DOOM, or The Official 2016 US Election Thread

[firefinga]

to quote Karl Marx: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.


http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/k/karlmarx382655.html

 

[sadmanbarty]

Again, I think many of the comparisons being made are hyperbolic, but this is nonetheless a very interesting thread about how influential Milosevic's rhetorical style has proven to be.

 

[sadmanbarty]

Corruption

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-children-business-blind-trust-231179

 

[droid]

"Among white voters ...no evidence in the exit poll that income affected the likelihood that they supported Trump."

 

[CrowleyHead]

Eh, Sanders had a shot. Can't stress, the amount of people who were engaged and made him feel vital as opposed to the resignation and cynicism surrounding Clinton from the left... There was a quantifiable difference. And I wasn't even all that enamored with Sanders given he'd probably have upheld the usual foreign policy.

 

[Leo]

I'm not proud of it, but every cloud and all that.

yeah, true. sorry about that, had just reached the end of a long day at which point schadenfreude didn't strike me as particularly clever.

 

[vimothy]

From the George Packer article I posted earlier:

Perhaps the first cosmopolitan élite in American history was Alexander Hamilton: an immigrant, an urbanite, a friend of the rich, at home in political, financial, and journalistic circles of power. Hamilton created the American system of public and private banking, and for two centuries he was a hero to conservatives, while his archrival Thomas Jefferson—founder of the Democratic Party—was taken as the champion of the common man.... But Democrats now embrace Hamilton for his immigrant background and his modern ideas of activist government. Meanwhile,... Jefferson has been removed from Democratic fund-raising dinners. The Hamilton who distrusted popular democracy is now overlooked or accepted—after all, today’s cosmopolitan élites similarly distrust the passions of their less educated compatriots.

If there’s one creative work that epitomizes the Obama Presidency, it’s the hip-hop musical “Hamilton,” whose opening song was débuted by Lin-Manuel Miranda in the East Room of the White House, in 2009, with the Obamas in attendance. The show has been universally praised—Michelle Obama called it the greatest work of art she’d ever seen, and Dick Cheney is a fan. It succeeds on every level... Miranda’s “Hamilton” suggests that the real heirs to the American Revolution are not Tea Partiers waving “Don’t Tread on Me” flags but black and Latino Americans and immigrants.

Miranda’s triumph is itself a coalition of the cosmopolitan élite and diversity. The Hamilton that theatregoers are paying scalpers’ prices to see is a progressive, not the father of Wall Street. Meanwhile, far from Broadway, Jefferson’s ploughmen are lining up at Trump rallies.

“Hamilton” coincided with an important turn in American politics. Occupy Wall Street had come and gone, and while the ninety-nine and the one per cent didn’t disappear, black and white came to the fore. There was a growing recognition that a historic President had cleared barriers at the top but not at the bottom—that the Obama years had brought little change in the systemic inequities facing the black and the poor.

(...)

[Activist Nelini] Stamp is both a millennial and a student of the nineteen-thirties—a “Hamilton” fan who works with the labor movement. Her ideal, she said, would be to see “white working-class people standing beside black folks, saying, ‘Your struggle is my struggle.’ That’s my dream!”

This year, Stamp’s dream seems as distant as ever, with Trump inciting his working-class followers to use violence against black protesters, and with students on élite campuses issuing sweeping denunciations of white privilege. All whites are unequal, but some are more unequal than others. In “Hillbilly Elegy,” J. D. Vance writes, “I may be white, but I do not identify with the wasps of the Northeast. Instead, I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree.”

For Democrats, the politics of race and class are fraught. If you focus insistently on class, as Bernie Sanders did at the start of the campaign, you risk seeming to be concerned only with whites. Focus insistently on race, and the Party risks being seen as a factional coalition without universal appeal—the fate of the Democratic Party in the seventies and eighties. The new racial politics puts Democrats like Clinton in the middle of this dilemma.

 

[sadmanbarty]

As Dissensus’s resident establishment stooge, can I get some feedback as to why the liberal elite has been getting a bollocking from other corners of the intelligentsia in the last couple of days? Is it because:


1) They made tactical errors that won Trump the election.

2) When it comes to issues such as banking and foreign policy their actions are incongruous with the ideals that they espouse.

3) People think that the liberal elite are arrogant and hold that against them even though it has no bearing on policy or people’s actual lives.

4) They see some strange form of hypocrisy in rich, well educated, coastal liberals trying to help poor, rural, right wing social conservatives.

5) The criticism is actually just a form of juvenile sense of “sticking it to the squares man” disguised as serious political discourse.

6) People think they’re out of touch.

Am I missing something?

The first two are legitimate, the 3, 4 and 5 are moronic. With 6 I’d argue that policy wise Clinton wasn’t out of touch; her proposals would have helped ordinary people while Trump’s proposed policies would harm them. I’d also stress that being out of touch isn’t necessarily a bad thing if being in touch means believing in things that are untrue or even immoral.

