first class travel, Fifth Avenue offices…oh how you can spend your way to a luxurious non-profit outcome! And whatever is left over after your personal indulgences have been satisfied, you can spend on a few pet projects.
The Clintons are seen as money grubbers who'd sell their own family members for the right price. Hillary is a despised person.

Trump is no better. The only difference between him and Hillary is that he is openly corrupt. Whereas Hillary hides her corruption behind a cloak of establishment respectability.

ArchibaldLeach , 10 Nov 2016 16:3>
The dumbest thing about the response to this is is how everyone is just shoehorning their own narrative into this. If this was just about neoliberalism, nobody would have voted for the Republican party. Trump won for a variety of factors. It wasn't that he was against globalisation, it's that he lied that he could change it. These people believed his "we'll bring back all the jobs" over concrete plans.

Such a coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner of a people's agenda called The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions.

I hang around in liberal circles in Toronto and even there, Black Lives Matter is hardly popular. I know socialists see the result and think that they can be next, but they won't be.

MooseMcNaulty , 10 Nov 2016 16:2>
The political class assiduously serves the needs of the wealthy, while the working people fend for themselves. The banks get a bailout, the bankers get a bonus, and the consumer gets his house foreclosed on. The oil companies and hedge funds get loopholes built into the tax code, and the middle class hears that they might not be able to draw their Social Security until they're seventy. It's not hard to see why people are unhappy, and Trump was unafraid to call the system rigged and the players corrupt. You can analyze the results of this election until you're blue in the face, but I think what it ultimately comes down to is that the working people have been thrown under the bus in favor of corporate profit for far too long.
Bar4U MooseMcNaulty , 10 Nov 2016 16:3>
True enough, but Trump's "solutions" will just make it worse for the same group of people and continue to support corporations and the wealthy. Sadly yet again the voters have been duped.
MooseMcNaulty Bar4U , 10 Nov 2016 17:1>
Probably. The only hope I have is that Trump is a vanity candidate, so I expect he really will try to do the best job he can for as many people as he can. He genuinely has no love for the political class and our campaign finance or lobbying systems. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that something half decent might yet come of his election. Probably not any of the big issues, and it's a shame about the environment and the Supreme Court, but you never know... Or so I'll keep telling myself.
Alarcos , 10 Nov 2016 16:1>
The problem with this stroy is two-fold:

1] Since the Eighties the powerless left have been saying that the solutions are on the left ... while the voters kept moving right. Repeating the same thing but louder doesn't make it work any better.
2] Since the Eighties every faction of the left has been calling unto the other flavours of left to 'unite' ... whereas as what they usually meant was 'join us'. Even now I see no evidence that the left is capable of running a 'united-self' ... let alone capable of uniting and healing the deep rift in the society of Trumpian-US or Brexit-UK.

This ship has sailed! The Modern Left has failed to prevent this fascist take-over every bit as much as 'Old Left' failed to stand-up in the Europe of the 1930's and 'Older Left' failed to withstand the nationalist fervor of '14-'18. No, I am afraid that, as in all previous episode, this fascism must be fought. We better start preparing while we still can.

formerlefty Alarcos , 10 Nov 2016 16:2>
But the problem with your story is that the left were defeated some time back. What we've had since are liberals (i.e. the neo-liberal right) tacking ever-rightward, constantly insisting that's the only way to avert the hard populist right. The result has been complete failure, as all that right-ward movement by liberals has achieved is to further create the conditions that lead to the rise of the right.

Its pretty much the same thing that happened in Russia post-communism. Neo-liberalism/liberalism (they are, in fact, the same thing) led to the rise of watered-down kind of fascism.

The modern pro-capitalist/non-populist right has failed to prevent this fascist take-over every bit as much as 'Old Right' failed to stand-up in the Europe of the 1930's...

Europa77 Alarcos , 10 Nov 2016 16:3>

as much as 'Old Left' failed to stand-up in the Europe of the 1930's

The 'old left' did stand up in the 1930s. The prison camps of mainland Europe were full of 'lefties' who stood up.

DunedainRanger , 10 Nov 2016 16:1>
This article is spot on. Neoliberalism creates its own hierarchy which has no place for the peole who voted for Trump. Two quotes from US voters (with acknowledgements to Sky News).
1. A black man who voted for Trump...'most blacks have more in common with white woeking class families trying to make ends meet than they do with the democrats'
2. A well heeled white democrat man in shock....'trying to come to terms with an election which has shown me a side of America I was unaware of...'
Shock horror....Trump was elected by ordinary people.
fmajor7 , 10 Nov 2016 16:1>
It was interesting to see that nearly each and every newspaper in the US and the UK and everywhere else and nearly all the TV channels started a barrage of anti-Trump rhetoric always repeating his sexual escapades and his racist and sexist comments. Only a few alternative blogs or news channels dared to criticise Hillary or question her integrity.
Now that Trump has won has shocked all these news channels and everybody is asking who voted for him ? All those "deplorable" people as mentioned by Hillary or all those sexist, racist or uneducated whites ? Were they angry ? If so, why ? Was it a protest vote ? Why ?
It is interesting to read Charles Hugh Smith's writing "The source of our rage" below and wonder why all these "expert" commentators got it wrong --
https://goo.gl/VuEGZy
bananakingdom , 10 Nov 2016 16:0>
Turn on your television or pick up a paper. Listen to a radio or read the online news. There's always someone telling us how we should think, and what we should do.
The belief that they know better - that they are superior to the rest of us - permeates every corner of our lives. Those that disagree with and challenge the 'consensus' are considered ignorant or uneducated.

This is the argument that's been trotted out since Brexit. The poor old folks didn't know what they were doing. That somehow, those who grew up under the black cloud shadowing post-Second World War Britain couldn't comprehend the implications of seeking to regain control of their economy and borders.

That's the way society has gone - the megaphone minority blasting away in our ear. The elites who believe their values and opinions are the only ones that matter. Pity the poor taxpayer who picks up the tab.

The international 'specialist' who flies in for a couple of days to lecture us on what they think we're doing wrong. From how farmers should manage their land, the type of energy we should use, through to how to control our borders. How these self-appointed experts love to enlighten the great unwashed. It happens at the local level as well. It could be the council dictating something as simple as the colour a homeowner is allowed to paint their fence.

There's the local action group. After moving into an area and setting themselves up as they see fit, they seek to restrict who can join them, and what their fellow residents can do.
A paddock that once held a herd of sheep has been subdivided, and then subdivided again. Yet the new owner places a placard on their new fence protesting against any future developments.

The events of yesterday in the US have turned the world on its head. World leaders are struggling to know how to respond, to Trump's victory.
While so much of the commentary and analysis by the experts has been about the two personalities involved, the US election results reflect something much more basic than that.

It's that the ones who do the lifting - that is, those who set their alarms early and go off to work - are tired of subsidising those that are the recipients of the public purse. They've had enough of paying for the lifestyles of those who look down on them. This includes the political class who lecture them, and everyone else.

The commentariat are putting their spin on the US election result. Much like Brexit, they're arguing that the poor uneducated folks didn't know what they were doing. The result is a two-fingered salute to the political elite who sign off on trade agreements with little regard for those that will lose their jobs. It's a protest against those elected to represent the voters' interests but rarely, if ever, visit the factory floor.

But it's not only the political class who left the majority behind. The result also reflects the great chasm that continues to grow between the wealthy elite - Wall Street - and those on the other side where wages have gone nowhere for years.

The post-GFC world has only pumped more money into the top few percent, while everybody else has been left a long way behind. While the Dow Jones Industrial Index has increased more than two-and-a-half times since the lows of 2009, real wages have barely increased a dime.

Nobody knows how the Trump presidency will play out. I doubt he even knows himself. And as the elites predict, it might turn out to be one of the US' great follies.
Some are calling the result a swing back to conservatism. But the result illustrates ever so strongly how the so-called 'silent majority' are deciding to reclaim the way their lives are governed. It's a major blow to elitism, and is a trend that will only grow.

Matt Hibbard,
For The Daily Reckoning

Andrew Failes bananakingdom , 10 Nov 2016 16:1>
Yeah because putting one of the elite in power a 'a major blow to elitism'. Maybe you actually should listen to an expert
outkast1213 , 10 Nov 2016 16:0>
Perhaps if The Guardian and every other major left media site would have been understanding this the past few years instead of ignoring Bernie, plugging for Clinton, and pushing the SJW stuff there wouldn't have been a Trump presidency. Everyone shares a bit of blame for his win. Hopefully we can not get so obsessed with blind Dem support and identity politics going forward.
Bogdanich , 10 Nov 2016 15:5>
Ya think? Finally someone says something sensible. Neo-liberal economic policy and neo-con foreign policy I might add. There is a German blogger who is a polyglot. He speaks German, French, Italian, English and Russian. He reads the romance languages at least I don't know about Russian. He monitors how different news events are spun to the various populations. Which facts are presented, which omitted, obfuscations, lies and who's controlling the narrative. Because of the time difference he went to bed before the election results were known and woke up after. The opening sentence on his piece that morning was, "So I just woke up and found that the world has changed. World War III was called off."

Which in my estimation is accurate. Perhaps not WWIII but certainly another major war. And what's the result over here in America? It's the Hillary supporters who are behaving violently. Rioting, destroying property, assaults, interfering with transportation etc. Not covered in your press of course because it is the republicans who were supposed to be the violent monsters and it doesn't fit the narrative.

AmyInNH Bogdanich , 10 Nov 2016 16:4>
First, neo-con warring, an essential subcomponent of neoliberalism, for when CIA manipulation of political strife isn't possible. Indonesia versus Iraq, for example.
Second, Hillary supporters rebelling is in the news this morning, though they aren't a) airing it as an alarming event, nor b) having the same paramilitary police response to it.
Third, R has been pushing for warring and I've no idea where you'd (they'd?) come up with an all R Washington isn't going to jump right in. Particularly, post election, when congress refuels the "campaign donation" money laundering machine, defense contractors (Northrop, etc.) and infrastructure (Parsons Brinckerhoff, etc.), with the gifting of federal contracts, which will no doubt run way over budget as cost plus contracts.
Peter Wynn , 10 Nov 2016 15:5>
Many of those left seemingly disenfranchised by neo-liberalism are taking up scapegoating, rather than blaming the REAL cause of their problems.
AmyInNH Peter Wynn , 10 Nov 2016 16:5>
There's a whole lot of less than Whole Truth used to manipulate. Some intentional, some due to ignorance.
Long ago I asked, what is the difference between ignorance and arrogance, and about the only thing I can come up with is ignorance is unintentional while arrogance is confident ignorance.
Dean Myerson , 10 Nov 2016 15:5>
And people like Trump never went to Davos? Republicans don't do that? Yes, a lot of people are in economic pain, and the Democrats and Clinton share that blame. I agree that the Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned, but Trump's victory is not just about economic pain. It's also about fear of the diverse country we are becoming. You want to know who is to blame for the election of Donald Trump? The people who voted for him. They are the ones who fell for the con that he was their solution.
mcstowy Dean Myerson , 10 Nov 2016 16:0>
What you say is correct, but the point is that it is expected that the GOP will protect business interests and profit at the expense of people. That is why they exist. The Democrats have historically been the party that protects the working class. As the author points out, they have abandoned that role during the last 40 years, leaving the working class without protection from the concentration of corporate wealth, power and influence. Working class whites, Latinos and blacks should be allies, not competitors for the scraps left after the Davos party. The conservative right in America is successful because they have successfully pitted these natural allies against each other, but they have been aided the the embrace of corporate neoliberalism by the Democratic party leadership.
PierreCorneille , 10 Nov 2016 15:3>
Bill Clinton gave us Bush the Younger thanks to having the self control of an adolescent chimpanzee. Now the Democrat establishment aided by another Clinton gave us Trump. When are we going to stop buying into the neo-liberal bullshit. They have played us like suckers since the revolution the French won for us. Speaking of the French, their revolution scared the shit out of the "founding fathers" especially the parts about equality and fraternity. I saw Trump coming a long time ago, but I thought someone would stand up. It wasn't as if we weren't warned. Instead all the talking fucking heads are telling us it's time to heal to work together. Right, like the way the Republicans worked with Obama. Are we going to work together, are we going to fight? Nah. We"ll find someone new to bomb in the name of liberty and some new shinny thing will come along and we'll just stay bent over. But never forget, we are the greatest and the most exceptional.
evacarey PierreCorneille , 10 Nov 2016 15:5>
Good post. But it was also Obama who recently led us here. He didn't do anything. Sure he was stymied by the Republican congress. But he didn't even use the bully pulpit.
He seemed to me to want to work for the rest of the world more than he did the U.S. He couldn't even see that the trade agreements are a problem for our citizens. And I supported him more than any previous presidential candidate, because I thought he cared.
NoOneYouKnowNow , 10 Nov 2016 15:3>
Ironic that Ms Klein has published this in the Clintonista, neocon Guardian. Perhaps we can revive the media as well.
nonsensefactory JulesBywaterLees , 10 Nov 2016 16:4>
Generally speaking, American and British media supports neoconservative foreign policy (regime change in Libya and Syria, military confrontation with Russia and China, expanded funding for NATO, the Iraq War WMD lies, etc.). At the same time, it tends to support neoliberal trade policies (free flow of capital, offshoring manufacturing to sweatshop zones) that enrich billionaires while impoverishing the middle class.

