SOME MORE INTERESTING ELECTION RESULTS

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the 2016 Presidential election is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, in fact, she won it by around two million votes! That's even more than Al Gore won by in the infamous election of 2000.  The silly outdated Electoral College that we use is a mess; actually, it's worse than that, it's undemocratic, partially stealing a political voice from more populous areas and giving it to smaller areas.  Sadly, like so many other parts of early American history, it's linked to slavery, specifically small slave states that wanted more clout.  And it brings unfair attention to the swing states, with candidates campaigning heavily in swing states like Florida and Ohio and ignoring deep blue and red states like California and Texas. We absolutely should get rid of it, but doing so would require a constitutional amendment, something that a Republican party that has benefited from it twice would never go for.  Thankfully, there is a movement, dubbed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, by which a state could pledge all of its electoral votes to whomever wins the popular vote, whatever the outcome in that individual state.  In effect, an end run around the Electoral College.  So far ten states and the district of Columbia have signed on, but it will take more to really change things.  So for now, all frustrated Democrats can do is grit their teeth.

Another interesting fact is that, although progressives like myself are blaming racism for much of Trump's victory (and with the KKK planning to hold a pro Trump rally, that's not too hard a connection to make!), there are a surprising number of voting counties in this country that turned to Trump this election after voting for Obama in 2008 and/or 2012.  It would appear that a lot of the angry white people who voted for Trump never thought that the change that Obama promised came to them.  Much of this has to do with the transition this country is going through; once upon a time, if you lived in a small town, you could graduate from high school and immediately get a local factory job that paid solid middle class wages.  In the past few years, many of those factories have closed and devastated the small towns that relied on them.  The perception is that the factories are leaving to hire cheaper labor in Mexico and China; Trump pounced on this perception, promising to put tariffs on products from those countries, going so far as accusing China of raping the US economically. He did this despite the fact the reliable economists have predicted that that  such an action would trigger a trade war, resulting in an economic downturn in our country that would cost more jobs than tariffs would save.  Part of Clinton's problem was that she had no easy message to give these frustrated workers; trying to make college more affordable doesn't help laid off factory workers in the short term.  The reason that both Trump's potentially disastrous proposal and Clinton's silence fall short is because the notion that US factory jobs are being lost to other countries is only partly true; the real problem is the rise of automation.  More and more, factories are using robotic workers instead of people; this is an inevitable consequence of the free market.  To keep competitive, companies have to keep labor costs down, and there's no easier way to do that than to build machinery that can do the job of several workers.  There is simply no easy solution to this problem, there's just  no way to force a company to hire workers to do a job a machine can do.  People who live in these small factory  towns are, through no fault of their own, are victims of progress, without  any easy answers of what to do about it.  And last Tuesday we heard the primal scream of their anger over it.

WHITE WOMEN AND TRUMP

The gender gap map, alas not the real one

When surveying the wreckage of the 2016 election one stunning voting statistic seems to stand out over all the others.  While Hillary Clinton won 54% of women voters overall, 53% of white female voters voted for Donald Trump; while that is 3% lower than the percentage of white women who voted for Mitt Romney back in 2012, it's still a clear majority.  It was expected by both Clinton and the media that a surge of female voters, disgusted by Trump's boasting of sexually assaulting women, would handily give her the victory.  Instead a majority of white women voted for a lying, boastful bigot.  Why?
While understanding the motives of millions of people isn't easy, I have some ideas.  First, there are some women who have just always voted Republican and always will, even if their candidate isn't normal.  Then, quite frankly, there is the fact that women can be bigots too, and that Trump's brand of xenophobia and race baiting caught on with some of them, overcoming whatever reservations they had about his attitudes towards women.
But I think there may be another reason: America is the most openly capitalist first world country, one in which the gulf between the rich and the poor is enormous.  Aggressive cut throat competition  is the name of the game here.  And Trump embodies that idea.  He is obsessed with promoting himself and always being a winner; he isn't just wealthy, he flaunts it, flying in planes and living in buildings  with his name on it.  He is the classic image of the well dressed, successful business man of the 1950's, an era that many of his white female supporters remember fondly.
And with an alpha male like that, the sexism and womanizing are seen as a natural outgrowth of his success.  While they may not admire his choice of words, his actions are no surprise to these women.  Women are often drawn to powerful men, so why shouldn't such a man enjoy that, they rationalize. And his ascension from corporate tycoon to celebrity only fuels his image of success.  Yes, even before he entered the political race he wielded a powerful mix of confidence, success, affluence, self promotion and celebrity that he brought into the race and used to win over not only angry white men, but their wives as well.  Sadly, they seemed to think that some of that  wealth and success could shake off him and sprinkle over the rest of us. 