 

[luka]

i think generally its the notion that they are the good cop to the rights bad cop and both are selling you the same programme, leaving aside the significant but ultimately marginal differences in domestic policy

 

[luka]

so 5) for me, although i can only speak for myself

 

[Leo]

i think some elements of all of those points, except for #4 (that one might exist but i haven't heard it).

 

[firefinga]

I think a lot are angry now bc they see that the Democrats are not (at least less so) the worker's party any more. That they should have voted Dems but to a large proportion didn't. And thats confusing for many.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

why the liberal elite has been getting a bollocking

1, 2, 3, 4, 6

3, 4 + 6 are all part of one larger thing. Also the arrogance absolutely matters b/c A) clearly they can't win an election to save their (political) lives B) arrogance & hubris definitely impact policy C) non-elites hugely resent it (see point A). Also, arrogance is forgivable if you can win but a dire sin if you lose, especially in the U.S. Also, I think many, many people view "helping" rather as dictating, or at best a hugely patronizing.

Btw the cluelessness of the American liberal technocratic etc elite is hardly a new thing. It goes back to at least JFK Camelot era, another of v smart coastal people who had zero understanding of flyover country (& were hand in hand w Wall St & the military-industrial complex; the more things change...)

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Also, I dunno if Bernie would have won but it would have been worth finding out. Obviously he was the Democratic establishment's worst nightmare, possibly moreso than Trump for the GOP's.

& I agree w Cramer that Trump is an opportunist rather than an ideologue but at a certain point the effects of what you say matter more than why you said it. Tho I also agree w whoever said that Pence is ultimately considerably more dangerous.

 

[Leo]

just for perspective, though: votes are still being tabulated but clinton currently has almost 400,000 more votes than trump.

yes, the democratic machine and clinton campaign certainly screwed up, and of course the only thing that matters is whether she won or lost the election. but at the same time, it's a bit incongruous to say the top vote getter ran an unmitigated disaster of a campaign.

 

[baboon2004]

In response to barty, I think a lot of people are outraged at the conciliatory way most of the Democratic Party has acted towards Trump after the result, regardless of the stupidities that meant they lost the election (not bothering to go to Wisconsin to canvass etc). It gives an indication as to how shallow-ly Democrats' respect for tolerance and equality actually run, beyond its rhetoric - http://theleveller.org/2016/11/appeasement-is-violence/ . Both Clinton and Obama have been shameful in this regard. All they needed to say was what Sanders said:
“To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him.”

I think it's 100% right to describe the Dem campaign as an unmitigated disaster. They lost an election that most people thought was unloseable, none more so than the arrogant Democratic top brass themselves. The rules have nothing to do with overall votes - I just don't understand why people keep bringing that up. And even if we do look at it, to only poll 400,000 votes more (in a nation of 235m potential voters) than an extremist candidate - widely considered a joke for many, many months and with far fewer resources to call upon - is a disaster in itself.

Is Pence the most evangelical ever to be a VP or president, or am I missing someone obvious?

 

[droid]

They were a disaster, no question, but I guess the reason people keep bringing up the popular vote victory margin (which is predicted to rise to about 1 million) is because it is completely batshit insane to have a 2 candidate race that allows the winner of the most votes to lose.

Nobody would put up with that in sport. Imagine a world cup final in which 7% of the teams who scored the most goals lost on a technicality.

 

[baboon2004]

Sure, obviously I agree in principle - the system is stupid. But it's happened before (in the US obviously, as well as Britain ), given that similar electoral models are widespread - I guess what I'm saying is it's not a shock that the loser could end up with more votes, and in fact it's not unlikely in such close races as 2000 and 2016.

Well, vastly 'unfair' victories in sport happen all the time - I know it's not precisely analogous, but...

 

[Leo]

the clinton campaign was a disaster. it would be an unmitigated disaster if she's lost in a blowout. but it doesn't matter, she lost.

and one of the pillars of american democracy is the peaceful transfer of power and coming together for the good of the country (as opposed to good of the party). loyal opposition is an important part of a functioning democracy, and i hope the democrats play that role enthusiastically. but immediately shitting on a president-elect lowers democrats to the level of mitch mcconnell, who the day after obama was elected organized a meeting of top republicans and declared their only objective would be to obstruct every obama initiative and make him a one-term president. that might be feel-good, middle-finger, party-loyal politics, but it's the type of thing everyone in this country is sick of. we can leave washington broken for the next four years or try to find ways to get some things done, and that doesn't require caving to the GOP.

RE: pence, he will be the most conservative evangelical christian to serve as VP or president. george w. bush was evangelical and let it influence some of his policy, but nothing compared to the level of how pence did it as governor of indiana.

 

[Leo]

btw, dynasties never die:

Just when you thought the Clinton family’s time in electoral politics had reached an end, the New York Post has a report today that says Chelsea Clinton is being “groomed” for a congressional run. The seat Clinton is reportedly eyeing is currently occupied by Democrat Nita Lowey, who was just re-elected for her 14th term representing New York’s 17th Congressional District in Westchester county.

The Post’s source says Clinton, who lives in Manhattan but is expected to move into a home next door to her parents Chappaqua residence, will run for the seat when Lowey retires.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...-reportedly-planning-a-congressional-run.html