The only real difference between "conservative" and "liberal" media outlets is in their take on identity politics; this is why people view media as propaganda that tries to point people away from the more important issues of global war and wealth inequality. It's a distraction tactic.

nonsensefactory , 10 Nov 2016 15:2>
Naomi Klein is right about the neoliberalism that played such a huge role in the creation of massive wealth inequality in the United States, but the other issue is that Hillary Clinton embraced the Bush-era neoconservative program (just look at her record as Secretary of State with Honduras, Haiti, Libya and Syria, as well as all the arms deals and support for Saudi Arabia and Israel). In addition, she was completely loyal to the Wall Street interests who crashed the economy in 2008 and yet were never criminally charged by the Obama Administration.

Obama shares much of the blame - despite coming in with Congress in Democratic hands, he quickly abandoned his populist base in favor of pro-Wall Street agendas; he expanded the domestic mass surveillance program and persecuted whistleblowers like nobody before him; and he was seduced by the CIA's regime change/drone assassination program. His peace prize is now the punchline of a joke. He didn't help out homeowners who'd been targeted by Wall Street; he instead pushed for a massive taxpayer bailout of Wall Street - and minority homeowners in particular were hit hard by the banks. As far as all the young people who supported him? He did nothing to alleviate student loan debt; that's not what Wall Street wanted. As far as renewable energy? He did little if anything on that front; instead he quietly OK'd offshore oil drilling, oil exports, and pipelines like Dakota Access. He betrayed his base and served Wall Street, and of course that's what Hillary Clinton would have done as well.

Bernie Sanders, in contrast, had good policies on all these issues and would have won the primary if it hadn't been rigged by the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and the corporate media.

The Democratic Party reforms needed are obvious:
(1) A fixed number of debates in the primary (Sanders vs. Clinton? 9 debates. Obama vs. Clinton? 26 debates).
(2) Elimination of the superdelegate system. (In Feb 2008, Clinton had 241 to Obama's 181; in Feb 2016, Clinton had 451 to Sander's 19)
(3) Opening the primaries to independent voters in places like New York, at the very least allowing last-minute party registration for independent voters.

That all takes power away from Wall Street-tied party elites, who will otherwise continue to pick losers that will serve Wall Street interests in exchange for big donations - but who are unpopular with the general public. That rigged process is why Bernie Sanders, who would obviously have beaten Trump with enthusiastic millenial support, was prevented from winning the Democratic Primary.

The other party in this debacle, the corporate media - they deserve to be broken up by anti-trust legislation. TimeWarner, Disney, etc. should all be forced to break up into a hundred independently owned news outlets, otherwise it'll be an endless stream of Wall Street propaganda from them.

mypets nonsensefactory , 10 Nov 2016 15:3>
Sanders was far too radical and unrealistic to have carried the day. He lost fair and square.
freeandfair nonsensefactory , 10 Nov 2016 15:3>
" Hillary Clinton embraced the Bush-era neoconservative program (just look at her record as Secretary of State with Honduras, Haiti, Libya and Syria, as well as all the arms deals and support for Saudi Arabia and Israel). In addition, she was completely loyal to the Wall Street interests who crashed the economy in 2008 and yet were never criminally charged by the Obama Administration."

Very much so. Hillary Clinton to me was pretty indistinguishable from George Bush. I never voted for Bush and I wasn't going to vote for a female version of him.

Dewsburian , 10 Nov 2016 15:1>
"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."
And in the Guardian, of course, they'll work out some way to blame Jeremy Corbyn...
Kevin Parcell , 10 Nov 2016 14:5>
Wrong.

We need to ask why the polling was wrong. People who normally vote did not, and people who normally don't vote did. Clinton really did rig the election as proven by Wikileaks, and lots of Bernie supporters could not bring ourselves to vote for her ; and Clinton called Trump's redneck base "a basket of deplorables", and many of those folks who would have watched the election from a bar stool got up to kick her ass. Naturally the same persons who pretended that Clinton did not rig the election want to continue to pretend. But Naomi, she really did.

Mckim Kevin Parcell
LYLEJAMES Mckim , 10 Nov 2016 16:5>
I too believe Clinton and the DNC sealed their own fate. But the "bucket of losers" accusation has proved to be false, the product of a spoof Podesta email.
ronaldadair , 10 Nov 2016 17:3>
So in other words Naomi Klein admits that "rampant insecurity and inequality exist" and that something is required to be done to correct this - which I think many of us realise is a balancing of the needs of national autonomy and globalisation, but then Naomi has the audacity to attribute these "responses " to "neo fascists" So suffer on you poor under privileged unwashed. but should you rise up then we ( the enlightened) know that you are being prodded by neo fascists !! A totally ridiculous idea which can only be explained as the last desperate gasp of the politically correct whose credibility is not only on the line but is now clearly beyond the pale
kleptco , 10 Nov 2016 17:2>
Beautifully said. Eight years of neo-liberal acting/progressive talking Barack Obama and the prospect of more of the same from the deeply flawed Hillary Clinton was enough to hand the presidency to the grotesque Donald Trump. The Democratic party is smoldering and needs to be rebuilt as Naomi says by and for the 99%.

http://www.snopes.com/hillary-calls-voters-bucket-of-losers /

nonsensefactory , 10 Nov 2016 15:2>
Naomi Klein is right about the neoliberalism that played such a huge role in the creation of massive wealth inequality in the United States, but the other issue is that Hillary Clinton embraced the Bush-era neoconservative program (just look at her record as Secretary of State with Honduras, Haiti, Libya and Syria, as well as all the arms deals and support for Saudi Arabia and Israel). In addition, she was completely loyal to the Wall Street interests who crashed the economy in 2008 and yet were never criminally charged by the Obama Administration.

Obama shares much of the blame - despite coming in with Congress in Democratic hands, he quickly abandoned his populist base in favor of pro-Wall Street agendas; he expanded the domestic mass surveillance program and persecuted whistleblowers like nobody before him; and he was seduced by the CIA's regime change/drone assassination program. His peace prize is now the punchline of a joke. He didn't help out homeowners who'd been targeted by Wall Street; he instead pushed for a massive taxpayer bailout of Wall Street - and minority homeowners in particular were hit hard by the banks. As far as all the young people who supported him? He did nothing to alleviate student loan debt; that's not what Wall Street wanted. As far as renewable energy? He did little if anything on that front; instead he quietly OK'd offshore oil drilling, oil exports, and pipelines like Dakota Access. He betrayed his base and served Wall Street, and of course that's what Hillary Clinton would have done as well.

Bernie Sanders, in contrast, had good policies on all these issues and would have won the primary if it hadn't been rigged by the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and the corporate media.

The Democratic Party reforms needed are obvious:
(1) A fixed number of debates in the primary (Sanders vs. Clinton? 9 debates. Obama vs. Clinton? 26 debates).
(2) Elimination of the superdelegate system. (In Feb 2008, Clinton had 241 to Obama's 181; in Feb 2016, Clinton had 451 to Sander's 19)
(3) Opening the primaries to independent voters in places like New York, at the very least allowing last-minute party registration for independent voters.

That all takes power away from Wall Street-tied party elites, who will otherwise continue to pick losers that will serve Wall Street interests in exchange for big donations - but who are unpopular with the general public. That rigged process is why Bernie Sanders, who would obviously have beaten Trump with enthusiastic millenial support, was prevented from winning the Democratic Primary.

The other party in this debacle, the corporate media - they deserve to be broken up by anti-trust legislation. TimeWarner, Disney, etc. should all be forced to break up into a hundred independently owned news outlets, otherwise it'll be an endless stream of Wall Street propaganda from them.

freeandfair nonsensefactory , 10 Nov 2016 15:3>
" Hillary Clinton embraced the Bush-era neoconservative program (just look at her record as Secretary of State with Honduras, Haiti, Libya and Syria, as well as all the arms deals and support for Saudi Arabia and Israel). In addition, she was completely loyal to the Wall Street interests who crashed the economy in 2008 and yet were never criminally charged by the Obama Administration."

Very much so. Hillary Clinton to me was pretty indistinguishable from George Bush. I never voted for Bush and I wasn't going to vote for a female version of him.

Giancarlo Bruno , 10 Nov 2016 14:5>
While I'm troubled by many of the implications of this electoral result, I think the main story is that the Democrats have bled so many votes that an extremely unpopular Republican candidate was able to win simply by holding on to most of the votes that Romney managed to get 4 years ago and flipping a few swing voters. When the final tally comes in, Hillary Clinton will likely have received over 8 million fewer votes than Obama in 2008 and nearly 5 million less than he got in 2012. Trump got fewer still, and he'll now be president because he managed to sway just enough voters in the rust belt to win several of those states.

It could not be clearer that Sanders' approach would have been the better one for this election by far. He spoke to the anger at the economic hollowing out of so much of this country while offering prescriptions that were in the best interests of the vast majority of people and framed the discussion in a way that made it clear race was not at the center, that the unchecked pursuit of the class interests of the wealthy & well-connected was responsible for so much of the human devastation that can easily be observed in so many parts of the country.

Anyone who zealously advocated for this view was derided as a "Bernie bro" or mocked with sneering suggestions that Bernie was only a viable candidate in white states. (Nevermind that being absolute bunkum) Clinton supporters and other DNC hacks falsely equated working class white people in states like Wisconsin and Ohio supporting a more left-leaning economic program that placed a lesser emphasis on racial & identity issues to engaging in some sort of insidious white male identity politics- and they did so deliberately, to muddy the waters.

They forced a widely reviled, ethically challenged, evasive servant of the establishment who deemed TPP "the gold standard" of trade agreements, supported the Iraq war, was content to let the financial sector completely off the hook for the last financial meltdown and engineered the disastrous Libya intervention down everyone's throat on the premise that Americans didn't have a choice. Anyone who expressed their fear that this would result in a loss to Trump, much less voiced a slight preference for Trump over Clinton (even if absolutely de minimis), was vilified to such a degree that I am confident that it stifled some of the public discussion about how to electorally confront Trump. The only acceptable answer was voting for Hillary Clinton without reservation, even accepting that many criticisms of her were valid was tantamount to enabling fascism.

Look where we are now. There's a lesson in this: you cannot rely on progressive issues on a few social positions as a fig leaf to cover up a massive failure to challenge the systemic rot of our economy, our governmental institutions and our legal system. Standing up for a person's right to peace, security and opportunity irrespective of race, ethnicity or creed is absolutely the right thing to do. Same goes for women's right to make family planning decisions or the rights of gay people to marry and live free of discrimination. None of these can begin to mask massive system-wide failures, that we are seemingly hopelessly chained to an economic paradigm that is grossly indifferent- even actively hostile- to the welfare of the majority of our citizens.

I think Sanders' response to Trump's election is entirely appropriate. If Trump does follow through on some of his challenges to globalization, lobbyists or modernizing and improving our infrastructure, we should offer our qualified support. If he attempts to push through massive deregulation, lopsided tax cuts for the wealthy, stripping of environmental protections, or anything to stoke the flames of bigotry and division we should unite in principled, civil opposition.

Laborequalswealth Giancarlo Bruno , 10 Nov 2016 15:5>
Excellent and intelligent post. I especially agree with your last sentence. Trump may have saved us from an insane war with Russia. But mass resistance is called for if he and the blood-red Congress try to turn us into Christo-fascist serfs.
Ardnas1936 , 10 Nov 2016 14:5>
Absolutely on target, thanks Naomi! The DLC (Democratic Leadership?? Council) won this for Trump. They may have taken a couple of presidencies--mostly on false promises--but their wishywashy presidents did nothing for real people and worked solely for the rich oligarchs and imperialists. The "Leadership" was only toward the Right. This election was the Revolt of the Rustbelt and the Dead Small Towns. But Drumpf will do nothing for them except postpone, then forget, and finally turn against any who dare complain.

And just think--if not for the DLC stuffed shirts and Wall Street bootlickers who held power in the Dem establishment, we might be happy that Bernie & Jane Sanders--AUTHENTIC feminists and genuine reformers--were going to the White House. I'm 80 years old, may not be around to see the young people's victory, so I get sick thinking of how much we almost gained, but was lost by the DLC Beltway minds and the GOP (Greedy Oil Party) solipsists. We lost more than Trump can guess, until his Miami properties are all swallowed by the sea. It takes a heavy knock on his orange noggin to get that egomaniac's attention.

I firmly believe that we must bring down BOTH of our over-age, limping, idiot-led political parties, or reform them from the grassroots up! (If they can be saved, which I doubt.) It's time to revive the LaFollette Progressive Republicans and the New Deal Democrats, but under different names--and this time NOT just for privileged, "entitled" white males. Yes, I know Bob LaFollette tried to be inclusive, but the time is way past when our children and grandchildren must support and empathize with the entire HUMAN race, not just the paleface branch who've grabbed all the goodies.

As for the macho white males, offer the cowboys a chance to put their he-man cravings to work at the top of wind-powered electric generators 200 feet tall out in the deep ocean, or avoiding glass slashes from large solar trombe wall collectors or even small glass solar cells, or staying alive around unexpected flares of methane, or getting caught in the ebb of a massive tidal bore and swept out to sea. All of these are renewable energy generating systems, safe for the planet but requiring daredevils who would marvel at how comparably un-scary mining and lumberjacking were back in the Olden Days.

John McManus , 10 Nov 2016 14:5>
Trump was born into the 1% and has stayed there; inherited wealth don't ya know. His policies and those of the Republican hierarchy include : union busting, lower taxes at the top, austerity at the bottom, financial deregulation below 2008 levels, and privatization of government services. Democratic policies are the complete opposite in each of these cases.
Trump doesn't stand for less neoliberalism but more.
cielosdeazul , 10 Nov 2016 14:4>
"People have lost their sense of security, status and even identity."