AMERICAN FASCIST?

 FASCISM

-a political philosophy, movement, or regime  that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic  government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

Now that Donald Trump has somehow managed to win the Presidency, the inevitable question that arises is: just what kind of President will he be?  Because the man has never actually held any political office before, we have no record to go on.  Therefore we must take him at his word and use what he has said in his speeches to try and find out.  And the scary answer is, he very well may be  the first outright fascist American President.
I don't use that word lightly, but I do feel  that it is correct.  Firstly, consider how he has repeatedly stated that he wants to round up all the undocumented immigrants in the country and forcibly deport them. The image of Government troops rushing through work places and houses demanding proof of citizenship and carting off people without that proof is straight out of the fascist playbook.
He ran as a law and order candidate, which will lead to an increase in police force and arrests (this in a country that already has the world's highest prison population).  He also wants to bring back the openly racist "stop and frisk" laws.  Again, this is classic fascist strongman behavior.  (Really, given this and his immigration policies, it's going to be very hard to be a nonwhite person in this country once he's in office.  But then, seeing as how his Supreme Court may overturn the recent pro gay marriage ruling, being gay or lesbian may also be hard.  And given his popularity with the now energized Neo Nazi movement, I wouldn't want to be Jewish either!).
Trump has also expressed a desire to change the libel laws of the country to make it easier to sue publications that print negative things about him.  At his rallies he would make members of the press sit in a ringed off section and often encourage the crowd to boo and taunt them (even calling some out by name).  Clearly he wants a crackdown on any negative reporting of his regime. 
And then there is his rhetoric; his speeches are filled with classic dictator themes, such as:  "I am your Voice" , "I and I alone can fix it" and "to the victor goes the spoils".
 He has even called for the torturing of suspected terrorists ("waterboarding and a hell of a lot worse") and the killing of the families of terrorists.  The fact that these two things are both considered war crimes doesn't matter to him at all;  his word will be law. 
 No doubt he sees himself as a singular powerful leader who's desires will be met unquestioningly. Just look at  his admiration for Vladimir Putin, a fellow fascist in arms.
Thankfully, we still have a Constitution in this country, and no matter how much he thinks he will be a dictator, there still some limits placed on his power, a few  brick walls that he will run into.  Still, how much damage can he cause to the country and the world?  When he is Commander in Chief of the world's largest military force, the answer is a chilling "who knows?".

WHO DO WE BLAME?

The President Elect (Lord help us)

I have never felt more proud to be an American than in 2008 when the country elected Barack Obama to the Presidency.  And I have never felt more shame for my country than I feel right now, waking up to a President Donald Trump.  I love the city and state that I live in, but I can't imagine that I will ever feel love for this country as a whole ever again.  Not for one that could vote for a racist, narcissistic, misogynistic, person like Trump. No patriotism for me, in fact right now I only feel seething rage; I want to look at each one of the 58,842,291 people for voted for him in the eye and ask:  how could you do this?

After every Presidential election, the losing side picks over the ruins of the campaign to try and gain insight.  So now it's important to ask, who is to blame for this political catastrophe?

1.  The Media-right after Trump took that fateful ride down the escalator, the media has been Trump's biggest alley.  Given his gift for absurd bombast and offensive statements, Trump brought high ratings to the news media, who quickly broadcast one speech of his after another, giving him literally billions of dollars worth of free exposure.  And because he lied so fast and so frequently in those speeches, fact checking became almost impossible, letting his lies out into the ether without any contradiction.  Conservatives love to rail against the liberal mainstream media, but it was that media that gave Trump the attention he craved.

2. The pollsters-Although the numbers fluctuated, Hillary Clinton lead in every poll leading up to the election, even on Fox News.  The usually reliable Nathan Silver of the statistical analysis website 538.Com gave her a healthy 65% chance of winning on election day, with most other outlets ranking her chances even higher.  Did this high level of certainty lead to many potential Clinton voters staying home on election night, thinking that she had it in the bag?  Possibly, her support was wide but shallow; she never really excited voters the way that Obama did.

3. Millennials-When the numbers are calculated,  I am sure that the turnout for millennial voters will be very low in this election; these young people tuned in for Bernie Sanders and then tuned out for Clinton.  Sadly, they don't seem to realize the stakes that were involved; for example, someday soon Trump appointed Supreme Court Justices may overturn gay marriage in this country, something they overwhelmingly support but couldn't seen to connect to in this election.  They sadly didn't realize that voting for the lesser of two evils is still something worth doing, especially when the greater evil is Trump!