That's about the only part that's correct. Globalisation and the threat of open borders is what does that. Everyone wants to feel secure in their home, individually or collectively, without the threat that anyone who likes your home better than theirs can invite themselves over and redecorate.

Canada's elite smugly refuse to recognize that its seeming imperviousness to "ethnophobic nationalism" is precisely because it has secure borders and an immigration policy that selects immigrants.

FooBar21 Nancy M Ruff , 10 Nov 2016 14:5>
Obama was elected twice in very recent history. If the country consisted mostly
of bigots, that would have never happened. To chalk this up to bigotry is
exactly the wrong thing to do - it makes one feel all smug and superior without
bothering to engage with the real issues, like the ones that Klein is discussing.
The Democrats have failed as a party of the middle and working classes. They
are the party of Wall Street bankers and the MIC and the Hollywood elite, who
are more concerned with eating organic arugula and with the bathroom rights of
transgender people than they are with the economic plight of the majority of
people in this country. And they nominated the one person who almost perfectly
embodies this establishment: Clinton - a war mongering, corrupt establishment neoconservative who revels in Hollywood fund raisers with $50,000/person
tickets, gets paid a quarter of million dollars by Goldman Sachs for an 1-hour
speech, and salivates at the prospect of starting more wars in the middle east
and poking Putin in the eye. That's why the lost, not because of bigotry.


It's not bigotry that got Trump elected,
although

richardbunning , 10 Nov 2016 14:3>
This piece is exactly right. The infiltration of the neoliberals has poisoned mainstream politics and hijacked the left. It is given form by the Washington Consensus:

1. Fiscal policy discipline, with avoidance of large fiscal deficits relative to GDP;

2. Redirection of public spending from subsidies ("especially indiscriminate subsidies") toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary health care and infrastructure investment;

3. Tax reform, broadening the tax base and adopting moderate marginal tax rates;

4. Interest rates that are market determined and positive (but moderate) in real terms;

5. Competitive exchange rates;

6. Trade liberalization: liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination of quantitative restrictions (licensing, etc.); any trade protection to be provided by low and relatively uniform tariffs;

7. Liberalization of inward foreign direct investment;

8. Privatization of state enterprises;

9. Deregulation: abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition, except for those justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and prudential oversight of financial institutions;

10. Legal security for property rights.

Trump is planning to tear up a lot of this, and he is quite right to do it, even if for the wrong reasons. Globalisation has screwed working people in the developed world and enabled multinationals to form an unholy alliance with the chinese communists to exploit the chinese people to make bigger profits, whilst the old manufacturing base in the developed economies has been hollowed out and sent to China.

jackrousseau , 10 Nov 2016 14:2>
The Democratic Party changed fundamentally under Carter/Clinton in the 1980s/1990s. Very much like Labour in the UK changed during the same period under Blair. During that period, both parties morphed from domestic worker's parties into global capitalist parties with (somewhat) progressive social agendas. In both instances, the move away from core left economic values was justified by electability. The sweeping elections of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in the early 1990s won the argument and relegated the original base of the parties (workers) to the periphery.

Now that neoliberals are no longer electable, what's the justification for their continued existence? No one on the left is happy with their core policies (deregulation, privatization, free trade, unfettered immigration, coziness with corporations/banks, etc.). If they aren't advancing progressive social issues y winning elections, why should we continue putting up with the neolibs co-opting our economic policies?

Ideally, Democrats would use this opportunity to revert back into being a domestic worker's party with genuine progressive/leftist values (much like Labour did in the UK by electing Corbyn). It almost happened with Sanders. Given the enthusiasm/turnout he generated, that's clearly the way forward.

Sadly, if I were betting, I'd imagine the Democratic establishment will do exactly what the Labour establishment did in the UK post Brexit...circle the wagons and double down. And with the anger being directed at Trump rather than the Democratic establishment's malpractice in this botched election, they may get away with it (unlike the Blairites in the UK).

Diane Lake jackrousseau , 10 Nov 2016 14:5>
The New Democrats (neoliberals) have been circuling the wagons for awhile now. They have tried to shoot down progressive candidates running in primaries for office and support the neoliberal ones.
The guy who lost to Rubio was a former republican who became a New Democrat while the party shut down any progressives.
It will take alot of battles to change the party back to their New Deal roots. The party saw the reaction to the true son of the New Deal, Bernie Sanders. Instead of taking lessons from that and what the democratic voters craved, they did everything to undermine him and shut him down.
It will take very heavy equipment to remove the entrenched neoliberals from the party and put true democrats in their rightful place
jackrousseau Diane Lake , 10 Nov 2016 15:2>
It's strange to watch...the UK seems to be about half an election cycle ahead of us in its rejection of neoliberalism. Everything happening in UK politics is echoed over here about 6 month's later. Down to the fact that, in both countries, wealthy orange haired baboons somehow managed to speak to the disaffected working class. If Gove hadn't snaked Boris Johnson at the death, both countries would currently be led by said orange haired baboons. I mean, what are the odds?

Granted, it is the Year of the Monkey per the Chinese calendar...so there might be something in that after all.

Relatedly, I cannot wait until the UK's new Secretary of State has a photo op with our President elect. Which one is the doppelganger?

wiggystardust , 10 Nov 2016 14:1>
This is a very decent article, indeed the mainstream left made a deal with the devil and now he's getting his due. But on the other hand I think it's terribly optimistic to assume everything boils down to kick starting a new democratic-socialist movement, raking in all those votes that have just been waiting for it to happen(and only voted for a right wing populist because it didn't yet, sure) and fixing everybody's problems forever.
For one, the neoliberals managed to singlehandedly to make the left look like even more of a villain in the eyes of those who already eschewed it, alienate those who believed in a left solution but were not diehard about it, and fracture the remaining group into niches who refuse to engage in dialogue or even in recognize each other as fellow lefties. Managing to form a stable coalition is a beginning but it only deals with the latter problem, the left still has a huge public image problem to solve before it can make a return.
And for another, the very idea of safety nets and benefits seems to have fallen out of fashion with the electorate: the "I had to climb the hill both ways to get here, so nobody dare cut a tunnel through it" mentality has been on the rise lately. It seems the neoliberals' failures somehow managed to make us all even more individualist, if only a bit more tribal too. Thus, for a new left to rise it wouldn't be enough to restore trust among all the isolated left groups, but also among society as a whole.
Diane Lake wiggystardust , 10 Nov 2016 15:3>
But, when you have people homeless, starving, falling through society's cracks you have a rise in crime.
Many who are suffering are not shiftless. Many are working but, don't make enough to pay bills and put food on the table.
Many do not have access to healthcare.
Children go to bed without food.
When society is uncaring, mean and causes undue suffering, society falls apart and into haves and have nots.
All the money that went to help people is the same money that now lines the pockets of the uber wealthy.
Our schools cannot teach with rats and cockroaches, ceillings falling in and no heat. When children cannot get a lunch anymore, how do they learn?
When we cannot pay teachers or even support them, you end up with the bottom of the barrel teaching the upcoming generation inadequately.
You can tell the strength of a society from how it cares for its poor and in need.
Ours is a 'i got mine' selfish shallow society now.
And it is violent and people are filled with hate.
Maybe because we have stopped caring and making sure people have opportunities and jobs and education and help when they fall on hard times.
MaryCurry , 10 Nov 2016 14:1>
Agreed, except for the major actors who started this globalization's depression ofN. American and European workers-- the Reagan and the Bush corporate supporters and puppet masters. Clintons and other neolibs have followed suit because they wrongly believed that they could beat them by joining them yet still do a bit of good for their voters. Wrong. But yes, the Revolution continues. Whether it can save the planet -- the environment, however, is doubtful, and nothing matters nearly as much. For years on is far to late.
Justthefactsman , 10 Nov 2016 14:0>
Yes it was the Democrats promotion of neo-liberalsim aided by such claptrap as this opinion from another Guardian scribbler.

"Centrism has failed these and many other voters. Clinton was not handpicked by the Democratic party's elite: she defeated an unexpectedly successful challenge by self-described socialist Bernie Sanders, partly because of his failure to inspire African Americans. "
That a closet Clinton supporter should have the temerity to write something like this to explain Clintons defeat is beyond belief, when we know from Wikileaks e-mails that the DNC actively opposed Sanders.
The reality is that all politics is dominated by the golden rule: he who has the gold rules.
Well meaning scribblers like Naomi can scribble all they want it will never change the situation. Even revolution will not change the situation for the simple facts are "the oppressed are potential oppressors".
The achievement of dominance and superiority seems to be built into human genes, and why not it is so in the rest of the animal world.

Ardnas1936 Justthefactsman , 10 Nov 2016 15:2>
Forget Richard Dawkins, dominance is certainly not universal among living creatures. If a species exists with a plentiful supply of food, domination and competition are unnecessary. Think of the cooperative bonobo and the symbiosis of insects and field flowers. On the other hand, where resources are scare, competition begins and we have social structures like the baboons and leafy trees that kill competitive seedlings by their own shade.

However, throughout evolution cooperation outweighs competition. If it didn't we'd still be solitary single-celled amoebae. As things are, our own bodies are well-furnished with microscopic critters from RNA through viruses and bacteria, many of whom run the shop in the background. Cooperation, whether vestigial, symbiotic or by choice, is the way that leads to life. Competition is the way of violence and death. That's not Marxism. It's nature.

Justthefactsman Ardnas1936 , 11 Nov 2016 04:1>
"Forget Richard Dawkins, dominance is certainly not universal among living creatures. If a species exists with a plentiful supply of food, domination and competition are unnecessary."
There is a plentiful supply of food for the human species.
So how can you explain the general situation that exists on the planet whereby governing elites control and enjoy the major part of all that human labour creates to the detriment of over 50% of the human population ?
Matt Wood , 10 Nov 2016 14:0>
"Neo-fascist responses"? Get over yourself Klein. Trump won because the Clinton's "own" the Democrat Party and they and Goldman Sachs were confident she would be the nominee and millions of gullible Americans would vote for Hillary.

By far the best candidate was Bernie Sanders but the Clintons had him run off the road by "Super Delegates". Oh and by the way is it not odd that the Democrats did not change the electoral system when they were in power?

House of Cards comes close to showing us just how ruthless the Clintons really are.

Karsten Scheibler , 10 Nov 2016 14:0>
Well, that it is worthwhile reading. At the beginning I thought: good that someone pointed that out. People haven't forgotten NAFTA and Hillary's speeches in closed wall street circles and so on. I just wanted to remark that it was probably a multitude of reasons that explain the Democratic loss. Comey's interference and other stuff that is outright dismissed by the author also played a role. However, as I read on I couldn't help but realize that there seems to be another person who wasn't even aware that Bernie and Elizabeth supported Hillary and wasn't aware of their arguments or the Democratic platform Bernie Sanders fought so hard for. The last two paragraphs speak volumes of Ms. Klein's realism or rather the lack thereof.
JTMcPhee gerrygoulde , 10 Nov 2016 14:3>
And how clear does it have to be that "the Network" is and has been purely supra and post-national? How many trillions in dark loot in shadow banks and other asset dumps which the Panama Papers only show a fraction of?

These Fokkers and Fuggers, what drives them? How much is enough? There's always been this cadre of people who figure out how to scam and manipulate and "transcend boundaries," but to the extent that exists today? With the habitability of the planet in question?

But then I have to remember that these people are into self-pleasing on a gargantuan scale, are what we call sociopaths, who have been with the species since "we" figured out how to grow grains and build granaries and walls to protect the granaries and warriors to man the walls and attack the neighbors and take their stuff, and artisans to make the weapons and "improvements," and kings to issue the orders, and priests to justify it all as the Hand and Will of God -- what we call "civilization." And the people at the top have known since forever that if they insulate themselves adequately from the rabble, they face no consequences for their predations, and can live out their lives of looting and indulgence and die comfortably, cared for by loving nurses and doctors who will ease their passing (unlike what the rest of us now face). Because as they have known since forever, "Apres ils le deluge," "IBG-YBG," http://tradicionclasica.blogspot.com/2006/01/expression-aprs-moi-le-dluge-and-its.html ,

And what are the rest of us going to do when they have passed on, or fled like the Nazis with the gold from the teeth of millions and the art treasures and other portable wealth of demolished and decimated nations, to live out their lives as CIA "assets" or in comfortable temperate South American and African places? Dig up their corpses and desecrate them, or try to find their "cremains" and burn them again? They do not care what happens to their children, even.

I wish us ordinary people all the luck in the world trying to create and maintain a different order that will let everyone eat only to their honest hunger and drink only to their reasonable thirst...

kakaran , 10 Nov 2016 13:3>
Couldn't agree more. The neo-liberalism orthodoxy instead of suddenly knocking at the door has come silently home to roost. The Democrats in America and Labor in UK were hand in glove with elites in the greatest robbery the history has ever seen. The concentration of wealth in one percent which was rationalized as panacea of all economic ills has turned out to be an opening of mythical Pandora's box unleashing evils of racism, xenophobia, misogyny etc. The abhorrent echo of "too big to fail" is still heard by the those who were let down by the same oligarchs. I have yet to find an answer to the vexing question as to why enormous benefits of human knowledge and scientific advances be exclusively extracted by one percenters.
vacuous , 10 Nov 2016 13:3>
Guardian commentators use identity politics and cries of "racism, sexism and xenophobia" to try and distract the working class from noticing how internationalism, globalization and immigration has stagnated their wages, moved meaningful jobs oversees and stoked up asset prices allowing a homeowner in London to earn more by twiddling their thumbs than their Polish cleaner gets paid in a year.
No matter how shrill the likes of Owen, Jonathan, Paul, Polly and Hadley try and distract us with their daily dribble of identity politics, we increasingly see them as just another faded facet of the corporatist, internationalist status quo.
JTMcPhee glauben , 10 Nov 2016 14:5>
The union excesses (which have largely been killed off and the union and former and would-be union workers looted and impoverished along with the rest of the "lower orders) are just part of the disease -- which is corruption, and self-pleasing at the expense of everyone else. Union "leaders," absent disinterested "regulation" by government (which has been mostly corrupted too) and thanks to cooptation by "capitalists," definitely screwed the ordinary people (who one must acknowledge included quite a few rank-and-file that aspired to leadership so they could join the looting).

There probably is stuff that needs to be built and manufactured (not the 7,000 pound SUVs and big Dodge and GMC and Ford F-series and "TUNDRA" trucks) to try to keep the species and culture alive. But killing the ability of ordinary people to organize, essentially making unions illegal except in tiny niches, just makes the end-game even worse. And continuing to punch down on working people on account of some 1962 wages (NOT "salaries," these were hourly payrolls, with "benefits" that in may cases like pension funds were subsequently looted by "private equity" vampire-squids and captured-government actions) just makes it harder for ordinary people to come together AS A CLASS and fight the 0.01% for a decent future.

Arnie Arnesen , 10 Nov 2016 13:1>
my post on Facebook that mirrors Naomi:
My thoughts about last night:
Bill Clinton's New Democrats were incinerated last night...arrogant, ivy league, sleeping with Wall Street, multinational corporations, insurance companies... and thinking that if they wrap themselves in the social issues from abortion to gay marriage that wage starved workers with enormous bills and debts, evaporating opportunities, disappearing pensions, shit schools and deteriorating infrastructure wouldn't notice they were overlooked and forgotten. This election underscores that Economic injustice is color blind
shooglebunny , 10 Nov 2016 13:1>
Good analysis; and exceptionally honest.

What I want to know though is that, given the reality of what you are saying, did none of this occur to the Democratic party prior t the election?

If they knew all this why did they not respond to it instead of continuing to plough the same old furrow regardless of the likely consequences for ordinary voters?

macktan894 shooglebunny , 10 Nov 2016 13:4>
Why? Because the Dem Elites knew that with Hillary their perks, access, power, etc. was secure. They wanted status quo and, just as they have behaved the past years, failed to listen to their constituencies, ignored them. They should have known just by seeing Bernie's exceptional campaign and the enthusiasm that fueled it, giving him more money than what Hillary often raised from her wealthy donors each month, that no one was excited about more of the same. Arrogantly, they chose to ignore and minimize what was before their eyes.
Mardak , 10 Nov 2016 13:1>
The most cogent analysis I have read so far. Bravo Ms. Klein. In a year where the country was screaming for populist change, the Democratic party establishment who had their own highly effective populist candidate, CHOSE to offer up possibly the most "establishment" candidate in history. Fly-over America responded with a sharply erect, if ignorantly self-destructive middle finger.
zenkaon , 10 Nov 2016 13:0>
Spot on diagnosis. People are angry that neolibralism has failed them and does not given a damn about them. Clinton offered nothing but the same to too many people. Trump was a molotov cocktail, warts and all, that they got to throw into Washington.

I don't buy the racist argument. People that elected Obama in 2008 and 2012, but Trump in 2016 are not racist. At the same time I acknowledge that all the KKK people did vote Trump.

Question is, does the left have an answer that is palatable to the people? It would be good if it did, but I'm not holding my breath. Corbyn isn't it, that you can be certain of.

tinguinha , 10 Nov 2016 13:0>
Clinton was a comically bad choice that made no sense whatsoever. The left often gets told that it has to endlessly suffer centrist/neo-liberal "lesser evil" candidates in order to defeat the right as they're more electable, which is an argument that at least makes some logical sense under some circumstances, even if I disagree with it. But in the case of this election, everyone has known for years that Clinton is wildly unpopular, and there was a radical alternative to her available who consistently out-polled her against Trump in the form of Sanders.

Now her backers, such as Hadley Freedman on here today, rather than admitting their massive and obvious mistake in supporting her against Sanders and generally backing the "centrist" policies that brought us to this point, are suggesting nonsense such as the idea that those who voted for Trump should be "held responsible." What does that even mean? What are you going to do, elect a new people? You could have had a radical candidate who unlike Clinton could have brought about real change, and unlike Clinton would have attracted many of Trump's blue collar supporters and, you know, won .

All that lesser evil neoliberal politics gives us is a lack of change that allows the right to make even more radical changes during the periods they're in power and eventually leads to the rise of people like Trump, and it's particularly stupid when it throws up deeply unpopular and unelectable people like Clinton, Miliband or the various empty suits lined up against Corbyn. It's time this paper decisively turned its back on the concept.

Lord Lew , 10 Nov 2016 13:0>
I don't have a lot of confidence in the prospect of political ideologies forged in the Industrial Age - "left", "right", "conservative", liberal" - being able to meet the challenges of this post-Industrial age and the future beyond.

Western societies are fracturing into ever-smaller social groups defined by different, complex combinations of social/economic/national/ethnic/topographical/sexual/religious factors which mushrooming sub-groups all create their own realities based on the unregulated information they they select from divisive, self-reflexive social media sources rather than inclusive "mainstream" news media which have become increasingly corrupted and not trusted.

Fragmentation, disintegration of societies - these lead to paranoia and aggression aimed at the "other" - and we can see this on both the "left" and the "right" in the blame-games that have followed Brexit and Trump's victory. The 19th century liberals and conservative who provided the foundations for the institutions of Western Democracy didn't foresee the emergence of global corporations and banks with interests that could defy "the national good" or disrupt the moderately equitable distribution of wealth and replace it with a massive diversion of wealth to a tiny global elite (So long affluent workers! Goodbye aspiring middle-class!) - while placating most of the population with a consumerist, material lifestyle mostly funded by debt. The old system is broken.

In both the Brexit referendum and the US election the most striking split was between the old - the over-50s, clinging to the past - and young people, disconnected in their social media silos, wanting a different future but, as a generation, not able to organize and politically express their unhappiness and their hopes for the future because inadequate conventional Left/Right political thinking doesn't chime with the reality of their lives.

Not everyone who voted for Donald Trump is a racist or a misogynist. Not everyone who voted for Hillary Clinton has no sympathy with an unemployed factory worker in a mid-west town whose future has been written off. However, everywhere you look - people are anxious and fearful that "the others" are trying to stop them getting what they solipsistically feel they deserve.

Donald Trump won't be able to get Apple of Walmart to switch their product sourcing from China to the US, nor will he be able to halt the long-term economic decline of the US any more than Theresa May will be able to prevent post-Brexit economic decline in the UK: the challenges our dysfunctional political institutions face are too complex for politicians who are strong on rhetoric and promises but intellectually feeble and cowardly when it comes to decision-making and execution.

We need education, public-service-based information, new political ideas and new political parties that can cut through the destructive white noise of Twitter and Facebook and focus on values that bring people together and counter the greed of the supra-national elites - something more powerful than divisive, out-dated concepts like Left and Right.

nooriginalthought Lord Lew , 10 Nov 2016 13:2>
What a lot of words to say bugger all.
Why do people with no answers always say we need more education ?

We have to get rid of this notion that we US and UK are post industrial.
We have made a huge mistake offshoring our industry and must relocate the more essential parts. We cannot be a service economy without making things.
Bashing metal turning wood molding plastics must be part of our future.
We cannot be a nation of management consultants and hairdressers.

mzlizzi Lord Lew , 10 Nov 2016 14:3>
The boom in population during the Boom didn't help. We are overpopulated, and our current economic structure cannot support the material lifestyles and the narratives of freedom that we grew up living with or dreaming about. That's the education that's needed.

Until we accept our current situation, we cannot understand or construct new political ideas, parties, or narratives.

goldshirt39 Kipwar , 10 Nov 2016 13:5>
Neoliberal globalization is the worst kind of socialism, whether or not it is actually socialism. It's what we're going to get if young people don't become collectively more informed and quickly. There is an attitude of entitlement among young people that drives towards a socialist mentality and the left has picked up the scent. They're going to chase that vote and those disaffected voters are going to chase that lie right down the rabbit hole eventually. If Hillary and Obama have their way, the riots that are being orchestrated right now will start the process immediately.
lochinverboy , 10 Nov 2016 12:3>
A very confused article. Neo liberalism is unfettered Global Capitalism given a nice sounding name. It is an invention of the right. To think that the most extreme Republican President ever, will improve the lot of the common man is quite simply bizzare.
onlythetruth1 , 10 Nov 2016 12:2>

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

Particularly as Trump himself is a member of that billionaire class and clearly has no interest in redistributing wealth away from himself, or in doing anything to overhaul the economic system that has made him very rich.

RutherfordFHEA , 10 Nov 2016 12:2>
Trump was elected US President by riding the same wave of anger & disaffection that fuelled Brexit. Many of those who were disappointed by the result were quick to console themselves with the (wishful) thought that he will not attempt to implement his more radical proposals, or that, if he tries, he will be thwarted by the Republicans (who now hold majorities in both the House and the Senate). It is important to bear in mind however, that any who dare oppose him will know that they do so at the risk of their seats.
WinkingJesus , 10 Nov 2016 12:1>
The "Inconvenient Truth" is that the politics of Donald Trump has much in common with movements like Attack and Occupy Wall Street, and hence with Naomi Klein. They both want to stop, or put a break on, international trade. Donald Trump wants to revive local production through protectionism. Klein sees international trade as a source of both environmental and social degradation.

Naomi, thus, carries some responsibility for Donald's success.

The combined Trump/Klein policies would see the old rust belt workers boarding self driven electrical buses to go to work in the new windmill factories. These windmills, normally, would be both more expensive and less effective than if the business was subject to international competition, hence the electricity they produced would be more expensive, giving domestic business a disadvantage.

The new environmental businesses would require support from the public purse (if not, we would already have had them). The taxpayers seem in no mood for such grand scale subsidies.

History does not repeat itself, but in the 1930s the industrial nations raised barriers to trade in order to protect their work forces. As a result, everybody got poorer and reacted by electing extremist politicians.

BonzoFerret , 10 Nov 2016 12:0>
Michael Moore outlines his post-election strategy. Point 1 is Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.

Exactly the same as what is happening in the Labour Party. But in that case The Guardian supports neoliberalism and seeks to undermine the ones who are trying to change things.

http://www.trueactivist.com/michael-moores-post-election-plan-is-being-shared-30000-times-an-hour/#.WCRDLir-FmI.facebook

Nada89 , 10 Nov 2016 12:0>
Klein's diagnosis is depressingly accurate.

Sadly I think the electorate in some western societies are in danger of becoming just as ineffective as 'the proles' in 1984, while the vice like grip of the military/industrial complex is just as tenacious as that exerted by Big Brother and the party.

Since the entire political class, or least those with any clout all sing from the same hymn sheet while moderate, or leftist figures, like Corbyn, or Sanders, are bound to be shredded by their own party and by the media, then what hope, eh, unless that hope is something new and outside of party politics?

Tom Wessel , 10 Nov 2016 12:0>
Thank you, thank you, thank you Naomi. Even after an unbelievable defeat, the neoliberals still don't get it. Blame game articles are starting already but no self reflection.

The how and why:
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-ongoing-dangerous-refusal-to-learn-the-lesson-of-brexit /

Gem59 , 10 Nov 2016 11:3>
The role of the media (The Guardian included big time) have a responsibility and offended people's intelligence and sensitivity about democracy, elites etc. Now they are running for cover. Today, Hadley Freeman writes "Misogyny won the US election – let's stop indulging angry white men". Disgrace, offensive and arrogant. Also, Hadley Freeman with "The US has elected its most dangerous leader"...No remorse, no responsibility, blaming American people for being angry, for swallowing the same medicine again...

Compare the Guardian and AP (recall who called California early and rigged the pre-selection against Sanders?) and Waleed Aly here: ( http://www.theage.com.au/comment/us-election-2016-its-not-about-racism-or-sexism-its-about-class-warfare-20161109-gslxzs.html)...What options did the "forgotten", vast majority, the "insignificant other", the disadvantaged, the powerless have? When one is drowning, the relatively privileged onlooker has a duty to help rather than blame the one drowning for "pulling our hair". Of course the future looks terribly bleak for democracy, gender/racial relations etc...

Seriously, could Clinton be an answer for the family that struggles to pay rent, the homeless, the unemployed, those scared of terrorism or a WWIII, the working poor, those in debt due to college fees, those who lost their house and jobs for the sake of "free trade"...These are many, many people folks...real people with flesh, dreams and humanity...

Understanding their pain and their lack of options (thanks to NDC & the Media) does not mean one identifies with Trump and the ugly fascist monsters creeping behind him...It's not about us or one's dream about equality, freedom...It's about survival & human dignity for millions of US people...
Did the demonizing of many working people send them straight to Trump land? Waleed Aly: "progressives have treated the working class largely as a source of xenophobia ... ignore it at our peril" --

KillerMarmot Gem59 , 10 Nov 2016 11:5>
I agree. The Freeman article was a disgrace.

She fails to see that such arrogance was precisely what many Trump supporters were voting against.