4. James Comey-Clinton was apparently coasting to a victory when FBI leader Comey announced on October 28th.  that there appeared to be more emails that needed to be investigated.  Although he cleared her the day before the election, the damage was done.  Although polls on the day of the election still showed her with an advantage,  her once commanding lead had evaporated after this unprecedented intrusion by his agency into the election.

5. Clinton herself-With the emails, the ethical questions about the Clinton Foundation, and the unreleased private speeches to Wall St., Clinton always seemed to have one scandal or another being discussed in the media.  Although none of them were criminal, and the attention given them was often overblown, they wound up having a cumulative effect, giving the impression that she was, to use Trump's term, "crooked".  And she was never quite a natural politician; her speeches were lacking in uplift, her emotions often seeming canned and phony. But in many ways she ran a strong campaign: she raised enormous amounts of campaign money, aired some very moving ads on TV, and built up a ground game to get out the vote.  And polls showed her beating Trump in at least two of the debates.  Alas, she wound up falling just short (as of this point, according to the New York Times, she actually got a few thousand more votes than Trump, even while losing the Electoral College). Given the closeness of the election, Progressives like myself will be grinding our teeth at the thought that if Bernie Sanders had gotten the Democratic nomination instead of Clinton, the support of the aforementioned millennial voters very well may have put him over the top.

SHELL SHOCKED

 "Is America a failed state and society?"

 -Paul Krugman, November 8th. 10:58 PM


I am stunned, horrified, shocked, speechless and terrified.  I can't possibly mince words; the worst Presidential campaign in American history has produced the worst possible outcome.  Here are words I can't almost bring myself to say: President Donald Trump.
How could this happen?  Every reliable poll saw Hillary Clinton with a small but consistent lead for months.  The early voting returns in Florida were skewing towards her.  The top fifty newspapers in the country refused to endorse Trump, and many prominent conservatives came to their senses and also refused to endorse him.  Did James Comey hand Trump the election when he announced that he was still investigating Clinton's emails, even when he later admitted he had found nothing?  Could Bernie Sanders have won against Trump? 
What kind of woman votes for a man who boasts about sexually molesting women?  How can they look their children in the eye afterwards?  Who can vote for a man who lies, blusters, insults and brags with every speech? What kind of person votes for a man who has been cheered for by the Klu Klux Klan and every other white supremacist organization in the country?  Who has expressed admiration for dictators like Vladimir Putin?  Who has spread hatred of Mexicans and  Muslims?  Who has encouraged violence at his rallies?
And what could possibly be worse than President Trump?  Try President Trump with a Republican majority congress which will inevitably rubber stamp his budget busting tax cuts for the rich, while he will sign Paul Ryan's move to privatize Social Security and Medicare.  And he will get at least one Supreme Court Justice pick, with perhaps more to come.  So, more than likely, we may say goodbye to gay marriage, along with Roe Vs. Wade.
America may be taking the hardest right turn it ever has, making the 50's and the 80's look progressive in comparison.  But now is not the time for progressives to surrender, we have to fight.  It once seemed impossible that a mixed race Senator with a funny middle name could ever be President, but damned if we didn't get 8 great years of one of the most progressive Presidents ever. We can do it again.
Consider this, once Trump is in office, he will have to try to live up to his promises, and he will find that trying to build a 1200 mile wall and deport 11 million people will not be as easy as he has said it would.  Once his followers discover that he is just another lying politician, they will hopefully turn on him.  And then we can reassert rational control over the country again.  And once the millennial voters who didn't show up for Clinton get a load of what a conservative president can do, they will start paying attention again.  I can't imagine that the four years we will have to suffer through a Trump Presidency will result in him winning a second term.  But just imagine all the damage he can do to both the country and the world by then.  Again, I'm stunned, horrified, shocked, speechless and terrified.

LET IT END....