TheDudleyOmmer , 10 Nov 2016 11:2>
Excellent article much of which could have been written during the past thirty years.

We all know hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I was puzzled as to why Mrs Clinton seemed to cold shoulder Bernie Sanders. He had already connected with many of the 'left behind' by putting a Social Democratic view opposite to Mr Trump's views. Both had identified the problems that the Chicago economists and neoliberalism had caused, but not having Mr Sanders involved or even accepting that his views would be part of her next administration, Mrs Clinton left the field open to her opponent. If only she had remembered her husband's slogan 'Its the economy, stupid', it may have turned fire on Trump's campaign.

There is an irony that although it was right wing politicians who bought in the neo liberal policies which have impoverished working people, it is the social democratic parties on both sides of the Atlantic who have suffered by trying to make neoliberalism work. They could not demonstrate however how 'trickledown' benefitted the poorest and the image left was of rich people sucking up more wealth and more influence over politicians as Ms Klein points out.

On our side of the Atlantic Mrs Thatcher ensured that the right have a strong supportive press due to her ownership reforms and the right is gradually weakening our BBC so that any opposition views will be stifled. Mr Corbyn has already been character assassinated. It remains to be seen if Mr Trump carries out his threats to the American press supporters of Mrs Clinton to reinforce only right wing views.

The smell of authoritarian regimes is now appearing in many places.

Whereangelsfear , 10 Nov 2016 11:1>
There was an almost dynastic arrogance in the Clinton's assumption that they would carry the day. I have often been impressed with Bill's eloquence and Hillary's tough fight for a rational health and insurance system, but have never heard a word of self-criticism about the dire effects of deregulation and the financial crisis. The democrats missed their chance for radical measures when they had control of Congress just after Lehman Bros.
Still, for international affairs, climate change, any sane kind of approach Trump is an unmitigated disaster. Hillary has much experience in international affairs, but her opportunism in the wake of 9/11 had led her to support the intervention in Iraq. Of course we were all opposed to Saddam's régime, but not with those means and in that kind of way, made much worse of course by Bush jr. Islamic State is a direct consequence of the chaos and unemployment in Iraq created under the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration.
stuart6233 Marangaranga , 10 Nov 2016 11:4>
"Neo-fascist responses"
"Trump-style extremism"
"they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women"

You call my right to vote the way I choose "stupid".
You just don't get it. Millions of Americans voted exactly this way. A big middle finger to the establishment, media, Wall Street, "experts", and yes moral posturing know-it-alls is a great way to use your vote.

You completely misunderstand Trump. He is far more for the working man than Clinton. The poor voted for him in droves. And for good reason.

KelvinYearwood , 10 Nov 2016 10:3>
Well said Naomi.

I am an angry white male, and I am not a misogynist, as this paper would have it.
I am fully aware of the appalling nature of Donald Trump.

On the other hand, I fully understand the bureaucratic nature of the Democrat Party, the embedded interests of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex in that bureaucracy, the dirty tricks that that bureaucratic machinery got up to in order to extinguish Bernie Sander's campaign.

I am aware of how that machinery has been ramping up a situation of global conflict, shamelessly recreating an aggressive Cold war Mk II situation with Russia and China, which is simply cover for the US racist colonial assumption that the world and its resources belongs to it in its sense of itself as an exceptional entity fulfilling its manifest destiny upon a global stage that belongs to its exceptional, wealthy and powerful elites.

And I am aware of how Hillary was so keen to service this reality and American image of itself. And to go beyond that, and bomb Libya for 6 months, killing thousands of civilians (Middle eastern unpeople) and, may I suggest, doing nothing whatsoever for the women of Libya. Quite the opposite!

Michael Moore, in a talk in which he predicted the victory of Trump before the election, notes how Trump went into an American car factory and told the executives of that company that if they relocated to Mexico, he would put a huge tax on their cars coming into America. Not all was misogyny in the vote for Trump. Whether he delivers on his threat or not, unlike the democrat bureaucratic machinery, he showed he was actually listening to working class Americans and that he was ;prepared to face up to company executives.

What has this paper got to say about Hillary and the Democrat Party's class bigotry – its demonstrable contempt for 10s of millions of Americans whose lives are worse now than in 1973, while productivity and wealth overall has skyrocketed over those 43 years.

What has this paper got to say about the lives of African American women, which have been devastated by Republican/Democrat bipartisan policy over the last 43 years?
What has Hadley Freeman got to say about Hillary's comment that President Mubarek of Egypt was "one of the family? A president whose security forces used physical and sexualised abuse of female demonstrators in the Arab Spring?

A feminist would need more than a peg on their nose to vote for Hillary – a feminist would need all the scented oils of Arabia. Perhaps Wahhabi funded Hillary can buy them up.

bunkl , 10 Nov 2016 10:1>
Great article, but Hilary was hardly responsible for privatization and austerity in the USA. She only had 2 terms in the senate (and was only one of 450+ in congress). She was in fact mildly center-left and at least nominally and aginst the TPPA. She could have led a progressive congress (as in the Johnson year) if her coattails were long enough.

I have never in my long life ever seen a politician so demonized... not by the mainstream media, but by the new media run mostly by the alt-right and funded by the likes of the Koch brothers. It worked.

The climate accord is now finished ..any movement towards single payer or paid parental leave, minimum wage increase ...gone. - military spending is now going up, and Trump is proposing tolls on all roads -all to be privatized to pay for tax cuts for the top earners. and this is tip of the iceberg...and not including the racist upswing.

That said, the DNC has a lot to answer for with its undemocratic superdelegates and documented undemining of Sanders...as did the media who either ignored him or unfairly lambasted him. The RealClearPolitics average from May 6-June 5 had Sanders at 49.7% to Trump's 39.3%, a 10.4-point cushion...polling that included independents. In that same time frame, Trump was polling close to Clinton and was even ahead in multiple polls. Most people were well aware of Sander's so-called "socialist" label since October the previous year, so I'm unclear if that would have been a factor in the general election.

Quiller , 10 Nov 2016 10:1>
An analysis of the media is long over due : It was remarkable to see the media, including American media, go into shock mode and scramble to reorganise the script and the thinking to run a perspective on what was happening on the night the votes were counted. The media had conditioned themselves to a Clinton win. Clearly the editors and the reporters were not out on the streets and in the hustings getting all the messages. The Guardian is in shock mode after the British Referendum and the American Presidential Election. The most politically dangerous person is a discontented voter with a ballot paper. How could the media have not spotted in advance what was happening ? I do not buy the lazy perspective that the voters deceived the media into their voting intentions. Personally, I think the media have got fat and lazy and need to come out from behind their editorial desks.
DaveLester FrankyJane , 10 Nov 2016 10:1>

This article is brilliant. Truth in spades.

Naomi, has omitted one very important detail: automation, i.e. the use of AI to replace jobs.

This absolutely requires us to restructure society to provide security and purpose to each every one of us who is not part of the super rich owners.

For example we will see driving jobs rapidly disappearing within the next five to ten years.

I also notice that where the worst effects of rampant capitalism are ameliorated there appear to be fewer issues. I'm thinking of many Western European nations where the issues do not yet seem to have the over fifty percent traction that they have in the US and the UK. If Australia were suffering a similar economic slow down it may well join the US and UK. But what's happening in Canada and New Zealand?

SlumVictim , 10 Nov 2016 09:2>
The problem with centre left parties throughout the western world is that they sold out to corporate capitalism, which forced people who rejected neoliberalism to go to the extremes to protest. The question is, once someone's loyalty has been broken, it is that much more difficult to win loyalty back, if it is possible at all.
empestteacup SlumVictim , 10 Nov 2016 11:5>
Good, concise post.

And you're right - the neoliberal capture of centre-left legacy parties from the Democrats to the German SPD and French Socialist Party has created an exceptionally unpromising landscape and public mood. Trust has been broken. Responsibilities betrayed. Intellectual traditions traduced, distorted, or simply cast aside.

In moments of humiliation or defeat - and make no mistake, this was both - there needs to be reflection and a willingness to return to first principles as well as evolving new strategies and insights appropriate to the present.

Economic realities shape cultural and social relations. The left should always listen to the experiences of people and build a consensus based on solidarity between groups and not the alienated support of different self-interested demographics. Exploitation is the corner-stone of capitalism when it is left to run unchecked. Without regulation, capitalism tends towards monopolies that end up subverting democracy itself.

These are the issues Bernie Sanders raised and the enthusiasm with which it was greeted is testimony to the fact that there are white working class voters hungry for a politics of positive, radical social change. Intoning with robotic piety that the people have never had it so good despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary is a form of deceit; when it comes from the mouths of corporate Democrats, it is political obscenity.

zephirine tempestteacup , 10 Nov 2016 12:1>

In moments of humiliation or defeat - and make no mistake, this was both - there needs to be reflection and a willingness to return to first principles

I think what I've realised from the Brexit and Trump results is how desperate people are for something to believe in. What used to be called 'the vision thing'.

For decades we've had to choose between different forms of managerialism and variations on a theme of 'there is no alternative to rule by the market'. We just had to put up and shut up, there was nothing to get excited about. Nobody's ever jumped up and down shouting "What do want? Trickle-down economics! When do we want it? Now!"

The thing about demagogues is they offer that emotional release. What we need is principled political movements that also enable it.

tempestteacup zephirine , 10 Nov 2016 12:3>
Absolutely right. One of the by-products of There Is No Alternative, though, is that managerialism and wonkiness have been fetishised. Hillary Clinton's devastatingly uninspiring offer to the American people was hailed by some as a mark of her "maturity", "experience", and "competence". Bernie Sanders, by contrast, was attacked for firing people up, for inspiring them to believe change was possible - by implication, of course, such attacks rest on the belief that change is in fact not possible at all. It is a bleak nihilism that states the best that can be hoped or organised for is a slightly better management of existing structures.

There is a hypocrisy, too, when someone like Clinton derides Trump's economic plans as "Trumped-up trickle-down". In reality, they were arguing simply over who would offer the *bigger* tax cuts. The notion that there were alternative visions on the economy, on climate change, on racial equality or healthcare and education, not to mention foreign policies, was almost completely absent.

This is why I wrote that in some ways Hillary Clinton was the greater evil in this election. It is one thing to hark backwards to a mythical past, as Donald Trump did. It is quite another to put such tight constraints on the entire notion of what is possible in the future. Trump offered nostalgia. Clinton offered the tyranny of low expectations - forever.

But that is all in the past now - for the future, I agree with you that there needs to be a willingness to offer radical, inspirational and visionary alternatives to a system that has simply not worked for the majority of people who through no fault of their own find their quality of life, possibilities and security in decline while wealth flows ceaselessly upwards and into the pockets of those already insulated from the harm their favoured politicians unleash.

Bernie showed what can be done - he also showed that people are willing to finance such campaigns and thus liberate the political process from the death-grip of corporate donations. Personally, I am sceptical of whether the Democratic Party is an appropriate vehicle for such politics (I know that Bernie doesn't agree with me!) Regardless, his campaign should provide somewhat of a model for what can be done - and likewise his statement from today. Amidst the headlong rush - in this paper as well - to denigrate and smear voters for failing to advance bourgeois liberal interests, it is imperative that deprived, working class voters of all races are listened to properly and not labelled racists and bigots. A few no doubt are. But these are, in many instances, the same people that helped elect Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. They are crying out for something to organise around. Hillary Clinton failed because she was not and never has been a person capable of, even interested in, offering that.

eyelacesforyou , 10 Nov 2016 09:2>
This is a great article. Alas, I fear it is all too late.

Everyone knew what was wrong with Clinton and the whole rotten DNC operation, but they supported her anyway. When her flaws were pointed out, people kept saying 'but she's a woman.' As if that even mattered.

Fundamentally the left has to abandon its obsession with identity politics, embrace national identity and individual liberty. Then it will be able to get over its economic message and win the day.

[Nov 09, 2016] Neoliberal stooge and argent Hillary supported Paul Krugman is upset

Nov 08, 2016 | www.nytimes.com

What we do know is that people like me, and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn't understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous.

We thought that the nation, while far from having transcended racial prejudice and misogyny, had become vastly more open and tolerant over time.

We thought that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the rule of law.

It turns out that we were wrong. There turn out to be a huge number of people - white people, living mainly in rural areas - who don't share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy. And there were many other people who might not share those anti-democratic values, but who nonetheless were willing to vote for anyone bearing the Republican label.

I don't know how we go forward from here. Is America a failed state and society? It looks truly possible.

[Nov 07, 2016] Hillary Loses the Left

Nov 07, 2016 | www.legitgov.org

November 7, 2016 by legitgov

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Hillary Loses the Left | 06 Nov 2016 | While Donald Trump has been consolidating his base of support, the opposite appears to be happening for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who seems to be hemorrhaging supporters from her progressive base...[I]n the closing days of the 2016 campaign, the rift has been laid bare through a combination of WikiLeaks revelations, a series of high-profile endorsements for Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein from progressives like Marc Lamont Hill, Cornel West, and Susan Sarandon, as well as polling data that suggests Trump's broad populist messaging is resonating with Democrat-leaning voters. v Contrary to the narrative perpetuated by corporate media, many prominent liberals are now expressing their belief that installing Hillary Clinton, a " corporatist hawk ," in the White House is " the true danger " and would be " more dangerous " for progressive values, the well-being of the nation, and the stability of the world than would four years of a Donald Trump presidency.

[Nov 03, 2016] If Trump wins, all the Democratic party elites should be given their pink slips and never allowed to run the DNC again.

Notable quotes:
"... Holding on to the White House in 2016 is extremely important. We can't afford to let party elites jeopardize that by ignoring the will of the voters. Join me and DFA in telling superdelegates to pledge to support the popularly-elected winner of the nomination now. ..."
"... If Trump wins, all the Democratic party elites should be given their pink slips and never allowed to run the DNC again ..."
Nov 03, 2016 | discussion.theguardian.com

nonsensefactory, 1h ago 3 4

Recall this warning to the Democratic Party after Bernie Sander's landslide win in New Hampshire? Shockingly, all the superdelegates went over to Hillary Clinton:

Holding on to the White House in 2016 is extremely important. We can't afford to let party elites jeopardize that by ignoring the will of the voters. Join me and DFA in telling superdelegates to pledge to support the popularly-elected winner of the nomination now.


If Trump wins, all the Democratic party elites should be given their pink slips and never allowed to run the DNC again.

[Nov 03, 2016] A Divided US Sociologist Arlie Hochschild on the 2016 Presidential Election

Nov 03, 2016 | www.truth-out.org

...they felt that mainstream America had left them and had gone by, didn't see them, didn't recognize who they were and neither political party spoke to their feelings and interests. In this sense, they felt like strangers in their own land.

I'll give you an example of that. One woman I spoke to said, "I'm really glad you've come to interview us, because we are the fly-over-state and people think of the South that we're ignorant, backward, that we have old-fashioned attitudes, that we're pro-family, pro-life and that many people think we're racist when we're not, and so they write us off, they call us rednecks, so thanks for coming to see who we really are." You've said that, "The conservatives of yesterday seem moderate or liberal today" in the US. Can you elaborate on this move to the right in American politics?

In 1968, Barry Goldwater was the first really radical anti-government national candidate for the Republican presidency. His wife was a founder of Planned Parenthood. Today, Republicans and the Tea Party want to defund Planned Parenthood, which offers contraception, abortion, cancer screening and other very important things.

Again, former Republican President Richard Nixon brought us the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and now Republicans are calling for the end of the EPA.

Yet again, former Republican President Eisenhower called for a minimum wage; now Republicans oppose this. Eisenhower called for investments in public infrastructure, now it's opposed. Today, the Republicans of the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s look liberal. That's how far right we've become.

[Nov 02, 2016] The real obstacle for improving conditions for the working class historically has always been the Democratic party, not the Republican party

Nov 02, 2016 | www.theguardian.com

toffee1 26 Oct 2016 7:58

Trump shows the true face of the ruling class with no hypocrisy. He is telling us the truth. If we have a democracy, we should have a party representing the interests of the business class, why not. The democrats is the party practicing hypocrisy, pretending that they somehow representing the interest of the working class. They are the ones spreading lies and hypocrisy and manipulating the working class everyday through their power over the media. Their function is to appease the working class. The real obstacle for improving conditions for the working class historically has always been the Democratic party, not the Republican party.

[Oct 23, 2016] The USA now is in the political position that in chess is called Zugzwang

Notable quotes:
"... I would agree that Trump is horrible candidate. The candidate who (like Hillary) suggests complete degeneration of the US neoliberal elite. ..."
"... But the problem is that Hillary is even worse. Much worse and more dangerous because in addition to being a closet Republican she is also a warmonger. In foreign policy area she is John McCain in pantsuit. And if you believe that after one hour in White House she does not abandon all her election promises and start behaving like a far-right republican in foreign policy and a moderate republican in domestic policy, it's you who drunk too much Cool Aid. ..."
"... In other words, the USA [workers and middle class] now is in the political position that in chess is called Zugzwang: we face a choice between the compulsive liar, unrepentant, extremely dangerous and unstable warmonger with failing health vs. a bombastic, completely unprepared to governance of such a huge country crook. ..."
Oct 23, 2016 | angrybearblog.com
likbez October 22, 2016 11:20 pm

The key problems with Democratic Party and Hillary is that they lost working class and middle class voters, becoming another party of highly paid professionals and Wall Street speculators (let's say top 10%, not just 1%), the party of neoliberal elite.

It will be interesting to see if yet another attempt to "bait and switch" working class and lower middle class works this time. I think it will not. Even upper middle class is very resentful of Democrats and Hillary. So many votes will be not "for" but "against". This is the scenario Democratic strategists fear the most, but they can do nothing about it.

She overplayed "identity politics" card. Her "identity politics" and her fake feminism are completely insincere. She is completely numb to human suffering and interests of females and minorities. Looks like she has a total lack of empathy for other people.

Here is one interesting quote ( http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/how-trump-and-clinton-gave-bad-answers-on-us-nuclear-policy-and-why-you-should-be-worried.html#comment-2680036 ):

"What scares me is my knowledge of her career-long investment in trying to convince the generals and the admirals that she is a 'tough bitch', ala Margaret Thatcher, who will not hesitate to pull the trigger. An illuminating article in the NY Times ( http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-became-a-hawk.html ) revealed that she always advocates the most muscular and reckless dispositions of U.S. military forces whenever her opinion is solicited. "

Usually people are resentful about Party which betrayed them so many times. It would be interesting to see how this will play this time.

Beverly Mann October 23, 2016 12:00 pm

It will be interesting to see if yet another attempt to "bait and switch" working class and lower middle class works this time?

Yup. The Republicans definitely have the interests of the working class and lower middle class at heart when they give, and propose, ever deeper tax cuts for the wealthy, the repeal of the estate tax that by now applies only to estates of more than $5 million, complete deregulation of the finance industry, industry capture of every federal regulatory agency and cabinet department and commission or board, from the SEC, to the EPA, to the Interior Dept. (in order to hand over to the oil, gas and timber industries vast parts of federal lands), the FDA, the FTC, the FCC, the NLRB, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Justice Dept. (including the Antitrust Division)-to name only some.

And OF COURSE it's to serve the interests of the working class and lower middle class that they concertedly appoint Supreme Court justices and lower federal court judges that are unabashed proxies of big business.

And then there's the incessant push to privatize Social Security and Medicare. It ain't the Dems that are pushing that.

You're drinking wayyy too much Kool Aid, likbez. Or maybe just reading too much Ayn Rand, at Paul Ryan's recommendation.

beene October 23, 2016 10:31 am

I would suggest despite most of the elite in both parties supporting Hillary, and saying she has the election in the bag is premature. In my opinion the fact that Trump rallies still has large attendance; where Hillary's rallies would have trouble filling up a large room is a better indication that Trump will win.

Even democrats are not voting democratic this time to be ignored till election again.

likbez October 23, 2016 12:56 pm

Beverly,

=== quote ===
Yup. The Republicans definitely have the interests of the working class and lower middle class at heart when they give, and propose, ever deeper tax cuts for the wealthy, the repeal of the estate tax that by now applies only to estates of more than $5 million, complete deregulation of the finance industry, industry capture of every federal regulatory agency and cabinet department and commission or board, from the SEC, to the EPA, to the Interior Dept. (in order to hand over to the oil, gas and timber industries vast parts of federal lands), the FDA, the FTC, the FCC, the NLRB, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Justice Dept. (including the Antitrust Division) -- to name only some.

And OF COURSE it's to serve the interests of the working class and lower middle class that they concertedly appoint Supreme Court justices and lower federal court judges that are unabashed proxies of big business.
=== end of quote ===

This is all true. But Trump essentially running not as a Republican but as an independent on (mostly) populist platform (with elements of nativism). That's why a large part of Republican brass explicitly abandoned him. That does not exclude that he easily will be co-opted after the election, if he wins.

And I would not be surprised one bit if Dick Cheney, Victoria Nuland, Paul Wolfowitz and Perle vote for Hillary. Robert Kagan and papa Bush already declared such an intention. She is a neocon. A wolf in sheep clothing, if we are talking about real anti-war democrats, not the USA brand of DemoRats. She is crazy warmonger, no question about it, trying to compensate a complete lack of diplomatic skills with jingoism and saber rattling.

The problem here might be that you implicitly idealize Hillary and demonize Trump.

I would agree that Trump is horrible candidate. The candidate who (like Hillary) suggests complete degeneration of the US neoliberal elite.

But the problem is that Hillary is even worse. Much worse and more dangerous because in addition to being a closet Republican she is also a warmonger. In foreign policy area she is John McCain in pantsuit. And if you believe that after one hour in White House she does not abandon all her election promises and start behaving like a far-right republican in foreign policy and a moderate republican in domestic policy, it's you who drunk too much Cool Aid.

That's what classic neoliberal DemoRats "bait and switch" maneuver (previously executed by Obama two times) means. And that's why working class now abandoned Democratic Party. Even unions members of unions which endorses Clinton are expected to vote 3:1 against her. Serial betrayal of interests of working class (and lower middle class) after 25 years gets on nerve. Not that their choice is wise, but they made a choice. This is "What's the matter with Kansas" all over again.

It reminds me the situation when Stalin was asked whether right revisionism of Marxism (social democrats) or left (Trotskyites with their dream of World revolution) is better. He answered "both are worse" :-).

In other words, the USA [workers and middle class] now is in the political position that in chess is called Zugzwang: we face a choice between the compulsive liar, unrepentant, extremely dangerous and unstable warmonger with failing health vs. a bombastic, completely unprepared to governance of such a huge country crook.

Of course, we need also remember about existence of "deep state" which make each of them mostly a figurehead, but still the power of "deep state" is not absolute and this is a very sad situation.

Beverly Mann, October 23, 2016 1:57 pm

Good grace.

Two points: First, you apparently are unaware of Trump's proposed tax plan, written by Heritage Foundation economists and political-think-tank types. It's literally more regressively extreme evn than Paul Ryan's. It gives tax cuts to the wealthy that are exponentially more generous percentage-wise than G.W. Bush's two tax cuts together were, it eliminates the estate tax, and it gives massive tax cuts to corporations, including yuge ones.

Two billionaire Hamptons-based hedge funders, Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, have been funding a super PAC for Trump and since late spring have met with Trump and handed him policy proposals and suggestions for administrative agency heads and judicial appointments. Other yuge funders are members of the Ricketts family, including Thomas Ricketts, CEO of TD Ameritrade and a son of its founder.

Two other billionaires funding Trump: Forrest Lucas, founder of Lucas Oil and reportedly Trump's choice for Interior Secretary if you and the working class and lower middle class folks whose interests Trump has at heart get their way.

And then there's Texas oil billionaire Harold Hamm, Trump's very first billionaire mega-donor.

One of my recurring pet peeves about Clinton and her campaign is her failure to tell the public that these billionaires are contributing mega-bucks to help fund Trump's campaign, and to tell the public who exactly they are. As well as her failure to make a concerted effort to educate the public about the the specifics of Trump's fiscal and deregulatory agenda as he has published it.

As for your belief that I idealize Clinton, you obviously are very new to Angry Bear. I was a virulent Sanders supporter throughout the primaries, to the very end. In 2008 I originally supported John Edwards during the primaries and then, when it became clear that it was a two-candidate race, supported Obama. My reason? I really, really, REALLY did not want to see another triangulation Democratic administration. That's largely what we got during Obama's first term, though, and I was not happy about it.

Bottom line: I'm not the gullible one here. You are.

likbez, October 23, 2016 2:37 pm

You demonstrate complete inability to weight the gravity of two dismal, but unequal in their gravity options.

All your arguments about Supreme Court justices, taxes, inheritance and other similar things make sense if and only if the country continues to exist.

Which is not given due to the craziness and the level of degeneration of neoliberal elite and specifically Hillary ("no fly zone in Syria" is one example of her craziness). Playing chickens with a nuclear power for the sake of proving imperial dominance in Middle East is a crazy policy.

Neocons rule the roost in both parties, which essentially became a single War Party with two wings. Trump looks like the only chance somewhat to limit their influence and reach some détente with Russia.

Looks like you organically unable to understand that your choice in this particular case is between the decimation of the last remnants of the New Deal and a real chance of WWIII.

This is not "pick your poison" situation. Those are two events of completely difference magnitude: one is reversible (and please note that Trump is bound by very controversial obligations to his electorate and faces hostile Congress), the other is not.

We all should do our best to prevent the unleashing WWIII even if that means temporary decimation of the remnants of New Deal.

Neoliberalism after 2008 entered zombie state, so while it is still strong, aggressive and bloodthirsty it might not last for long. And in such case the defeat of democratic forces on domestic front is temporary.

That means vote against Hillary.

[Oct 21, 2016] The main issue in this election is that the Imperial Oligarchy has now taken off the mask, they have abandoned the pretense of 2 party competition to unite behind the defender of status quo interests, with WikiLeaks detailing the gory bits of their corruption and malfeasance

Notable quotes:
"... Point being that not only would The Clintons have the Democratic Party machine to rely on for potential vote rigging in this stage of the process (distinguishing vs. primaries simply for rhetorical focus), ..."
"... but with the clear reality of the Republican Party elite also backing her, she can rely on at least some of the Republican Party machine also being available for potential vote rigging, and who have their experience in Florida, Ohio, etc to bring to the table. ..."
"... The longer term issue is the Imperial Oligarchy has now taken off the mask, they have abandoned the pretense of 2 party competition to unite behind the defender of status quo interests, with WikiLeaks detailing the gory bits of their corruption and malfeasance. And everybody in the system is tainted by that, both parties, media, etc. It has overtly collapsed to the reality of a single Party of Power (per the term Oligarch media like to use re: Russia for example). ..."
"... the Clinton faction is 100% "bi-partisan" and about confluence of both Oligarchic parties. ..."
"... I would say the Democratic primary was even a mirror of this, I would guess that Clinton had hoped to win more easily vs Sanders without rigging etc... essentially between Sanders and Trump turning anything but "radical status quo" into boogymen. ..."
"... That just reveals how close to the line the Imperial Oligarchy feels compelled to play... and, I suppose, how confident they are in the full spectrum of tools at their disposal to manipulate democracy. ..."
"... But that is also shown merely by the situation we are in, with the collapse of the two party system in order to maintain the strength of Imperial Oligarchy. ..."
www.moonofalabama.org

yup yeah uh huh | Oct 19, 2016 8:12:06 PM | 96

Point being that not only would The Clintons have the Democratic Party machine to rely on for potential vote rigging in this stage of the process (distinguishing vs. primaries simply for rhetorical focus),

but with the clear reality of the Republican Party elite also backing her, she can rely on at least some of the Republican Party machine also being available for potential vote rigging, and who have their experience in Florida, Ohio, etc to bring to the table.