And so, on Tuesday, the ugliest Presidential Campaign in modern history will finally come to close.  Immediately  books will be written, TV specials and documentaries will be made, and the battle between two stunningly unpopular candidates will be analyzed.
To me, there is a central irony  to this whole process that must be noted: this Presidential Campaign, between two white candidates, was more about race than the two campaigns before it with Barack Obama on the ticket.  When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Presidency by accusing Mexico of sending over rapists and drug users, he lifted a rock in America and found the ugly racist slugs lying underneath.  He energized the country's white supremacist movement into backing a national political figure, something that it almost never does.  Just the other day The Crusader, one of the most prominent Klu Klux Klan newsletters, put him on the cover and wrote a spirited defense of his campaign. 
Let's not kid ourselves, when he made that statement about Mexican immigrants and doubled down on it by saying that he would deport all undocumented immigrants in the country, and then build a border wall with Mexico and get that country to pay for it, for many Republicans(and non registered white supremacists), he didn't need to say anything else.  He was their man.  As popular right wing author Ann Coulter tweeted after  his immigration policy paper was released, "I don't care if @realDonaldTrump wants to perform abortions in White House after this immigration policy paper."  And at every rally that Trump holds, "build the wall" is the chant that's heard the most; in nearly every interview with his supporters it's their number one issue.  His overwhelmingly white constituency cling  to the sad belief that somehow, in a country of three hundred and twenty million people, the actions of eleven million "illegals" is what's holding us down, taking away jobs and spreading crime.
Understand, I am certainly not saying that all Republicans are white supremacists; many Republicans are voting for him because they can't stand Hillary Clinton, or just have always voted for Republicans, and can't see voting any other way.  And most Republican Party officials and Congress members have given little to no support of Trump. But  the way his supporters have responded  against any dissent in the Republican party shows how deeply racist many of them are; David French, a conservative writer for The National Review, led the charge against Trump at that magazine.  The result was a flood of  emails and twitter messages aimed at him and his wife that made violent threats towards both of them. The fact that he has an adopted black African daughter was immediately pounced upon, with the most vile kind of photo shopped images being sent to him and his wife; the fact that his daughter is only seven seemed to not even slow them down.
But there appears to be good news on the horizon: early voting numbers are in, and there are already high numbers of Latino voters (many of them first time voters) making sure their voices are heard in states like Florida and Nevada.  Yes, it would appear that the friends and relatives of the same group of people that Trump began his campaign demonizing are the same ones that are going to  send him slinking back to Trump Tower, whining the whole time about a rigged election.  That's called Karma.

OCTOBER SURPRISE

Huma Abedin

Just when it looked like Hillary Clinton was winning in a landslide, just when it looked like America was rejecting the worst Presidential candidate of modern times (and maybe ever), last Friday FBI director James Comey had to bring up the scandal that she had hoped was behind her.  In a vaguely written letter to congress, Comey said that his agency was reopening the investigation into Clinton's emails, because some of them may have been found during the investigation of former congressman Anthony Weiner.  Weiner's ex-wife,  Huma Abedin is an advisor for the Clinton campaign and may have received classified emails from her, which are now coming to light due to the investigation into Weiner's alleged sexting with a minor.  Got that?

The bottom line is that we have no idea yet just how these emails relate to Clinton and the investigation, and Clinton herself wants the emails released as soon as possible to clear up the matter.  Naturally that didn't stop Donald Trump from immediately crowing that this was a scandal "worse than Watergate".  Comey's behavior clearly seems to be a partisan attack on the Clinton campaign and Democrats in general; in a later letter to the his own agency, Comey wrote “of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations.”   Oh, you think?  And that goes double when such an investigation is announced with less than two weeks to go before an election. While it doesn't appear that this news will change the outcome of the election for Clinton, it may hurt down ballot Democrats, and it threw yet another crazy twist into a Presidential election full of them.

When one looks at the history of Clinton in politics, you can't help but wonder just how much male politicians engaging in sex scandals have affected her life: first, they were the rumors (many true) that her husband Bill was often unfaithful to her when he was Governor of Arkansas, which led to her forgiving him (more or less) in a 60 MINUTES interview.  Then, of course, he was later almost impeached for the Monica Lewinsky scandal; leading the charge on that call for impeachment was Newt Gingrich, who was never shy about his contempt for both Clintons, and who was himself cheating on his wife at the time.   And now she's running against Trump, who's negative comments about women are well documented, and who is currently accused of groping eleven different women(and counting?).  And finally there's Anthony Weiner, a man who seems incapable of controlling his addiction to sexting, who humiliated his ex-wife Abedin twice before (once as congressman, once as a mayoral candidate), and who now faces criminal charges.  It's hard to imagine the rage Clinton must feel; after all the humiliation her husband has brought her over the years, and with the White House now apparently in her grasp, she has to contend with another scandal involving a man who just can't seem to control his sexual appetites.   And if this overblown scandal results in the election of the supremely unqualified Trump, I will also be enraged myself!