The longer term issue is the Imperial Oligarchy has now taken off the mask, they have abandoned the pretense of 2 party competition to unite behind the defender of status quo interests, with WikiLeaks detailing the gory bits of their corruption and malfeasance. And everybody in the system is tainted by that, both parties, media, etc. It has overtly collapsed to the reality of a single Party of Power (per the term Oligarch media like to use re: Russia for example).

And the craziest thing of course is not that this all happened by accident because some "scary clown" appeared, but that this was nearly exactly planned BY The Clinton faction themselves (promoting Trump in order to win vs. "scary clown"). Most notably, not simply as a seizure of power by Democratic Party "against" Republicans... They are very clear the Clinton faction is 100% "bi-partisan" and about confluence of both Oligarchic parties.

I would say the Democratic primary was even a mirror of this, I would guess that Clinton had hoped to win more easily vs Sanders without rigging etc... essentially between Sanders and Trump turning anything but "radical status quo" into boogymen. Only surprise was how well Sanders did, necessitating fraud etc, with polls in fact showing Sanders was BETTER placed to defeat Trump than Clinton.

That just reveals how close to the line the Imperial Oligarchy feels compelled to play... and, I suppose, how confident they are in the full spectrum of tools at their disposal to manipulate democracy.

But that is also shown merely by the situation we are in, with the collapse of the two party system in order to maintain the strength of Imperial Oligarchy.

[Oct 20, 2016] The Ruling Elite Has Lost the Consent of the Governed

Notable quotes:
"... As I have tirelessly explained, the U.S. economy is not just neoliberal (the code word for maximizing private gain by any means available, including theft, fraud, embezzlement, political fixing, price-fixing, and so on)--it is neofeudal , meaning that it is structurally an updated version of Medieval feudalism in which a top layer of financial-political nobility owns the engines of wealth and governs the marginalized debt-serfs who toil to pay student loans, auto loans, credit cards, mortgages and taxes--all of which benefit the financiers and political grifters. ..."
"... The media is in a self-referential frenzy to convince us the decision of the century is between unrivaled political grifter Hillary Clinton and financier-cowboy Donald Trump. Both belong to the privileged ruling Elite: both have access to cheap credit, insider information ( information asymmetry ) and political influence. ..."
"... If you exit the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, etc. at a cushy managerial rank with a fat pension and lifetime benefits and are hired at a fat salary the next day by a private "defense" contractor--the famous revolving door between a bloated state and a bloated defense industry--the system works great. ..."
Oct 20, 2016 | www.informationclearinghouse.info

Information Clearing House - ICH

Brimming with hubris and self-importance, the ruling Elite and mainstream media cannot believe they have lost the consent of the governed.

Every ruling Elite needs the consent of the governed: even autocracies, dictatorships and corporatocracies ultimately rule with the consent, however grudging, of the governed.

The American ruling Elite has lost the consent of the governed. This reality is being masked by the mainstream media, mouthpiece of the ruling class, which is ceaselessly promoting two false narratives:

  1. The "great divide" in American politics is between left and right, Democrat/Republican
  2. The ruling Elite has delivered "prosperity" not just to the privileged few but to the unprivileged many they govern.

Both of these assertions are false. The Great Divide in America is between the ruling Elite and the governed that the Elite has stripmined. The ruling Elite is privileged and protected, the governed are unprivileged and unprotected. That's the divide that counts and the divide that is finally becoming visible to the marginalized, unprivileged class of debt-serfs.

The "prosperity" of the 21st century has flowed solely to the ruling Elite and its army of technocrat toadies, factotums, flunkies, apparatchiks and apologists. The Elite's army of technocrats and its media apologists have engineered and promoted an endless spew of ginned-up phony statistics (the super-low unemployment rate, etc.) to create the illusion of "growth" and "prosperity" that benefit everyone rather than just the top 5%. The media is 100% committed to promoting these two false narratives because the jig is up once the bottom 95% wake up to the reality that the ruling Elite has been stripmining them for decades.

As I have tirelessly explained, the U.S. economy is not just neoliberal (the code word for maximizing private gain by any means available, including theft, fraud, embezzlement, political fixing, price-fixing, and so on)--it is neofeudal , meaning that it is structurally an updated version of Medieval feudalism in which a top layer of financial-political nobility owns the engines of wealth and governs the marginalized debt-serfs who toil to pay student loans, auto loans, credit cards, mortgages and taxes--all of which benefit the financiers and political grifters.

The media is in a self-referential frenzy to convince us the decision of the century is between unrivaled political grifter Hillary Clinton and financier-cowboy Donald Trump. Both belong to the privileged ruling Elite: both have access to cheap credit, insider information ( information asymmetry ) and political influence.

The cold truth is the ruling Elite has shredded the social contract by skimming the income/wealth of the unprivileged. The fake-"progressive" pandering apologists of the ruling Elite--Robert Reich, Paul Krugman and the rest of the Keynesian Cargo Cultists--turn a blind eye to the suppression of dissent and the looting the bottom 95% because they have cushy, protected positions as tenured faculty (or equivalent). They cheerlead for more state-funded bread and circuses for the marginalized rather than demand an end to exploitive privileges of the sort they themselves enjoy.

Consider just three of the unsustainably costly broken systems that enrich the privileged Elite by stripmining the unprivileged:

While the unprivileged and unprotected watch their healthcare premiums and co-pays soar year after year, the CEOs of various sickcare cartels skim off tens of millions of dollars annually in pay and stock options. The system works great if you get a $20 million paycheck. If you get a 30% increase in monthly premiums for fewer actual healthcare services--the system is broken.

If you're skimming $250,000 as under-assistant dean to the provost for student services (or equivalent) plus gold-plated benefits, higher education is working great. If you're a student burdened with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt who is receiving a low-quality, essentially worthless "education" from poorly paid graduate students ("adjuncts") and a handful of online courses that you could get for free or for a low cost outside the university cartel--the system is broken.

If you exit the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, etc. at a cushy managerial rank with a fat pension and lifetime benefits and are hired at a fat salary the next day by a private "defense" contractor--the famous revolving door between a bloated state and a bloated defense industry--the system works great.

If you joined the Armed Forces to escape rural poverty and served at the point of the spear somewhere in the Imperial Project--your perspective may well be considerably different.

Unfortunately for the ruling Elite and their army of engorged enablers and apologists, they have already lost the consent of the governed.

They have bamboozled, conned and misled the bottom 95% for decades, but their phony facade of political legitimacy and "the rising tide raises all boats" has cracked wide open, and the machinery of oppression, looting and propaganda is now visible to everyone who isn't being paid to cover their eyes. Brimming with hubris and self-importance, the ruling Elite and mainstream media cannot believe they have lost the consent of the governed. The disillusioned governed have not fully absorbed this epochal shift of the tides yet, either. They are aware of their own disillusionment and their own declining financial security, but they have yet to grasp that they have, beneath the surface of everyday life, already withdrawn their consent from a self-serving, predatory, parasitic, greedy and ultimately self-destructive ruling Elite.

Charles Hugh Smith, new book is #8 on Kindle short reads -> politics and social science: Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle ebook, $8.95 print edition) For more, please visit the book's website . http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.mx

[Oct 17, 2016] Jill Stein On Fire "Crooked Corporate Democrats! Waste of Votes! Traitors! Monsters!"

EUTimes.net

WOW! Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein is on fire! After previously blasting Hillary Clinton, accusing her of basically being a scary psychopath who "would start World War 3 with Russia", Jill is now warning liberal progressives not to throw away their vote by supporting corporatist Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton because she is a "two faced public and private position, corporatist who takes Wall Street special interest big donor money, traitor who would betray you, a crook who controls the media, a monster and your votes would be wasted on her" in what is basically a summary of what Jill Stein said.

"Don't waste your vote on corporate Democrats. #InvestYourVote," Stein wrote on Twitter on Wednesday:

"If Trump's campaign is flailing, does a "spoiler" vote even exist anymore? Don't waste your vote on corporate Democrats."

Stein then retweeted a statement from the Green Party's official Twitter account which read, "It's time to #InvestYourVote in building a people's party – not waste your vote on corporate party candidates that continue to betray you."

"Unlike the Democrats and Republicans, we don't cuddle up to Wall Street and special interests with our 'public' and 'private' positions," Stein added in a separate tweet, referring to the recent WikiLeaks revelation that Hillary Clinton said that politicians need to have "both a public and private position" on every issue:


"Unlike the Democrats and Republicans, we don't cuddle up to Wall Street and special interests with our "public" and "private" positions."

she's right the Republicans are in the same boat! People like Paul Ryan, John McCain, there's no doubt about it, they are just as corrupt as the Democrats. Its only Donald Trump himself who is not bound to any Wall Street special interests and who doesn't accept donations from big banks, but other Republicans are just as corrupt as your average Democrats. That's why GOP elites are not endorsing Trump. Trump himself is also at war with the GOP establishment.

Stein observed that "corporations were originally chartered to serve the public good, but they've become monsters that dominate our government."

Stein has previously explained that the liberal progressive agenda–on health care, crime, climate change, trade, etc.– cannot be accomplished under a corporatist like Hillary Clinton. Stein argued that a Clinton presidency will simply be the continuation of the policies supported by Washington's "uniparty," which is controlled by special interest donors–and will not in any way advance the goals of liberal progressives.

Seeming to borrow Trump's moniker for Clinton, Stein also attacked DNC chair Donna Brazile for her "crooked" behavior– providing Clinton's campaign with a question in advance for a town hall as Clinton was trying to defeat Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary:


"Invest your vote in a movement party, not in more crooked behavior from the Democrats! PodestaEmails4 http://thehill.com/media/300427-emails-donna-brazile-gave-town-hall-questions-to-clinton-camp-in-advance "

Stein is a Harvard Medical School graduate, a mother to two sons, and a practicing physician, who became an environmental-health activist and organizer in the late 1990s. As the Green Party's 2012 presidential candidate, Stein holds the record for the most votes ever received by a female candidate for president in a general election.

While third party Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson has received quite a bit of media attention throughout this election, Stein said that she has experienced a virtual media blackout. Stein urged supporters to help her "#BreakTheBlackout from corporate media."

Stein suggested that the reason for the media blackout stems is because she is an effective messenger against Washington's "uniparty."

"I debated @MittRomney in 2002 and was declared the winner by viewers. After that they locked me out of the debates," Stein tweeted. "The Democratic and Republican candidates + @GovGaryJohnson refuse to debate me because they're scared. #OccupyTheDebate":


"Help us #BreakTheBlackout from corporate media – go to http://Jill2016.com and sign up to join our team! #GreenTownHall"

WOW! Her anti-Hillary rants have been really strong lately! Its nice to finally see someone else take on the crooked Democrats with such anger. Seeing Trump doing all the ranting all by himself is really nice but now its even better. Perhaps the two should meet and discuss some sort of alliance. Jill Stein could be an effective messenger to the Bernie voters. Perhaps Trump could make her the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency or something, since she's Green.

In exchange Jill should of course drop out and ask her 2% voter base to vote Trump. She should also keep bashing the Democrats and target Bernie Sanders's people to vote Trump. Wouldn't be such a bad idea, wouldn't it??

Yeah, it's too far-fetched… we agree!

[Oct 16, 2016] Revenge of the White Working-Class Woman

Notable quotes:
"... In a June/July national survey by GQRR, white working-class women put Trump 23 points ahead of Clinton in a three-way ballot ..."
www.politico.com

POLITICO Magazine

Donald Trump's solid core of support comes from white working-class America. As the blue-collar voter has become central to the political conversation, a clear picture of who we're talking about has emerged: He's likely male and disillusioned with the economy and loss of industry. He's a coal miner that's been laid off in Hazard, Kentucky, and is scraping by off his wife's income; a machinists' union member in a Pennsylvania steel town who says "a guy like Donald Trump, he's pushing for change." Through the campaign, we've seen endless portraits of Trump support in the heart of Appalachian coal country, and a recent spate of books documents white working-class alienation and the history of the white underclass in America. Trump's iron grip on the support of blue-collar white Americans has been one of the most striking threads of his unprecedented campaign.

... ... ...

...Thomas Frank, who recently published Listen, Liberal, about the Democratic Party's abandonment of the working class and Robert Reich, public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley and former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. They both have outlined a series of Democratic moves to elevate free trade and an inability to defend unions as proof that Democrats created a platform that left no room for the white working class.

Marginalized for years without working-class candidates or elected officials, "the white working class found their voice in Trump," says Justin Gest, assistant professor of public policy at George Mason University and author of The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality. "He speaks directly to conspiracy, frustration and a sense of powerlessness, and they're grateful he speaks to them." Trump, too, has worked hard to burnish his working-class cred, telling a crowd in Pennsylvania on Tuesday that he considers himself "in a certain way to be a blue-collar worker."

...In terms of the economy, white working-class women also differ from their male counterparts. While manufacturing concerns and the white working class may be linked in our cultural narrative (especially in Trump's campaign), the women were focused on different economic concerns-in particular, the cost of higher education and preschooling.

.... Single women tend to lean to the left, and in recent years white working-class marriage rates have fallen more sharply than those of their more educated and affluent counterparts, who are more likely to delay marriage than not get married at all, according to FiveThirtyEight's analysis of Census data. (Roughly 45 percent of white working-class women are unmarried, according to GQRR's Nancy Zdunkewicz). In a June/July national survey by GQRR, white working-class women put Trump 23 points ahead of Clinton in a three-way ballot, but when you looked at only unmarried white non-college-educated women, that gap was only 11 percent-a preview, if current trends continue, of a gap likely to grow in the future.

..For Democrats hoping to capitalize on this group, it's not obvious they can just swoop in and grab alienated women. For one thing, white working-class women don't necessarily trust Hillary Clinton any more than men do.

,,,For now, though, if Democrats continue bleeding white working-class men and women, the party's white base will be mostly highly educated and white collar, a perhaps uncomfortable shift for the so-called party of the people

Julia Sonenshein is California-born writer and editor living in New York City. Her work focuses on social-political issues like reproductive rights, American gun culture and intersectional feminism.

[Sep 12, 2016] DemExit This Dem goes rogue. #DemExit

Notable quotes:
"... The incomprehensibly privileged treatment of Hillary and her impossibly possible run for President is not my last stand. I give up. ..."
"... I have defected from the Democrats. I will stay registered to them because the system is designed to keep you adhered to one party or the other, particularly in my home state New York ..."
"... The Democrat issues are not mine, they have no core beliefs or ideology, instead it is a tangle of fiscal recklessness, big government, hierarchies of victimization, contributor solicitations coupled with some implicit threat, catchy jingles and nifty focus group tested slogans. ..."
"... The system is broken. The legal and ethical exceptions that the FBI, the DoJ and the Democratic party establishment and it's too loyal voters have bestowed to Hillary is frightening. There is a really big hole in the dam and now there will be many more. ..."
www.adamtownsend.me

I was a partisan. Now I am not. I am a Democrat at the exit. DemExit

The incomprehensibly privileged treatment of Hillary and her impossibly possible run for President is not my last stand. I give up.

I have defected from the Democrats. I will stay registered to them because the system is designed to keep you adhered to one party or the other, particularly in my home state New York. Here an independent is a sub voter, reduced to a spectator as the primary candidates thrash around. But now I am emotionally detached from the Democratic party comradery. That nucleus is broken and instead I'll pick at its smallest bits, mixing and matching the candidates like a sports team, drafting this one, trading that one.

The Democrat issues are not mine, they have no core beliefs or ideology, instead it is a tangle of fiscal recklessness, big government, hierarchies of victimization, contributor solicitations coupled with some implicit threat, catchy jingles and nifty focus group tested slogans.

The Democratic party is a mess and it won't get cleaned up soon, this is a generational problem. The Democrats still have too many overly practiced, memo circulated, talking points to be recited. They are not yet hoarse and exhausted from singing 'we shall overcome' in the protected, comfortable caverns of Congress while between courses of catered buffets.

The system is broken. The legal and ethical exceptions that the FBI, the DoJ and the Democratic party establishment and it's too loyal voters have bestowed to Hillary is frightening. There is a really big hole in the dam and now there will be many more.

[Sep 12, 2016] I am a Dem and Im Voting for Trump. Lets talk about it… #DemExit

Notable quotes:
"... I believe that the symbolism of a black President shielded Obama from the evaluation, discussion, transparency and criticism that citizens must demand of their leader. ..."
"... TPP is the most urgent example of a President aligned with lobbyists to install the most transformational and anti Democratic bill in American history ..."
"... ObamaCare Was a transfer of taxpayer wealth to insurance companies. It was cloaked in excessive language to hide its deceptions according to its own architect . ..."
"... Trump has direction. Precision can be acquired ..."
"... "On trade, on immigration, on foreign policy, the jobs, incomes and security of the American worker will always be my first priority." - Trump doctrine ..."
"... Trump is the peace candidate. For decades we have been led by self-aggrandizing neocon war hawks who desired war and regime change and then reversed engineered their way into those conflicts. The neocons hate Trump and instead they aligned with the vicious war mongerer Hillary. They wrote this inverse ..."
"... We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them - Albert Einstein ..."
"... Free speech is a safety valve . Reducing our language of any possible offensive character is being engineered not to salve, but to createturmoil. Big state (your tax dollars) is manufacturing chaos and then big state (your tax dollars) is coming into legislate and police. Big state is setting the fire and then calls the fire department and becomes a hero. ..."
"... Is Trump Racist, Islamophobic, Misogynistic, Homophobic? Answer: No ..."
"... "The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies, that we are always happy when old enemies become friends and when old friends become allies, that's what we want. We want them to be our allies. We want the world to be - we want to bring peace to the world. Too much destruction out there, too many destructive weapons." ..."
Aug 02, 2016 medium.com

Medium

My thoughts below are scattered, brief and incomplete.

Obama

Hillary

#NeverHillary

Hillary and her political enablers and courtiers argue that the Democratic party must come together to defeat the 'evil' of Trump, I disagree…

It is far more 'evil' and destructive to the United States to permit Hillary to be our president:

Sanders

I am voting for Trump

"On trade, on immigration, on foreign policy, the jobs, incomes and security of the American worker will always be my first priority." - Trump doctrine

Trump is anti (endless) war

Economic outlook

Government

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them - Albert Einstein

Free Speech

Can political correctness kill? Why has political correctness so aggressively being injected into legislative and judiciary and Executive agendas?

Free speech is a safety valve . Reducing our language of any possible offensive character is being engineered not to salve, but to createturmoil. Big state (your tax dollars) is manufacturing chaos and then big state (your tax dollars) is coming into legislate and police. Big state is setting the fire and then calls the fire department and becomes a hero.

Is #FightingForYou also #VictimizingYou

Is Trump Racist, Islamophobic, Misogynistic, Homophobic? Answer: No

An uncomfortable discussion that knocks on the walls of a safe space can be frightening to some people. But, that person cowering in their safe space can also be a bully.

Refugee crisis and economic (illegal) immigration

Trump didn't create the wars in South America or provoke American intervention in those countries. He didn't draft, advocate or sign NAFTA, CAFTA which caused massive economic disruption. He is unmolested by the legacy of those issues. This gives him, and us, a chance to sincerely discuss very real issues.

Supreme Court

Both parties use this contrivance to lure straying voters and attach them to a cause. I don't see any certainty that one side, left-wing or right, will produce a different outcome than any other. We are fortunate to have a very durable foundation.

Dodd-Frank and Banks that are too big

Trump foreign policy

"The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies, that we are always happy when old enemies become friends and when old friends become allies, that's what we want. We want them to be our allies. We want the world to be - we want to bring peace to the world. Too much destruction out there, too many destructive weapons."

Trump vs ______

Miscellany incomplete thoughts

President Trump

America needs a true leader, not just someone swathed in American iconography and reciting focus group certified slogans. We are an emotionally frail country. A generation of Americans have never known a country not at war, not in debt, not printing money. We have to get out of the state of wardom, spend our money on us and save for our future.

I am voting for Trump. Make America Great again.

Continued

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[Jun 11, 2019] A Word From Joe the Angry Hawaiian

[Jun 05, 2019] Do Spies Run the World by Israel Shamir

[May 28, 2019] Any time you read an article (or a comment) on Russia, substitute the word Jew for Russian and International Jewry for Russia and re-read.

[May 20, 2019] "Us" Versus "Them"

[May 19, 2019] How Russiagate replaced Analysis of the 2016 Election by Rick Sterling

[May 13, 2019] Angry Bear Senate Democratic Jackasses and Elmer Fudd

[May 13, 2019] US Foreign Policy as Bellicose as Ever by Serge Halimi

[May 11, 2019] Just worth noting that in the hand-written notes taken by Bruce Ohr after meetings with Chris Steele, there is the comment that the majority of the Steele Dossier was obtained from an expat Russian living in the US, and not from actual Russian sources in Russia

[May 11, 2019] Crowdstrike planted the malware on DNC systems, which they discovered later discovered and attributed to Russians later

[May 11, 2019] Why Crowdstrike's Russian Hacking Story Fell Apart -- Say Hello to Fancy Bear

[May 11, 2019] Whitney Judgment Day Looms For John Brennan

[May 11, 2019] Intel and Law Enforcement Tried to Entrap Trump by Larry C Johnson

[May 11, 2019] Doug Ross @ Journal A TIMELINE OF TREASON How the DNC and FBI Leadership Tried to Fix a Presidential Election [Updated]

[May 11, 2019] Christopher Steele, FBI s Confidential Human Source by Publius Tacitus

[May 11, 2019] Nunes Memo Details Weaponization of FISA Court for Political Advantage by Elizabeth Lea Vos

[May 10, 2019] Biden is up to neck in Spygate dirt by Jeff Carlson

[May 10, 2019] Obama administration raced to obtain FICA warrant on Carter Page before Rogers investigation closes on them and that was definitely an obstruction of justice and interference with the ongoing investigation

[May 10, 2019] What was the meaning of the term "insurance policy" in Stzok messages to Lisa Page

[May 10, 2019] The Battle Between Rosenstein and McCabe

[May 09, 2019] Trump DID commit obstruction of justice... he refused to force HIS Dept of Justice to indict Hillary, Comey, Brennan and Clapper

[May 08, 2019] Obama Spied on Other Republicans and Democrats As Well by Larry C Johnson

[May 03, 2019] The Wheels Of Real Justice Are In Motion Now Kunstler Fears The Desperate Resistance Next Move...

[Apr 28, 2019] The British Role in Russiagate Is About to Be Fully Exposed

[Apr 26, 2019] Mueller investigation was launched in order to investigate the obstruction of his investigation

[Apr 26, 2019] Intelligence agencies meddling in elections

[Apr 21, 2019] John Brennan's Police State USA

[Apr 19, 2019] Tulsi Gabbard: People get into a lot of conversations about political strategies I might get in trouble for saying this, but what does it matter if we beat Donald Trump, if we end up with someone who will perpetuate the very same crony capitalist policies, corporate policies, and waging more of these costly wars?

[Apr 10, 2019] A demoralized white working and middle class was willing to believe in anything, deluding themselves into reading between the barren eruptions of his blowzy proclamations. They elevated him to messianic heights, ironically fashioning him into that which he publicly claims to despise: an Obama, a Barry in negative image, hope and change for the OxyContin and Breitbart set

[Apr 07, 2019] Nunes The Russian Collusion Hoax Meets An Unbelievbable End

[Apr 04, 2019] Nine Reasons Why You Should Support Joe Biden For President by Caitlin Johnstone

[Mar 31, 2019] Because of the immediate arrival of the Russia collusion theory, neither MSM honchos nor any US politician ever had to look into the camera and say, I guess people hated us so much they were even willing to vote for Donald Trump

[Mar 31, 2019] A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco by James W Carden

[Mar 30, 2019] My suggestion is that Cambridge Analytica and others backing Trump and the Yankee imperial machine have been taking measurements of USA citizens opinions and are staggered by the results. They are panicked!

[Mar 25, 2019] The Mass Psychology of Trumpism by Eli Zaretsky

[Feb 13, 2019] MoA - Russiagate Is Finished

[Feb 13, 2019] MoA - Russiagate Is Finished

[Feb 10, 2019] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Exposes the Problem of Dark Money in Politics NowThis - YouTube

[Jan 29, 2019] These 2020 hopefuls are courting Wall Street. Don t be fooled by their progressive veneer by Bhaskar Sunkara

[Jan 22, 2019] The French Anti-Neoliberal Revolution. On the conditions for its success by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

[Jan 12, 2019] Tucker Carlson Mitt Romney supports the status quo. But for everyone else, it's infuriating Fox News

[Jan 12, 2019] Tucker Carlson has sparked the most interesting debate in conservative politics by Jane Coaston

[Jan 11, 2019] Blowback from the neoliberal policy is coming

[Dec 30, 2018] RussiaGate In Review with Aaron Mate - Unreasoned Fear is Neoliberalism's Response to the Credibility Gap

[Feb 15, 2020] One face of the US voters desprations with establishment candidates

[Jan 31, 2020] What's going on right now with Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton is the beginning of sticking the knife back into Bernie's back by Bill Martin What follows originates in some notes I made in response to one such woman who supports Bernie. There are two main points.

[Jan 29, 2020] Campaign Promises and Ending Wars

[Jan 23, 2020] An incredible level of naivety of people who still think that a single individual, or even two, can change the direction of murderous US policies that are widely supported throughout the bureaucracy?

[Jan 21, 2020] WaPo columnist endorses all twelve candidates

[Jan 11, 2020] William Greider Knew What Ailed the Democratic Party by Katrina vanden Heuvel

Sites



Etc

Society

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Quotes

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Bulletin:

Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 :  Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method  : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law

History:

Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds  : Larry Wall  : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOSProgramming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC developmentScripting Languages : Perl history   : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history

Classic books:

The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-MonthHow to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite

Most popular humor pages:

Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor

The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D


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Last modified: March, 29, 2020